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

[cowboys282]

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 am not suprised you did as you have been making the most sense around here. I apoligize for not reading all your posts as some were long and I just skimmed over them.

You have the best point of all though. That is the game designed the power ups with the idea that some would be harder than others. They scored them accordingly. The most obvious being 2x points compared to Jackpot. You are rewarded for difficulty.

There is so little skill and strategy involved with 2x, Shockwave, Bottle Rockets, and Road Rage. I use to never use them and have now been forced to. I see now how using them were better for a handful of songs. That is a shame knowing the lack of skill they take to use.

Pinball does require some skill and the points match that but I can't stand using it. It takes away from actually playing the song. I prefer a Power up that requires notes to be hit. I will still not use Pinball for that reason.

Runaway notes would be interesting if it actually had a point value that made it worthwhile. Once again this is a powerup that requires notes to be hit.

Since the nerf I have been trying out Synchrony. I am not a fan of this Powerup but think it's point value is correct.

I have scored well in some songs using a Road Rage/Blast Note/ Synchrony load out. Although I scored well on a few certain types of songs I just don't see the skill in using this combo. On top of that it is so boring to use.

I have no desire or plans to do any of the tournaments they have set up. So until they make some type of decision on what they will do a customer like myself is pretty much forgotten. I still cannot believe this game has been messed up like this for over a week now.

[bmdbmd15]

First time poster with a couple things to add. I am a Road Rage/Blast Notes player. Occasionally I use the Jackpot on songs that require it to GS a few songs with lot of long sustain notes. If Harmonix were to nerf Road Rage or Blast Notes, I would be as upset as most of the people posting here. I like to chase my high scores and nerfing my preferred setup would tick me off to no end. I know the Jackpot/Flame combo can produce some untouchable scores for a player like me but it also requires a higher skill set. I prefer to stick with my setup because it is how I enjoy playing.

Put the flame notes back to where they were. Allow people to go back to chasing their high scores. Otherwise you are sucking the fun of the game for a group of gamers who paid good money for the game and all those DLC songs.

Harmonix staff, ask yourself this simple question. What fun is to to chase a goal you can never catch?


P.S. Please let us import RB3 songs into Blitz. I am throwing money at the monitor, please take it.

[MaximusDM]

So until they make some type of decision on what they will do a customer like myself is pretty much forgotten. I still cannot believe this game has been messed up like this for over a week now.

Well hmxhenry said the "Blitz team" would be meeting on Wednesday so currently they have been deliberating for 2 days. Must be some pretty deep, heated day long discussions going on there.

I wonder how long it took them to deliberate the decision to nerf flame notes. Seemed pretty unplanned when they suddenly tried to throw together a response. Its as if they thought no one would notice.

It all makes this especially lame this took place during the holidays when everyone had so much free time to be playing Blitz and logging a mass amount of scores in. Instead, I haven't played it since the nerf hit.

[grace_pressure]

I forgot to mention that I care a lot about my friends' scores, too - wiping the leaderboards would nuke that motivational infrastructure, and like me, they probably won't recover that.

[agentnnc]

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.

How about giving a boost to EVERYTHING ELSE? Flame notes still work but everything is balanced around them so they're all even and leaderboard scores are not invalid.

[A_Drunken_Smurf]

My apologies if this was answered already -

Couldn't we leave the Flame value where it is, and adjust the leaderboard scores of anyone who used flame notes? That data is captured by the system. It's a 77% drop from 1500 to 350, so apply a 77% reduction to the flame notes portion of the score, and you will then have a rebalanced leaderboard.

For those that wanted to remember their name in lights, have an online-only "pre-adjustment" leaderboard that shows the old scores, but the in-game leaderboard would be the adjusted one.

To answer Aaron's questions (yes, I know it's past 1/2, but still):

1) What do you think Flame notes should be worth?

They should be worth either what they were (if no leaderboard adjustment), or whatever you feel makes other powerups competitive (with a leaderboard adjustment).

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

Resetting the leaderboards in their entirety would be devastating to the community, I think. I personally wouldn't care too much, but I know a lot of people that would. Adjusting the leaderboard to scale previous flame note scores down to current values would go a long way to pleasing most people. Or at least me, I guess.. can't speak for everyone.

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

I used them about 75% of the time, particularly once I found how useful they worked with Bandmate.

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"?

5 - it's a nice thing when I beat my friends, but the overall leaderboards was not something I particularly cared about.

[Ketchupyoshi57]

Child in Time and a few other similarly hard songs are still gold-starrable, but only with a couple of powerup combinations in most cases. You either have to path Jackpot/Blast almost perfectly or execute a good Jackpot/Pinball run. Here's a video I made demonstrating a post-nerf Child in Time gold star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVjmgFHc8wc

It's getting a bit ridiculous that nothing is being done about the nerf over a week later. Clearly the game is a lot more broken than before and the only options Harmonix are seriously considering will alienate large portions of their playerbase. Nuking the leaderboards will frustrate players that have invested a lot of time and money into large music libraries and leaving them the way they are without bringing back flame notes will demotivate competitive players to the point of eventually quitting the game.

I am quickly falling into that second group. I want to try other powerup loadouts, but pinball is the only way to get top scores in over 90% of the songs now. There needs to be something that can compete with it, and Jackpot/Flame was that strategy in most cases. I'll probably stick around for tournaments, but I don't see myself playing the game in its current state after they are over.

EDIT: Please don't misinterpret this post as someone asking for pinball to be nerfed. The best way to balance pinball (and a suprisingly large portion of the game) is to buff Blitz mode. In its current state, the reward for hitting more notes and not breaking combo is nearly useless compared to what you get by ignoring the notes to chase a pinball or spamming two lanes to keep a flame note chain going.

[Epsilon82]

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.

I definitely agree that the best solutions would require a patch, but I also have serious doubts that a patch will ever happen. The game seems to have been designed with the specific intention of not having to do that, because patches are expensive and require extensive testing. It's entirely possible if not likely that a patch simply isn't in the cards given their resources.

And turning the tournament into "Who can use Flame Notes the best" contests is vastly preferable to the present situation, which is "Who can use Pinball Notes the best." At least people using Flame Notes are actually playing a music game.

Right now, I'm 3rd on Elton John, 6th on Colbert, and 5th on Shout in the tournaments. My Elton John result was an extremely mediocre Pinball/Sync run that barely edged out a very solid conventional loadout run. My Colbert run was a halfway decent Pinball/Sync run. My Shout result is the only one I got with a regular loadout, and was definitely the best Jackpot/Blast/SG I've ever had on that song (it even beat my best Jack/Flame score.) But Shout is an outlier because of the relative length and the huge proportion of long double note sustains in the back half of the song that can be abused with Jackpot. And even then, I'm still getting (and will continue to get) creamed by good Pinball players.

If they're worried about the exploit, then just don't use 4-lane songs. The exploit wouldn't work on two of the three songs anyway.

I just don't see how making Pinball the only viable note powerup for consistently high scoring is preferable to the previous situation. Especially since Pinball is completely inconsistent with actually playing the music, and also requires even more twitch skill at high-level play than Flames ever did. If the aim is to make the tournaments more accessible to average-skilled players, this move failed miserably. It just shifted the balance of power exclusively to a ludicrous novelty powerup, destroying the leaderboards and all of the legitimate Flame play in the process.

[zage1337]

Nerfing flame notes did not stop outrageous outlier scores at all. Look at the top scores on the Touraments. Proof that Flame Notes were not always the most overpowered powerup. The only thing HMX managed to accomplish by nerfing flame notes is reduce the variety of high level play. I almost exclusively use pinball now because It's the only powerup that's worth anything at this point. I'd like it back then when I had at least a few options on how to dominate the leaderboards. Now I only have 1 option and it's starting to get really boring too.

[Epsilon82]

Couldn't we leave the Flame value where it is, and adjust the leaderboard scores of anyone who used flame notes? That data is captured by the system. It's a 77% drop from 1500 to 350, so apply a 77% reduction to the flame notes portion of the score, and you will then have a rebalanced leaderboard.

Leaving aside the fact that leaving Flame Notes where they are is tantamount to completely eliminating them as a feasible powerup and making Pinball/Sync far and away the only potential high-scoring combo for the vast majority of songs, I highly doubt they could do the kind of leaderboard adjustment you're talking about.

Even assuming they permanently keep the scoring splits on their servers for every run, they would have to store even more detailed data than that to be able to do what you're asking, because the points you get from Flames while Jackpot is active get folded into the Jackpot score. It's very common for the reported Flame score to be much less than it actually was because of that. So even if they have access to the "splits," that would only be directly applicable to Band/Flame runs, not Jack/Flame.

I don't think it would be advisable at all to do this even if it were possible, but I just wanted to clarify that it's not quite as simple as just looking at the points earned under the "Flame Notes" category on the scoring result screen, at least when Jackpot or Point Doubler use is involved.

Again, I personally strongly disagree with the notion that Flame Notes themselves were unduly overpowered. The actual culprit in this whole exploit situation is the combination of the engine letting players hit both notes in the same place on adjacent lanes and the fact that the game does very little to punish you for button mashing. Addressing either of those factors would eliminate the exploit's utility entirely. Flames themselves are not the core problem, unless you believe that powerups that require more of the player shouldn't have higher scoring potential, so nerfing their point value isn't the solution.