How important are the background visuals (really)?

[gopher_p]

I do quite a bit of lurking on various Rock Band forums and am surprised by the number of complaints regarding the background visuals; e.g. not enough options in the character creator, issues assigning specific characters to specific instruments, lack of choice of venue, not enough venues, etc.

For me personally, the stuff going on in the background is the least important part of the game, and I don't see how it can be a significant source of dissatisfaction for people. Of course I understand the issues people have with the aspects of the background visuals such as strobes and other effects that obscure the highway and interfere with the core game play.

Am I way-off, and are the background visuals really that important for people?

If there were no background visuals at all, would you still play Rock Band?

Edit: This is not an attempt to troll anyone. I'm just trying to understand other people who aren't me and have different feelings than I have.

[bclewis]

I would still play, probably as much or almost as much -- but on the other hand I would certainly miss the background visuals if they were removed.

[dog037]

I think it looks more professional with nice background visuals. I don't care about the background visuals until I play Rock Revoultion and Power Gig and see how awful they are. The only game I pay attention to it is The Beatles Rock Band.

[folkeye]

Well depends who you ask. If they went away, I'd probably never play RB again. It was a huge part of the reason I came over from GH in the first place, and continues to be a big reason in interest. For me personally, enjoying something visually (be it movie, game, whatever) adds to the over all enjoyment of the experience, more so when it becomes a personal touch (aka character creation vs. picking off a list of pre-mades). I'm truly passionate about it due to RB's avatars inspiring so much real life creativity and production... and that I am thankful for. Been an awesome run for art the last few years.

I do believe we're at a point where we might be able to better customize our experience eventually (turn background visuals on or off) and that'd be cool for both sides of the spectrum.

[Doc_SoCal]

Your post was worded in a way that looked like trolling the people who DO care enough to voice disastisfaction.

I was just going to close it but decided to edit out the uneccesary eye-poking.

We will see where it goes from here.

Personally, I would play with nothing but the charts, but the extras looks nice and I do like having my band look like I made them that way as opposed to no option to do so at all.

I would welcome a bare-bones option that would toggle all background stuff off but I would not use it at parties.

[folkeye]

Your post was worded in a way that looked like trolling the people who DO care enough to voice disastisfaction.

I was just going to close it but decided to edit out the uneccesary eye-poking.

We will see where it goes from here.

Personally, I would play with nothing but the charts, but the extras looks nice and I do like having my band look like I made them that way as opposed to no option to do so at all.

I would welcome a bare-bones option that would toggle all background stuff off but I would not use it at parties.

Yeah, more options for what/how the player wants to do things is good.

As for that non-blank screen at parties... it IS blank... but all them mixers make things come alive

[SheSaidSheSaid]

Your post was worded in a way that looked like trolling the people who DO care enough to voice disastisfaction.

That's kind of what I thought, too. I came in expecting to say "Yeah, there's some problems with them, but I agree, who really cares that much."

I really love having a character that's basically a rockstar version of me jump around and play guitar on the screen. Would I still play if she had to go away? Probably. But it just wouldn't be the same.

[kingtonyx]

The graphics are extremely important to me.

[Cipher_Peon]

I feel petty, but yeah I would play a lot less without the awesome backgrounds.
And besides, I don't think I ever had jaw dropping visuals impact me as much as Lego Rock Band did. And I totally dropped my guitar in the middle of the song. It was THAT mind blowing :O

[frisbeesteve]

The background visuals are pretty important to me in the fantasy/enjoyment sense of being able to see the animations of created characters, but even more so important when they become distracting to the actual gameplay. Although a patch improved some of the early problems where the charts were too transparent and barely visible, there are still too many venues with too much strobing effects and flashing lights/pyro type displays that make the game visually hard on the eyes when you're trying to concentrate on which notes to play and when. I would love an option to select specific venue so that I could usually opt for the "least distracting" venue for most gameplay. A secondary option would be to toggle the backgrounds off, but this would admittedly suck some of the life from the game and I would barely prefer this option to a distracting venue (i.e. music video).

End result is, yeah, background visuals are indeed important.