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

[agentnnc]

So I got around to playing a few songs. I'm rather rusty. I know they've been reverted because if you play a song like Weird Science where there are very few keys parts, guess what? Those flame notes are gone once you drop them once because the next note will be on that one keyboard note at the end of the song. :P

Anyway has their frequency been diminished from the original? I don't remember but it seems like they drop a little less frequently.

[Nekketsu]

I don't know if they diminished from the their original spawn rate, but I know I played through over 20 percent of So Whatcha Want last night without a single flame note spawning. Been so long since I used flame notes on that song I don't remember if that's the norm.

[hmxhenry]

Did it truly benefit this one area of the community that you sought to benefit? Because I questioned that IMMEDIATELY. And if this was a group effort, I don't know why no one else saw it.
Did pinball win every single tournament?
I rest my case.

Whether pinball won every tournament or whether flame note one every tournament is irrelevant. No one won the tournament by taking advantage of a scoring exploit. So yes, this benefited the people that were playing the game within the boundaries of how it was meant to be played.

Participation was better than we had expected, and certainly higher than participation in comparable RB3 Battles, which is the closest basis of comparison. We had a lot of requests to expand Tournaments to include international players, and a number of them were so interested that they were willing to participate knowing that they couldn't win. Outside of posters in this thread, I don't believe we received a single complaint about Tournaments or the re balancing around the tournaments. And if we didn't make any change for tournaments I'd have someone else in my ear about how their trust was broken by allowing someone to compete and win by taking advantage of a scoring exploit. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

I am not convinced that changing an integer in a line of code on the servers is as difficult as you make it seem.

Sorry, but I'll trust the coders, testers, and designers involved. Even if it is changing an integer and walking away, there are approvals, there are time requests, there are the other projects that coder is working on, there are the other projects the testers are working on, and there are other time sensitive projects we're devoting resources to. I'm sure changing my pepperoni pizza to a hamburger pizza seems easy, but yelling at the delivery guy isn't going to change the fact he has to drive back to the pizzeria, cancel the order, get someone to make the dough, throw it in the oven, etc.

I feel like I loved this game more than some of the people that worked on it. Why not give balancing it another shot before totally wiping your hands clean of it. There are power-ups that are still just as useless as when flames were nerfed.
The game is done, why not put forth the extra effort to make things right?

Because there is no "right". "Right" is a myth. Your "right" is not the same as another player's "right" and the "right" for the players in this thread isn't the same "right" as the other 99% of the people playing Blitz. We balance through rounds of playtest and get it as close to "right" as we can. Sometimes when games ship, you find out in the live environment that "right" is something different. We've been able to patch other games and with Blitz we've been able to live balance. But it will never, ever be "right" for everyone. RB3 has been patched 5 times and we could release another 5 patches and we'd still be getting requests for specific features, specific fixes, additions, subtractions, etc.

Because you didn't. You guys supported Blitz through the goals system, rock band world facebook page, and then tournaments that I'm sure were all planned.

It seems only now that its a a waste of time, money, effort.

Blitz was released 6 months ago and, gee, kind of a lot has happened since then. We've announced the end of weekly RB DLC, we've announced the end of monthly DC DLC, we've spun up production on multiple other titles, we've put over 1,100 previously released tracks on sale, we've released all the Blitz tracks as singles DLC... can you see how the RB landscape overall is not in the same place as it was 6 months ago?

Many titles don't receive any support, let alone the support you mentioned, 6 months after release. That doesn't mean it's a waste of time, money, and effort, it just means we can't provide indefinite support for every game, certainly not launch levels of support. As you pointed out, 3 months is a long time. 6 months is even longer, especially when so much has changed in the world of RB in that time.

[HeyRiles]

Now that the tournaments are over I am still curious, how did player traffic fare with the changes? Did the nerf increase/decrease player traffic? Did the tournament increase participation? I'd love to see a graph of player traffic through the entire lifetime of Blitz. It would make for an interesting study.

Of course the game has received less traffic over the course of three months, that's the same as any other arcade game. To see that the game is being played less six months later and credit it to a score change is downright silly

[cowboys282]

Of course the game has received less traffic over the course of three months, that's the same as any other arcade game. To see that the game is being played less six months later and credit it to a score change is downright silly

I wasn't going to post again seeing as what I wanted has been done. But the only thing "Silly" is what you have said. Yes ALL arcade games will lose traffic after 6 months.

But to act like the Flame note nerf had no effect on the games population is "Silly." You see there were never a ton of players who played this game. but those who did play played a lot. And I have seen a quite a few people on this forum who played many hours a week say they stopped playing after the Flame nerf.

There were specific people who came on and posted they were not playing the game anymore specifically because of this change. You must not play Rock Band Blitz otherwise I don't know how you could call is logical assumption "Silly."

[cowboys282]

Whether pinball won every tournament or whether flame note one every tournament is irrelevant. No one won the tournament by taking advantage of a scoring exploit. So yes, this benefited the people that were playing the game within the boundaries of how it was meant to be played.

Participation was better than we had expected, and certainly higher than participation in comparable RB3 Battles, which is the closest basis of comparison. We had a lot of requests to expand Tournaments to include international players, and a number of them were so interested that they were willing to participate knowing that they couldn't win. Outside of posters in this thread, I don't believe we received a single complaint about Tournaments or the re balancing around the tournaments. And if we didn't make any change for tournaments I'd have someone else in my ear about how their trust was broken by allowing someone to compete and win by taking advantage of a scoring exploit. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

I am glad that Harmonix changed the game back to the way it originally was. I do not doubt tournaments were a success. I am sure participation expectations were not high to begin with. I think it is to bad that only one combination dominated tournament play.

But honestly not my concern as I did not play in any of it. In hindsight I wish I knew how much Facebook integration was going to be a part of this game. I understand why it was done. In the future you should treat customers who do not take part in the Facebook stuff no different then those who do. Our money is the same.

Sorry, but I'll trust the coders, testers, and designers involved. Even if it is changing an integer and walking away, there are approvals, there are time requests, there are the other projects that coder is working on, there are the other projects the testers are working on, and there are other time sensitive projects we're devoting resources to. I'm sure changing my pepperoni pizza to a hamburger pizza seems easy, but yelling at the delivery guy isn't going to change the fact he has to drive back to the pizzeria, cancel the order, get someone to make the dough, throw it in the oven, etc.

Nice analogy. And all of what you say is true. Which is why the way it was handled on 12/26 was too bad. You guys had this planned for awhile. It would have been nice if those playing the game had more warning. No need for me to beat a dead horse. Its over and flame notes are back. I just wanted to point that out one final time.

Now I can play the game I payed for and no longer have to come on here and post.

[DavidTLynchEsq]

This is anecdotal, but while I haven't been playing Blitz nearly as much since the Tournaments began, it has less to do with Flame Notes (my weapons of choice were and still are Road Rage and Blast Notes) and more to do with the fact that I gold-starred all 25 songs and completed all the Achievements back in September. I don't usually play a game much after 100% completion, let alone 3-4 months later. If anything, the tournaments kept me playing longer, even if it's just those three songs and maybe a goal or two.

(Bioshock only lasted me two weeks, and that was originally a $60 retail game)

[PedroRVD]

It is really sad to see this "Rock Band was a bad experience let's move one, LETS MOVE ON" attitude from people at HMX

I really really hope they don't forget 100% about this franchise that we love so much and...where people like me have spent more than $2000 on (lunatic fans like us may be few...but we matter and we can't be thrown to the trash like that). I want to be wrong...but NOTHING will be as beautiful and succesfull as Rock Band...and nothing will form a community like RB has built.

I will support EVERYTHING Harmonix does....damn I did it with Dance Central, I have gotten all DLC from it as well and I still enjoy that game to this very day.... But HMX is music, and if they move on from music, I will be very scared about the future, I will support it anyway, but PLEASE, don't ERASE Rock Band from your plans. It would be like Nintendo killing Mario.

Sorry, my english is even worse when I'm mad and worried

[DeferredGalaxy3]

It is really sad to see this "Rock Band was a bad experience let's move one, LETS MOVE ON" attitude from people at HMX

I really really hope they don't forget 100% about this franchise that we love so much and...where people like me have spent more than $2000 on (lunatic fans like us may be few...but we matter and we can't be thrown to the trash like that). I want to be wrong...but NOTHING will be as beautiful and succesfull as Rock Band...and nothing will form a community like RB has built.

I will support EVERYTHING Harmonix does....damn I did it with Dance Central, I have gotten all DLC from it as well and I still enjoy that game to this very day.... But HMX is music, and if they move on from music, I will be very scared about the future, I will support it anyway, but PLEASE, don't ERASE Rock Band from your plans. It would be like Nintendo killing Mario.

Sorry, my english is even worse when I'm mad and worried

Rock Band will always be Harmonix's main title. I've always had fun with Rock Band ever since I've heard about it, but even the great must fall at some point. (It's just too early though!!!!) And if this all turns out to be some April Fools joke at the last day of rock band DLC, I'M NOT GOING TO BE LAUGHING!

[PedroRVD]

omg! I thought I was the only one who has been thinking all this time that this is the best April Fools joke ever