Rock Band Blitz Coin Economy Changes Coming Today
Ever since Rock Band Blitz has come out, there have been a few stickler points that people seem to have taken issue with. I’m not talking about the occasional “disconnected from Rock Central” issue or the less sophisticated “Facebook is evil so I want join it just so I can get more coins” argument. What I’m talking about is that some seem to think that it is too hard to get coins in Rock Band Blitz, and that spending them is too easy. While I personally don’t have an issue with not having enough coins (see above), I guess I can see how some of the more casual fans may be coin-bankrupt in Rock City. Now, based on some of the feedback that Harmonix has been seeing, they’re tweaking the coin economy in the game.
A post over on RockBand.com from @MrPope explains the changes that will be dropping today. No patch is required, as everything happens on their side, too:
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.
Is anyone else having an issue with coins? Let us know what you think of these changes below…
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Very positive. It may end up negating the restart issues i face when trying to gold star specific songs. Time will tell once the Score War monies start rolling in.
HAVE MY BABIES HMX
RockBandAide Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
This is the best comment name ever.
HMXhenry Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
GROSS, NO.
Numskull Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 7:26 pm
The having babies part or the butt soup part?
Shmoo Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 9:01 am
If you don’t know the answer to that question, you are also part of the problem
Numskull Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 9:14 am
In China they have soups made with the genitals of tigers, oxen, and other large mammals. Once you know that, “butt soup” seems kind of tame.
Really wish I hadn’t of done the grinding for 50 songs in a decade and 50 in a genre already, but I’m still over 150 songs away from being done with the achievement grind, and it’s not as though that will be the end of my play.
Hayley Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Yeah, that’s my only (very small) problem, I’ve already gone through a chunk of my songs, so have lost out on a number of coins.
Ah well, no big deal, I’ll just play more!
I’m fine with it either way, I can see how this would be better. I just want to know what to do with my Blitz Cred, yo. It’s already much better than my street cred. :’(
I like the idea that a full load out is only slightly higher than the reward for a 5-star performance. It makes it so you don’t waste those 3 power-ups. And if it’s your first time performing a song you can get back DOUBLE the performance so for a while people have plenty of opportunities to build coin reserves.
I have 100,000+ coins. I am one of those “freaky, back woods, Blitz Survivalists,” as the loading screen says! Actually, I just have a lot of songs to play, and a lot of double coin opportunities because of that. Plus, the first time I play a song I usually play without power-ups, so that is pure profit.
Still, nice of Harmonix to tweak the economy based on user feedback. The always-online aspect of Blitz has a few disadvantages, but being able to patch it on the server side is a big advantage.
When I was first starting out, I had some problems with being able to afford all the power-ups, but I wasn’t doing any goals or score wars, either. After completing a few goals, I have the opposite problem. I’d like something else that I can use my coins for so that they actually mean something.
Very good.
I found myself playing less RBB as I had to go through songs without any power ups – and thus no chance of improving – just to get power ups. That was annyoing.
It seems like it’s a bit better now.
Where do you see those stats displayed in the picture? Is that one of those parts of the game that is only supported in the facebook version of the game? Or is there some way even on the website or somewhere else to view those stats? As a stats junkie, i need to know..
RockBandAide Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Rock Band World: http://apps.facebook.com/rock-band-world/
Nice change, but if all coins do is give power-ups, and the coins were balanced so you don’t need to worry about having enough for power-ups, it feels like there should be something else that costs coins.
It would have to be something that doesn’t help your score (or you’re back to the “I don’t want to have to stockpile to get high scores” argument). Like maybe some graphics controls, like a slider for how many particle effects you want, ability to change the colours of the lanes, and other silly things like that.
RockBandAide Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
That’s all the coins do… for now.
If you listened to the most recent podcast, they were kicking around hypothetical situations that will make use of coins and cred outside of Rock Band Blitz. One idea was that you could buy real life DLC using coins that you’ve amassed.
Kirksplosion Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 4:16 pm
That’d be friggin’ nuts. I seriously doubt they’d follow through in that way specifically, but…man, that’d be great. I just think that wouldn’t work since people could EASILY cheat the system – challenge an alt account to a Score War, and get an easy win for example. The prospect is still awesome, though.
I’m seeing complaints about this change making the coins useless, which is a bit silly to me. It’s an extra system in the game that I didn’t even know existed until a day or two before Blitz’ release, and it had no effect on my purchase or enjoyment, so them becoming less useful really has no bearing on…well, much of anything for me.
Craig M. Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
That would be pretty cool, but I can imagine you’d have to have A LOT of coins to pay for more songs.
Anyone else not really fussed about the change? The goals and new song bonus was more than enough to keep my coin balance fairly healthy.
StephenH Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 7:56 pm
This. I am not a big person on scores for just competition’s sake. Sure there are points where I will try to do better, but for me it is more about rewards. Now that I’ve earned the trophies that are achievable for myself and unlocked all of the powerups, I think there will be little reason to keep playing RBB. The only situation I feel that I will play Blitz without added incentive is when I have limited time and I don’t feel like dragging my Ion drums out from the corner. If they were to give the coins or cred more purpose, I feel that I would be more apt to play it. Blitz is a great game, but it needs something more. I know that free DLC or discounted DLC with cred/coins is highly unlikely, but it is a nice thought!
Tommy Gun Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 12:56 am
@rockbandaide – is that what they said? I thought they said completing *goals* could win you some free DLC. In that case, it could be some crazy goal that requires you to own a lot of DLC first, which would protect against people gaming the system.
RockBandAide Reply:
September 18th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Yes. Also, this: https://twitter.com/MrPope/status/248102663093374976
Looks great to me. I also didn’t have much of an issue with getting coins, (Similarly, I have a little over 29,000 coins), but this will make it much better for all the score chasing on already played songs.
So now with full power-ups, as long as you get 5-stars on a song you’ve already played, you simply spend a total of 50 coins. Seems quite fair to me.
Kirksplosion Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
And kudos to Harmonix for addressing this! It’s not something that I thought was a necessary change, but enough people were miffed about it that I’m sure it’ll be appreciated. And I’m grateful for the savings.
Headcase Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Nice. Even a small discount on DLC would be a very powerful use for coins.
Headcase Reply:
September 6th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Oops, my bad, this was for the above thread.
Damn it! And I still can’t get my Rock Band account to show up in the dashboard. When will it be fixed?
Oh good. this might make a difference for me. I like the game (not love), but because of the coin farming issues, and need for powerups to have any chance to 5/gold star a song, I’d been planning to stop playing once I finish off the achievements. This makes it a little less burdensome.
*still plays song twice without power ups to practice charts and plan score route*
I almost always skip the power-ups when I play a song for the first time, so I’m far from bankrupt. Still, I whole-heartedly approve of these changes. It won’t change the amount of time I spend playing the game, but it will make that time more worthwhile.
Considering I went from 20,000 coins to 0 from simply trying to gold star the remaining Blitz soundtrack songs, I welcome this. It didn’t make much sense earlier, now it makes some. And thanks to this week’s awesome goals, I’m back up to 32,000 coins.
The server issues are still annoying.
Mike Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
You, sir or madam, have waaaaaaay too many Dave Grohl songs if you’re back up to 32,000 coins. (Not really- to each, his own!)
Dogmatic Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Completed the Grohl goal day 1, son!
Makes scores almost useful for coins now. I mean you can try as much as you like, but if you try 3 times and win you are still in the hole as far as coin profit.
A lesser cost for a loadout should soften the blow on server disconnects after a song.
Bugs bugs bugs everywhere. Achievo won’t unlock. Songs I play not registering to my goals. Score Wars with ppl I don’t know on songs they don’t own. But yeah, let’s tweqk the coins system.
This game is just a bad facebook app.
Paul W. Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 6:02 am
Funny. I haven’t come across ANY of that.
LunaticS Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 7:34 am
Curious, as you goldstarred all songs in the RB platform, thought you liked the game.
RockBandAide Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 10:07 am
I don’t see anyone else having these problems…
Don’t have any coin issues myself. The game is ok but I don’t really see myself playing it once I’ve nabbed the cheevos. Surprisingly though my seven year old son seems addicted to the game! money well spent!
I think coins should have been a little harder to obtain, or power-ups should have been more expensive, but purchasing a power-up for a particular song should have been permanent.
That is, buy Point Doubler for “These Days” and Point Doubler will always be available for “These Days” with no additional expense. You decide that Point Doubler really isn’t cutting it for Gold Stars, you need triple points, so you buy Jackpot for “These Days”. More coins spent, but now Point Doubler and Jackpot are always available for “These Days”. And if you want Super Guitar or Flame Notes added to “These Days”, that is more coins, but again a one-time fee per song.
Epsilon Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
That’s not a bad idea at all, but I suspect that’s just way more data than they can handle tracking, considering that it seems that literally every solitary piece of data related to the game (possibly including the A/V settings) are stored on their server and have to be retrieved from same. I speculate this because on the PSN I was never even given an option to have it automatically copy my save to the cloud, and that explains why the offline mode is completely and unforgivably useless.
I understand the benefits on their end of being able to do things like tweak the coin economy without pushing out expensive patches, but that doesn’t justify making the end user’s entire experience hinge on things that are almost completely out of your control (HMX’s servers, PSN/XBL networks, local ISP stability.)
I like how they’ve rearranged some of the coins and how they continue to look to the fans for ways to help the gamers who play their games…
That said im still running into one issue…and that is needing my PC right next to me when I need to complete goals…
There should be a section that once you add a goal through FB it should be implemented into the messages section or another section so that I don’t need my PC next to me at all times to figure out what I need to do to complete goals…
Hope that made sense
Nick Reply:
September 7th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
The problem is the facebook app in the first place. It should have been included in the game, like the RB3 goals were. They obviously can control that stuff server side, so no patch would be necessary to update them. The facebook app just serves the purpose of tying it into social media in a rather distasteful way.
I disabled my 4-digit uid account a year or so ago, and I have no intention to ever enable it again.
I never have a problem with coins because I’ve got so many saved up- when I want to gold star a song, I’ll play it a couple of times to get a feel for the track and to figure out which power-ups to use- but I think this is a welcome change. For people who aren’t obsessive like me, coins could definitely be too hard to come by, and the power-ups should be a benefit, not a hindrance, to enjoyment of the game. I am 100% behind this move.
Because of the coins issue at the beginning, I just decided to play without powerups until I had unlocked them all, and to get a good feel for switching enough to raise all the multipliers. So I already had built up close to 100,000 when they made this change, and then I immediately loaded up with Road Rage/Blast Notes/Super Guitar (usually) on every song, and started Gold Starring just about everything I played. I think that practice really paid off.
Even with full loadouts, I’m now sitting on 140,000 coins, so yeah…I think I’m going to eventually discover the maximum storage at some point, especially if I end up playing every song I have.
I have no issue with the coin system, and never really did, but the fact that the offline mode is useless beyond belief (it’s essentially a gimped practice mode) is a serious issue for me. I cannot fathom any reason why they couldn’t handle this more like RB3 (which I’m pretty much forced to take offline because of the PS3 XMB crash bug) and just store the coins and cred locally and then sync that back up with the server whenever it’s back online. I don’t even care if they end up pushing your local scores to the leaderboards later, but you should at least be able to play the game if their servers or the PSN/XBL or your local ISP is having issues.
At the bare, bare, minimum, they need to do something better than tell me “Sorry, you get jack shit for this song because our servers happened to have a brief hiccup while you happened to be playing!” I’ve twice lost top scores on the PSN leaderboard to that now, and my repeat attempts were invariably worse.