hmmm......cool.....i guess? i never really look at anything other than the note highways when i'm playing so as long as the new engine makes those look better then great!
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Rock Band 4 announced for PS4 and Xbox One
- Thread starter GameE
- Start date
Some interesting stuff in there, but most interesting for me is that character creation was almost kicked to the curb. I really enjoy Rock Band's character creator and it would have been a real loss if they didn't do it. Can't wait to see what they do with it this time around.
Shift Breaker
Member
At least from the videos it looks alright, they had a bit of a bad run in that department for while. Seeing notes with overdrive on Bass on The Beatles: Rock Band was difficult, all instruments were difficult with overdrive in Lego Rock Band and the whole damn highway in general was far too transparent until a patch in RB3 which left Wii owners buggered in that department.
If they get it right the first time then I'll be delighted.
Same here... It just wouldn't be the same if they ditched it. Glad it's in.
Jawmuncher
Member
I wish I was on the Harmonic Rock Band difficulty team. There's nothing worse than a song you can't 5 star in moderate, but you can five star impossible stuff.
There's been some odd decisions in terms of placing songs in different difficulty rankings. I personally think all the first Rock Band songs are rated a little too highly for example. Wouldn't mind a retweeking of songs' difficulties, but to do this for all the songs in the library... yeah, just a dream. I'll live with it.
GuitarAtomik
Member
Oh shit! I went to art school with Shawn Witt. I knew he was over there, but never saw anything he had worked on specifically. Small world.
They've said themselves that tiering is 100% subjective and it's up to the person authoring each time. Generally, I think they've done pretty good, since the tiering is used more for random song pool selection.
It's really hard to get exact tiering when you have DLC involved. If you know all the songs in the game are fixed like GH2, then yeah, you can hone down the progression a bit more. When the progression can involve over 2000 songs.. things might be slightly over or undertiered for some people
walkmetothelake
Banned
Never really had much of an opinion with difficulty tiers either way other than that Antibodies song in RB3 felt like it had way too low of a difficulty ranking for either guitar or bass. I remember doing one of the intermediate or whatever challenges and that was definitely harder for me than the rest by a fair amount.
Boy, they should have "NOT FINAL GAMEPLAY" even more prominent, because while they're gushing about new engine's abilities, this is still pretty ugly:
Elastic metal studs on oddly hunchback human! Audience of clones!
(Don't take me seriously, I'm not one of those trolls)
The one that always perplexes me is Smoke on the Water goes from something like zero dot on 5 lane bass and then is devil tier on pro bass
and then The Look is Devil Tier on bass, it's just constant strumming, and not even that fast
maybe for RB4 they could let you vote on what you feel the tier is and the game updates with community tier weights
PhoncipleBone
Banned
I chalk it up to how difficult I have to adapting to a song's style. Like, I can get 5 stars or damn close on most all of the Rush drumming stuff on pro. My brain and body just adapt to Neil Peart's drumming style pretty well.
But damn, do I have a really hard time on the Police stuff on drums. The shit Stewart Copeland does may have a legit 3-4 star difficulty ranking, but my brain just doesn't work that way. Same with Detroit Rock City. I just can't wrap my brain around some of the beats in that.
I disagree. Stuff like You Should Be Dancing on guitar is way more difficult to me than a fair share of devil tiered songs, but to put it in that tier would feel wrong to me because it's mechanically not that difficult. It's just the awkward strumming that does it for me.
Shift Breaker
Member
Difficulty tiers have always been a problem, particularly the need to divide the on-disc tracks equall across the seven tiers, which ends up with "Something Bigger, Something Brighter" in the final tier and "Constant Motion", a DLC song which is difficult all round with an even harder solo in the sixth. If it wasn't for the 2,000+ song list then it'd be great if it was done like the last few Guitar Hero games where there were 10 tiers, not in a precise order and the song list wasn't divided equally into each of those tiers for some reason. I mean, Guitar Hero 5 didn't even have a tier 10 guitar song until the Metallica export.
R_thanatos
Member
So we have now a real crowd in the First and second rows ? OK
I'm happy they decided on the character créator, that's good. Now if you could take those old RB3 assets and UpGRADE THEM in RB4 you'd have a decent list of clothes already .. hopefully with more complex elements now.
I'm happy they decided on the character créator, that's good. Now if you could take those old RB3 assets and UpGRADE THEM in RB4 you'd have a decent list of clothes already .. hopefully with more complex elements now.
Baron von Loathsome
Member
Rock Band 3's tiers were all kind of messed up. I can't see any other context in which Walk of Life would be devilheads on guitar.
Shift Breaker
Member
They even altered the limits in comparison to RB2, songs that were final tier in that game were in the sixth in RB3, the RBN tracks attest to that. They really had to alter things to accommodate the lower difficulty of the majority of songs, something that would be resolved by not rigidly dividing the number of tracks by the number of tiers.
But, in the long run this isn't the biggest priority. As long as the tiers are vaguely correct and the songs themselves run fine and look good that's that matters. A great setlist would be fine too, but I'm mostly getting the game for its DLC and (hopefully) instrument compatibility. The fact that I like the songs so far (Lazaretto being my favourite so far, and I hadn't listened to it before the setlist was released).
I hope we get a full setlist reveal asgood as the RB3 one was.
As a note, tiers are numeric values in the metadata, so hypothetically they could create differing tier numbers by switching the ranges around. This is what happened w/ RBN songs for RB3 - the RBN songs of a given tier all have the same ranking (which is why they sort together when sorting by difficulty), and that sixth tier line was moved, so they all dropped to the fifth. The on-disc stuff is also split evenly across the disc, so if the hardest disc song is 'really' only a five dot song when compare to the rest of the catalogue, it's still going to be a six. I think a cool way to handle it would be to have absolute tier values, and then relative tier values. So, for example, that previous song would show up as a five dot song with no filter, or a six dot song with a "release" difficulty filter (meaning RB4), or perhaps a five or six dot song with a "my library" difficulty (which could be derived by finding the mean/median values and deviations of your song library, or something). You could similarly tier the other disc releases.
As for difficulty ratings for given songs, it always struck me that for the bulk of songs tiering seemed based on how difficulty it is to pass, and skewed towards lower difficulties. Back w/ RB1, when I was playing on medium and hard drums I had less 'brick walls' with tiers than I did on expert.
As for difficulty ratings for given songs, it always struck me that for the bulk of songs tiering seemed based on how difficulty it is to pass, and skewed towards lower difficulties. Back w/ RB1, when I was playing on medium and hard drums I had less 'brick walls' with tiers than I did on expert.
Shift Breaker
Member
Relative tiers would be great, but I'd love the option to have custom tiers as well. They'd have to be absolute, no low tier 4, no high tier 4, just tier 4, but I'd still like it. Firstly it'd be fun to mess about with your friends ("Satch Boogie? Yeah, it's pitifully easy. Just jump straight to expert.") but more importantly songs are more difficult for some people than for others, for years I was great with solos and stuff but awful with basic alt-strumming. I've got better but it's still not perfect (You Should Be Dancing and Antibodies are still bad for me). Not to mention that people have different criteria for what makes a song difficult. Passing? FCing? Gold Starring? Custom tiers might not be a heavily used feature but it'd be much appreciated by those that use it.
PROh1bited
Banned
Sorry but pre alpha footage of RB4 looks much better than the GHL reveal.
Duxxy3
Member
As long as I can use my warriors of rock guitar I'll be fine. Always have preferred the guitar hero guitars. Don't particularly like buttons or the strum on rock band guitars.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
I just heard Wipeout and realized how bad we need that and more surf rock in the game.
RyanPierre
Member
Did the FMV crowds impress you that much? I can't imagine the dull fretboard had you too excited.
I wasn't really blown away by either reveal, but I'm sure both games will look nicer by release.
You should be dancing is one of the hardest songs in the game despite having no crazy solos or difficult ho/po sections. and it's only rated 4 stars.
Afterlife is an average difficult song besides having one of the craziest batshit insane solos in the game, and it's only rated 5 stars.
Constant Motion an overall hard song with one of the hardest soloes in the game, and it's only rated 5 stars.
Then we have We Built this City which is a very easy song all the way until the last 10 seconds where you have an incredible difficult solo part, and it gets devil tier.
I don't think Harmonix have any idea how difficulty is rated on Rock Band. It's often completely random.
toymachine
Member
Well it looks like Rock Band 3
Much like SotC PS2 would look like a pre-alpha of SotC PS3, sure.
And even in this pre-alpha stage, Rock Band 4 looks like it will be a lot better than Rock Band 3 in terms of graphics.
I've said it before, but people should go play Rock Band 3 and then go make the comparison to Rock Band 4. RB3 isn't as rosy-tinted as people like to remember.
Sidenote: since disc space is so huge this time around, Harmonix, just include the previous free Harmonix DLC right on the disc, so we don't have to hope people have found them on the store.
Specifically, the RB2 tracks since they're a free pack, but the RB1 Harmonix tracks would also be cool if the RB1 export is going to expire. The two free ones off the OXM disc that later became regular paid DLC are probably not feasible for this since people paid realbux for those.. but I hope it's something under consideration.
I also hope if that doesn't happen, that we do see the return of Harmonix Songs(tm) to the setlist at least.
Specifically, the RB2 tracks since they're a free pack, but the RB1 Harmonix tracks would also be cool if the RB1 export is going to expire. The two free ones off the OXM disc that later became regular paid DLC are probably not feasible for this since people paid realbux for those.. but I hope it's something under consideration.
I also hope if that doesn't happen, that we do see the return of Harmonix Songs(tm) to the setlist at least.
ricen-beans
Member
Sounds awesome! Can't wait!
Any news about modifying setlists after they've been made? That's one of my biggest gripes with Rock Band 3. I want to get rid of one song or two, and add some in, or maybe rearrange them for a better flow but can't. Becomes a real hassle if you have tons of songs in your library and you have to pretty much recreate the set list from scratch if you want it in a different order.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Some exciting sounding stuff in there! Overall, it sounds like it will be closer to Rock Band 2's campaign which I absolutely loved. This seems like a natural progression of that in a very good way.
No news on this specific front yet, but that sounds like it'd be a really cool upgrade to setlists. If you really want it, let Harmonix know via social media or something. They've said they're always open to ideas and now is the time to let them know about things like these.
Baron von Loathsome
Member
That'd be nice. It'd be easier to recreate Guitar Hero setlists with that sort of functionality.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Yes. They have talked about the cymbals a few times I think.
Thanks. I just realized I hadn't seen the round notes in any of the videos I've watched.
This would be fantastic. Unfortunately, they've been making it sound like we may have to wait until E3 to get any more "big" news. They just filmed a trailer for the game, so I imagine we'll see that at E3 sometime along with a few more songs. E3 is only 3 weeks out, so the wait is bearable, I guess.
That being said, I would love if Harmonix did something like Guitar Hero: Live is doing and release bits and pieces of the soundtrack every week or so. They've never been one to do this though, so for now, it's just a dream.
toymachine
Member
Would really like some confirmation about Ion Drumsets for Xbox One
you likely won't get any sort of confirmation on that until at a min E3. I wouldn't be surprised if final confirmations on stuff like that isn't more until july or august though as the game is still quite a ways from release and they are still trying to make things work (though things seem to be working well from the sony front)
Also, for those looking to play Rock Band another time but don't want to set up their 360/ps3 again
http://www.dwsk.co.uk/
Phase Shift is pretty much a continuation of Frets on Fire with a lot more customizability, a UI that isn't awful, and a whole slew of other features. It's a pretty nifty little program. There's a whole lot of custom songs available for it, the most obvious being from these guys
http://customscreators.com/
http://www.dwsk.co.uk/
Phase Shift is pretty much a continuation of Frets on Fire with a lot more customizability, a UI that isn't awful, and a whole slew of other features. It's a pretty nifty little program. There's a whole lot of custom songs available for it, the most obvious being from these guys
http://customscreators.com/
IGN tweeted out that they'll be collecting questions to ask Harmonix about Rock Band 4.
Not sure when exactly the Q&A will be, but worth following through on this if you have a burning question or two.
Not sure when exactly the Q&A will be, but worth following through on this if you have a burning question or two.
toymachine
Member
I asked some hard hitting questions
They've not been too consistent on the time at which they put stuff up. Videos and articles have gone up later in the day, but as of now, there's nothing but the tweet.
Man, the IGN First coverage sure did start out good then flame out after the mid-month gameplay reveal. Maybe that was their intent but I was hoping for a few more songs from their set-list. Seems like today (the last weekday of May aka the last day IGN First would be "covering" the game) would be a good day to reveal a few more songs coming out. Then release a bunch of stuff next mid-month at E3.
Unfortunately, it looks like the campaign RPG aspects might have been the last bit of information we'll even get before E3, which is slightly disappointing. I was hoping for something a little more substantial towards the end as well. To be fair, we got more information this month than we've had before on the game, so that's nice. Just wanted more!
Same here. More, more, more! Ha, I guess I'm getting greedy. Hopefully, they tell us a lot at E3 and I wonder what other events there will be before the game releases that they can drop info at.
nicholasbrutal
Epic Games PR Manager
Don't expect to hear (or see!) more about the campaign until closer to release. SORRY. The team is still implementing it into the game, so we're not quite ready to show it off yet. I will say that I played what's in already and it's early BUT WHY AM I NOT PLAYING IT RIGHT NOW!?!!?!? (That means I think it's awesome.)
We have more exciting things at E3. Not just new songs, either! But we'll also have those, of course.