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

[grace_pressure]

I'll post too, though with the same rationale that many have already given:

1) They should be worth the original amount because of the problems enumerated with nerfing. If you're concerned with overpowered or underpowered power-ups, leave ones with comparatively minimal risk and buff the rest.

2) If you keep the nerf, you have to reset the leaderboards, or they will be meaningless. If you reset the leaderboards, it would make them meaningless to a significant number of people.

3) I enjoy using Flame Notes about 75% of the time, pairing it with Bandmate or Jackpot evenly.

4) 9. I consider myself a casual player, but I care about my scores and use them as a motivator. I recently spent about a week playing through every song in my library to get moderately good scores on them, which I want my friends to see. I'm not doing it again!

[Epsilon82]

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?"

I think Harmonix largely answered this question themselves by designing the powerups the way they did in the first place. It makes no sense to have powerups that have vastly different parameters of use (and respective difficulty differences) without providing some incentive to use the more demanding ones.

That's what's so frustrating about this whole situation; the game was almost entirely fine as it was. No game will be perfect, and completely destroying the risk/reward balance of the entire game is hardly a price worth paying to stamp out an exploit that pretty much nobody actually used anyway.

For testing purposes, I played 21st Century Digital Boy by Bad Religion with a few different powerup combos. I chose it because it has relatively average length and moderate tempo with a pretty typical balance in the track density. I played pretty much optimally as far as my ability goes on each attempt (no broken Jackpots, missed Blast Notes, bad Flame chains, etc.) and I never left Blitz mode once I first activated it.

Here were the results (I used Super Guitar on all of them for consistency's sake):

Road Rage/Blast Notes: 306,000
Jackpot/Blast Notes: 285,000
Jackpot/Flame Notes: 239,000

Like I said, these were reasonably optimal runs, and using the most difficult combo barely got me enough for Gold Stars. I wouldn't read too much into the fact that Jackpot/Blast scored less, because it's close enough that it could have come down to the random Blast Note placement, more or less. Jackpot has always to some extent been hobbled by the fact that you don't really get anything worthwhile from it until the multipliers are higher, and some songs never really get to that point because they just don't have enough checkpoints. But the result from Jackpot/Flame is just completely absurd.

From playing quite a few songs with both Jack/Blast and Road Rage/Blast, it seemed like they were pretty comparable unless the song was longer, in which case Jack would win easily.

Incidentally, I was able to get the top score on the PSN leaderboard on a couple songs, Tutto e Possibile and Dance Dance, using Road Rage/Blast, and I did notice the names of a few very skilled players on those songs near the top. So it's not like Road Rage/Blast could never compete at all on any given song. But the way the game presently is, people who are really skilled at the game using the tougher combos will have very little chance to top those. The game will literally just become a Pinball/Sync test at the top of leaderboards, which is just completely silly in a game ostensibly about music interaction. I enjoy chasing scores, but I'm never going to resort to practicing enough to get really good at Pinball. If I want to play a game like that, I'll load up Shatter or even dust off my trackball and play some Arkanoid. I play Rock Band games to play along to music, and I think it goes without saying that most people, regardless of overall skill level, do so as well.

[pelemerengue]

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"?

They should be at least 1000 points. Although, I would rather they go back to 1500 for the sake of making old leaderboard scores accessible again.

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

It doesn't matter -- if the Flame note values remain as is, I'm simply not going to bother playing this game anymore. If you leave the leaderboards as is, players can no longer reach the top positions, if you wipe them, everyone loses months and months of progress. Either way, it's a crappy deal. Bring flame notes back up to 1500 and buff Blitz mode and the other power-ups.

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

100% of the time. The only time I didn't use Flame notes was when I was trying to figure out what the best power-up loadout was, and when I was trying to complete power-up specific trophies/Facebook goals.

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"?

8.

I care about them in the other Rock Band games, but to a far lesser degree. The only replayability Rock Band Blitz has, as a single player game, is in trying to best other people's scores on the leaderboards. It's an arcade experience and it's all about getting the perfect run--a mix of luck and skill. Otherwise, what's the point of playing through your library once you've already done it once and achieved gold stars on everything?

[agentnnc]

I haven't been playing blitz over the holidays. I noticed the drop right away when I logged on today after my first song. So....anyone care to tell me how the hell songs like Child in Time and Still of the Night can be gold starred now? This is BS. You don't nerf the powerups, you increase the values of others so that way you avoid making leaderboard scores unobtainable. Already some songs gold star cutoffs were almost impossible.

I would put it back and start augmenting other power ups to compensate. Maybe this hasn't been done because GS cutoffs are expected at a certain difficulty or an average amount of points per song is desired. IMO, that went out the window when purple notes were randomized and songs range from GSed in the first 10% of the song to needs a near perfect play + lucky purple note placings.

[Mircosoft93]

1) between 500 and 750 pts

2) reset the leaderboards

3) almost every time before the nerf

4) 9

[agentnnc]

Just saw the HMXHenry questions, I'll answer:

1) If I HAVE to nerf them to avoid balancing everything else, 1000 to put it in line with Jackpot. IMO, They should stay at 1500, bring up everything else.

2) Reset. If--no, that's not right-- Since scores are unobtainable now leaderboards have become pointless alltogether. It's just "LOOK! this is how good I was BEFORE that nerf!". Mind you, losing my scores would just get me to quit Blitz altogether for a very long time but keeping scores would discourage me from playing knowing that the leaderboard screen means nothing.

3) It's my go-to strategy....almost all the time. I guess it still applies since I don't feel like playing Blitz right now with the nerf.

4) 8. I like getting high scores and gold stars...a lot.

[Pitch-Black]

I think not nerfing the flame notes so harshly in the first place would have been the thing to do. But, as things stand now, why not increase the spawn rate of the flame notes to compensate? If done right leaderboard scores would become attainable again but would take a lot more flame notes hit and kept alive to reach. I think everyone knows the highest risk/skill loadout should have the highest reward. I don't play for leaderboard rank, but jack/flame is my go-to loadout because of the challenge of higher risk and skill along with the greater chance of choking under pressure involved. Now I'm definately paying attention to one lane while on a jackpot run and not bothering to chase flames because the reward is not worth the risk anymore. Oh, and I don't see any chance of resetting the leaderboards not pissing a lot of people off. It would basically be telling everyone (especially those who care and work hard for their ranks) that their effort and time was wasted .... and future efforts could definately be a waste of their time as well if HMX ever decides to nerf something again. Not a good precedent to set, I think.

[cowboys282]

To anyone who is suggesting flame notes should be worth anything less than the original 1500 should understand some logic here.

The reason they nerfed flame notes to 350 was because that was the value that made the Bandmate/Flame exploit useless. At a 350 value you could do the exploit and still not beat most scores.

So if you set Flame notes to say 1000 let's see what happens. Well it's simple. The legit combination of Jackpot/Flame will still not be able to compete with most scores. That is to big of a loss for that load out.

However if you rasied Flame notes to 1000 the exploit would suddenly become relevant again. So suggesting Flame notes should be worth anything under 1500 but above 350 renders Jackpot/Flame useless but makes the exploit of Bandmate/Flame still viable.

The options should be simple. Either return Flame to 1500 or leave it nerfed at 350. Anything in between is pointless.

[Epsilon82]

To anyone who is suggesting flame notes should be worth anything less than the original 1500 should understand some logic here.

The reason they nerfed flame notes to 350 was because that was the value that made the Bandmate/Flame exploit useless. At a 350 value you could do the exploit and still not beat most scores.

So if you set Flame notes to say 1000 let's see what happens. Well it's simple. The legit combination of Jackpot/Flame will still not be able to compete with most scores. That is to big of a loss for that load out.

However if you rasied Flame notes to 1000 the exploit would suddenly become relevant again. So suggesting Flame notes should be worth anything under 1500 but above 350 renders Jackpot/Flame useless but makes the exploit of Bandmate/Flame still viable.

The options should be simple. Either return Flame to 1500 or leave it nerfed at 350. Anything in between is pointless.

I made that same point in one of my longer posts above, but it definitely bears emphasizing. My only quibble is kind of a snarky one: there really is only one option that doesn't have massive numbers of huge negative consequences, and it's not the one that leaves Flames nerfed. ;-)

[Bront20]

I made that same point in one of my longer posts above, but it definitely bears emphasizing. My only quibble is kind of a snarky one: there really is only one option that doesn't have massive numbers of huge negative consequences, and it's not the one that leaves Flames nerfed. ;-)

I don't know, unnerfing them and then giving merchandise to the exploit users and basically turning a tourniment into a "who can use Flamenotes the best" tourny has pretty negitive consiquences.

The best fix involves either tightening the timing window a bit or removing notes in neighboring tracks when you hit a note at that same time signature. Both those solutions require a patch most likely, as do most of the "best" solutions.

Also, the deminishing returns suggestion (Flame Note value drops every hit) is a worth while suggestion that addresses most of the problems without penalizing normal flame use much.