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

[cowboys282]

Rhythm is important, but fun is still important in a game. If they thought that switching tracks and chasing powerups with a more strict timing window was more fun, they would have released the game like that in the first place.

I don't agree or disagree with this point. However Harmonix proved with the Flame note nerf that they don't necessarily make decisions based on what will be most "Fun" for the majority.

After all this is the same company who the day after Christmas removed Flame notes as a relevant Powerup. And now seeing nothing change a month later and hearing how very few people even play these tournaments I have little faith in any decision they make.

[Oblivion1026]

So, my friends and I were messing around in Blitz the other night, and decided to record some pinball/sync/shockwave runs.

Peacemaker by Green Day Didn't beat my old score, but came darn close. I also think the old score was set with this set up, so...

Welcome to Paradise by Green Day in which I manage to annihilate my previous score.

And Whatsername by Green Day in which I also miss my old score #1 score, but I do come relatively close. Considering it took me a lot of time with Flame/Jackpot to get that #1 spot, that's a bit disappointing.

I also had a lot of mistakes in these songs that cost me a lot of potential points, so...yeah.

I want my flame notes back.

[panos1983]

Superhero games nearly died because of Activison because they keep releasing yearly Spidey games and for like 3 years straight their games sucked. Also the 2 Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk game sucked. Ultimate Allience 2 was a disappointment. But then Rocksteady kicked open the door and brought Batman back to life forcing Activison to make better superhero games.

[Epsilon82]

Per HMX, average player gets 4 stars (up from 3 earlier in the release cycle). Making it harder on them isn't going to win them new players or get these players to buy DLC.

I still haven't seen a single post from HMX where they specify the rather important distinction here as to powerup loadouts. Namely, I'd like to know what the average player gets with a full powerup loadout, preferably only loadouts that don't include the relatively worthless powerups like Runaway, Shockwave, 2X, and now Flames.

It presents a highly misleading picture to include the scores from people who are grinding for coins by playing without powerups, or from people who don't even have most of the powerups unlocked at all. There's no way that the average player gets 4 stars on any given song with a remotely competent powerup loadout. Even flailing around like an idiot will get you 5 stars without breaking a sweat on most average songs as long as you actually use the powerups every once in a while and have a basic understanding of the multiplier system.

Averages can be very tricky for reasons like this. For instance, Bill Gates and I have an average net worth of roughly half of Bill Gates' net worth. But my net worth is pretty much zero.

Making anything else adjustable online means you'd have to be online to play it at all (even without powerups).

Honestly, they might as well have just axed offline completely if it meant they could make more server-side adjustments. Having the offline mode as it is right now is pretty much entirely worthless. Blitz without powerups is barely a shell of itself, and certainly not worth anyone's time.

Like it or not, a game has to be accessable on some level to everyone without being too easy. Sure, it's too easy for us hardcore players to GS songs (though I can't GS a few in my library still), but we're not the only audience.

That's perfectly true, but we ARE the only audience when it comes to the audience Harmonix was supposedly trying to reach with this asinine nerf decision. Even if we assume that the "average player gets 4 stars" stat isn't total bunk, that only undermines Harmonix's stated justification, because that means that the average players have literally no chance of ever being competitive in tournaments whether Flames are nerfed or not. Which is actually true regardless of that stat. There are really only a handful of players who are good enough at the game, no matter what is done to the powerups, to truly fight for the top two spots. We've seen that time and time again already.

The only difference now is that in order to compete in a rhythm game, you have to use a high-level twitch skill based powerup completely divorced from the fundamental mechanics of playing a rhythm game. How this is supposedly a more casual-friendly scenario or more exciting to the hardcore players who were good at a variety of skill-based powerup loadouts is completely beyond comprehension.

[zage1337]

The thing with bandmate/flame, jack/flame, and pinball. I always feel like I can do better in the song and improve my score. Even if I am not doing that well earlier or later I can always make up for it by just trying harder to make up for those points. As my skill progress I can usually add 100,000-200,000 to my current score on a song that I haven't played in a few weeks. and with Band/Flame..probably 300,000-400,000 above my old score when I get better at that combo lol..

I can't do that with jack/blast.

Jackpot/Blast on the other hand is far more luck based and how you do is solely dependent on where the game decides to throw a blast note. If you don't get a blast note in an overdrive section then tough luck you can't get 1st on that song unless no one played it yet. Jack/Blast songs will always have the top score being the person who got the "luckiest" with where the blast notes spawn. I feel like I can't improve or just improve my score by mere inches as I get a slightly luckier blast placements as I play the song. No matter how many times i play a jack/blast song, my score will be arbitrary capped. Only way to break that is to pull of a high pinball run with jackpot, or use flame notes which is not an option anymore.

In a game that has random powerup spawns is it seriously a problem with having variable scoring? So what if someone can double someone's GS score. As long as it's technically possible then it should be fine.

The only way to get a 1st place score on any song that is still obtainable is to
A) play a song no one has played..you'll probably lose your spot eventually
B) get really lucky with jack/blast or grind until you get them to spawn in the right place
C) Use Pinball and either get lucky or practice your skill with it. Probably the only skill based powerup left.

if you are not doing one of those 3, then you will never get a 1st place score at this point. Before flames were nerfed there were at least 6-7 ways or more to achieve that.

[Iceman71421]

I got my first number 1 score yesterday afternoon on sweet emotion. Only 65 people had played it so far but I had some really good pinball sections that allowed me to get 504,000. I was really happy about that.

I lost it pretty soon after but the guy was nice enough to message me to tell me to try to beat his new top score. lol

[agentnnc]

The only way to get a 1st place score on any song that is still obtainable is to
A) play a song no one has played..you'll probably lose your spot eventually
B) get really lucky with jack/blast or grind until you get them to spawn in the right place
C) Use Pinball and either get lucky or practice your skill with it. Probably the only skill based powerup left.

if you are not doing one of those 3, then you will never get a 1st place score at this point. Before flames were nerfed there were at least 6-7 ways or more to achieve that.

Blitz high scores 2013: luck, Arkanoid or hipster?

[grumblevolcano]

I would have to say my high "Helena Beat" score with Jackpot/Blast/Keys was quite lucky as I got a Blast Note on the last note before the checkpoint leading into the first chorus. It got my Bass multiplier up to 3 hence making all the multipliers move up by 2 with the checkpoint. I was #3 on the leaderboards before ZAGESAW had to ruin everything.

[Oblivion1026]

My friends and I have three more videos up now.

Learn to Fly, Visions, and Call me Maybe.

This play session resulted in us all just...laughing. You shouldn't be able to top leaderboards in a rhythym game by ignoring the notes and just bouncing a pin ball around. I know it's all been said already, but...this needs to be fixed.

[cowboys282]

I got my first number 1 score yesterday afternoon on sweet emotion. Only 65 people had played it so far but I had some really good pinball sections that allowed me to get 504,000. I was really happy about that.

I lost it pretty soon after but the guy was nice enough to message me to tell me to try to beat his new top score. lol

Only 65 people on the 1st day of promoted DLC lol. Before the Nerf 100+ people would be on leaderboards after a few hours. I can proudly say I would have bought the Aerosmith DLC if the Flame not nerf never happened.

But I haven't been on the game in days and have no plans to spend any money on DLC. So that's at least one person who didn't spend money they would have because of the ridiculous and poorly handled day after Christmas nerf.