What Happened to Flame Notes In Rockband Blitz?????

[jibjqrkl]

I don't use Google. And that is exactly why I only register on a site that I want to. Think of the difference between registering here at rockband.com and Facebook. They are very different. On Rockband.com they ask for your birthdate and email address.

Now think of the information about yourself on Facebook. A lot more than your Birthdate and email address right? You are comparing Apples and Oranges. Which is why I simply told people to stay informed and read the Terms of Service the Harmonix lawyers release.

you do know you can actually put in fake info right?
as for tracking cookies, browsers have an "auto-delete 3rd party cookies at end of session" option for those

[cowboys282]

you do know you can actually put in fake info right?
as for tracking cookies, browsers have an "auto-delete 3rd party cookies at end of session" option for those

I would rather not get to technical here and keep it on topic. But to answer your question this is not a cookie issue. This is a personal information issue. By holding tournaments on Facebook you would be ineligible for the tournament and "Prizes." It will all be in the terms of service written by Harmonix lawyers.

I just want to play Rockband anonymously and try to get top scores on the leaderboards. That option has been removed. I personally disagree with their decisions but it's their company not mine. I will just not play the game until certain issues are addressed. If a lot of people feel like me Harmonix will probably fix things. If a lot of people participate and sign up for these tournaments it will be a success and they will have no reason to change anything.

The community will ultimately decide the fate of Blitz by what they choose to play. Like most business decisions this is about economics, and growing the brand. If it causes the company to make less money and stunts the growth of the brand than they will do something different.

[metalkorn]

I know there are at least 160k users on Xbox alone who have played Blitz. Lets be conservative and say PS3 has 140k users for 300k total users. Rockband world makes up 2% of all Rockband Blitz players.

I think these numbers are representative of the people who tried the trial, not necessarily those who bought it. If you were to use RB World and look at the leaderboards for on disc songs you would see it is more in the range of 50-60 K on 360. The songs in the trial are listed as 160,000 or what have you due to them being available in the trial. Not sure what it is on PS3.

I can understand feeling like you are being forgotten but it is still a choice you are making for yourself. This is the future of connected gaming. Create a new facebook account for the purpose of RB World and this will cease to be a problem for you.

From my perspective I can't win any of the prizes as I'm not in the US. Am i complaining saying that I am forgotten because I am not in the US, no because it is what it is and I'm grateful to HMX for continuing to add functionality and new challenges on a weekly basis to keep me interested in the game.

A lot of developers could learn a valuable lesson from this IMO.

[Lowlander2]

Before digging in any deeper, I want to highlight the beginning of that last paragraph: we have done re balances like this before and it's possible we will again.

No. No. Not like this. Pope in fact said that they would never, ever, nerf powerups, very much because it would make some scores unattainable. What happened with that? Did he lie to us? Was he even there when you made this decision?

Why weren't other power ups raised instead? The launch date for tournaments left us with a rather narrow margin of time to implement in game changes. Add in the holiday, and that leaves significantly less time. In game changes aren't as simple as flipping a switch, and every change means additional rounds of testing, additional errors to consider, additional side effects in other areas, etc. That means implementing a re balance on 10+ power ups, versus a re balance of 1 was a huge timing issue for us to consider.

Then you wait on the tourney implementation.

I'm sorry, do you realise the relative gravitas of what you've done? In your explanation, you've directly addressed not being able to gold star some songs, but seemingly tiptoed around leaderboard scores being unattainable. Having a permanent mark on the leaderboards on any given song, including a few that come from Blitz itself, destroys the notion that it's a fair playing field, and so does the notion that powerups could be moved around in the hierachy at any time. How am I then meant to take this game seriously as a score attack game?

But rest assure that Blitz isn't broken

But my trust that it will remain a consistent, and more importantly enjoyable, experience is. I don't think I can go back.

If the myriad of online-only issues got me closer to stop the play of Blitz, then principle helped make that final push.

[zage1337]

So you alienated a huge portion of your fan base that will not be allowed to take part in the tournament because they live in a different region by rushing out a flame note nerf that makes then dead useless and kill an important gameplay mechanic? Jackpot/Flame was a very fun high risk/high reward way of playing the game, and became an important tactic in the blitz meta game for awhile. This nerf completely throws that out of the window. You don't rush out a major nerf like this 4 months after the game was released without facing problems.

The same people were on the top of the leaderboards because they were the most skilled usually. It was truly a skilled based powerup. Yes there was a lot of luck but that's with every powerup in the game. In order to take advantage of flame notes, you'd have to inherit the skill of being able to react to when the flame notes appear, juggle and catch them without making a single mistake, which is a valid skill set. It's much more engaging than deploying a car that hits random notes.

You should have hold off on the flame note nerf until you truly knew how to deal with the issues that would happen after it. Now you have some songs that are no longer GSable. The leaderboards are a complete joke now with a huge number of scores that are literally unobtainable. Flame Notes are now by far the most useless powerup in the game because the nerf was too extreme. You have limited the amount of good useable combos.

Nerfs aren't as easy as buffing and rushing a nerf was a very bad decision, and I and many other players can no longer take this game seriously anymore. It was a very fun game but now I don't see the point if the rules are going to constantly change like this.

There were other ways to combat the bandmate/flame issue, such as changing the spawn behaviour so players can't keep flame notes spreading indefinitely by hitting 2 lanes at once. Changing the point value however just wrecks it. The new point value makes flames complete garbage and not a viable option in any loadout anymore.

I feel that this was a very lousy and rushed move and it shows.

[www1221]

So you alienated a huge portion of your fan base that will not be allowed to take part in the tournament because they live in a different region...

Not their fault. Legal stuff for other countries is bananas. Thats why most contest and things that take place in the US are US only or at the most US and Canada(excluding Quebec)

[cowboys282]

I think these numbers are representative of the people who tried the trial, not necessarily those who bought it. If you were to use RB World and look at the leaderboards for on disc songs you would see it is more in the range of 50-60 K on 360. The songs in the trial are listed as 160,000 or what have you due to them being available in the trial. Not sure what it is on PS3.

I can understand feeling like you are being forgotten but it is still a choice you are making for yourself. This is the future of connected gaming. Create a new facebook account for the purpose of RB World and this will cease to be a problem for you.

From my perspective I can't win any of the prizes as I'm not in the US. Am i complaining saying that I am forgotten because I am not in the US, no because it is what it is and I'm grateful to HMX for continuing to add functionality and new challenges on a weekly basis to keep me interested in the game.

A lot of developers could learn a valuable lesson from this IMO.

You are correct that the numbers are probably closer to 50 - 60k on each system. But I am sure not all of the those 6k on Rockband world play Blitz. Maybe the idea is to get some of those 6k to buy Blitz now that the game sales are slowing down $$$

And I agree this is the way companies market now. They do it through social media. It is the immediate future of gaming but it can be argued if this is still how things will be years from now. I think the whole social aspect has the potential of slowing down.

The point is I no longer have a reason to play this game. Nor do many others. Time should tell if this will make a difference in the long run. If leaderboards get reset this will be a clear sign that they are trying to increase sales and target a new market of people to spend their 800 points on the game.

Think about it. Everyone who still plays the game has already spent money on the DLC they want. I am sure DLC sales have been going down steadily. They need a new stream of revenue. That starts with getting new players buying the game. That is what this is all about I am sure.

[SirDavidTLynch]

I am starting to think that they have some type of marketing deal going on here. Selling your information for those who sign up through Facebook. Make sure all of you read all terms of Service and be well aware of what they are doing with your information.

You are correct that the numbers are probably closer to 50 - 60k on each system. But I am sure not all of the those 6k on Rockband world play Blitz. Maybe the idea is to get some of those 6k to buy Blitz now that the game sales are slowing down $$$

Who's marketing what now? If it's to get more people to sign up for Facebook, Facebook don't exactly need any promotion, and you can just make up a name like Seymour Cox or Haywood Jablome and leave everything else blank. If it's to get more people to buy Rock Band Blitz, most people who use Rock Band World already have Blitz. That's why threads about Rock Band World goals appear here and not in the main Rock Band forum.

[MasterMo]

I'm limited to my iPhone for the next few days, so I'll keep this brief.

You say this nerf is to ensure power up balance before the upcoming tournament. I can respect that. But you say you don't have time to adjust multiple power ups before then. So I have to ask: couldn't you just delay the tournament while you go through that process? Is that for some reason not possible? The impression I have at this time is that you are haven't done enough testing as to find good balance for flame notes so you nerfed them such that they become a nonissue for the tournament. I hope I'm wrong in that regard.

Can you further explain the reasoning behind nerfing flame notes to nearly a fifth their original value? Do you truly believe their value had to be dropped that much to make them balanced?

[Nekketsu]

Didn't notice this topic till now. Was wondering why I was getting strangely low scores when doing the Easy Glam goal this morning using flame notes. Very over the top nerf and as was repeated hundreds of times already it just destroyed any worth the power-up and leaderboards had.

I myself started using Bandmate+Flame Notes awhile back, but not because of that topic about MasterMO. The GAME ITSELF suggests using the two together during one of the loading screens, so I tried it after not being that happy with Bandmate+other combos. Not good enough to do any insane lane juggling, but it was still giving me better results than other combos, even on five lane songs.

Oh well, doesn't bother me too much as I preferred Blast Notes+Jackpot/Road Rage for the most part although I now have several scores I can never beat now due to how overpowered Flame Notes were.
Can't think of anything that could have actually been done other than modding how the game generates the flame notes, and even that would still require a leaderboard wipe. Either do that or buff EVERY other purple note power-up. Runaway Notes in particular were absolutely useless compared to just casual play with Flame Notes.