Rock Band 2

[gnr61]

i actually like quite a lot of those songs :<
i'm especially excited for PDA, Testify, and Man in the Box O_O

ps is it certain that it's DT's panic attack and not Finger Eleven's? because DT's will be pretty damn hard without double bass (a possibility with the new drum controller?)

[dore]

According to the playtesters who leaked it it's Dream Theater. But until HMX officially announces it I wouldn't take it too seriously.

[EnR]

I don't think it will be Dream Theater.

[Tokzic]

Originally Posted by everyone

omg dream theatr si going 2 b hard it has dubble base!!

Uh, hi, guys, remember Rock Band 1? Where any double bass is completely ignored, and they only focus on the right bass pedal? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're going to carry that way of thinking over.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Tokzic

Uh, hi, guys, remember Rock Band 1? Where any double bass is completely ignored, and they only focus on the right bass pedal? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're going to carry that way of thinking over.

Not necessarily.

They could easily add a second pedal. This would give them the option of double base or hi hat, depending on the song of course. (Was I the only one weirded out by the hat on Black Hole Sun?)

Man, I really hope they go all out and make as many dedicated input points as I'm hoping for. Really, if they just added 3 for cymbals and a second pedal, I think that would be just perfect. Alternatively, even if they don't, I hope they put the placement on the pads more like a real kit... What they have is more like a marching quad on a tilt than a set. Honestly, I'd almost rather see them do something like Konami's game, because at least there's a precedent for that sort of setup; I've seen plenty of electronic systems with a similar layout as the Konami one, but nowhere else have I seen one set up like Rock Band's.

[dore]

RB1 drumkits are compatible with RB2 so I doubt they'll add anything too crazy. And they won't add a pedal and make it optional because it will (to quote a HMX dude) "make the leaderboards implode."

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by dore

RB1 drumkits are compatible with RB2 so I doubt they'll add anything too crazy. And they won't add a pedal and make it optional because it will (to quote a HMX dude) "make the leaderboards implode."

WHAT

They could totally do it AND make it optional AND have separate leaderboards.

Like, it'd be like different difficulty levels. Expert and Hard would make use of both pedals, Easy would be like the current Medium difficulty, and Medium would be like the new Hard difficulty minus double pedal (and probably difficulty toned down a small amount). You cannot seriously tell me that the lowest difficulty level is truly needed. If you're playing band with clueless retards that can't play rhythm games worth a crap, stick them on Easy vocals or something, because drums on the lowest difficulty isn't drumming at all.

And if it's a situation of "RB1 drumkits are compatible with RB2... and they won't make it... optional because it will make the leaderboards implode." Well, then, I just have to say that there is no way they can improve the drum system for 2 if they're actively refusing to do so for backward compatibility and systematic difficulty levels. They can't add additional pads, they can't change the placement, they can't do a damn thing with it. If they change things at all, then the basic idea comes back to "oh but then different kits will be more or less likely to allow someone onto the high score tables!"

Why not just say "if you want to get on the online leaderboards, invest in a new drum kit, otherwise butt the **** out of the online high scores and stick to simplified play without worrying about high scoring". They can implement play for cheapskates (that is, add new things to the set for 2, yet still allow the same charts to be playable on old kits), but that doesn't mean they need to limit innovation. I am going to be seriously pissed if they don't improve the kit. There are so many options they can go with on it, and even better is that if things are done right, it can be fully backward and forward compatible (aside from the bull**** online leaderboard thing).

[dore]

What's wrong with the current setup? It's pretty much the most versatile setup you could make without using a real kit. As it is, four pads can pretty accurately represent any pattern you can think of. The only real change that would make a better simulation would be a dedicated crash cymbal (and not 18008490 cymbals with ride and hithat and everything) or just a 5th pad for more versatility with tom patterns.

Rock Band is and ultimately will be a party game. Realize that they are trying to reach the broadest audience possible and not just cater to the people who know what Drummania is

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by dore

What's wrong with the current setup? It's pretty much the most versatile setup you could make without using a real kit. As it is, four pads can pretty accurately represent any pattern you can think of. The only real change that would make a better simulation would be a dedicated crash cymbal (and not 18008490 cymbals with ride and hithat and everything) or just a 5th pad for more versatility with tom patterns.

Rock Band is and ultimately will be a party game. Realize that they are trying to reach the broadest audience possible and not just cater to the people who know what Drummania is

Party game?

Why then would they prioritize an online leaderboard over innovation?

And I'm not saying they need to go nuts with 27 cymbals or something. I just want to see all components of a simple kit accounted for. As of right now, they've got toms and cymbals on the same pads, and no pedal for the potential hat. Guitar Hero's drum set is proving that it can be done in an economic fashion to include dedicated cymbals, so why shouldn't Rock Band be able to do it as well? ANNNNNNNNNNNNND, like I said, the positioning is nothing like a drum set. Imagine if the guitar controller didn't look a thing like a guitar. Imagine if the way it was played, was nothing like holding a guitar. Wouldn't you be dismayed at how unlike playing a guitar it is? I don't see why people are so thoroughly satisfied by a drum set that doesn't truly mimick the feel of a real kit. At least holding a guitar controller in your hand, it's held the same way a guitar is, even if the playing is retardedly simplified. and if anyone comes back with a "but holding the stick is the same", I've got one thing to say to you: **** you.

[dore]

The guitar controller doesn't play anything like a real guitar. Vocals is nothing like real singing. The drums aren't set up like a real drumset. I see a pattern.

They're all as close as they can be in a simple, intuitive way. Why fix what isn't broke?

As for GH:WT's setup, have you even considered how that's going to work? They have two dedicated cymbals, which will cover the hihat, the ride, the crashes, and the splash and china cymbals and whatever the hell the drummers want to throw in. What happens when a drummer transitions from the hihat to a splash then a crash then back to hihat? There's no way to chart that without just ignoring the fact that the drummer's using different cymbals. How will you transition from hihat to crash to ride? Are you going to chart crash and ride on the same cymbal or ride and hihat? Either way it isn't at all realistic. At least with RB there are ways to chart things like that while keeping each cymbal distinguished from one another.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by dore

The guitar controller doesn't play anything like a real guitar. Vocals is nothing like real singing. The drums aren't set up like a real drumset. I see a pattern.

They're all as close as they can be in a simple, intuitive way. Why fix what isn't broke?

As for GH:WT's setup, have you even considered how that's going to work? They have two dedicated cymbals, which will cover the hihat, the ride, the crashes, and the splash and china cymbals and whatever the hell the drummers want to throw in. What happens when a drummer transitions from the hihat to a splash then a crash then back to hihat? There's no way to chart that without just ignoring the fact that the drummer's using different cymbals. How will you transition from hihat to crash to ride? Are you going to chart crash and ride on the same cymbal or ride and hihat? Either way it isn't at all realistic. At least with RB there are ways to chart things like that while keeping each cymbal distinguished from one another.

All I'm hearing is:

Yeah, Rock Band 2 would be great if they had 3 dedicated cymbals like you said, Afro!

There are really only 3 cymbals that need to be worried about. Collapsing similar cymbals down is where the simplification should come in, not collapsing cymbals and toms together. For example, if a song is heavy on 2 types of crashes, but light on ride, take the one that would be limited to ride and make it work as 2 crashes. Any additional distinct crashes beyond that could be done in an alternating fashion, or they could be collapsed into two sets: higher pitch and lower pitch. It's not hard, I assure you; this could even be done independently on individual SECTIONS of songs if they happen to move into a multiple crash section or something but still use rides a lot in the rest of the song. And if you want to play a charted rhythm game with 4 inputs, I hear there's this great game called FFR! Drum set simulation shouldn't be that limited though, since it's not exactly hard to actually simulate playing on a drum set. The only justifiable reason I can see for limiting it is economical reasons, but like I said, GH has proven the concept is viable to have additional cymbals above, and a second pedal wouldn't complicate things much more from a hardware perspective.

But compare this to playing a guitar... Can you imagine 5 buttons for each string on like 20 frets, making for about 100 buttons just for frets? Can you imagine 5 unique strum bars? Can you imagine a chord actually being a chord? Can you imagine having to learn wacky-ass fingerings for each of the notes and chords? Can you imagine having to learn how to read scrolling sheet or tablature because that's the only way to scroll notes for a Guitar? Now think about a drum set. Can you imagine playing a drum simulation with 4 drum pads (1 snare, 3 toms), 2 pedals, and 3 cymbals? Can you imagine learning tablature for a drum? I can tell you right now that it's simple as ****. Look it up if you don't believe me. In fact, I would say that it can even be argued that RB's scrolling notes for drums are a kind of tablature already, and if not for note collapse of unlike instruments, it would even be playable outside of the game. And above all else, that would cover all of the standard issue basic kit requirements and also allow for most songs to be played in a dedicated manner without combining unlike sounds onto the same point.

Also: about your comment about vocals-- what? Dude, how is vocals not anything like singing? The only way it's not is if you bull**** it and hum through it or something. I hope they fix that **** in RB2. But yeah, when you're doing vocals, you are singing. It gauges your pitch and tells you if it thinks you're in the right pitch or not. Any problem you have with that could only be limited to either not recognizing and verifying words or it's inability to tell pitch within octaves very well.

[dore]

What I mean by vocals is not like real singing is that to sing at a high level on the game you have to do so much **** to your voice that it ceases to become real singing. Anybody who can full combo a song on expert vocals probably could not do so while actually making the song sound good. The game rewards players for matching the pitch, not for articulation, clarity, dynamics, or tone, which are more important than just getting the pitch right if you want to sound good as a vocalist.

Anyway, to drums/guitar: The reason why they are successful is that they collapse well. Is playing RB guitar anything like playing real guitar? No, but what it does do is preserve the basic idea of how to play the song on guitar. When you play a song on RB, all of the chord shapes and finger patterns are remarkably close to their real-life counterpart. It's not exact, but it's close, and oftentimes technical pitch-relevancy is sacrificed for realism in shape and hand motion. Drums are condensed, yes, but you hit drums in similar patterns to what you would on real drums.

The reason why I don't like GH's setup is because it has dedicated cymbals. I'm not against the cymbal part of that phrase, but the lovely adjective dedicated is what makes it not work for me. There are two pads for cymbals and three pads for everything else. Which is a great idea because it's not like cymbals are used more often and with more variety than other pads. Which it's also a great idea to have it set up so that the most generic patterns won't work on the pads because there's three pads and not four. The brilliance of the RB set is that it's flexible and its four pads can simulate whatever is needed. The more dedicated the kits' pads get, the less flexibility there is, and at that point you ought to just skip the middle man and buy a midi drum kit.

[EnR]

Having 1 snare, 3 toms, 3 cymbals and 2 bass pedals would be way to hard to read off the television because there would be so much **** going on at once

[ddranthony92]

[quote=EnR;2296577]Good one, my taste in music cannot be wrong, because everyone has a different taste in music.

haha i never said your taste in music is wrong, you said

Originally Posted by EnR

2 songs there that are good. Megadeth and Chop Suey

Then i said wrong because those are not the only "good" songs that are gonna be in the game (so far), just because you don't like the other songs doesn't mean there aren't "good".

[tofurox]

What about Rock Revolution?

[Kagome]

Wow a lot of you have really odd tastes in music. There isn't one song on any of those lists (besides ones I have not heard) that I don't like. You guys are crazy. Metal isn't the only good genre of music.

[Kekeb]

Originally Posted by tofurox

What about Rock Revolution?

Hell yeah man.

[EnR]

[quote=ddranthony92;2312127]

Originally Posted by EnR

Good one, my taste in music cannot be wrong, because everyone has a different taste in music.

haha i never said your taste in music is wrong, you said

Then i said wrong because those are not the only "good" songs that are gonna be in the game (so far), just because you don't like the other songs doesn't mean there aren't "good".

Alright, understand, agree'd.

Should have said, " the only songs I like are"

[Biff_tech]

Originally Posted by Kagome

You guys are crazy. Metal isn't the only good genre of music.

Or is it....

Topic: How about instead of focusing on the number of pads they should focus on the quality of them, Because face it there is to many flaws with the rb setup.
- The end pads (red and green) need better support, yellow and blue are fine they have a fairly sturdy base.
- This Plastic piece that holds the sensor in.... No I broke the censor protector within a week.
- Metal Kick.. or even a metal plate..
- The Metal poles at the bottom suck they a pain in the ass to get in and they hardly work. They should just use a clip or something.
- I also wouldn't mind if they got rid of the patch cord for the headset.
- Also did I mention Metal kick.

[TC_Halogen]

Wow, I read all of Dore vs. Afrobean there. XD

I really hope they loosen the timing windows a tiny bit, some songs are really difficult to pass because of their excessive counts of speedy 16th runs (This Ain't a Scene, It's An Arms Race), or even 24th runs (Don't Fear The Reaper). And as GH did, throughout the series, improve upon the appearance (and action) of hammer-ons. It took a while to learn how to do proper hammers in GH1, but coming into GH3, the technique is almost unnecessary to learn, because it's done naturally.

About the RB drums, I would love to see a forward/backward compatibility with potential new drum sets. As far as implementing new scoreboards for those using double bass drums/hats (if a new controller even happens), I really can't see it happening. It's just simply too much work for the addition of a simple thing.