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

[Bront20]

Right, that's why the loading screens specifically suggest using Bandmate and Flame together.

Let's get something straight here; the only "exploit" is being able to rapidly switch back and forth between lanes to hit two notes within the same timing window. That's "not intended use". Band/Flame just happens to be the most susceptible to that. Many of my high scores were gained by using Band/Flame legitimately. So please, don't lump everyone using that combination into the same pool.

This is what I'm referring to as the exploit when refering to high level play. I used Band/Flame on occasion in a more legitimate fashion myself. Probably good to clarify though.

[zage1337]

I don't really see how hitting 2 notes in the same timing window is an exploit. Timing window abuse is something that always happened with rock band and guitar hero. People would activate OD and hit notes either early or late by abusing the timing window to get a higher score. This was known as squeezing and was completely legitimate. It's also not easy to do and you risk ending your band/flame chain a lot easier if you attempt to hit 2 notes and fail.

[Thisnameislame]

Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

No, you apparently want to boost your ego by feeling like you're good at something without putting in the time/effort it takes to actually be good at it. Like others have said, even if all the "exploits" get removed, experienced hardcore players will always crush casual players because that's how skill-based things work. Casual elitists can be so hypocritical.

[Bront20]

I don't really see how hitting 2 notes in the same timing window is an exploit. Timing window abuse is something that always happened with rock band and guitar hero. People would activate OD and hit notes either early or late by abusing the timing window to get a higher score. This was known as squeezing and was completely legitimate. It's also not easy to do and you risk ending your band/flame chain a lot easier if you attempt to hit 2 notes and fail.

1) In Band/Flame, as long as you hit at least 1 flame note, you're ok
2) You can get top 10 leaderboard scores by mashing buttons, because the loss of Blitz Mode isn't that big of a deal.
3) HMX has mentioned it's an unintended use of the timing window, which is generally the definition of an exploit.

[athl_latin]

I haven't ben following this thread nor playing Blitz for about 8 days since I figured nothing would be done until a few days after the HMX crew got back. I've caught up with the thread, tried a few things and here are my thoughts.

I agree with Zage. Most of songs are still GS'ed under the new scoring. I'm actually posting scores in the top 10 just like I was before the nerf. I tired several combos and all of those top ten scores except 1 were achieved by using Pinball/Synch. I think my learning curve was smaller since I was using synch 90% of the time before the nerf. The only problem is that I "hate" Pinball. I play the game to "jam" along with the music and Pinball IMO is the only powerup that prevents me from doing that since I have to pay attention to where the ball is heading. At first it only affects you when the ball is coming down but if you manage to return the ball a few times it becomes an Arkanoid game and a smash buttons fest! Which is what is so bad about the BandMate/flame "exploit" right?

Speaking of that, I don't know how many people have tried to replicate the smash button "exploit" with BandMate/Flame but it's really hard to pull off. I certainly can't. Magnet is a pretty good player (attested by his place in the tournaments leaderboards) and capable to do that but I doubt that the casual player will be able to accomplish it.

I also followed MaximusDM advice and particiapted in the tournaments using several power combos and manage to reach #15 in two of the songs. Both of those runs used Pinball and I couldn't get close to those scores otherwise. The disparity between the first 3 or 4 top scores in the tournaments is still there and flames had nothing to do with it. Nerfing the Flame Notes just dishartened/enraged several of the loyal players who enjoyed using them.

Ultimately I'd like the nerf to be reversed and the leaderboards keep intact but based on my experience this wekeend I'd like to make a suggestion to HMX. Most likely after the first week, you'll have most of the scores at the top of the tournaments being done without the Flame Notes (my guess is that most if not all will be reached with Pinball). On week 2 let's change the Flame Note score from 350 to let's say 500 and look at the top scores again. All of us participating in the tournament are good guinie pigs and since there's a prize on the line we'll most likely put a pretty good effort into it. Keep doing that each week after that until you see the Flame Notes scores showing at the top of the tournament leaderboards, then you would have found a "sweet spot".

I pay a lot of attention to the loaderboards and it's in part what makes me come back to the game. The game was pretty fun because of the variety of ways to reach high scores thus appealing to a wider range of people. If you take that away and leave Pinball to be the highest scoring powerup, people like me will go away and with them the revenue from buying all those songs. Specially the one that I wasn't going to buy but it's the only one I'm missing to complete this week's goal.

[RyRobo]

3) HMX has mentioned it's an unintended use of the timing window, which is generally the definition of an exploit.

As a side note to this, I feel we should add that 'exploit' generally shouldn't be a dirty word in gaming. Some exploits can add a lot of depth to the gameplay that wouldn't be there otherwise, even if it wasn't what the designer originally intended. If it's an 'exploit' or not shouldn't be a deciding factor in the decision to nerf flame notes, more what the impact of flame notes to the games enjoyability on high level play is (I don't think this effects 'casuals', if I'm honest, so they can be ignored). Ask any competitive Rock Band player worth their salt if they would remove squeezing from the game, and I seriously doubt they'd say 'Yes'.

While I'd argue that flame notes and bandmate doesn't add anything substantial to the gameplay (After all, the combination removes skill and replaces it with luck, and luck/randomness is not a deciding factor you want in a competitive environment) nerfing them leaves us with many unfair leaderboard scores, and that's more degrading (If not, suicide) to the competitive environment if you ask me.

[sacktheavenger]

So I was playing Blitz and then I noticed I was getting quite a few less points from flame notes. Then I found this thread. Honestly I suggest making them at least 1000 and occur more often across all tracks thus making people able to get their high scores attainable again or just resetting the leaderboards. I wouldn't care because I am just as able to do as well skill-wise on the songs I got in the top ten for before flame notes got nerfed. I occasionally use Jack/Blast but most of the time I use Band/Flame. This frustrated me mildly and made me think that Harmonix doesn't love us anymore. It just suggested to me that they should reset the leaderboards to make it fair again.

[LibertyGeis]

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

Please give it some serious thought before doing something so drastic. If you wipe the leaderboards, you'll be affecting more than just the hardcore competitive types. It sounds like you'll be undoing the progress of every Blitz player who has yet to obtain the trophies/achievements for 5-starring and gold-starring the main Blitz setlist. Possibly their progress toward the 300 unique songs, etc. as well -- I'm not really sure since nothing is saved locally.

I've gotten my 100% already, but I worry for those who haven't. Those goals are a lot of work. If I had been one or two songs shy and then found all my progress wiped away because of some "power-up balance" quibble, I'd probably never bother with Blitz again.

[Epsilon82]

Anecdotal and all, but:

I am not a casual player. Neither is my friend I usually score joust with (score wars and non-score wars). I can GS most songs, but there's some I struggle with. Neither of us use flame notes regularly. I don't find the Jack/Flame style very fun on most songs (I do use Jackpot or Flame, but not both together for the most part). I still put up some pretty high scores, occasionally top 10 score (I had a #1 score on a Lego song for almost a month when Blitz was released). I also would have no prayer in a tourney that allowed Jack/Flame, and Band/Flame is a flat out exploit (IE, not intended use).

Sadly, Band/Flame is probably the bigger issue with the tournaments than Jack/Flame. But ultimately, HMX felt it was what they needed to do to fix an exploit that was the least intrusive to all involved.

Edit: FYI, the Band/Flame exploit I mean is the playing 2 tracks at a time way to play.

I don't even really consider playing 2 tracks at a time an exploit in the sense of "cheating." That was a predictable consequence of two design decisions Harmonix made; to allow a wide timing window for each note, and to enforce all of the timing windows as people switch tracks. The latter is why many people struggle with Jackpot, and it's the other side of the sword which allows players to "abuse" Bandmate/Flame.

The exploit, to me, is that because the game doesn't significantly penalize you for button mashing (in the sense that Blitz mode is worth peanuts compared to what you can get for the powerups), you don't have to necessarily exhibit much skill to take advantage of that. But most of the best Bandmate/Flame players weren't doing that; Magnet just did it to demonstrate the possibility, but even he said he hated it and would never actually do it regularly.

And not to be insulting or anything, but you have repeatedly said that you don't easily get Gold Stars all the time. If that's the case, you would never be able to compete in a tournament against the top players even if both Flame and Pinball were nerfed into oblivion instead of just Flame. The best players are going to vastly outpace the less skilled. There's nothing Harmonix can do to address that except to completely remove the element of skill from the game. Killing Flames was a small and fruitless step in that direction, but it would be the height of absurdity to go all the way down that road.

You say that you would have no prayer in a tourney that allowed Jack/Flame or Band/Flame. What kind of prayer do you have now that Pinball/Sync is the only viable scoring combo? Do you think you can compete with players like Ketchupyoshi57, Magnet, or Zage (if he were actually in the tournaments) at Pinball? I highly doubt it, and if you could, there's no reason you couldn't have been competing with the Flame combos either.

Again, this is just completely unconvincing. There's no way Harmonix improved the competitive balance of the game by doing this. They simply axed a perfectly legitimate powerup in the service of forcing high-level players to use a ridiculous one like Pinball that is not only more technically difficult, but completely divorced from the basic principles of playing a music game.

[Bront20]

You say that you would have no prayer in a tourney that allowed Jack/Flame or Band/Flame. What kind of prayer do you have now that Pinball/Sync is the only viable scoring combo? Do you think you can compete with players like Ketchupyoshi57, Magnet, or Zage (if he were actually in the tournaments) at Pinball? I highly doubt it, and if you could, there's no reason you couldn't have been competing with the Flame combos either.

To be fair, I surprised myself by placing in the top 100 on all 3 songs last night, including in the top 30 on one of them. Tried a couple different combos, and could probably improve my scores on all of the songs with those, and only 1 song did I go Synch/Pinball.

Now, granted I'm not likely to be a #1, but I've got a shot at being maybe a top 25-50, which is pretty cool in my opinion, and all the scores will be skill scores (and not button mashing band/flame scores), so I'll feel a lot better.

YMMV though.