Official Discussion: DLC Week of 4/12 - Fleetwood Mac & Stevie Nicks 6 Pack!

[ReluctantAdept]

... and it's live. I was able to purchase the pack directly from the Xbox marketplace, and it's coming down right now. That, and I got a title update for the Rock Band 3 that is presumably the fix for the "no stars" issue with Pro Guitar. Now excuse me while I check out both ...

[ReluctantAdept]

There's quite a bit of variety here for pro keyboardists because the songs are just so different stylistically. Even though the fairly simplistic Dreams is a bit of a cakewalk through hard, it's still beyond me on expert as it starts to throw in a good mix of 4-note chords.

I'm just dumbfounded in retrospect that Landslide didn't get a pro upgrade since guitar is the only instrument in the track alongside the solo vocal! It's a okay bonus with the pack but I can't it will sell well as an individual offering.

[twilight klaas]

Just went through pro guitar/bass for the Stevie/ Mac tracks.

Dreams is fun to play with a bit of variety for both bass and guitar.

Edge of seventeen is repetitous, mostly 7, 5, 3 frets, but still a good song and fun to play, repetition on pro isn't so bad, cuz its the real deal and still has you moving around a bit and grooving to the song. Great song for beginners.

Landslide is excel...oh wait where's the landslide pro upgrade...right?!

[tnevaker]

the only thing i can think is that they didn't give landslide pro g/b because there's no bass, and they were worried they'd get complaints from people paying 99 cents and only getting one pro chart instead of two. even though most people don't seem to bother with the pro bass charts anyway.

that, or they've got something against fingerpicking. with the screwed up arpeggio notation in pro guitar, would a fingerpicking chart even be readable?

[hmxhenry]

I appreciate the responses but I still feel like you're too defensive about criticism.

I am all about criticism. I sift through it every day on the forums, in email, on fan run sites, gaming news sites, snail mail, phone calls and at live events. We leave tons of the most critical discussions on this forum active specifically because we care what people have to say. The Stage Kit support thread is a great example of how we used criticism to affect positive change in game. That said, criticism is certainly more compelling when it's backed up with solid numbers, reliable statistics and informed opinion.

I've got a fan letter on my desk taking us to task for not making Metalcore Rock Band game. That's a fair bit of criticism in his mind because that's what this kid wants, but I know that's never going to happen because it's not what the rest of the people playing RB want. I don't think that's defensive, I think it's a practical response when considered in light of all the available info.

And I never understand why there's always this need to push back against the forum audience and other websites. Have you actually examined the correlation between the two?

Yes, we have.

The vast majority of DLC buyers are web active, you can tell this easily by looking at the names on the leaderboards on DLC tracks that didn't sell very well.

This is not necessarily true. The vast majority of DLC buyers may be web active (or at least active enough to know how to buy DLC) but that does not mean they're all posting leaderboard scores and it certainly doesn't mean they're all active on RockBand.com. The number of active posters on the forums is a fraction of the active Rock Band community, and they are not representative of the whole. There are a lot of different segments of the RB community, ranging from hardcore to super casual, and they all want and need different things.

Anyway, excuse me if I'm skeptical that it's impossible to hype any artist, unless it is reported by Rolling Stone magazine or USA Today. You need to make it a priority to hype stuff... I just find it highly unlikely that only Billy Joel and Jimi Hendrix were available to hype for more than a few days since RB3 launch.

I, of course, didn't say it was impossible to hype any artist unless it was through those outlets. In fact, we've also promoted recent DLC via Billboard, Fender, Game Informer, Giant Bomb, sponsored battles from Truth & Schick, our DIY Duets video, PAX East events, social media partnerships, etc. and I agreed that we could be doing a lot more.

If you actually have any suggestions for how you think we should be hyping new DLC releases I definitely think that's worth starting a separate thread for.

Frankly, I'd prefer no response and action, instead. I think you need to stop resisting and listen to people asking for 80s metal, modern music and more challenging tracks.

And I think you may need to accept that those requests may not be as popular as you think they are. We've released DLC for 46 of the 50 artists most requested via RockBand.com (from forum discussion threads, song requests and DLC wish lists from the RB2 version of the site) and there's a lot more classic rock, a lot more pop, and a lot more Christian Rock than you would think. And, again, we know what the correlation is between forum requests and actual sales.

I'm just trying to help you guys help yourselves. I love your DLC and your game.

Love for the DLC and the game is fine, how about a little respect for the people behind it? We have an entire team of people dedicated to interacting with the community, collecting information, promoting this content and determining what will make the most people happy in the long run. We have to look at the big picture and I can understand that it's hard to see that without all the information available, but have a little faith.

[hmxhenry]

I'm just dumbfounded in retrospect that Landslide didn't get a pro upgrade since guitar is the only instrument in the track alongside the solo vocal! It's a okay bonus with the pack but I can't it will sell well as an individual offering.

I had an awesome talk with our Audio QA guys yesterday and learned that they are very particular about which masters they use for Pro Guitar charts. In addition to needing functioning master tracks to chart songs for 5 button game play, they need especially clear guitar masters to reproduce accurate Pro Guitar charts. I'm not sure if that directly affected Landslide but I figured at the very least it would be a handy bit of info to pass along to the community for instances when it looks like we avoid upgrades for the more obvious songs.

[JetWolf]

I had an awesome talk with our Audio QA guys yesterday and learned that they are very particular about which masters they use for Pro Guitar charts. In addition to needing functioning master tracks to chart songs for 5 button game play, they need especially clear guitar masters to reproduce accurate Pro Guitar charts. I'm not sure if that directly affected Landslide but I figured at the very least it would be a handy bit of info to pass along to the community for instances when it looks like we avoid upgrades for the more obvious songs.

That is really helpful, and makes a lot of sense. It should be a given that there's more going on than just "the guitar in this song is awesome", but even I have to admit that with the lack of any other info that's where the brain tends to default. Now there's another concrete factor to consider, which should help a lot when the choices sometimes appear to not be logical.

So much awesome in this thread this week. If we do PAX Prime this year, I'm totally high-fiving you, Aaron.

[TheFunto]

Sorry about the off-topic, perhaps dumb question, but why does hmxhenry's logo beneath his name says "HAMRONIX" Developer?

[Catch-22]

Sorry about the off-topic, perhaps dumb question, but why does hmxhenry's logo beneath his name says "HAMRONIX" Developer?

Inside joke

[FlyGuyLXI]

Sorry about the off-topic, perhaps dumb question, but why does hmxhenry's logo beneath his name says "HAMRONIX" Developer?

I don't know. Maybe because he's... A Harmonix Developer?