The dreaded "Connection to Rock Central has been lost. Sorry about that!" message

[MaximusDM]

From someone who has seen this message a lot, this is the first time I've seen this one:
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/...M/DSC02508.jpg

[Hibou77]

I agree with the OP, this need to be fixed. If it is impossible to reconnect to the central at the end of the song, then save the score somewhere locally until the connection with the central is restored. Just had to replay a 5 minutes song 3 times in a row because the first two times, the connection to the central was lost while I was playing...

[Epsilon82]

From someone who has seen this message a lot, this is the first time I've seen this one:
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/...M/DSC02508.jpg

MaximusDM! *jokingly shakes fist*

I see you above me near the top of the leaderboards an awful lot.

[Diamaniacal]

From someone who has seen this message a lot, this is the first time I've seen this one:
http://i1078.photobucket.com/albums/...M/DSC02508.jpg

I have saw that one more than my fair share of times. If I leave game on menu and go away for a while, but never while playing a song, or after finishing and reviewing scores.

I am pretty disappointed that it is rearing its ugly head here, past 2 weeks I have also had RB3 stall out on main screen 'connecting to RCS' but just waiting 2-3 minutes has gotten me connected unlike before. This has only happened 2 times, so it is nowhere near the issue it was in the past.

[RyRobo]

Your scores don't update? Is this just a PS3 thing (As I understand PS3 Rock Band 1/2 didn't cache leaderboard scores while playing offline)? I've had this message a few times now and I'm pretty sure my scores still hit the leaderboards, but I've never properly checked. I'll test it next time I can, if so though this is way worst than I thought.

This is a huge problem for Blitz right now, and I'd argue the only real major one as the game stands in its current state.

For guys who don't have a problem imagine the situation other people are in. The internet is a flakey thing, and a connection to Rock Central requires...

1. Home connection to stay up without a hitch. In the days of wireless, although this tech is improving, this still isn't something that can be guaranteed.
2. Your local council might have really got a great infrastructure going that's relatively problem free... but some parts of the world don't even have broadband yet, let alone Google Fiber. Canada of all places was rated third world for their web connection by Netflix literally a few days ago, we're not talking remote parts of the world.
3. ISP might run into no problems. This is something locally that has been improved greatly, but I still experience periodic dropouts that my router reports is all on their side. Again, out of control.
4. Xbox Live/PSN must be facing no problems, and we're all too aware of the reliability of their servers.
5. Rock Central has to be up, which as far as I can tell from the 360 side of things... Harmonix are pretty good at this!

Just 5 of the ways that the web can fail us, but the real problem is that it only takes a second for any of these services to lose contact for the whole run to be void. Even if I get disconnected from Xbox Live reconnecting during the song still results in me being kicked off Rock Central and nothing counting for that run. Happened in Ghost of Perdition, I wept. Still haven't dare ran through 2112.

What I think we're seeing here is just straight up DRM, probably Harmonix reacting to the custom community that plagued RB3 pre-patch, the games reaction to removed RBN songs is proof of this enough to me. As far as I'm concerned DRM hurts legit customers way too much, the ends don't justifies the means, and we're seeing that in the guys who are experiencing drop outs or plain can't play the game because they don't have a constant connection. At least Harmonix seems to be looking to turn coins into something cross Rock Band titles, so something positive can come out of this.

Still, a 'reconnect' button should definitely be there at the end of the song to make everything count, and I'm really baffled why it isn't. And in the future when Xbox Live for the 360 is gone, or Rock Central is no longer supporting Blitz, we'll no longer be able to enjoy our game like we would be able to Rock Band 3. Give that a thought, it's a real sad one to me. Games are art and should be preserved, DRM as a trend is making this impossible.

[SirDavidTLynch]

It probably has more to do with coins and goals than DRM.

[RyRobo]

I don't see why that info can't be saved and then sent to Rock Central when the connection is regained like old Rock Band titles did for scores. Yeah, granted it would cause a bit of sync time for Facebook and whatever else they plan use coins for in the future to catch up with, but it would have given much more freedom to the players.

I don't see why goals have to be on Facebook either and not in the game, that wouldn't be a problem then. Don't see why coins can't be stored in the game's save instead of in the cloud.

I think these systems were build in that are employed in the first place as DRM, or at least it stood as a benefit to employing them as they are even if it wasn't the main cause of it. You simply can't use power-ups without a connection to Rock Central, I don't think this was accidental. It's a pretty clear design decision.

It's possible for a program to hang back sending data until the correct requirements are met. It's also possible for a program to receive data at the right time and adjust itself accordingly. Older Rock Band titles did both.



EDIT: Of course, it's not really important why design choices were made, it's the impact that's more important, so I guess this post is kinda pointless and doesn't contribute. Still, it's hard to not agree that the impact is intrusive, similar in ways that DRM naturally is.

[SirDavidTLynch]

I don't see why goals have to be on Facebook either and not in the game, that wouldn't be a problem then. Don't see why coins can't be stored in the game's save instead of in the cloud.

If the goals were set up entirely in Blitz, they wouldn't be able to update as easily, and you wouldn't be able play the goals in Rock Band 3. For the coins, you can use coins to look at your opponent's loadout during score wars. It's not much now, but if they find more uses for coins, you spend all your coins on Facebook, how is Blitz going to know if you play it offline? What if you spend all your coins of Facebook and spend them all playing Blitz offline?

They also wouldn't have been able to respond to peoples' complaints about grinding so quickly, or set it up so that you get more coins by playing songs by that week's featured artist(s).

[RyRobo]

They would absolutely be able to send out goals with just as much ease, they've been able to send us setlists and whatever before, there's zero reason this should be impossible. Coding wise it's just the same as any messages of the day they send. Even playing the goals in RB3 makes sense, the same process that happens right now would happen then, although you'd have to start the challenges in Blitz obviously. Rock Band World is just a UI.

Yeah, I agree that spending all the coins in Facebook is a tricky one... but shouldn't that functionality to 'peek' already be in Blitz anyway? Why can't Harmonix provide a store front that can be updated with new things to spend coins on be in Blitz? I understand this could be more limiting in future updates, but I'm not too sure if even that's true. It all depends how much allowance Harmonix can send to a game based on MS/Sony restrictions. When you consider this kind of stuff, the Rock Band World integration seems more than a little bit... unnecessary? Although I concede there's a lot of speculation here.

On the other hand, yeah, it would have been impossible to react to fan criticism for coins amounts without a patch, which I understand, agree with and am grateful for, but why would they be suddenly unable to award double coins for playing certain songs? That's just functionality that requires a Rock Central connection, Harmonix has already built this feature in Blitz, it just need a ping from the server to turn it on. There's no reason this is tied to the coin counts being calculated server-side rather than client-side.

[gwpom]

I have posted several times in various places here in the forum about this problem. I have it ALL the time, and not always at the end of the songs. There are many times when I can't even connect to the server. I have never had a problem with RB3, or any other game for that matter, other than the normal PSN glitches from time to time. Absolutely nothing like the horrible connection issues with Blitz. I tried two different times this evening to play in the Free DLC challenge, and when I was finally able to play a song, I got dumped both times. I've spent over two hours tonight trying to play a frakkin' song and could not submit ONE score. I am so ready to both embrace and completely abandon this game. And for every one person like myself who is willing to take the time to voice my disapproval and utter disappointment, Harmonix, think of all the thousands you are losing who just say Screw it, it's not worth the hassle. I'm right there at that point, and I hate being there. Come on guys, DO SOMETHING!