Power-up Rebalancing

[HMXPope]

Hey gang!

Since launch we’ve been keeping a close eye on the trends in player behavior in Rock Band Blitz. As we expected would be the case, in the weeks post-launch, we found people leaning more heavily on certain Power-up loadouts than others, and falling into pretty rigid playstyles. In response to this, we have rolled out some tweaks to our power-ups this week that should help level the playing the field a bit for some of the previously under-powered items. We hope this will give you a greater range of power-ups and playstyles to try out and play with, thus also further extending the time you spend with Rock Band Blitz!

Allow me to allay some worries right off the bat. We’re only tweaking these things in the positive. That is, your favorite power-up is not being maimed or gimped in any way. You just may start to see a little more competition for your top leaderboard spots from some folks, so keep a look out!

Power-Ups Affected:
-Point Doubler
-Bottle Rocket
-Shockwave
-Pinball
-Instrument Bonuses (including Synchrony)

Play around with try these out now, you may find you have a new favorite loadout! We’ll continue to keep a look out for any play anomalies and work to keep right the ship in such cases that it’s deemed necessary. Thank you all, as always, for being our eyes and ears on the frontlines. I hope this will bring an air of freshness to your RB Blitz play sessions! See you on the Leaderboards!

[thatmarkguy]

So one-trackers can get even more ludicrous scores with Pinbal now? Great.

Doubler... is it still doubling? So you've just tweaked the overdrive consumption rate so it lasts longer?

What's the instrument multiplier now?

People still aren't going to use Pinball for normal 4+ track legitimate play, and if Shockwave still doesn't actually consume gems and build multipliers people still won't use it regardless of point boost.

[Epsilon82]

I'm glad to see Harmonix tweaking the powerups to keep things fresh, but I kind of agree that Pinball effectively breaks the legitimate gameplay. What bothers me about it is the fact that it's just an entirely different skill which is divorced from rhythm gameplay. If someone is really good at playing a discretely segmented game of Arkanoid, should that really make them good at Rock Band Blitz by extension?

At the same time, I definitely understand the rationale behind not nerfing anything, because that can lead to scores that were previously attainable becoming unattainable and possibly ruin leaderboard competition. I just think that Pinball is the last thing that should get any buffs.

[Meat-Popsicle]

Great ideas. I now have an excuse to break out of my "always use the same 3 power-ups" rut. And yes, making them all positive changes is a smart move, ensuring that you can always score at least as high as you did before, no matter what the power-ups used to be worth.

Will some high scores fall now, directly because of these changes? Yep. Will people get furious about it? Yep. "It's just a game" ... but some people take their gaming very seriously.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

That is, your favorite power-up is not being maimed or gimped in any way.

The word you're looking for is nerfed (isn't it?).

[bigmf]

Mr. Pope Tweaked My Pinball would be a great name for a band.

[MagicMurderBag7]

Are gold star cut offs still the same?

[hmxhenry]

Are gold star cut offs still the same?

Yes, Gold Star cut offs are still the same. The only things changed were the effectiveness of the Power-ups listed above.

[T-Hybrid]

I wonder if the Bottle Rocket now triggers Blast Notes. That seemed to be one of the primary issues I had when using that instead of Road Rage. And there are somes songs where Blast Notes would be a much better fit if they did.

[thatmarkguy]

Yes, Gold Star cut offs are still the same. The only things changed were the effectiveness of the Power-ups listed above.

Out of curiosity... theoretically, *can* gold star cutoffs be changed from server-side tweaking? Or is the GS calculation baked into the software and with no means to override via server communication?

It's been something some people have been curious about... if some songs prove impossible to GS by the current rules, can HMX re-strike the GS threshold on a per-song basis on the server side?