Overall Rock Band 3 Vocal Difficulty

**Nuke39** · Joined: 11 Aug 2007 Posts: 929

I feel like with Rock Band 3's overall change in harmonies, more punishing rock meter, and a certain few added songs, I feel like the difficulty in Rock Band 3 has shot up from Rock Band 2. Don't get me wrong, I know that vocal difficulty is very subjective for many hardcore vocalists and depends on the range of people, but is anyone else feeling that the overall engine feels more difficult? It atleast has the fact that you can fail much faster, yet vocals don't get the unison-only bonuses compared to instruments.

I really just want the community to talk about this within the section, since there's so much focus on the instruments. I've felt like hthe "pie" is much more punishing in terms of filling it up all the way. I've been getting far more "strongs" than ever, and it's harder at times to see how much it filled up, since it's blue on blue. And does anyone find a song easier with harmonies on than going straight solo? Because the pitch correction will shift you to a different harmony without question.

And in terms of songs, I'm just curious if anyone else is having trouble with particular songs.

-Good Vibrations and Bohemian Rhapsody are very worthy of their spots. I feel like Vibrations is much trickier due to the middle and outro, while BoRap has much more annoying octave shifting.
-The Killing Moon feels really hard, due to the number of shifts and constant inflections in the last 2 minutes, that requires memorization.

Speak up, Scorehero!
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**Icemage** · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 3200

RB3 is definitely harder than RB2, no ifs ands or buts. If anyone thinks otherwise, they aren't playing any of the seriously challenging stuff.

It's easier than RB1, however.

If I had to guess based on a week of playing vocals on-again-off-again with keys in between, I'd say:

Again, these are guesses on my part based on about 15-20 hours of vocals gameplay in the past week

- Vocal pitch lenience feels like 1.3 semitones or so. More than RB1 with its 1.2, less than RB2's with its 1.4. Feels almost exactly like The Beatles Rock Band, actually.

- Pie spinning is slightly but noticeably slower in "bonus" situations like short phrases, slides and sustained notes. That makes it harder to fill the pie since you have a little less lenience to break away from the pitch line, on top of the higher pitch accuracy required.

- There does not appear to be any end-of-phrase bonus in RB3, so if you're way behind on the meter heading into the end of a phrase, you're more likely than not going to break combo.

- Talkies spin much, much slower, and are absolutely rock solid reliable in RB3 as long as your sensitivity isn't bolloxed by the auto-sensitivity "feature". I took several of the most notorious broken talky songs for a spin a last night. Inside Out, One Way or Another, and Cherry Bomb all ended up being 1st attempt FCs. No problems whatsoever.

- Overdrive windows are "more" consistent now (again, as long as auto-sensitivity isn't hosing your input). There are still cases where OD won't trigger reliably, however, typically on small windows, and windows that appear right after earning the 2nd overdrive phrase.

- Vibrato is your friend, as it was in The Beatles Rock Band. It doesn't make the pie spin nearly as extra-fast as TBRB, but it does help you get full credit for being on-key if you would otherwise have been slightly off pitch and only earning partial credit.

All in all, I really like the vocals engine in RB3. It's easily the most playable vocals engine in any game - when it's working. I know non-PS3 players have had nothing but headaches from the auto-sensitivity feature, however.
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**boss1592** · Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 4:01 am Post subject:

this is how i would rank all the games, from hardest to easiest

Rock band 1
Rock band beatles
Rock band 3
Rock band 2
Rock band lego
Rock band Green day

why does it feel like ive missed 1?

anyway, as i said in a different thread, i think bohemian rhapsody is the hardest non broken on-disk vox song in RB history, and theres a few other very tricky ones as well.

**Punkarella** · Joined: 28 Oct 2010 Posts: 37

**singemfrc** · Joined: 10 Aug 2007 Posts: 4407 Location: California

**woozerkristen** · Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:34 am Post subject:

I think I'm having slight calibration issues, but nothing major, and I think the more strict engine is offset by the fact that you can use practice mode and in particular a pitch guide. That, to me, has made this game easier rather than harder than previous ones, primarily because I didn't have the patience to keep replaying songs over and over to get one tricky part.

To me, stricter engine, but easier overall game, vocals-wise.
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**Icemage** · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 3200

**ProffessorJoe** · Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:21 pm Post subject:

If you factor in vibrato then there is no way to accurately compare this engine to the old engine. They are just so different in the way the pie acts. Personally, i find 81 of these songs to be a bit easier than all of RB2. However, BORAP is quite a bit harder than anything in RB2, and GV is about equivalent to American Woman, which i would say is the hardest song in RB2 (not counting OWOA because its broken). So i guess personally i would say: if you can use some vibrato, RB3 will be much much easier than rb2. If you can't, saddle up for a rough ride

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**twistedoak** · Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 1152

I found rb3 to be easier than everything but green day(easiest by far). There were phrases that I should have missed in the earlier engines that I got an awesome on in rb3 solely due to vibrato and such.

Rb1 was harder due to talkies only, and acdc was probably harder than rb3 imo because of acdc's off pitch singing lol. The rest of them are probably close to difficulty with rb3, but that's not saying much.

Cliff notes: I found rb3 to be one of the easiest fgfc so far.
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**internetguy87** · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 3505 Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Still not completing the whole setlist yet, let me give my way too early reasons why RB3 is harder for me.

Just for people who don't know, I believe I am pretty tone deaf, and I play mostly by reading charts, and rarely by listening to the vocalist. This makes what songs I think difficult different from numerous other people.

- The pitch arrow can randomly jump between octaves mid phrases or during breaks. This makes it very hard for me to keep track where I am on the chart.

- It seems completely random which songs will use the "octave shift" and actually move the vocal window. (First evident in TBRB). Some songs have very long stretches of near monotone pitches with minute differences that don't take advantage of this. This makes it very tricky to see very small differences in pitch. Granted RB2 doesn't have this at all, but having no idea when the pitch window could "rotate" adds another thing to worry about.

- Lack of end bonus makes it very trick to score well when either of the above instances happen. If it takes you even a short amount of time to find where to start the phrase, it is much harder to awesome that phrase than in previous titles.

Now granted I don't think RB3 is MUCH harder than RB2, but I do think that some game mechanics make it a bit trickier.

I will post a more complete comparison once I finish the FGFC in the next day or 2 hopefully.
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**uSound** · Joined: 24 May 2009 Posts: 1180 Location: Virginia

Speaking of calibration, what's a good set-up? I know numbers vary from TV to TV but is your vocal calibration often the same as your instrument one? I always feel like I'm singing too late for the game, resulting in a bunch of Strong ratings on things I used to be able to do in RB2.

**Icemage** · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 3200