Rock Band 4

[Mando Pandango]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l083QXGOwws

my Metropolis Part 1 guitar sightread

[TooB]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/10/26/rock-band-4-interim-title-update-coming-early-november.aspx

Alright! They fixed my first big issue with this game.

[Thyme]

bulk dlc downloader plz

[ME##]

bulk dlc downloader plz

Did you say Harmonix employees reviewing RB4 in bulk on Amazon?  Done

[Thyme]

bulk dlc downloader plz

Did you say Harmonix employees reviewing RB4 in bulk on Amazon?  Done

lol smgdh

[TooB]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/11/19/rock-band-recalibrating-with-a-host-of-new-features.aspx

getting better

[C.Mongler]

man i was gonna buy a ps4 for this game but then it turned it it was Rock Band: Early Access, so thx for saving my money harmonix 

[Mando Pandango]

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/11/19/rock-band-recalibrating-with-a-host-of-new-features.aspx

getting better

still need practice mode, but this is looking good

Also, harmonix flew out a top-tier drummer to Boston for live feedback to try to get everything working properly at all skill levels. Read about it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rockband/comments/3t2mrk/my_day_at_the_harmonix_studio/

Harmonix flew me up to Boston for the day to help diagnose the drum issues and playtest some new features. I had already been helping Harmonix for some time, testing and providing feedback online, but they had some new stuff to show me and wanted to give me a chance to work alongside their technicians. Sweet! They kept me very busy, bouncing from one department to another for 7 hours straightdrum testing, showing me how stuff works, playtesting new features, playing new DLC, more drum testing, and all while getting my feedback on everything. It didnt feel like workI was giddy as a schoolgirl!
I signed an NDA, so much of what Im going to say will be vague. I can give you a few morsels of information though and tell you what it was like. And yes, there was cake.
First, I got to meet the crew and they were all really cool. (no Boston accents though, what a disappointment) I started by giving the team lots of feedback regarding the direction of the game, features that need to be added, potential UI adjustments, bug reports, lots of drum related stuff, etcI didnt hold back and they were very receptive. It was a lot easier to say all this to their face than I expected.
They gave me a tour of the place, and I had tons of nerdy questions and they answered pretty much all of them. The architecture of Rock Band is incredibly complex. Some of our discussions led down a rabbit hole and made my head explode. Ive taken game design/programming courses in school so I thought I knew how complex game development was, but this Holy Shit. Adding even the smallest features can be a huge undertaking. Thinking about it makes my head hurt so instead of explaining it, this picture should give you a good idea. Needless to say, I have a whole new appreciation for everything they do.
The majority of my time was spent testing the drums for the hardware/engineering guys, trying to determine why the drums feel off. They used some fancy telemetry to analyze my drumming in-game, it was pretty neat. We concluded that the internal timings of the drums needed adjustmentbasically the drum kit is slightly out of sync with itself, and it wasnt something that could be fixed with the calibration options. I dont know the timeline for the update or whether itll happen before the Dec 8th updatebut rest assured, its getting fixed!
We also concluded the calibration options for RB4 work slightly different than in RB3. The team is debating whether to make the minor change or keep it the way it is. Neither way is wrong, its just a matter of what causes the least confusion.
The overall latency of the instruments is a different story however. I had a very insightful conversation with their engineering guru about this. Its incredibly complex, but I think I can sum it up by saying the PS4 and Xbox One each have their own separate issues in their architectureand the end result is about the same amount of latency on each. HMX can only tweak a small part of the data train before the rest is out of their hands and handled by the consoles. Yes I know, Im having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the newer consoles are slower than the old ones. Im going to talk with the engineer about it a little more just in case theres some undiscovered solution.
Regarding the pads dropping notes after the most recent firmware updateI have not had this issue myself, my RB4 pads worked fine for me after the firmware update. So because of that I really couldnt approach HMX about it. I have seen some mention on other threads that it might be an issue with either Bluetooth or the firmware update software making you think you updated but you didnt. Dont quote me on that, but its worth checking out.
I told them about the drum scoring glitch. (that easily gets you an extra 15-20k points on average) I strongly encouraged them to reset the leaderboards once its fixednobody wants to see 98% scores that are 20k higher than anyone with an FC. They havent made a decision but it looks like they wanted to hear from the community first. I told them you would all agree!
As for Ion/ekit compatibility on Xbox One, I learned about the technical hurdles surrounding it and I can say flat outgetting wired controllers to work is totally out of their hands. However, I do have some ideas on what we can do and Ill make another post about it soon.
Regarding the December update, I saw a new game mode (that I got to playtest) and several new features and enhancements. I gave them plenty of feedback on what I liked or didnt like, it was fun! The only thing I can say is that the game mode is something that hasnt been seen before in a RB game. There are a few other features in particular that are decidedly very small, but they have me very excited. They might not be a big deal to some people, but for competitive players they will be!
They have changed the note highway to be less transparent, so notes should be easier to see. Im guessing itll be on the Dec update.
They also showed me some awesome songs that havent been announced yet. I got to sightread them right in front of the guys who charted the songs, how cool is that? Can't say what they are, but theyre very challenging and a lot of people will like them. In my book, its easily the best DLC since RB4 launched.
Everyone I worked with at Harmonix was awesome, not a bad one in the bunch. They all have a good sense of humor toowhile I was playing the new songs, HMXThrasher said itd be cool to see you and Billtvshow play these songs together on Twitch! I immediately spun the drum throne around to all the HMX employees who were watching behind me and said That would be cool! If only there wasI dunnoa system or mechanism that allowed me to do thatyou know, like over the internet. I was greatly outnumbered so I'm glad they laughed.
By the way, did you know TSA agents are huge fans of Rock Band? They were super excited to see every piece of RB equipment I had in my bags.

[Thyme]

hey popsi, have you been able to download the free rock band 2 dlc pack?

smh if i can't play prequel to the sequel on this

[Mando Pandango]

I don't have the game

[TooB]

hey popsi, have you been able to download the free rock band 2 dlc pack?

smh if i can't play prequel to the sequel on this

I haven't seen the songs from that pack, but I haven't looked in a while.
Eventually, everything should be available.

also, now that i think about it, those songs were not available as seperate DL's in the store, but you should be able to get them once they figure out how to access on-disc transfers from the first 3 games like they said they are

[Thyme]

hey popsi, have you been able to download the free rock band 2 dlc pack?

smh if i can't play prequel to the sequel on this

I haven't seen the songs from that pack, but I haven't looked in a while.
Eventually, everything should be available.

also, now that i think about it, those songs were not available as seperate DL's in the store, but you should be able to get them once they figure out how to access on-disc transfers from the first 3 games like they said they are

lmao oh boy i won't hold my breath

[TooB]

hey popsi, have you been able to download the free rock band 2 dlc pack?

smh if i can't play prequel to the sequel on this

I haven't seen the songs from that pack, but I haven't looked in a while.
Eventually, everything should be available.

also, now that i think about it, those songs were not available as seperate DL's in the store, but you should be able to get them once they figure out how to access on-disc transfers from the first 3 games like they said they are

lmao oh boy i won't hold my breath

nor will I

[TooB]

Next update includes a Brutal difficulty mode.

I'm down

[Mando Pandango]

so i made the finals of this

http://www.harmonixmusic.com/blog/the-rock-band-4-brutal-mode-battle/

come watch me on stream this weekend