Oh
Are there any rules for this sort of thing available to the public somewhere?
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Rock Band Blitz |OT| Rocking Out in the Instrument-Free World
- Thread starter FyreWulff
- Start date
Are there any rules for this sort of thing available to the public somewhere?
Fox Mulder
Member
I've had plenty of fun with the plastic instruments and friends. The genre started without them though, and a couple of the early guitar hero games would let you use 360 controllers. It was still a challenging rhythm game that let you just sit back and enjoy some good music. Sometimes I don't want to dig out plastic guitars.
I was hyped, but too bad they had to screw this all up with facebook. I had the MS points ready for it.
metsallica
Member
Thank you! Now if only my Internet would come back online so I could actually download the unlock key (13 days of outages in the last 3 weeks, gotta love TWC!).
If your internet is behaving like that, you probably shouldn't get it right now. Every time your connection drops, you'll have to stop playing the game if you care about earning coins and "cred" (XP). This is an online-only game.
AndyMoogle
Member
Scores won't be saved either, and you can't use powerups while offline. Basically, it's a worthless game if you aren't online.
Yeah, the goals in the Facebook app will specify whether you have to play songs in Blitz or in Blitz or Rock Band 3. If the latter is the case, you can play the songs required for the goal (for instance, one grunge song) in Rock Band 3 and you'll get the reward (400 coins) in Blitz. I think it's quite genius how they intertwined the two games.
metsallica
Member
Good to know, thanks guys. My connection is straight-up dead (48 hours now, but it's better than the 8 consecutive days two weeks ago!) so I won't even attempt to boot the game tonight. If anyone from TWC is reading this, you work for the most incompetent company on planet earth.
But FB only, so a no-go for me. Appreciate the info!
Bought the game and love it so far. Hopefully I never get to that point where I run out of coins and start getting pissed trying to gold star songs.
But for now I'm enjoying this very much. I love juggling all the music lanes. And I love the graphics and presentation. At first I was annoyed by the way the note highway curved but now I think it's fucking awesome! And man the backgrounds are so nice. I didn't really notice them until I played baba oreilly which has no notes for a minute or two. As you progress through the game's "highway" you pass parks, restaurants, trees, homes, etc. It's all very lovely and vibrant.
The best thing about the game is that for me personally I didn't just buy a rhythm game with a 25-song track list. I bought a rhythm game with an 800+ song track list. The game plays differently enough from regular Rock Band that I feel I could play every one of the DLC songs I really love and have lots of fun. Gosh it's so satisfying jumping from Ghost Of Perdition to Go With The Flow in this game.
But for now I'm enjoying this very much. I love juggling all the music lanes. And I love the graphics and presentation. At first I was annoyed by the way the note highway curved but now I think it's fucking awesome! And man the backgrounds are so nice. I didn't really notice them until I played baba oreilly which has no notes for a minute or two. As you progress through the game's "highway" you pass parks, restaurants, trees, homes, etc. It's all very lovely and vibrant.
The best thing about the game is that for me personally I didn't just buy a rhythm game with a 25-song track list. I bought a rhythm game with an 800+ song track list. The game plays differently enough from regular Rock Band that I feel I could play every one of the DLC songs I really love and have lots of fun. Gosh it's so satisfying jumping from Ghost Of Perdition to Go With The Flow in this game.
SuperPac
Member
Love the game. A lot. I really wish readouts for the goals/community stuff were available in-game after you've accepted them (a la Score War). I understand the fascination with Facebook and I don't mind connecting up my accounts but I still kinda want to be able to see progress without having to go to a computer.
Sp3eD
0G M3mbeR
If you use it through Facebook in safari it does.
Not for me. When I click goals it reloads the page and I'm right back where I started. At least last time I tried.
Absoludacrous
Member
In my dream world, Sony contacts HMX for a Freq/Amp HD collection.
thekonamicode
Member
Gold Starred my 110th song last night, now I'm working on my last achievement in the game (gold star every song that came with blitz)
Is there a good gold star cutoff list? I didn't find one at Scorehero, and they usually are on top of this kind of thing.
Either way, I just hit gold in Always by Blink 182. The cutoff is approximately 269k. My final score ended up being 281k.
Baconsammy
Banned
I'm done with this game. It costs me 800-900 coins to play a song. I 5 star that song and get rewarded with a whopping 350-400 coins. So if I want to continue on to get the achievement for 5-starring all included songs I now have to go play a bunch of songs with no chance of 5 starring them. In what world is that good game design? This game is stupid.
toythatkills
Member
I played a song and messed up the start a couple of times, and so restarting meant it actually cost me 2,250 coins to play one song.
As soon as the stock of coins I've got runs out, I doubt I'll ever play this again.
It's not good design. It reeks of free-to-play bullshit from ME3 or most iphone games. Fuck Harmonix for implementing any sort of grind system for in-game currency.
For now I'm happy because I haven't really gone for any gold stars yet and I have 10000+ coins. I PRAY that I don't end up like others and run out of coins when I start going for gold stars en masse. Thing is, I have 800-900 songs and since I am going to start the long journey towards the "Play 300 unique songs" achievement, I don't think I'll ever want for coins. Especially since I'm choosing to play DLC songs strategically via the Facebook app to get big 1000-coin bonuses after every three or five songs (that's the reward for some of those Facebook challenges).
Like you said, you have no hope of even five-starring any song unless you spend their in-game currency. As I work towards the "play 300 unique songs" achievement, I'm not going to spend any coins. That means I'll be playing ~~300 songs and every single one of those songs will be 3- or 4-starred, regardless of my skill.
But since I'm an achievement whore, and not obsessed with scores (like I used to be back with Rock Band 2), I don't mind. I'll just stockpile 50,000+ coins and save them only for when I tackle the Gold-Star-Every-Blitz-Song achievement.
AndyMoogle
Member
Yeah, this game gets boring real fast when you play songs without powerups. I'm going to get a few more achievements, and use up the coins I have; after that I'm done.
Baconsammy
Banned
That's my biggest problem with the game. It's not fun simply to play without the powerups. You know from the start that you have no chance to get a good score, so basically you're just moving from track to track killing time listening to music. I ran out of coins 5 starring the included tracks. Got half done before I ran out, so now my choices are play a lot of the same songs over and over for next to no coins and no chance for a good score or to simply throw Harmonix my middle finger and delete the game. I'm going with the finger. Eff this.
Yeah, it has that free-to-play feel which is really weird because it's not free-to-play. You can buy more songs for small coin boosts, but it's not like buying songs will ever get you to the point where you'll be earning more coins than you can spend. I usually get 300 coins the first time I play a song, so double that for the bonus and I get 600. A full loadout costs 750. So even the first time I play a song, if I use all of my powerups, I'll end up with 150 fewer coins than I started with.
I think it's just the Facebook list. I haven't been able to do any group challenges, though, since I don't have anyone on my Facebook list with this game and my Facebook list is too exclusive to add people just for gaming.
thekonamicode
Member
You don't need to have friends on Rock Band Network to complete group goals. I have 29 completed goals from Rock Band World under my belt (most of these group challenges) and not a single one was completed with the two other people I'm friends with on facebook.
Fixed, only because Rock Band Network is a specific other thing
and I'm a pedantic asshole
Also, the actual coin distribution system was (likely) figured out:
Band Tiers 0-1 have a base amount of 50 coins.
Band Tiers 2-4 have a base amount of 75 coins.
Band Tiers 5-6 have a base amount of 100 coins.
That times the number of stars you get (gold = 6) is how many coins you get for a run. Which results in this payout chart (not counting first-play doubling bonus):
4-star: 200/300/400
5-star: 250/375/500
6-star: 300/450/600
Understood. I actually don't use Facebook, but I made a fake account for this game, hehe.
I just hit 271,831 on These Days by Foo Fighters and had no gold star. =/
edit: Another run, 287,518 on These Days and no gold star. FUCK.
toythatkills
Member
Has anyone from Harmonix explained the thinking behind coins yet? I'm sure there's some reason they chose to implement them and weight them so against the player like this, but I can't see a single advantage to the end user so I'm interested to hear what the reason was.
I started playing some Score Wars last night, which I can see becoming very addicting, except I had to start grinding every other song for coins. After playing so many songs with all 3 power-ups, it's kinda boring playing songs without them.
Baconsammy
Banned
The joy of being able to buy new music tracks to increase the odds of getting higher scores on tracks you already own.
AndyMoogle
Member
It's more likely that they want people to connect to Facebook, considering that all the Facebook stuff could have easily been implemented into the game; which in turn would have made the coins a non-issue.
It's not like anyone is going to buy a lot of songs for just this game. I can't believe that anyone at Harmonix is expecting that.
I am REALLY enjoying the game. Enjoy it much more than playing in Rock Band 3. Finally putting the massive amount of dlc that i have bought to use. Also love the stats and challenges and everything on rock band world. I do however wish it was not connected to FB.
Overall well done harmonix.. I see myself playing this game for a long time.
Overall well done harmonix.. I see myself playing this game for a long time.
Baconsammy
Banned
Umm, Zelda isn't a high-score centric game. Stupid analogy. I love(d) Harmonix, but that statement is a load of bullshit. The only way you're not forced to grind songs is by paying Harmonix for new music to earn double the coins. Getting 5 stars on a song doesnt come close to recouping the number of coins you spent just to play it. And if you want to encourage me to use World Goals, include them in the ****ing game. Don't make me log into a computer. Just dumb.
toythatkills
Member
Yeah, that doesn't cut it. It's just "other games do it so we did it too," or basically "we gave no thought to this whatsoever, we just copied some other stuff." I was hoping for a proper explanation, some way they thought it might actually improve the experience.
If Zelda was a game in which the only thing you could do was shoot arrows, there's no fucking way that Nintendo would have made you grind for arrows so that you could only actually play the game properly 50% of the time.
I played the same song about 8 times last night with 3 powerups each time, and maybe was down a few hundred coins.
I don't necessarily like the consumable powerups route that they went with in this game, but it's not the fucking armageddon that some of you are making it out to be.
I don't necessarily like the consumable powerups route that they went with in this game, but it's not the fucking armageddon that some of you are making it out to be.
SuperPac
Member
I agree about the logging into a computer thing. It's not user-friendly to make you straddle 2 services just to make progress in a game.
But I think I understand what they were trying to do with the coins/economy. They're trying to make each time you played a song in Blitz count in some way where you couldn't just restart if you messed up without some (small) failure cost. In this case the cost is coins, though if you're playing goals (many of which can be completed in RB3 and you can join a "team" of randoms to complete) you really aren't going to have that much trouble having a good enough coin balance in your bank. You're betting "OK *this* is the run where I'm going to 5-star this" - and you're betting coins/power-ups on it.
I guess some of you have never played Bejeweled Blitz or the many high-score-centric social/mobile games that use a similar type of system? What Blitz might've benefitted from is a daily-spin type mechanic or bonus for coming back on-console.
toythatkills
Member
Let us know what you think when you've run out of coins.
That version of Bejeweled Blitz is free, so consumables make sense.
Baconsammy
Banned
3 powerups cost 800. I 5 star a song and I get 400 coins for doing so. I've just lost half of what I spent. That's a good thing?
Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing something. Assuming you don't use the FB app since we're told is completely optional, mathematically you will run out of coins no matter how well you play. That doesn't sound fine to me
I'm actively participating in all FB goals I can muster too, so I've got a stockpile of 30K plus coins.
A goldstar is going to get you more coins too.. I was at 31K yesterday, and after I played a dozen or so songs (Wicker Man about half a dozen times, and Cult a few times), with some stupid restarts, I was down to like 29K. I'm now back above that with just a few more songs.
Only reason I'm replaying the same songs over and over in the first place is for the last goal I need to complete. I personally don't find it very fun to replay the same song over and over, and that's why I have 2000+ songs to pick from. I don't care about chasing high scores, but give me a goal or achievement to chase, and I'm all over it.
Dangle that carrot in my face!
thekonamicode
Member
I've got roughly 29,000 coins in the bank! Working on 3 challenges at the moment. I'd have to buy Motorhead and Weezer DLC to finish one of them (which I probably won't do).
Baconsammy
Banned
I have no interest in FB, so when I got the game I basically went through all 25 songs to get the achievement for playing them all. No powerups. Pretty boring. Eventually I had about 9000 coins and quickly went through all of those simply by attempting to 5 star all the included songs. It's piss-poor design when you 5 star a song and you come away the loser. Whoever designed that aspect of the game needs a head-slap.
Find someone who has those songs to join your goal. I can't help you, because I've already finished it.
TheyTookOurJobs
Member
I like it so far, even though it seems overly simplified. Reminds me of frequency and amplitude and Rock Band 3 for the DS.
So I've been playing it the past couple of days. Love the gameplay. It's definitely not as good as Rock Band Unplugged, but it's good. For some reason, though, I cannot seem to get five stars. I feel like I'm doing really well on songs, but I can never get past four stars. Anybody know how to remedy this? Am I just not hitting the notes enough or switching tracks enough or something?
Baconsammy
Banned
Are you using powerups?
Well, the ones I've unlocked so far, yeah. But that shouldn't matter if I don't have the more expensive ones yet, should it?
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