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[TheGreatDave]

Coursework? In July?

...I'm so sorry.

 

[JonathanEx]

Me too. Seeing as it doesn't need to be to the exam boards by OH I DONT KNOW MAY I'm fucked off that apparently this morning was the final deadline because of some bullshit.

I'll hand it in tomorrow morning, last day of term.

 

[McBradders]

I had my friend over this week and we did a lot of... wait this isn't the right thread.

*sigh*

 

[JonathanEx]

So. Yes. Music.

I've decided Rock Band 2 needs festival gigs as locations. Waving flags, screens of the crowd, jumping around in the rain... the on stage visuals in the game are good, but after the last few days, really hammered home how awesome live stuff is.

Also, I think "no fail" should be called stoner mode - the audience is too fucked up to care you miss notes.

 

[TheGreatDave]

Stonehenge was the best location in GH:2 (bar it's long wait before you play)

Bring back Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell! Where the banshees live and they do live well!

 

[Struct09]

Sweet, but I want to be able to ignore a certain number of disk songs as well.

Well, the disc songs are essentially the "levels" of the game. So in a way that's like saying you want to play a game like Gears of War but skip the levels you don't like Of course you'll be able to play any song you want at any time in quickplay, but if you want to progress through the career mode there will be times where you play songs you don't really like.

 

[McBradders]

Stonehenge was the best location in GH:2 (bar it's long wait before you play)

Bring back Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell! Where the banshees live and they do live well!

I'd like some stuff like rooftop performances and like the intro in Rock Band. That'd be rad.

 

[Onemic]

I like the irony. But I can't playu tonight, I'm on last warning with some coursework.


...it's my fault, I did just fuck off to a Festival. Which was AWESOME.

what's your gamertag BTW?

 

[MalevolentPanda]

Well, the disc songs are essentially the "levels" of the game. So in a way that's like saying you want to play a game like Gears of War but skip the levels you don't like Of course you'll be able to play any song you want at any time in quickplay, but if you want to progress through the career mode there will be times where you play songs you don't really like.

Right, which is what I'm objecting to. Your analogy to other games doesn't work unless you pick a game where a few of the levels are not just worse than the rest of the game but actively irritating. Even then, it's not the same thing. Rhythm action games are all about getting into the music. If you are not able to do that then the game is ruined, especially if you're having to sing.

 

[Belgand]

Right, which is what I'm objecting to. Your analogy to other games doesn't work unless you pick a game where a few of the levels are not just worse than the rest of the game but actively irritating. Even then, it's not the same thing. Rhythm action games are all about getting into the music. If you are not able to do that then the game is ruined, especially if you're having to sing.

Exactly. If you don't want to skip any tracks then we simply haven't found a track objectionable enough yet. Maybe we can get "It's a Small World"?

Personally, and I realize my musical tastes aren't the same as everyone else, I'm loathing Chop Suey. I'd also be happier without another Foo Fighters song, well, ever. The Disturbed and Linkin Park tracks also fill me with dread of a level almost the same as Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. Beastie Boys and RATM are solid clangers, but, well, I can tolerate them for the time it takes to play them once and then never again.

I think the greater problem is that with on-disc songs they're trying to be increasingly diverse. In practice this generally means that we end up with a larger portion of songs that portions of the audience dislike. I'm sure that something I love and am looking forward to is something that you're loathing ever having to play. The ability to have increasing amounts of DLC and the ability to remove some tracks would help to make an experience that more people are happier with.

While it will likely never happen I could see the idea of offering a future game with maybe nothing but some bonus songs on disc and free downloads of the other 85 tracks from DLC letting players customize their setlists. While there are obvious flaws with this idea (no DLC servers, no game, overly reliant on hard drive space, damn game should be on the disc, etc.) it would go a long ways to allowing people to get just what they want and nothing else.

After all, musical opinions are like assholes: almost everyone has one and they all have some shit in there somewhere.

 

[Flynn]

Did you guys catch the second Harmonix feature we did over at The A.V. Club?

Chris Interviewed Helen McWilliams, Matt Boch, Ryan Lesser and Eric Brosius. It's a fairly epic interview.

 

[BigBlackGamer]

nice. thanks flynn.

 

[Christoff Yurievich]

I turned off avatars to make the Rock Band threads more readable but it doesn't work. Why doesn't it work?

only works for avatars stored on the neogaf servers, meaning mods/admins and the various "i can't change my avatar" avatars.

 

[Struct09]

Right, which is what I'm objecting to. Your analogy to other games doesn't work unless you pick a game where a few of the levels are not just worse than the rest of the game but actively irritating. Even then, it's not the same thing. Rhythm action games are all about getting into the music. If you are not able to do that then the game is ruined, especially if you're having to sing.

I guess that I just disagree. I would hope that they would take the on-disc songs and create a challenge from them as they see fit. If I wanted to only play songs that I liked, then I would just create a quickplay set list.

I think it's cool that they're letting you customize your BWT experience to a degree, but if you could choose 100% of the songs that show up then I'd see it as pointless.

 

[Ridley327]

Finally, some disappointing news about Rock Band 2....wait, what?

In regards to characters/bands carrying over:

Though songs will be imported just fine into RB2 - bands, characters and the such will not. It is actually not technically possible for this to happen though it will be easy to recreate your characters just fine in RB2.

In regards to the RB1 transfer:

You don't get to chose. It is a bulk import of the songs that have been re-licensed.

Apparently, the Major Nelson podcast over the weekend had an interview with someone at Harmonix who commented that the transfer tool wouldn't be more than $5, but I guess some will bitch about the RB1 songs. The real tragedy is the characters and art not transferring over; I'm willing to believe that they really couldn't have made it work, but that doesn't ease my pain of having to create my army of Ridley clones from scratch again :-(

 

[Raistlin]

ION kit cannot come out soon enough

 

[M3wThr33]

BULK relicensed? Once again he's using terms that indicate a range of 60-80% and not something like 99%.

Exactly. If you don't want to skip any tracks then we simply haven't found a track objectionable enough yet. Maybe we can get "It's a Small World"?

I'd love 'It's A Small World.' It'd be good if they could license out to the Japanese labels, like Avex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU65mUtyOH8

 

[BigBlackGamer]

dont care about characters and bands not carrying over. I have no problem making Hayley Redux.

 

[DGRP]

Bah.

Why can't HMX release a special RB1 pack in the music store, then when you buy the whole thing you could choose which songs to keep.

 

[TheGreatDave]

Yeah, won't be bothering then. I don't want to risk having to play Seven ever again.

Do we know if they're sticking to their totally random song picking style for ranked online matches? I've always hated that. A simple veto option would work better than making me play GGAHT and Seven non fucking stop.

Don't care about characters not carrying over. Hopefully this is a good thing and they've made the character creator more than picking 4 faces and how tiny your waist is now.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

dont care about characters and bands not carrying over. I have no problem making Hayley Redux.

And who knows, there might be more options making said recreation even easier and/or more authentic. I will miss Janine, though. My guitarist was the very embodiment of Soul Coughing Spirit.

 

[Ten-Song]

I will miss Janine, though. My guitarist was the very embodiment of Soul Coughing Spirit.

This reminds me that before I had a theme going on for my vocalist, I made his default name "Mr. Bitterness".

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

This reminds me that before I had a theme going on for my vocalist, I made his default name "Mr. Bitterness".

(That's awesome.)

 

[McBradders]

Gentlemen, I present to you... my band

¬_¬

 

[Belgand]

I've decided Rock Band 2 needs festival gigs as locations. Waving flags, screams of the crowd, jumping around in the rain... the on stage visuals in the game are good, but after the last few days, really hammered home how awesome live stuff is.

Definitely. Perhaps for the endless setlist and such?

Actually, what about a festival challenge or such for parties. You could have multiple bands get up and play a short set (for the sake of gameplay, unless you have patient friends or want to more closely simulate a real, all-day festival) and then swap off with other bands. The fans/money would involve a linked effect between everyone's performance so if one band fails out you all lose fans (albeit a smaller amount than if you failed on your own), but if you all do really well the effect of playing at such a legendary festival brings in a bonus of more fans for everyone involved.

 

[BenjaminBirdie]

Festival arenas would be god damned amazing.

 

[MalevolentPanda]

only works for avatars stored on the neogaf servers, meaning mods/admins and the various "i can't change my avatar" avatars.

Ah, thanks. I've found an alternative solution now.

I guess that I just disagree. I would hope that they would take the on-disc songs and create a challenge from them as they see fit. If I wanted to only play songs that I liked, then I would just create a quickplay set list.

I think it's cool that they're letting you customize your BWT experience to a degree, but if you could choose 100% of the songs that show up then I'd see it as pointless.

I don't want to pick everything, I just want to be able to exclude a handful of shitty songs that are no fun. It's not going to happen anyway. And I bet they have no problems relicensing Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

 

[Emerson]

I'm really interested to see which songs are getting relicensed. That list can't come soon enough for me.

Also no character transfer is okay, but I guess that's bad news for score transfers? I've got some epic scores I doubt I could recreate with ease and it'd be a shame to lose those.

 

[Belgand]

Festival arenas would be god damned amazing.

I honestly wonder why they aren't in it already. I mean, GH1-3 have each had a festival venue (ok, so GH3 was designed by idiots who assume that somehow Burning Man is a venue or a rock music festival!?!), but nothing in RB?

Maybe even setlists designed to recall famous festival moments like a set of slower, more mellow songs before moving abruptly into heavier material (e.g. Dylan plugging in at Newport) or losing fans whenever you play Altamont (not technically a festival, but I couldn't resist... even if it is in terribly poor taste). Festivals would also make a lot of sense for longer setlists devoted to particular genres (you're playing a damn metal festival, what did you expect?).

Just off the top of my head I'm thinking:

Woodstock (USA;of course)
Woodstock II (USA;for when you want to sell out even more heavily)
Coachella/Bonnaroo (USA;indie rock/misc.)
Summer Sonic (Japan;uhh... it's in Japan? It's big?)
Wacken Open Air (German; Largest metal festival in the world)
Isle of Wight Festival (UK; classic rock, esp. British; focusing on the 1970 festival here)
Reading/Leeds (UK; uh... a bit out of my element here as well)
Glastonbury Festival (UK; again... my knowledge of focus here isn't that good)

Past that I'm running up against either genres that aren't as important in Rock Band, smaller or less iconic festivals, traveling festivals, and ones that frankly I don't know anything about.

 

[koam]

Dave has the worse taste in music, im convinced he's deaf

 

[Christoff Yurievich]

Compared to Costanza, Dave is David Fricke or Peter Travers.

 

[sublime085]

I honestly wonder why they aren't in it already. I mean, GH1-3 have each had a festival venue (ok, so GH3 was designed by idiots who assume that somehow Burning Man is a venue or a rock music festival!?!), but nothing in RB?

Maybe even setlists designed to recall famous festival moments like a set of slower, more mellow songs before moving abruptly into heavier material (e.g. Dylan plugging in at Newport) or losing fans whenever you play Altamont (not technically a festival, but I couldn't resist... even if it is in terribly poor taste). Festivals would also make a lot of sense for longer setlists devoted to particular genres (you're playing a damn metal festival, what did you expect?).

Just off the top of my head I'm thinking:

Woodstock (USA;of course)
Woodstock II (USA;for when you want to sell out even more heavily)
Coachella/Bonnaroo (USA;indie rock/misc.)
Summer Sonic (Japan;uhh... it's in Japan? It's big?)
Wacken Open Air (German; Largest metal festival in the world)
Isle of Wight Festival (UK; classic rock, esp. British; focusing on the 1970 festival here)
Reading/Leeds (UK; uh... a bit out of my element here as well)
Glastonbury Festival (UK; again... my knowledge of focus here isn't that good)

Past that I'm running up against either genres that aren't as important in Rock Band, smaller or less iconic festivals, traveling festivals, and ones that frankly I don't know anything about.

I think it'd be awesome to play a rooftop concert a la the Beatles in Let It Be. (or U2 I guess, if you swing that way)

 

[Ridley327]

I'm really interested to see which songs are getting relicensed. That list can't come soon enough for me.

Also no character transfer is okay, but I guess that's bad news for score transfers? I've got some epic scores I doubt I could recreate with ease and it'd be a shame to lose those.

This work?

No scores won't "transfer over" except in the sense, I think, that we won't be erasing the leaderboards.

 

[Belgand]

I think it'd be awesome to play a rooftop concert a la the Beatles in Let It Be. (or U2 I guess, if you swing that way)

Those are almost fighting words. Not so much based on a love of the Beatles as a dislike of U2.

 

[DuckRacer]

So I was watching the Castle Crashers walkthrough on Gamersyde and I heard Living on a Prayer playing in the background, presumably on Rock Band 2 since it had the master recording ending.

Why haven't we seen any videos? That was the ultimate cocktease.

 

[Emerson]

This work?

Ehhh... Guess that's that then. Don't know if I'll ever get 213k on RTTH Expert Drums again. :|

Too many good scores to lose

 

[Sp3eD]

Ehhh... Guess that's that then. Don't know if I'll ever get 213k on RTTH Expert Drums again. :|

Too many good scores to lose

Look at it this way, everybodies scores go away thus allowing you to do even BETTER and get higher in ranks Count this as a blessing.

 

[Affeinvasion]

I think it'd be awesome to play a rooftop concert a la the Beatles in Let It Be. (or U2 I guess, if you swing that way)

Or even more notably that Heroes song from the Spiderman soundtrack by the guys from Nickelback and Saliva.

 

[borghe]

Woodstock II (USA;for when you want to sell out even more heavily)

as someone who was at Woodstock 1994, I have to say you couldn't be more wrong about this statement. Unlike Woodstock 1999, this wasn't really a wholy commercial deal. IT was still in a field, still had tons of artsy crafty vendors (the majority) and had not some of the biggest, but ALL OF the biggest acts in the country all at the same weekend. There was plenty plenty plenty of all indulgences to be had (herbal and physical) and it was just pretty awesome.

Just saying, aside from the ticket price, the entire experience was fucking awesome. And how else can you say you saw Johnny Cash, NIN, Aerosmith, Metallica, Green Day, Cranberries, Peter Gabriel, Blind Melon, Allman Brothers, Dylan, CSN, etc all in the same weekend. Just saying. Carry on.

 

[Belgand]

as someone who was at Woodstock 1994, I have to say you couldn't be more wrong about this statement. Unlike Woodstock 1999, this wasn't really a wholy commercial deal. IT was still in a field, still had tons of artsy crafty vendors (the majority) and had not some of the biggest, but ALL OF the biggest acts in the country all at the same weekend. There was plenty plenty plenty of all indulgences to be had (herbal and physical) and it was just pretty awesome.

Just saying, aside from the ticket price, the entire experience was fucking awesome. And how else can you say you saw Johnny Cash, NIN, Aerosmith, Metallica, Green Day, Cranberries, Peter Gabriel, Blind Melon, Allman Brothers, Dylan, CSN, etc all in the same weekend. Just saying. Carry on.

My half-sister was there as well. I didn't use a particular date because while '99 was definitely a major, overly-commercial problem that descended into chaos, the '94 festival was still seen by many as a cash-in on the name.

 

[ZeoVGM]

You know, achievements should be leaking in a week or so. Wonder what they'll be.

 

[McBradders]

Or even more notably that Heroes song from the Spiderman soundtrack by the guys from Nickelback and Saliva.

Don't you fucking bring that in here. Don't you bring that in here. I swear to god if Nickelback somehow find their way in to the game now it will be because of this very post, and will therefore be your fault and you will have to pay a terrible price for that.

A terrible price.

EVEN MORE NOTABLY?!

 

[TheGreatDave]

Dave has the worse taste in music, im convinced he's deaf

What have I done now?! This isn't really a music taste thing; I kinda like Seven as a song for example (in a guilty pleasure way), I just hate playing it in Rock Band. If I say a song sucks in a Rock Band thread, I'm talking about playing it in game. For example: Doolittle sucks. Pixies are one of my favourite bands.

RE: The achievement list, I really hope Rock Band 2 has more skill based achievements. With the exception of beating drums and vocals on expert and 100%ing a song on expert drums, the only stuff I have left to get is complete all those gigs in BWT. And seeing as me and the girlfriend hate BWT and just use quickplay, they're a bunch of points I'm never going to get.

 

[Magik]

HMX dev blog update: http://www.rockband.com/rockers_blog_entry/hmxspraynwipe/387742?redir=1

Endless Setlist 2 takes roughly 10 hours.... fuck....

 

[JonathanEx]

* Battle of the Bands is our flagship feature in Rock Band 2. This isn't just 4v4 - in the words of PR Coordinator John Drake, "four versus four is what I like to call a band sissyfight in the parking lot after a gig". Instead, this is your band battling against your entire friends list, then once you're the #1 friend, the entire world!

Love the quote.

 

[neorej]

HMX dev blog update: http://www.rockband.com/rockers_blog_entry/hmxspraynwipe/387742?redir=1

Endless Setlist 2 takes roughly 10 hours.... fuck....

Is there a pause-button?

TELL ME THERE'S A PAUSE-BUTTON!!!

 

[Struct09]

For those of you who've moved kits around, the kick pedal no longer falls off when you move the kit!

That's enough reason for me to get the new drumset right there

Is there a pause-button?

TELL ME THERE'S A PAUSE-BUTTON!!!

At least in the 360 version, I believe hitting the guide button pauses the game.

 

[neorej]

just went through the setlist and glimpsed the new drumkit. I'm gonna get RB1 and a guitar in september, and import RB2 when it hits. Is there a RB1 guitar-only bundle?

 

[FF_VIII]

"Breakneck Speed". By popular demand, we've added an option that increases the scroll speed of all tracks. Since we consider this a personal taste issue and not a game-changing exploit, we don't disable anything.

 

[sublime085]

- There are also guidelines engraved onto the drum legs to help you perfectly balance your kit

Ohh, I like this, I always feels as though my drum kit is uneven.

It'll also be useful for remembering the proper height of the drums for me.