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

[pelemerengue]

Trying to get a high score posted on "Charlene" for the tournament, I tried all combinations of Jackpot, Blast Notes, Road Rage, and Flame Notes (I know they're worthless, but they're all I know!)

I'm pretty sure Epsilon82 already pointed this out, but Road Rage+Blast Notes can actually be more effective than Jackpot+Blast Notes, which is disappointing. Successful Jackpot use should be hugely rewarded, and that was the case with Flame Notes. Now, it's a ton of effort for what might end up being a middling score.

Anyway, with my best attempts at this, I couldn't get past 90,000 pts. And I played the song like 10 times and put in a few incredibly solid runs. It was really frustrating.

Then I try Pinball for the hell of it, and without hitting most of the notes or trying to up the track multipliers at all, I break 100,000 pts easily. I didn't hit even 15% of the notes in the game and it was the most effective strategy.

Excuse my French, but this is bull****. Please bring Flame Notes back up to 1500 and buff Blitz Mode.

[zage1337]

Anyways as I can still see the top scores for the tournament, I would like to add that the top scores wouldn't honestly look that different if Flame Notes were kept at their original value, except now people don't have flame notes as an option to compete. The same top players would still win the tournament regardless if you nerfed flame notes or not.

Beating those top scores on the tournament songs would still be very difficult to pull of even with flame notes at 1,500. Not many people beat ketchupyoshi's Shout score with Flame Notes. I think only like 5 people actually did until now. So no..Flame were not overpowered in contrast with other powerups in the game.

A good jack/flame score couldn't beat a good sync/blast score on a wide variety of songs prior to the nerf anyways. They weren't that overpowered. The kind of scores MasterMO was getting was a very rare exception and honestly 800k on Buddy Holly looks just as outrageous as 300k on Charlene. I highly doubt those scores were anticipated, but that's what the game allows you to do.

I hope the data from the tournaments will be helpful.

i'll continue to post high scores that are 100-200k above the next top score on songs without using flame notes that I doubt HMX thought was possible. Got over 640k on Electric Eye and 848k on BYOB the other day.

tl;dr Flame Notes were powerful but not the only option. Taking them out however reduced the options and variety in high level play.

[Epsilon82]

I'm pretty sure Epsilon82 already pointed this out, but Road Rage+Blast Notes can actually be more effective than Jackpot+Blast Notes, which is disappointing. Successful Jackpot use should be hugely rewarded, and that was the case with Flame Notes. Now, it's a ton of effort for what might end up being a middling score.

Might end up being a middling score? I think you meant guaranteed to be a middling score. ;-) Seriously, Flames are completely useless now. They might as well take them out of the game at this point value.

But yeah, you touch here upon an interesting dynamic that may not be entirely obvious at first glance. The general downside to Jackpot (along with not being able to make mistakes, of course) is that its effectiveness is severely crippled in the early stages of songs. This is just a byproduct of the game's stacking multiplier system, but what made Jack/Flame so useful is that it largely offset the terrible weakness of Jackpot when the multipliers haven't had a chance to get raised much yet. So in combination with Flame, the game brilliantly allowed the Jackpot powerup to be more powerful early on with the tradeoff that it is much more difficult to keep Jackpot while chasing Flames because of the quick decisions and clean lane switching required.

My point here is that another byproduct of the Flame nerf that may go largely unappreciated is that it effectively nerfs Jackpot's general use effectiveness as well. I've been playing a lot of songs of moderate to short length (of which there are plenty in the Rock Band library), and experimenting between Jackpot and Road Rage with Blast, and on most songs with a relatively average number of total checkpoints, it seems pretty unusual for Jackpot to have any kind of significant advantage.

You can make the argument that this could be an intentional element of the design, to encourage people to strategize by using Road Rage or Bottle Rockets on shorter songs and save Jackpot for longer ones, but it's hard to ignore the fact that using those powerups effectively is much easier than using Jackpot, even if Jackpot isn't typically as tough without Flames to chase. And again, the beauty of the game before was that you could offset Jackpot's weakness in many cases by choosing to use it with Flames, which is risky and requires more of you, but now that option has been completely eliminated from the game.

In short, Flames are now worthless, and Jackpot itself is also hobbled a bit indirectly because it has lost one of its most valuable pairing partners.

[HMXPope]

Hey Gang,

Wanted to jump in. Obviously a LOT of great discussion in this thread so far, please keep it up.

I wanted to start with a little info for you all about how this rollout went, because it obviously was not the smooth launch we planned for.

The initial intent was to launch Tournaments as well as the Flame Note change together, and to do so before the holiday break. As happens with web development sometimes, bugs were encountered which prevented us doing so before Xmas. So the decision was made to launch it a week later, on the 26th/27th, expressly because we knew a lot of people would likely have time to try out the new system as it is a vacation for so many. This time, though, a live environment bug required us to pull down the Tournaments, but after the Flame Note change had already gone live.

This resulted in a week with that Power-up change out there with no explanation from us, which was not at all our intent. So huge apologies for the lack of communication there. I know HMXHenry was in the office (I was not) and doing his best to reply to folks, but still, it didn't go how we wanted it to.

The Flame Note change itself is obviously the topic of discussion in this thread, not so much the Tournaments, but I first wanted to get this out there before anything else. Still, the two topics are related for the reasons I posted in the Tournaments announcement. It was a measure to try to level the playing field in a way that would encourage the maximum amount of people to try the Tournaments out. I realize this in itself is a topic of debate here, but at least understand that was our intention.

As for the level that the Flame Notes are at right now, that’s likely where they’ll stay for the duration of the tournaments. We’ve spent countless hours discussing alternatives with the Production and QA teams, pushing many of the suggestions that came from this thread, and this is honestly the least disruptive to the core game play experience.

With so many alternatives suggested in this thread, we simply can’t address them all individually, but nearly all of them weren’t possible for either technical reasons or because of production bandwidth. Buffing all power ups would have so drastically decreased the value or standard notes that the plate spinning mechanic would have been worthless compared to chasing power ups. Buffing Blitz mode in addition to the other power ups would have completely devalued Gold Stars and made them achievable very quickly. Tightening the hit window is a major change that would have drastically altered both the difficulty of the game and the enjoyment for the majority of players who are significantly less skilled than the forum community. And the more things we try to change, the greater the risk we run of breaking something in game and the greater the need for tester time, which is already very difficult as additional resources are being moved on to developing other titles.

The intent of this change is not at all meant to be punitive, and we, of course, understand that those of you with the highest scores have likely committed the most gameplay time to getting really good. The idea was this, we hoped: if the best players are the ones most directly affected by this, they will also likely be the ones to figure out new, killer strategies for high scores quickly after the change. I’ve already seen some posts (and Tournament scores) to reinforce this hope.

We completely understand the concern about the leaderboards and previously logged scores now being unattainable. We’ve polled several segments of the community about whether or not scrubbing the leaderboards would be a preferable solution, and there are strong opinions on both sides. We’ve considered everything from targeting specific scores for removal to color coding leaderboard scores to reflect the Power-up combo used by that player. But, for right now, leaderboards will remain as is. We’ll continue to track feedback and if it remains a strong concern for those invested in leaderboard scores we’re open to the possibility of restoring Flame Notes to their original value when Tournaments are concluded.

Tournament participation has already been stronger than expected for the first 24 hours and we hope many of you join, experiment with different power up load outs, and take a shot at both the Tournament leaderboards and the prizing we’re offering. Feel free to continue to post your feedback in this thread and we’ll continue to pass feedback up the chain and submit proposals to the Production / QA team to see if there are other minor adjustments we can make along the way.

[A_Drunken_Smurf]

Thanks for the explanation, Eric. I think, considering the scoring impact that flame notes + bandmate + button mashing has on the leaderboards, rebalancing the point values for the tournaments was necessary. Even if everyone moves to Pinball for the tournament, there is still SOME skill involved in keeping the pinball active. With Flame notes, the people gaming the system would outscore the people using the system with skill.

I don't envy your position with a move like this, and I think communication (or the lack therof initially) probably made everything worse than it needed to be. No one likes change, but information at least lets people cope.

Leaving the leaderboards alone is probably the best move, for the same reason.

Also, happy to hear that testing is going on for "other titles" .. you know, I'm sure the blitz community would forgive all ills if you let slip what those titles were

So should flame note discussion continue here, or should a new thread get started once the tournaments wrap up?

[HMXPope]

So should flame note discussion continue here, or should a new thread get started once the tournaments wrap up?

Discussion can definitely continue here, we certainly don't want to silence any discourse. Unless someone leaks any upcoming titles. Then we're shutting everything down and heading to South America with a briefcase full of gold and secrets.

[www1221]

Discussion can definitely continue here, we certainly don't want to silence any discourse. Unless someone leaks any upcoming titles. Then we're shutting everything down and heading to South America with a briefcase full of gold and secrets.

So its not a good idea for me to post those pictures you sent me of Tenacious D Rock Band?

[HMXPope]

So its not a good idea for me to post those pictures you sent me of Tenacious D Rock Band?

Those were just pictures of HMXHenry and me. We've REALLLLLLLY let ourselves go.

[www1221]

Those were just pictures of HMXHenry and me. We've REALLLLLLLY let ourselves go.

I would totally buy Tenacious D covers by you and Aaron. Make it happen!

[MaximusDM]

Buffing Blitz mode in addition to the other power ups would have completely devalued Gold Stars and made them achievable very quickly.

Gold Stars are already devalued with few exceptions.

I would have assumed if you had the ability to change power-up point numbers, you would be able to alter the algorithm by using said numbers. It would of made more sense to have the algorithm based on the power ups selected and their number values. Either way, gold stars mean little in the way of the final score you get at the end of the song. That is all that really mattered.

And the more things we try to change, the greater the risk we run of breaking something in game and the greater the need for tester time, which is already very difficult as additional resources are being moved on to developing other titles.

If you don't have the time and resources to do something the right way, then maybe you shouldn't of touched it. I'm not trying to sound pompous like you owe me the world. But the rug was really pulled out from under me and here I am left confused and angry.

You built the game to have the knobs and switches at your disposal for exactly these types of adjustments. Use that ability responsibly.

You imply that this magic number of 350 points was actually tested by a team of QA and deemed ok?

The idea was this, we hoped: if the best players are the ones most directly affected by this, they will also likely be the ones to figure out new, killer strategies for high scores quickly after the change. I’ve already seen some posts (and Tournament scores) to reinforce this hope.

There are no "new" killer strategies to be had here. Players are all using the same power-ups with the same values minus the use of flame notes. Player loadouts are just being dumped from the best one to the next best one.

Doesn't that contradict this:

It was a measure to try to level the playing field in a way that would encourage the maximum amount of people to try the Tournaments out.

So you want the maximum turn out, yet you are still convinced that the best players already topping leaderboards prior to the nerf would still be the same ones topping the leaderboards after the nerf.
And that is leveling the playing field how?

Tournament participation has already been stronger than expected for the first 24 hours and we hope many of you join, experiment with different power up load outs, and take a shot at both the Tournament leaderboards and the prizing we’re offering.

I haven't seen these tournament leaderboards, but its safe to assume that all #1 scores will use pinball. I know you can see the loadouts used for all the scores. And it would really be up to the top scoring players to come forward with their load outs to admit to using pinball because I know you won't/can't.
But when you see pinball at the top of all the leaderboards, what does that mean for pinball? Is that too over-powered? Is it the next to be nerfed? Can other loadlouts honestly compete with an, all-do-respect, fluke pinball run?

I never said anything bad about pinball on here. I just said its not my way to play. If pinball players could match flame note scores or vise versa then I feel there is a mutual respect to be had between players because both involve their own type of skillset. It also lends to how upper scores of flame notes could have always been challenged pre-nerf.