Pinballing has ruined this game!!!

[bmdbmd15]

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Pinball - mighty Harmonix has struck out.


Though I never used them I will be glad when they bump the flame notes back. At least you are still playing the song with flame notes. If I wanted to play pinball I would play one of the numerous pinball games available.

I enjoy playing the music so I stick to more conventional power-up's. I am number 13 on Tuesday's Gone with 847.289 using Jackpot/Blast Notes/Keyboard. Blast notes are mostly useless for this song so it took a near perfect run and a bit of luck with blast note locations. While it is too late after release and no patch in sight, it would have been great to have a Trials Evolution style leaderboard. Even without repaly's just the ability to see what powerups were used by the leaders. I would like to have seen how the 20 or so people who have been able to gold star were able to accomplish it. Especially those like myself who were able to GS the song since the flame notes points were reduced.

BDSooner72 - Top 50 on 360 who has never used flame notes but shamefully used pinball on one and two instrument tracks.

[zage1337]

I achieved 1,010,097 on Tuesday's Gone with Jackpot/Flame Notes/Super Guitar which is 1st cross platform. That's pretty much the best loadout for it assuming flames are at 1,500. I haven't even bothered trying that song with pinball but it might be effective. I got over 1,270k on Child in Time with jackpot/pinball/guitar

To OP: Also proof that I am perfectly capable of using other loadouts besides Pinball. And this is true with ketchupyoshi and other top pinball players.

[DeftRockX3]

Don't forget about blast notes. They're still kind of decent in this day and age of pinball wizardry.

[Hairlooksgreat]

I would like to have seen how the 20 or so people who have been able to gold star were able to accomplish it. Especially those like myself who were able to GS the song since the flame notes points were reduced.

Gold starred it prior to the flame nerf. Took 55 attempts and I used JP/Flames/Super Keys. That double solo took me a while to figure out. Would love to see the score Zage could post using Pinball. I have a feeling with the lack of dense notes, the solos, length of song and 5 lanes, it would be tough to beat a "lucky" run with pre-nerf flames. Though if anyone could do it, it would be him

[cowboys282]

Don't forget about blast notes. They're still kind of decent in this day and age of pinball wizardry.

Blast notes are ok on some songs but they have there limits. Both Flame notes and Pinball give you control over your score. You continue to get points on a run of flames or pinball until you mess up. Basically you control how much points you get.

Blast notes are pre determined. You have to play a song many times to hope and get one really lucky placement of a few blast notes. Once I have mastered a song with Blast notes I will get almost the same exact score every time with no hope of improvement. It just can't compete with Pinball because of that.

I do believe there are many songs that I could beat even the best Pinball player using Flame notes. That cannot happen with Blast notes.

[zage1337]

I just did a quick run on Tuesday's Gone to see what kind of score I can get.

935,557 on Tuesday's Gone with Pinball. This was just a quick attempt to see what kind of score I would get so it's not the most stellar pinball run. I would say Pinball and Jack/Flame are about equal on Tuesday's Gone. I can definitely beat my 1.010 million if I do a grind session on it.

Both Flame notes and Pinball give you control over your score. You continue to get points on a run of flames or pinball until you mess up. Basically you control how much points you get.

And that nerfing either one of those power ups is completely insane and basically suicide(the flame note nerf drove many many good players away from this game). The fact that there were TWO power ups that gave you control over your score as long as you possessed the skill and have luck in your favor proves that the game was more balanced than they thought it was. When you take one of these away..say flame notes..all you have left is pinball because every other power up combo has a hard limit and is predetermined on how many points you can get. It get's boring using those other power ups because you can not improve your scores beyond a certain point.

I like Jackpot/Blast because it's the closest style to the main Rock Band games, but anything else with blast notes, I just can't find myself doing. Even with Jackpot/Blast I can only play a song like 4-5 times before I basically capped what kind of score I will get. Anything higher after discovering the jackpot path is totally down to blast note luck that I have no control over at all.

Flames and Pinball you can improve your skill and your scores will reflect that.

[grumblevolcano]

The official rules state the tournaments end on March 13th. That's 13 days from now, so look forward to the possibility of flame note returning to normal around then.

[HMXLachesis]

Just in case it's back to normal and that there actually is a conspiracy, I just want to point out that the site was down for about an hour or less just now. Could be totally coincidental and non-related.

Yesterday's downtime was due to a Facebook/website interface problem and should not have affected the game in any way.

[Epsilon82]

I do believe there are many songs that I could beat even the best Pinball player using Flame notes. That cannot happen with Blast notes.

I think Pinball's utility is largely only limited by the length of the song. A song would have to be pretty short, I think, for Pinball to not be able to beat Flames, even at the original value. The longer a song goes, the more a particularly skilled Pinball player will be able to score. Apparently Ketchup beat Zage's superlative Jack/Blast run on TTFAF recently, as one example.

Even from the very early stages of the game, I think most people understood that Pinball would theoretically be the best powerup because of its virtually infinite capability. But for the most part people didn't bother using it because Flames were really good; Pinball wasn't being used that much until it was left as the only viable option after they destroyed Flames. Probably because most people saw it as a gimmick that kind of defeated the purpose of a rhythm game unless you are preternaturally gifted at multi-tasking. I have a feeling Pinball would still be winning tournaments if they hadn't nerfed Flames, because once they put prizes on the line it seems like people would be more willing to suffer annoying gameplay in exchange for higher potential scores.

I could be wrong, and maybe the Band/Flame exploit would have been a real problem, but I think Pinball was always theoretically super powerful. From what I understand Zage has been destroying the scores of most of the high-level Band/Flame players with Pinball.

[zage1337]

I am actually starting to agree with the OP that Pinball has ruined this game but it's not the top level player's fault. This is on HMX for designing and balancing the game in away that the only way to get a #1 score on the majority of songs is to play pinball. I can probably count all the jack/blast songs on my fingers where pinball can't beat it..yet.

It's really stupid that the best powerup is a powerup where the scoring is not affected by the structure of the song but rather the density and length. The reason why I use Pinball so much now is because I was pretty much forced to if I still want to beat my previous scores or if I still want to play competitively.

At least with pre nerf flames..bandmate/flame players can put up scores that severely challenges pinball players or outright beats them. Jack/Blast use to put up a good fight too but we've reached a point where the top pinball players can beat pretty much any jack/blast run on any long song.

I have a few ideas on how they can fix this...

1. Bring Back Flames to 1,500 - this is the easiest and most straightforward option. It will also do the least amount of damage to the game and if anything bring back many players who refused to adapt to pinball and increase the competition again.

2. Increase the Bass Points from x10 to either x15 or x20 and have Flame Notes at 1,500. What this would do is put a much larger emphasis of hitting notes and raising multipliers and it will also strengthen jackpot significantly so that players who rely on Pinball and Bandflame will have to focus on hitting notes and getting their multipliers to prevent their scores from getting beaten.

also.. please make Runaway Notes worth something. They are a fun powerup but they are completely worthless. Same with current flame notes. I have no idea who in the right mind would think that 350 was a good number. It's like there was 0 thought at all put into re balancing that. Clearly it shows that was rushed and wasn't tested AT ALL. Flames are 100% worthless right now. That's not balance, that's killing a powerup. Killing powerups makes games more shallow.

tl;dr Pinball SHOULD NOT be the ONLY option for Top level play. Every single Tournament win used Pinball. Every single one.