Is Blitz more fun with four lanes or five?

[thatmarkguy]

So sure, if it's a song where the keys are prominent, I definitely prefer five lanes to four. Otherwise, not particularly.

"Heart of the Sunrise" FTW!

[Meat-Popsicle]

I hate inconsistency: Blitz should play just like Rock Band 3, you can play a maximum of two tracks from {guitar, bass, keys}! It makes the songs so much harder to play (and not in a fun way), especially when (as noted above) the keys are just not prominent, or appear after a section or two of silence.

Or, like "Shout", when they have no keyboard notes at all in the beginning and force you to take a zero on the first section. Infuriating!

Dance for the Dying songs are especially hard because of the way their keys are charted. I find their keyboard parts fun in RB3, and certainly in person (that retro keytar really is a signature instrument for them), but I'm still work on finding a good pathway through their songs on Blitz.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

I find it fascinating how you guys got this idea that in every single five-lane song, one of the lanes has little if any notes in it.

[Epsilon82]

I find it fascinating how you guys got this idea that in every single five-lane song, one of the lanes has little if any notes in it.

I don't think anyone's saying that. It's pretty obvious that Harmonix was cognizant of this in the Blitz setlist and made sure that they didn't have any "Before I Forget" or "Need You Tonight" keys parts. But the DLC is a different story, and there are undeniably plenty of songs where the keys make playing the song less fun.

Those situations wouldn't be as frustrating if the game handled these situations a little differently. Ironically, it's not really the "one or two note" problem that causes an issue, because the game almost always doesn't count that lane against the multiplier cap at all in that scenario. It's mostly when there's just enough notes to allow for one multiplier advance but not enough for two or three where it becomes a frustrating burden. If they would just account for that by either ignoring anything that can't get up to 3x or by recognizing when the max multiplier for a given lane as been reached and giving the +3 cap anyway, it wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem.

But like I said, I think most people agree that as long as most lanes are reasonably busy, five lanes is a blast to play.

[Plutarch]

You need to have a nice busy keys part for it to be fun. I can't stand it when you have to play the other instruments but then switch over to hit this long-ass chords and you have to basically hit all of them to get the multiplier up. It kind of put a damper on The Wicker Man for me, and I'm a rabid Iron Maiden fan. But like someone else said, usually a busy keys part winds up balancing out a slow guitar or bass part. That's why we need some power/progressive metal where all that stuff is busy. :P

[Epsilon82]

You need to have a nice busy keys part for it to be fun. I can't stand it when you have to play the other instruments but then switch over to hit this long-ass chords and you have to basically hit all of them to get the multiplier up. It kind of put a damper on The Wicker Man for me, and I'm a rabid Iron Maiden fan. But like someone else said, usually a busy keys part winds up balancing out a slow guitar or bass part. That's why we need some power/progressive metal where all that stuff is busy. :P

You probably already know this, but the way you phrased the "long chords" thing makes me want to make sure, but you don't have to hold the sustains to get the multipliers. In those cases, especially earlier in songs where the multipliers aren't up, you just want to hit the sustain briefly and then move off to busier tracks.

[Plutarch]

You probably already know this, but the way you phrased the "long chords" thing makes me want to make sure, but you don't have to hold the sustains to get the multipliers. In those cases, especially earlier in songs where the multipliers aren't up, you just want to hit the sustain briefly and then move off to busier tracks.

Yeah, I know that and I usually switch to vocals in those situations. I just sometimes have issues when you have to hit the beginning of almost every keys note to get the multiplier and sometimes I wind up neglecting drums or bass because I'm always hovering in the right lanes. But this is definitely a song-by-song situation, some have five lines and everything's good.

[firedoom666]

5 lanes...

gives you more to do

[T-Hybrid]

You could ask the same question with four lanes. If there's an instrument with very few notes it's going to make the song either more challenging or more frustrating to score well on.

Since (at the moment) keys is the one that typically has little or nothing to do, there you go.

[zage1337]

I'll just say this. Playing Do You Feel Like We Do is boring as hell because you have to hit 1 drum note every 2 seconds and a bass note and leveling those up just takes the fun out of that song.

Songs that actually use all 5 lanes like TTFaF on the other hand are pretty fun. It doesn't really matter if it's 4 lanes or 5 lanes. Except I would like to point out that 3 lane tracks and lower can be completely cheesed and make the leaderboards on those songs meaningless.