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

[CJHobbes]

I know this is probably too late for anything, but here's my two cents.

1) What do you think Flame notes should be worth? It seems that most posters in this thread aren't opposed to the suggestion that Flame notes were previously over powered... but where do you see the balance between "over powered" and "under powered"?

2) If the Flame note values remain as is would you rather see the leaderboards reset or see them remain as is?

3) How often do you use Flame notes when playing Blitz? Never, sometimes, all the time?

4) How important are top leaderboard scores to you on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "never think about them" and 10 being "they consume my every waking moment"?

1) The value should be set back to what it was, while other power ups should be buffed. Doing any sort of leaderboard wipe while nerfing power-ups is a terrible, terrible thing. Bring the other power ups in line with flame notes and let the chasing for #1s begin anew.

2) I don't see anything positive coming from this option.

3) I use Flame notes about 50% of the time, but I don't chase scores (see #4). My usual load-out is road rage - blast notes - super guitar, but only because I can lazily gold star most songs this way.

4) -5. I care nothing for leaderboards or chasing them, I just play through songs on Blitz to interact with my music a different way. I don't even chase my own scores.

I believe at this point it's not so much a matter of completely balancing the power ups as much as it is keeping customer confidence. Nerfing things and wiping the leaderboard does not do this, while buffing the others brings a level of new intrigue and freshness to the game.

There's no need to destroy the Kingdom when the castle just needs a few upgrades.

On the topic of the tournament coming up:

Here is where you can nerf flame notes, but I still don't feel that this would be a great solution. What you should do is just ban the bandmate/flame note/xxx loadout, kind of like when Street Fighter or Soul Calibur bans certain characters for tournaments. That to me would be the quickest and most effective "fix" for the short time you have to get it running.

[Epsilon82]

There's no need to destroy the Kingdom when the castle just needs a few upgrades.

Indeed.

On the topic of the tournament coming up:

Here is where you can nerf flame notes, but I still don't feel that this would be a great solution. What you should do is just ban the bandmate/flame note/xxx loadout, kind of like when Street Fighter or Soul Calibur bans certain characters for tournaments. That to me would be the quickest and most effective "fix" for the short time you have to get it running.

They really don't even need to go to that extreme unless they really want to include 4-lane songs in the tournaments. In order to maximize overall participation, they'd probably be sticking to core Blitz songs for these anyway, I'd imagine, and of the included songs, the majority of them have a Keys track. The exploit really doesn't work with 5-lane songs, at least not to the extent that makes it impossible for skilled usage of other methods to beat it.

JCirri was the first to suggest it and I really think it's the best overall solution: just put the game back the way it was, investigate the possibility of buffing other powerups to some extent, and use 5-lane songs for the tournaments.

[CJHobbes]

They really don't even need to go to that extreme unless they really want to include 4-lane songs in the tournaments. In order to maximize overall participation, they'd probably be sticking to core Blitz songs for these anyway, I'd imagine, and of the included songs, the majority of them have a Keys track. The exploit really doesn't work with 5-lane songs, at least not to the extent that makes it impossible for skilled usage of other methods to beat it.

JCirri was the first to suggest it and I really think it's the best overall solution: just put the game back the way it was, investigate the possibility of buffing other powerups to some extent, and use 5-lane songs for the tournaments.

Good point, I didn't even think of the 5-track songs. That would work out fine then.

[rapierdwit]

1.) Set them back they way there were, buff other ones accordingly. No one is going to complain if they start getting better scores from other load outs. Better a buff then a nerf.
2.) Give Zen Studios a call and ask them how the ONE reset they did to ONE pinball table was received. In other words, don't reset the boards, nothing good will come of it and it will tick off the majority of people.
3.) Rarely, but I recently got the game and love it. I am working my way up to flame notes/jackpot. Currently just trying to gold star most of the songs.
4.) 5. I like to move up the leaderboards but anything in the top 200 is currently out of my reach, so not a real concern of mine.

[ASPMike]

1) What do you think Flame notes should be worth? It seems that most posters in this thread aren't opposed to the suggestion that Flame notes were previously over powered... but where do you see the balance between "over powered" and "under powered"?

2) If the Flame note values remain as is would you rather see the leaderboards reset or see them remain as is?

3) How often do you use Flame notes when playing Blitz? Never, sometimes, all the time?

4) How important are top leaderboard scores to you on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "never think about them" and 10 being "they consume my every waking moment"?

1. Between nerfed and current. Compromise, i do think they are a bit over valued for a person like me who knows how to time Rockets and blast notes to get high scores then find out that someone has a 400000 point difference between my score

2. Yes, DO IT... that's my thought. many games have done this in the past to remove scores of people that have been exploiting a glitch or cheating

3. Rarely, but as a Rocket/Blast note user i have a problem with trying to obtain the high scores flame note/jack pot users get

4. uh like 2, i gave up on leaderboard scores when the communities started acting all like turds.

That's my thoughts

[Fedora]

I don't think I've posted on these forums since the Rock Band 1 Graph Thread but what the hell I play this game too, I'll toss in my two cents.

(For your micro-demographic targeting info, I've been a fanboy since Amplitude, own three different colors of split-strumbar P-Basses, and ~1000 DLC songs. I also asked if some sort of XBLA Amplitude-clone could be worked out during the HMX panel back at PAX 2008.)

1) The correct answer is "1500" and to buff other powerups, but for a short term tournament fix go 1000 or to a diminishing returns cycle - for tournament matches only. After tournament season (which I agree with Cirri should be 5 Lanes) reset it to 1500, look into buffing the other powerups to match, and consider making Blitz mode worth more for keeping active.

2) I only have a handful of Top 10s so I don't have anything to lose, but yeah, I'd say a reset is needed in that case. You will lose a lot of players if you do this, however. I wouldn't recommend it unless there really is no way to make it work.

3) I didn't even know the lane spam thing was possible until I read this thread, but I use them 60-70% of the time - on songs that I have trouble leveling up checkpoints or heavy note-dense songs I go jack/blast instead of jack/flame

4) 6. It's nice to see my scores climb and hit a Top 20 now and then, but I had my OMG MUST GRIND HI SCOREZZZ phase during my affair with the DJ Hero series. DJ Hero 2 was another game that suffered from another grossly overpowered power-up in Rewind, which let you play the entire song twice and made all other powerups worthless in comparison. The constant rewinding took you out of the "rhythm game groove" constantly and made every song take 10-15 minutes to complete.

[Banjofan284]

First off, I wanted to say thanks to HMX for continuing to support Blitz with balances and listening to fan feedback several months after launch. I've had tons of fun with it. I've played Move Your Body in Blitz more times than I can remember, it works so well in this game.

In the interest of collecting as much info as possible before meeting with the team to discuss further, I thought it would be helpful to float a few short questions to posters in this thread. Please respond if you have a moment, it'll be really helpful in defining the overall temperature of the forum community.

1) What do you think Flame notes should be worth? It seems that most posters in this thread aren't opposed to the suggestion that Flame notes were previously over powered... but where do you see the balance between "over powered" and "under powered"?

2) If the Flame note values remain as is would you rather see the leaderboards reset or see them remain as is?

3) How often do you use Flame notes when playing Blitz? Never, sometimes, all the time?

4) How important are top leaderboard scores to you on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "never think about them" and 10 being "they consume my every waking moment"?

I'll pass along any responses that pop up before Wednesday and will flesh these out to full fledged polls if we need more definitive stats. Thanks all.

1. I'd say make them worth somewhere in-between 1000-1250 points per note. Anything less than that would turn them into a useless powerup, instead of an over-powered one.

If it's technically possible, it might not be a bad idea to keep them at 1500 points each, but either make them show up fewer times per song or make the next flame note only show up on 1 randomized instrument track, instead of 2. Or void any flame notes hit by the bandmate (I wasn't aware of that exploit).

Regardless, it would be good to consider making changes to the other power-ups, not just flame notes.

2. Resetting all the leaderboards would be unfair to everybody that never used flame notes, so I think that'd be a terrible idea. If flame notes are weakened, but other power-ups aren't buffed, you could maybe reset the top 5-25 scores per song (though I don't know if that's an option or not).

3. All the time, since about a month after Blitz released. The Jackpot/Flame Note combo in particular has gotten me more high scores than any other combo (though this doesn't work as well in very short songs).

4. 7. Getting personal high scores is what I go for since I play each song I get in Blitz.

[Epsilon82]

1. Between nerfed and current. Compromise, i do think they are a bit over valued for a person like me who knows how to time Rockets and blast notes to get high scores then find out that someone has a 400000 point difference between my score


3. Rarely, but as a Rocket/Blast note user i have a problem with trying to obtain the high scores flame note/jack pot users get

Not to pick on this, but this goes to the heart of what I was saying before. Using Bottle Rockets and Blast Notes is significantly easier than using Jackpot and Flame Notes effectively. You're not supposed to get as high of scores as Jackpot/Flame users get. That part of the game was working exactly as it should before this nerf. If you could consistently get higher scores with Road Rage (or Bottle Rockets) and Blast Notes, there would be no reason for anyone to ever use Jackpot/Flame, because the latter requires a lot more of you as a player. The risk and difficulty should be rewarded with higher potential scores. If they're not, then why would anyone bother using them?

Even with Flames being effectively taken out of the game at the moment, the high scoring gurus are currently hard at work mastering Pinball/Sync, which is the only combo that has any chance of scoring anywhere near prior levels now. Unless they nerf everything else, the best players are always going to vastly outscore the beginner combos anyway. All they've done is taken away a perfectly legitimate powerup that required relevant rhythm gaming skill and essentially replaced it with one that asks you to play a superhuman game of Arkanoid without analog paddle control.

[Fedora]

I guess maybe the question that needs to be asked at the heart of all this is

"How much of a risk/reward scaling do we want the power ups to have?"

[DeftRockX3]

1) They should return to the value they had before the nerf. If you want to balance the game, buff blitz mode, shockwave, runaway notes, and other powerups as needed. Due to the way I play blitz, most of my library has been rendered useless for score hunting, which is a significant aspect that made blitz fun to play (I still play, just not as much as I used to).

2) The leaderboards should not be reset at all. I know I won't ever beat some of my scores, even with pinball, but it's better than having them all erased.

3) I'd say 90% of the time. My execution with band/flame wasn't anything to brag about, but I was definitely proud of my jack/flame performances on some songs. It was risky, but definitely worth the effort when everything went as hoped/planned.

4) I'm not obsessed with being #1 on every song, just the ones I know for certain I can be #1 (zagesaw is in my friends list, so that keeps me super humble). Therefore, I'd say a 7 or perhaps an 8.