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Rock Band Blitz |OT| Rocking Out in the Instrument-Free World

Roto13

Member
I own Unplugged, but, uh, have yet to play it. How is it different?

It's similar to Blitz except instead of power ups and juggling multipliers, you use four buttons to play notes instead of two. If you play a track well for a while, it starts playing itself and you can move on to a different track. So instead of juggling for multipliers, you're juggling to keep all of the instruments playing simultaneously.
 

Holy Wars

Banned
I agree, the economy is harsh for people with limited content, but it's not an issue at all personally, and it never has been. I've got 46,000 coins in the bank, the only difference is I've been playing with full load-outs the entire time.

I don't understand how this is even possible. Playing a song with a full load out will always take away your coins, so I'm assuming you've been playing through every single Facebook goal?
 
I don't understand how this is even possible. Playing a song with a full load out will always take away your coins, so I'm assuming you've been playing through every single Facebook goal?

I've played through all the Facebook goals from last week, and the Grohl Goal from this week. I've also mostly played "new" songs, so I got the double coins bonus for those of course (a lot of which give 1200 coins since they are high difficulty, 450 coin profit after full load out).

I realize my situation is unique, and most players will not experience the game the way I am.

S7mBo.jpg
 

jgkspsx

Member
It's similar to Blitz except instead of power ups and juggling multipliers, you use four buttons to play notes instead of two. If you play a track well for a while, it starts playing itself and you can move on to a different track. So instead of juggling for multipliers, you're juggling to keep all of the instruments playing simultaneously.

Isn't that pretty much how Frequency and Amplitude worked? I don't think Blitz is a dumbed down version of that. Juggling chasing overdrive and purple notes and filling up your multipliers is more fulfilling to me. (Also, better music.)

Not that I wouldn't buy Rock Band Unplugged HD. They should just go ahead and port that.
 

Roto13

Member
Isn't that pretty much how Frequency and Amplitude worked? I don't think Blitz is a dumbed down version of that. Juggling chasing overdrive and purple notes and filling up your multipliers is more fulfilling to me. (Also, better music.)

Not that I wouldn't buy Rock Band Unplugged HD. They should just go ahead and port that.

Frequency and Amplitude only use three notes at a time though, right? But yeah, those three games are basically the same except for that.

Blitz is totally a dumbed down version of that with multipliers and power ups to compensate for cutting the number of notes in half. It kind of works when you can use power ups, which isn't often enough.
 

Holy Wars

Banned
I've played through all the Facebook goals from last week, and the Grohl Goal from this week. I've also mostly played "new" songs, so I got the double coins bonus for those of course (a lot of which give 1200 coins since they are high difficulty, 450 coin profit after full load out).

I realize my situation is unique, and most players will not experience the game the way I am.

S7mBo.jpg


etGEO.jpg


I've done plenty of goals and played a ton of songs but I've still had to grind out coins by playing short songs repeatedly once every day or so. I guess maybe it's a necessity to do the "hard" goals which usually involve playing DLC I have no interest in owning.
 

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Coin Economy Tweaks

HMXPope said:
Hey gang,

We’ve been monitoring all the feedback we’ve gotten since the launch of Rock Band Blitz (via Forums/Twitter/Facebook/etc) and, based on that, we’re making some tweaks to our coin economy in the game today.

Here’s what’s new:
Cost of Power-ups:
Overdrive Power-ups: 250 coins per use
Note Power-ups: 200 coins per use.
Track Power-ups: 100 coins per use.
(note: it now only costs 550 coins for a full Power-up loadout!)

Song Performance Coin Rewards:
At the end of a song, you now get 100 Coins per Star across the board.

Score Wars:
Winners of Score Wars will now be receiving 1500 coins at completion.
Losers of Score Wars will now be receiving 500 coins at completion.

I, of course, would be remiss for not again mentioning Rock Band World as a great (and even fun!) option for earning even more coins for use in Rock Band Blitz. But, we of course understand that some folks don't want to use Facebook, so these tweaks should help make those players out.

Note that this won’t require a patch or anything, as we’re able to make these changes server-side. We’ll continue to keep an eye on your feedback in the coming days and weeks, so let us know what you think!
 

Mister Game

Project Director, Harmonix
So, how does joining goals work then? I started a bunch and invited my GF to join them. she got the little FB message that I wanted help doing the goal and when she clicked on the request in RBW it took her to the goal page, so she started started the goal.

Now it says on both of our goal lists that we're the only ones in our group (as in, on her page it says she's a group member and on my page it says I'm a group member, but not both of us in the same group - individual groups).

So we're in two groups of one person each instead of one group of two people.

There was a bug we just found that would not display your friend's groups on the goal join page. A fix should be pushed soon (today, I hope).

We're also adding a "Leave Goal" button for the case you just described when you accidentally joined a goal without your friends. Leaving a goal means you lose any progress, but at least you don't have to wait a week.
 

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Holy Hell, I wonder how many coins I can amass now. My new goal is 250,000 space bucks.

That's.... gonna take effort. I'm probably just gonna crack 70k tonight with some Facebook goals, but I don't even see hitting 100k soon....
 

Montresor

Member
Atta fucking boy Harmonix. Those are amazing changes.

Now I can recommend this game to my friends that have zero DLC. Harmonix is awesome.
 

Roto13

Member
It's still not enough until I never have to grind, but at least this will cut down on the grinding by a lot. It won't be a huge pain in the ass any more. Just a minor inconvenience.
 
Wait, what? Yesterday we were malicious screwjobs.

I'm so confused.

Now you just need to patch Score Wars into the game rather than Facebook and it's actually pretty solid.

Nice work on the coin changes, you'd have to be pretty useless to run out now which is as it should be.
 

nicholasbrutal

Epic Games PR Manager
Wait, what? Yesterday we were malicious screwjobs.

I'm so confused.

We've blossomed into beautiful butterflies, Nord. :) We listened and we listened good. We're screwjobs, but we're definitely not malicious.

It's still not enough until I never have to grind, but at least this will cut down on the grinding by a lot. It won't be a huge pain in the ass any more. Just a minor inconvenience.

I'd be shocked if anyone who is competent at Rock Band Blitz would have to grind for coins in order to use Power-ups at this point. If you're finding yourself doing this, I'd recommend playing without Power-ups to get a feel for the song structure, and then tackling the song with a full loadout. Also keep in mind that we'll be offering bonuses for simply playing certain kinds of songs -- bands, genres, certain decades, etc. -- so you'll be getting bonuses there, as well. And if you wanted to use Rock Band World to compete in Score Wars and goals, you could be Scrooge McDuck-style swimming in Blitz Coins before you know it.
 

Roto13

Member
We've blossomed into beautiful butterflies, Nord. :) We listened and we listened good. We're screwjobs, but we're definitely not malicious.



I'd be shocked if anyone who is competent at Rock Band Blitz would have to grind for coins in order to use Power-ups at this point. If you're finding yourself doing this, I'd recommend playing without Power-ups to get a feel for the song structure, and then tackling the song with a full loadout. Also keep in mind that we'll be offering bonuses for simply playing certain kinds of songs -- bands, genres, certain decades, etc. -- so you'll be getting bonuses there, as well. And if you wanted to use Rock Band World to compete in Score Wars and goals, you could be Scrooge McDuck-style swimming in Blitz Coins before you know it.

I normally get 4 or 5 stars, which will now be 400 or 500 coins. A full loadout will cost 550. That's more than 500. And that's just how it is. A 50 coin loss per song is not very much. That means I can five-star eight songs if I four star one without power ups.

Rock Band World is kind of useless for me because none of my Facebook friends play Blitz or actively play Rock Band 3.
 

Holy Wars

Banned
Wait, what? Yesterday we were malicious screwjobs.

I'm so confused.

You put an economy system in a console game people pay to play. You must spend every day confused.

Assuming the changes mean I can actually profit by playing well as opposed to grinding goals, these changes sound perfect. Does gold = 600 coins?

Now all we need is to send score duels through XBL and the game will be excellent.
 

Mister Game

Project Director, Harmonix
I normally get 4 or 5 stars, which will now be 400 or 500 coins. A full loadout will cost 550. That's more than 500. And that's just how it is. A 50 coin loss per song is not very much. That means I can five-star eight songs if I four star one without power ups.

Rock Band World is kind of useless for me because none of my Facebook friends play Blitz or actively play Rock Band 3.

So play a score war. Even if you lose, you get 500 coins. That means for every score war you lose you can play 10 songs with full loadouts until you are back to 0.

And if you win, fuggedaboudit. That's 30 song plays.
 

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Rock Band World is kind of useless for me because none of my Facebook friends play Blitz or actively play Rock Band 3.

There's still the goals, which you don't need anyone to help with. The easy ones generally amount to "play two or three songs from this genre/decade", so you should be able to cover those independently. Though I would like to see more medium/hard ones that are less "buy and play a ton of songs" and more "play a few songs really really well".
 

Mister Game

Project Director, Harmonix
You put an economy system in a console game people pay to play. You must spend every day confused.

Assuming the changes mean I can actually profit by playing well as opposed to grinding goals, these changes sound perfect. Does gold = 600 coins?

Now all we need is to send score duels through XBL and the game will be excellent.

Mine was a rhetorical post.
 

Roto13

Member
So play a score war. Even if you lose, you get 500 coins. That means for every score war you lose you can play 10 songs with full loadouts until you are back to 0.

And if you win, fuggedaboudit. That's 30 song plays.

Score wars with strangers? No thanks.

Bottom line is, if I have to do anything to use power ups besides play the songs I want to play, it's more than I should have to do.

There's still the goals, which you don't need anyone to help with. The easy ones generally amount to "play two or three songs from this genre/decade", so you should be able to cover those independently. Though I would like to see more medium/hard ones that are less "buy and play a ton of songs" and more "play a few songs really really well".

The "buy and play tons of songs" goals are the problem. Just... no. I'm not going to buy and play tons of songs, which is what too many of those goals are.
 

Mister Game

Project Director, Harmonix
Score wars with strangers? No thanks.

Really? Why? I'm honestly curious. You don't have to listen to them spout profanities over a headset mic. You don't have to talk to them at all. All you will see is a Gamertag. It's like a racing game.

And the server's pretty good about suggesting opponents that match your song selection and ranking in the leaderboards, so they should mostly be competitive.

I find it really compelling to compete on a song, and sneak glances at the leaderboard as I'm playing. And that might not be what you like about the games, which is cool, but I'm interested.
 
Really? Why? I'm honestly curious. You don't have to listen to them spout profanities over a headset mic. You don't have to talk to them at all. All you will see is a Gamertag. It's like a racing game.

And the server's pretty good about suggesting opponents that match your song selection and ranking in the leaderboards, so they should mostly be competitive.

I find it really compelling to compete on a song, and sneak glances at the leaderboard as I'm playing. And that might not be what you like about the games, which is cool, but I'm interested.

I like leaderboards because they're anonymous. I like friends leaderboards because they're my friends. There's no real crossover, there. I don't feel the need to top a normal leaderboard because I don't know anyone on it, so the only people I really compete with are friends, and elsewhere I just do as well as I can.

The only fun in Score Wars is playing them with friends, because with anyone else you may as well just check the leaderboard. There's no emotional attachment, as I'm sure you know since the game's full of "your friend says you suck!" type messages to jokily encourage such play.
 

Roto13

Member
Really? Why? I'm honestly curious. You don't have to listen to them spout profanities over a headset mic. You don't have to talk to them at all. All you will see is a Gamertag. It's like a racing game.

And the server's pretty good about suggesting opponents that match your song selection and ranking in the leaderboards, so they should mostly be competitive.

I find it really compelling to compete on a song, and sneak glances at the leaderboard as I'm playing. And that might not be what you like about the games, which is cool, but I'm interested.

I just get no satisfaction from getting a higher score than some random internet person. And the couple of times I initiated a Score War, the other players apparently ignored it anyway. I guess they care as much as I do.

I've never gotten a request for a Score War either, though I haven't played in a few days.
 

vg260

Member
Is the app still down? I haven't been able to access it for a couple days. Still getting the "app is currently unavailable" message.
 

Fox Mulder

Member
The "buy and play tons of songs" goals are the problem. Just... no. I'm not going to buy and play tons of songs, which is what too many of those goals are.

Eh, I never really cared that they are pushing people to buy dlc. You can't even really find Rock Band in stores anymore, I tried. Amazon only has limited quantities from third party sellers. DLC is what they've got at the moment.

I just wanted this game to be fun and let me put up high scores. Hopefully the new tweaks will be better. I may crumble and try the Facebook stuff. I've just hated the implementation used in every other game that has tried to force it down my throat.
 

Holy Wars

Banned
I used to like playing score duels on XBL against real live people in RB1 and 2, until Harmonix removed it from RB3 because not enough people did it.
 

Rewrite

Not as deep as he thinks
Nice coin tweaks.

I used to like playing score duels on XBL against real live people, until Harmonix removed it from RB3 because not enough people did it.
Yes. They were fun. :(

Also, I'll never forgive you HMX for not adding crowd singalongs in any of the RB 3 songs + future DLC. They were the best and some of those songs screamed to have a singalong.
 

Roto13

Member
Eh, I never really cared that they are pushing people to buy dlc. You can't even really find Rock Band in stores anymore, I tried. Amazon only has limited quantities from third party sellers. DLC is what they've got at the moment.

I just wanted this game to be fun and let me put up high scores. Hopefully the new tweaks will be better. I may crumble and try the Facebook stuff. I've just hated the implementation used in every other game that has tried to force it down my throat.

I don't have any problem with them pushing DLC, but I need to get more enjoyment out of the game before I buy new songs for it and I apparently need to buy more songs for it before I can get more enjoyment out of the game.
 
Coin tweaks are pretty awesome, don't feel so bad about playing a song multiple times in a row and if I Gold Star it I get that nice little bonus. Good job HMX!
 
Isn't that pretty much how Frequency and Amplitude worked? I don't think Blitz is a dumbed down version of that. Juggling chasing overdrive and purple notes and filling up your multipliers is more fulfilling to me. (Also, better music.)

Not that I wouldn't buy Rock Band Unplugged HD. They should just go ahead and port that.

Blitz is an extremely dumbed down version of Amplitude/Freq. Amp/Freq took actual skill to play. Blitz hardly ever even throws double notes together. If it was as good as Amp, you'd see fewer people complaining about the gameplay without powerups.
 

Sp3eD

0G M3mbeR
600 coins for golds is awesome.

550 full loadout + gold stars means no grinding ever again (and that is if you don't get coins for first time songs / special artists weeks / goals / score duels)

This pretty much fixes all the coin problems.
 

nicholasbrutal

Epic Games PR Manager
Blitz is an extremely dumbed down version of Amplitude/Freq. Amp/Freq took actual skill to play. Blitz hardly ever even throws double notes together. If it was as good as Amp, you'd see fewer people complaining about the gameplay without powerups.

These are different games that require different thinking and skillsets. Whether you think one game is better than another is irrelevant, and largely a matter of taste and expectations, but insinuating that Rock Band Blitz is simply a dumbed down version of other (much different) beatmatch games or requires no skills is off-base. I'd be shocked to find any player who is at the top of a number of song leaderboards say that Rock Band Blitz features no depth or requires no strategy; the best players absolutely know what they're doing.
 
These are different games that require different thinking and skillsets. Whether you think one game is better than another is irrelevant, and largely a matter of taste and expectations, but insinuating that Rock Band Blitz is simply a dumbed down version of other (much different) beatmatch games or requires no skills is off-base. I'd be shocked to find any player who is at the top of a number of song leaderboards say that Rock Band Blitz features no depth or requires no strategy; the best players absolutely know what they're doing.

To be fair, you guys said you had the coin mechanic because you have to pay for arrows in Zelda, so you're not really the best judges of how games should be compared to other games.
 
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