Compilation of questions answered by HMX (indexed)

[Sayburr]

HMXHenry saidWe are working on numerous things all of the time, but we don't post time lines or expected dates for fixes when they are out of our control. Some fixes are dependent on 1st party approval, so it would be awfully presumptuous for us to make a definitive statement without having all our ducks in a row first. Also, if given the choice between having a fix done fast or done right, we'll choose doing it right. When we're confident that we have a stable date for a patch we will, of course, post that date and make everyone aware as soon as we possibly can.

[Sayburr]

Why are we always in the dark on things? Why can’t HMX answer our questions?

HMXHenry said We're not able to make stickied announcements for every subject that comes up on the boards. There are currently 78 stickied threads (!!!) in all the sub forums, and that's already a horribly unwieldy number. Making more stickies isn't the answer, especially when a great deal of information that people complain about IS addressed in stickies that they didn't bother to read.

Our communication can definitely be better and, as some posters have noted, our follow up is not strong and we're working to improve that process. A great deal of our frustration lies in the fact that we rely on many other parties for information. When we announce a DLC issue, for example, we're reliant on 1st party for a resubmission timeline that we can pass along to you. Sometimes we don't get that crucial follow up info and we all end up in the dark, sometimes until we come in one day and find that the issue has been mysteriously fixed, and that's clearly not ideal for any of us. One thing that we've started doing in an effort to make info more visible is editing responses into OPs to consolidate info, realizing that many people won't read beyond the first page.

All forums rely heavily on community interaction and peer to peer info sharing. Users like Apples and Sayburr are invaluable because they're willing to take a minute (literally one minute) to search for info that they are looking for, and they then go out of their way to share that info with other posters. Between the search feature, the ability to review the backlog of dev posts and the existing stickies there are many ways to find official comments on issues. If you see someone looking for info and you know where it is, please link to that thread or post. If more people are providing links and helpful quotes, that will end up becoming more effective than one stickied post in a wall of stickied posts.

Regarding specifics of fixes, sometimes we're not able to give that info right away. Sometimes "we're aware of it and we're working on a fix" is the best answer available. It would be foolish, irresponsible and misleading for us to announce a list of things that we hope to fix only to find out that something had to be cut due to technical limitations, there was an issue with 1st party, there was a delay in the expected date, etc. When we have concrete information, we will post it as soon as we're able. You should be seeing an announcement addressing specific patch issues in the very near future, and that will be stickied front and center so everyone can see it. I think that announcement is very much in line with the info and communication you're asking for, and we'll be just as thrilled as you are to start discussing it in more concrete terms.

[Sayburr]

Why can’t HMX just put a post in the announcement forums that is updated with all of the issues

HMXhenry said From my experience, when you have threads that mix software issues with DLC issues with hardware issues with retail issues with export issues, etc. it becomes increasingly difficult for people to find the one specific piece of information that they are looking for. I think Sayburr's thread provides a lot of what you're looking for, but even in that thread there's posts asking for answers that were quoted on the very same page.

Our ultimate plan is to make the support forums almost like mini announcement threads. Our plan is to make them read only, so there will be higher visibility for issues that are brought up and stickied there. We expanded these support forums from 2 to 4 sub forums at launch to make sure people were able to jump right to the section specific to them. If someone is looking for the missing Week 96 DLC we wouldn't want them to have to read through a 5 page sticky of hardware, export and retail issues to find an answer. We've left the support threads open this long to catch as much initial feedback as we can during launch, but by the end of the year we should expect to mass merge a great number of threads and make it read only so that mods and devs will be the only people posting or moving issues into those forums. Hopefully that will keep things organized in a way that makes sense to everyone.

[Sayburr]

Is there any way to request a band or make it more likely for them to be DLC (getting a lot of support, contacting record company, etc.)?

Der Lex said A few ways, actually.

If you want a band to have 'official' Harmonix-charted DLC in the game, you can either post a request in the Ultimate Setlist section of the forum (make sure to see if there's already a thread for your band, one big thread is more impressive than dozens of little ones) or you can use this link for a direct request: http://www.rockband.com/request (link at the bottom of every forum page)

If you think a band might be interested in putting their songs on the Rock Band Network, you can contact them (or their management) yourself and tell them about it. You'll find a lot of information on how to approach bands in the Rock Band Network section of this forum.

Additional information from Dec 16 2011 press release The Facebook RB Dashboard is a cool way for you to explore the RB library (like a more accessible version of our Songs page) and let us know which bands you want to see in the game! We've been pointing people to RockBand.com/request for song suggestions, but the RB Dashboard offers a few different wishlists that are visible to everyone in the community, so you can see in real time which bands are the most requested.

[Sayburr]

Why is HMX so pro-censorship?


HMXThrasher said It's not tailored to adults. The game and the site are supposed to be T-rated.

We like both our game and our website to be accessible to the largest audience possible, for us a T for Teen rating helps do that. Obviously it follows then that the site subscribes to some of those same rules - we want anyone who visits to feel comfortable posting.

For all of the songs that appear in-game we do work with the artists, their managers, and labels to ensure the artistic integrity of their work - you'll never see a song "censored" to the point of making it vastly different from the original. Rather what you find in-game for some tracks is similar to an edit you might hear on the radio.


HMXHenry goes on to say Everyone is really just taking stabs in the dark. Even I'm not directly involved with the licensing process, but I can say with some degree of certainty that RB is getting more play time in living rooms than in bars, and that we get more angry emails asking for more censorship than we get emails asking for less.

Would offering two different versions of a song net us more than it would cost to license and submit or develop a tool to support? Probably not. Would having profanity kept in songs attract more people than it would alienate? Probably not. If that we're the case I'd imagine we would have pursued that path long before it was suggested on the forums.

As a company full of artists (and generally foul mouthed individuals) it's not as if we're "pro censorship" and we're getting our jollies cutting words from songs. We're working hard to maintain the integrity of an artist's work while still releasing it in a format that will get approved by the ESRB and will appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

No one has ever told me that they're going to stop playing RB because swears aren't included in songs, but we get emails all day long about Cleveland Steamers, goddamn half Japanese girls, riding trains while high on cocaine and Dave Coulier in a theater. If you absolutely positively have to hear a song in it's original form you can always listen to that song. But if you want to play it in RB it's going to conform to the T for Teen slapped on the box.

[Sayburr]

Q: Couldn’t you offer M rated songs to those who want them? If I were HMX, I would offer the choice.

A: HMXThrasher said But if you're us, and you're doing all of this market research into who plays your games, and who your audience is, and you have to juggle additional factors such as development time, authoring budgets, and ratings from the ESRB, you also have to look at what makes the most business sense. I know it seems (b/c I've read threads like this over and over the last few years), like it would really be a simple thing to just make an "M" rated version of our game ON TOP of all of the development we do for the regular versions. If that were the case, and it made business sense to do so, or made sense for the audience we've spent so much time researching, that's perhaps what would happen. BUT our goal, before we even get into the economics of game development and distribution, is to expose as many people as we can to new music. If someone hears something in-game and loves it, hopefully they'll go check out more by that band. At this time a "T for Teen" rated game not only helps us do that, but it also makes business sense for us to do that, plain and simple.

Like I said too we work with the artists who appear in our game - and their affiliates - very carefully to ensure that they're happy and comfortable with what shows up in game.

[Sayburr]

Where is all of the good music?

HMXHenry said At the corner of Different Strokes For Different Folks and "Good" Is Entirely Subjective, that's where.

Forum response: Hey, you all are ignoring a huge market by ignoring certain bands

HMXHenry said My response didn't have anything to do with the bands that he listed, but rather with his assessment that the bands we have been releasing aren't "good". If he had said "I'm not crazy about the songs that have been released lately, but I'd like to see some stuff by these bands" I wouldn't have said anything at all. I didn't say anything about which bands are and aren't good, he did. It's something that really gets my goat.

Forum response: Wow HMX Henry. I own over 1,200 songs from all genre's, I have owned all the Harmonix games. I have supported since day one. I am just starting to question if you guys are even trying anymore. Why even have an ultimate setlist suggestion thread if 99% of the requested songs never make it. Support the fans that play the game!

HMXHenry said It's awesome that you have so many songs and that you're such a big fan of Rock Band, but it bums me out when people declare that bands or songs aren't "good". You may not like all the DLC that we put out, but there are a ton of other people out there playing Rock Band and they're downloading those songs in huge numbers. Heck, I don't like every song that we put out but I'm able to recognize that different people like different things, just as I'm able to walk into a record store without knocking over displays for bands I don't like and shouting "EPIC FAIL, where's all the GOOD music?!"

We're are supporting the fans that play the game, and we're doing so by releasing DLC more frequently and in larger quantities than any other game out there. Releasing huge artists like David Bowie, Johnny Cash, The Clash and Bob Marley doesn't mean we're not supporting the fans, it just means that we're releasing different content than what you want right now. That doesn't make them any better or worse than the bands you listed.

[Sayburr]

Harmonix is no longer owned by Viacom? What happens to us?

HMXHenry said This shouldn't impact you guys at all. Support for RB3, past titles and weekly DLC will continue uninterrupted.

[Sayburr]

The DLC being released is boring, we need more Metal! Even people at ScoreHero are asking for more challenging DLC

HMXHenry said While these forums represent a small percentage of the overall RB community, the folks at ScoreHero are an even smaller part of the whole, repping the most hardcore of the hardcore. Metal may not be as popular with the majority of RB players as you might imagine judging by comments on the forums.

Metal still outnumbers Classic Rock in the DLC library, and RBN has been cranking out amazing metal tracks every week so there's more than enough stuff available for those looking for a finger cramping challenge. And we will, of course, be releasing more metal DLC in the future. But I don't think releasing punk, country, reggae and classic rock DLC will drive all the metal heads to immediately sell their games, no more so than the large chunk of metal dropped around RB2's release frightened off the fans of punk, country, reggae and classic rock.

[Sayburr]

Hey! Why can’t I play Pro-Guitar online with people who don’t have Pro Charts? If I am playing Pro Guitar with three others that are playing pro drums and keys, but don’t own the pro-guitar charts, because they don’t need them, why can’t I play with them?

HMXHenry said Pro upgrades are intended to function as all other DLC does, meaning you need to have parity with people playing in your online band. That is, if you want to play Under Pressure with a band, everyone else in the band needs to have Under Pressure. If you want to play Under Pressure (RB3 Version) then everyone else in the band needs to have Under Pressure (RB3 Version). And if you want to play Pro Guitar on Under Pressure (RB3 Version) then the rest of your band mates need to have that file as well.

File compatibility is no picnic, especially as more tiers are introduced with RB3 versions and upgrades, but it becomes even more problematic when incompatibility results in blank note highways, mismatched scoring and other miscellaneous problems on the back end. To account for these edge cases and to correctly display tracks as intended in the design of our online multiplayer system this was changed in the title update.

Making larger changes to the infrastructure of online band mechanics is a bold enough undertaking as is, and a patch isn’t really the ideal platform for it, certainly not a patch as densely packed as the one we released today. We will, however, continue to track your feedback and pass it along internally to ensure that we’re able to improve online matchmaking moving forward. I hope that answers some of your questions.

Forum Response: To paraphrase: "Pro guitar/bass was never intended for online play. deal with it."

HMXHenry said That's not the case at all, and it holds about as much water as saying that we're holding people hostage with regular DLC because a full band needs to have a track before they can play with each other online. Pro DLC is intended to work the same as regular DLC. But I can see that may not be an ideal solution for some people in this thread, so we're collecting feedback and we're letting Design know how we can improve things in the future.

Also, for what it's worth, the process of identifying an issue, confirming it internally as "an issue" and not "a confusing design choice", crafting a solution for it and then implementing it is not always as easy as any of us would like it to be. This wasn't something that popped up on launch day that we ignored until now, and there's a lot of work that we do behind the scenes that you're not seeing. Our hands were also relatively tied until we knew what was going to make it into the final version of the update that hit on Monday.

Forum Response: We know you listen because of the stage kit support being added back in, so if we keep this issue going will you listen to us too?

HMXHenry said We are listening and we are collecting feedback for the Design team. We're also comparing forum feedback to statistics we have for online gameplay, online Pro gameplay and online Pro gameplay in full bands so we can make decisions that will positively benefit as many players as possible.

Forum response: So really? I have to go find new friends? That's a ridiculous solution.

HMXHenry said If the answer is "find more people by taking advantage of the robust community on RockBand.com" I think that's a pretty minimal effort required to reach your ideal online RB3 scenario. It doesn't mean you have to stop playing with your RB1 era friends, but since when is meeting new people and having more options on your friends list a bad thing?

We obviously want to make online matchmaking as easy as the current system will allow, but if you refuse to play with different people online or reach out to other members of the community then there's not a whole lot more we can do for you right now.