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

[agentnnc]

I've played quite a bit of Jack/Flame and aside from some bad drops due to my own rustiness I haven't noticed any difference in the spreading. Flames have always been volatile, so to speak, in the regard of spreading, but generally speaking, the more you hit, the more they spread, and this makes it really important to hit as many as you can early, even at the risk of breaking streak, because it seems to have a cumulative effect on how frequently they spread later in the song.

It's also critical to stay vigilant and make sure you spot and hit the first flame note in a chain, because if you miss that, it could be quite a while until another spawns. It's just the nature of the beast; on busier songs with 5 lanes, and depending on how the highway is curving at a particular point, you could miss a starting flame that you never even saw and it seems like they never spawn.

That issue with the next flame note spawning WAY later in the song by putting it in a sparsely populated lane is unfortunate, but I don't think it behaves any differently than it did before the initial nerf. That's just something you have to take into account when choosing powerups; songs that have long gaps between parts on particular instruments can really hurt you in flame spreading if you're unlucky. And it doesn't matter if you "drop them once" in that regard; you can hit multiple flame notes, all of the ones that are available even, but if the spread pattern hasn't gotten to the point where it spawns more than one per hit, it can still put the next one way down the track and there's nothing you can do about it.

Thanks for the reply. I've been replaying songs this morning and beating old high scores. It likely my imagination given that some of my scores looked like they were done without power ups when I finished with my latest runs.

[agentnnc]

I don't see what the big deal is. Say for the sake of argument that ALL flame notes players were pissed with the rebalancing and only a fraction of them posted on the forums or complained at all. I would think that this is still a minority of the blitz community. The only company I can think of that would provide balancing support after 2 months of release is Valve (since Steam is their own platform) and Capcom (in the form of re-releasing the same game with a new name). Personally I'm impressed that Harmonix even bothered considering it's been made apparent since February that there are bigger fish to fry in the coming generation (and I don't blame them for making this decision, it's perfectly logical). Maybe I'm not impressed as I should be with the move, but I know this is due to holding them to a higher standard than I do other companies.

The fact that Harmonix wanted to wait until the end of tournaments before even thinking about it is understandable. While I don't use the exploit/technique Magnet found for flame notes I must admit it does look like a significantly less legitimate way of playing than playing the game with synchrony/pinball/??? as if it were arkanoid.

I don't see the big deal here other than that they went out of their way to please a minority once tourneys finished. How many major game developers currently in business go out of their way like this? How many make massive and permanant deals on DLC? How many go out of their way to ensure that product is available 3 years after release? How many supervise their forums and take fan feedback to heart for five years straight? I can count them on one hand and still have fingers to spare.

[grace_pressure]

RB's character creator is a great example of a feature that is completely unrelated to the music itself that a portion of our fanbase is FIERCELY passionate about. Just because it's not related to the music doesn't mean it can't be fun. It was likely the most popular power up throughout all of playtest and remains one of the most used power ups by novice and expert players alike. Just because it's not 100% focused on hitting the gems doesn't mean there isn't a place for it in the game or with a substantial part of the player base.

This is splitting hairs because you still have an arguable position, but the example wasn't a good equivocation. Creating characters in certain ways isn't a dominating or viable strategy to scoring in Rock Band.

[cowboys282]

Riles is actually correct, we didn't see a substantial decrease in play statistics after the Flame notes were changed, not any more so than the expected decline in activity 3-6 months after launch. It affected a very small portion of the community and while there were a number of people in this thread who were unhappy, just as many people in this thread continued to play or participate in tournaments.

Hmm I am skeptical but I will play along. Let's say you are right and this decrease had little affect on the game population and there was just a few of us in this thread complaining.

Then why did you restore Flame notes less than a week after tournaments ended on a game your company is not supposed to be spending anymore resources in?

Doesn't make a lot of sense to change a game for only a few(like you claim) when the game population itself saw little affect after you made the original change.

I will remain skeptical. But hey it would be cool if you brought some of those analytics to your Pax East panel to actually prove your point. If I am wrong you would never hear from me again.

[hmxhenry]

This is splitting hairs because you still have an arguable position, but the example wasn't a good equivocation. Creating characters in certain ways isn't a dominating or viable strategy to scoring in Rock Band.

My point remains that there are things people like about games that aren't directly tied to scoring. People still whammy like it's going out of style when playing RB because it looks bad ass and makes them feel cool. People love the art because they enjoy avateering and that's how they want to immerse themselves in the game. Different people like different things, and the majority of players aren't focused on "viable strategy" or "optimal load out" as much as they are on what is "fun" for them.

Hmm I am skeptical but I will play along. Let's say you are right and this decrease had little affect on the game population and there was just a few of us in this thread complaining.

Then why did you restore Flame notes less than a week after tournaments ended on a game your company is not supposed to be spending anymore resources in?

Because we care? My role on the forums isn't to be Johnny Bad Guy, it's to take your feedback and push it to the dev team and take the response from the dev team and present it to you. Sometimes we're able to serve the vocal minority, sometimes where not. It all depends on the 5 points I outlined a few posts above: audience, bandwidth, etc.

Take the Stage Kit for example. When there wasn't functionality in RB3 we were under no obligation to patch in support for a third party peripheral that a fraction of a fraction of the player base owned. But there was a dedication chunk of the community that lobbied for a fix, but the first patch came and went and we weren't able to introduce functionality. But, I think by the time of the 3rd title update, we had the bandwidth, and even though there was a minimal audience, we did it because we do care about supporting our hardcore fan base. That doesn't mean that the vocal 1% will (or should) always get what they want, but we listen and do what we can when we can.

I will remain skeptical. But hey it would be cool if you brought some of those analytics to your Pax East panel to actually prove your point. If I am wrong you would never hear from me again.

I won't have these stats at our panel for a few reasons. Primarily, honestly, it's because hardly anyone else is interested. As I've pointed out, there's not a lot of chatter about Flame note or Blitz stats outside of this thread. With a booth to run, a panel to finalize, and an RB party tonight, there are much much bigger things on our plate at the moment. Again: audience, bandwidth, etc. I can't drop all that to satiate the curiosity of a handful of posters, not when there are subjects to discuss that would address the questions of tens of thousands of people. Feel free to remain skeptical if you'd like, but I have literally no reason to be dishonest with you.

[Magnet]

We'll never know if Pinball still would have dominated tournaments (I suspect it would have in most cases)

In most cases I'm sure it would not have. I once believed 5-lane songs were a likely exception to the flame exploit, but testing it now I'm able to reach tournament-winning scores on some of the ones from the tournament. (And on 4-lane songs the exploit easily blows away the pinball top scores.) Had no changes been made, I believe there may have been just a handful of songs winnable with pinball, and the rest would have been vulnerable to the flame exploit, making for a pretty lousy (and way more controversial) tournament.

[MaximusDM]

I'm not sure what else you're hoping for. An admission of guilt? 10 weeks of Blitz time back that you didn't enjoy during Tournaments? We've rebalanced Flame notes specifically in reaction to the feedback in this thread. We won't be able to do that all the time, but in this instance we were able to and we're glad that the majority of people are pleased with the change.

My main gripe is you are making it sound like you are doing me a favor. While in some respects you are. I look at it as if I am a pet dog and you are teasing me by waving bacon under my nose and then wonder why I am ticked after you finally give me the bacon.

No matter how I read it, its like you are saying;
You got what you wanted right? What do you want? You should be happy we even gave you that at all.

If you felt flame notes were overpowered, then you should of left the nerf intact. You are the developers, you make the final decision. You can't listen to every complaint you get, that is how we ended up in this position in the first place.
Probably should have wiped leaderboards too.

Nerf was made for the majority, next it was reverted for the minority.
Makes sense. Make a concrete decision, and give valid reasoning.

Although I sound totally negative, reverting it was the right thing to do. Thing is, it should of never happened and reverting it was proof of that.
I see the revert as either admission of guilt or being spineless enough to fold to pressure of a bunch of exploiters or potential exploiters as you like to call them.

[DavidTLynchEsq]

If you felt flame notes were overpowered, then you should of left the nerf intact. You are the developers, you make the final decision. You can't listen to every complaint you get, that is how we ended up in this position in the first place.
Probably should have wiped leaderboards too.

They didn't leave it intact because almost nobody agreed with the decision, and the people who disagreed were very loud and clear about it. It was considerably easier to bring it back to where it was before than it would have been to test new values, or throw a number out there, hope it's more balanced, and run the risk of fixing nothing.

Wiping the leaderboards would be a really bad idea at this point. It's one thing to have unattainable scores, but I don't think it's any better to have a #1 rank for the only score on a song.

[cowboys282]

I won't have these stats at our panel for a few reasons. Primarily, honestly, it's because hardly anyone else is interested. As I've pointed out, there's not a lot of chatter about Flame note or Blitz stats outside of this thread. With a booth to run, a panel to finalize, and an RB party tonight, there are much much bigger things on our plate at the moment. Again: audience, bandwidth, etc. I can't drop all that to satiate the curiosity of a handful of posters, not when there are subjects to discuss that would address the questions of tens of thousands of people. Feel free to remain skeptical if you'd like, but I have literally no reason to be dishonest with you.

Well I will still look forward to seeing what you guys talk about. Maybe my mind will get opened to just how big this Rock Band thing is tomorrow. Although I am sure I wont be the only person there that plays Blitz.

[DeferredGalaxy3]

I'm pretty sure the sheer amount of times that Harmonix staff said it isn't an April Fool's joke confirms it isn't. If it were an April Fool's joke, they would have announced it...I don't know....maybe a little closer to April first instead of February?

I was joking around... but what if... what if... They want us to believe it's not an April Fool's Joke.