Thoughts on the RB3 vox engine

**LucasPWNS8907** · Joined: 11 Apr 2009 Posts: 181

well, it's been almost a year since rb3's release and i was wondering what everyone thinks of the vocal engine after taking time to get adjusted to it. i'll start.

on my initial impression, i absolutely hated the engine because i didn't understand how it worked at all and how it was so unlike the rb2 engine. i soon realized that having the mic volume up at the default level produced incredibly laggy audio and it really threw off my timing so once i learned to turn that down every time, i started warming up to the engine.

a few months later, i was really having a lot of fun with it and thought it was close to being a perfect engine. several more months passed and now i'm back to hating the engine. i've decided that it's too loose, too easy to abuse, and too easy for other people to cheat on. i find it very inconsistent. some songs "spin the pie" really fast while a ton of others (mainly, and interestingly enough, rock band network tracks) seem to just barely fill without having to over-vibrato.

still, probably the most annoying fact about the actual singing part to me, is how it has such a strong emphasis on the very end of a phrase. rock band has always had that emphasis on the end of a phrase but in this game, it's much more stubborn about it. you can nail the phrase perfectly but if there is one last "tick" or "blip" of a word and you miss it, it will give you the "strong". the scoring, in my mind, needs to be based more off of filling XX% of the pitch no matter where it is placed within the phrase. also, the whole business of the 99% glitch is really frustrating. and i'm not talking about when you drop ticks, but when you don't drop any ticks, get 100% on all the song sections, and it scores you with a 99%.

maybe the lack of legitimate competition is also demotivating to me. there's so many songs yet so fewer people that are actively competing. there's maybe 5 vocalists i see at the top of the leaderboards all the time.

a few general things about visuals of the engine:
-i think the visual style of the chart is easier to read on most songs. on songs with a small range (where the words are really "fat"), i have a lot of trouble distinguishing if i'm on the pitch or not. but, most songs are easier to read with that darker black chart and the ones that have the grey areas for different octaves are really nice to see.
-i still really wish the multiplier wasn't on top of the "pie". i've learned to depend on just reading the intervals between the notes more than anything else. the tip of the arrow is too small to see if you're reading something for the first time and it's too distracting to keep eyeing over to the pie to try and read it (the fact that it turns into light blue on blue once you hit 4x doesn't really help much either).
-early windows, broken windows, and gaps before phrases are all gone which is great. back button activating is also a huge plus. however, phrases (on older songs) "spilling" into the next phrase is a strange glitch that slightly annoys me but the placement of other phrase break lines is skewed so much so that it makes some activation squeezes impossible that used to work. that being said, there are also some new reverse squeezes that can be pulled off thanks to these. it's a mixed bag :/
-talkies-yikes! well, at least all of them are hittable once you get the talkie engine to work. i still can't get them to just work simply by talking. i really have to put some work into them and hold them out overly long for them to register properly. i've always hated talkies. they only really work in the most recent guitar hero games. whatever.
-tambos- why aren't they gone yet?!
-and harmonies...i'll save that world of problems for another post

/end rant
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**Icemage** · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 3200

Here's my opinions...

Gameplay:

+++ Vocal practice mode with guide pitch is the best thing to happen to Rock Band vocals, ever.

+++ Back/Select activation is a godsend. No more stupid broken activation windows, and no more cases where you have to make noise in the one place you might have reasonably caught your breath (see: Feeling This by Blink-182).

*** I like how vibrato works in RB3, though as mentioned above, some phrases are scored really tightly and you're almost forced to vibrato to hold combo. At least it's not stupendously powerful like it is in TBRB.

*** I'm not nearly as annoyed with end-of-phrase scoring in RB3 as I was in RB2 and earlier games, where the end of the phrase was vasty overweighted.

--- Removing sensitivity settings is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in a video game.

Visual presentation:

+++ The vocal arrow is cleaner and easier to see than in previous games, making it even easier to tell if you're slightly off-pitch.

+++ I like the faint octave-scale shading in the vocal marquee. It gives you a much better idea of how much range is represented in the song (except in the case of those thrice-damned shifting charts - see below...).

--- Vertically shifting vocal charts for the loss. This was easily my most disliked vocal feature in TB:RB and it's back in RB3. It's not a huge problem once you learn a song, but it does make learning from a sightread more tedious than it ought to be.

--- The solo pie meter is almost invisible now. Dark blue on black? Whose brilliant idea was that?

Scoring:

--- I have no idea why percussion points per tap were removed, but the final bonus wasn't. HMX should have ripped a page out of GH's notebook and axed scoring for percussion entirely, since what we have now is even MORE pointless than it used to be. Under the old system, at least on a few songs you could squeeze an extra tap for +25 points. Now if your OD runs out mid-percussion it doesn't matter because you still earn 0 out of it.

--- 99% FCs are the devil. Call it a glitch, design feature, or just terrible math, it's still monumentally stupid.

--- Why are harmony vocals and pro drums scored so much lower than pro guitar/keys/bass? Very disappointing to see, considering that the non-pro charts are (more or less) well balanced scoring-wise.

Glitches:

--- Overdrive burn stopping when any band member fails should never have been kept as a feature as soon as No Fail allowed leaderboard tracking.

--- Talkies glitching out at random is stupid.

--- Overdrive vanishing if you pause during an OD phrase is also stupid.

Overall, I think I liked RB2's vocal scoring mechanics just a shade better than RB3, but vocal practice means RB3 vocals are a lot more enjoyable to play solo.
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**Iggy-Sparks** · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 11:42 am Post subject:

I like the RB3 engine, and I agree on what you say on many points.

Only thing that I hate, is that you can activate as late as possible, it doesn't matter, you have to be lucky and do a good vibrato to get a good squeeze!
And sometimes when it's short squeeze (like 1st activation on 20th century boy) it can changes from 100 to 500 points though you feel like you did exactly the same!

And one other thing is this guy who use Fail glitch to get his highscores (PresidentGoatse), I've stopped doing Rock Band 3 Vocals career because of him.
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**nilesong** · Joined: 23 Oct 2011 Posts: 1

Thank you! The same things about the RB3 engine frustrate me, especially the RBN stuff. It's easier if I'm by myself, but when I'm with a band I can't just keep restarting the same song.

The 99% glitch drives me nuts. I know I've FC'd stuff, but then end up with a 99....funny to look on the leaderboards and be surrounded by 100% and I'm stuck with a FC 99.

**Billtvshow** · Joined: 20 Dec 2007 Posts: 832 Location: NC, USA

I agree with most everything Icemage said in his post about the positives and negatives of the engine.

Solo vocals is a whole different beast from harmonies. Applying the logic that the bonuses for harmonies should be less (when compared to other pro instruments) because solo vocals is the easiest instrument / has the most FGFC's is a short sighted. Also saying that the bonuses should be less based strictly off of narrow personal experiences in which you and your friends did well with harmonies doesn't mean that is the norm. Most of the people who post here are among the absolute best Rock Band vocalists and harmonizers in the world. Just because it's easy to you doesn't mean it's easy everywhere else. My friends, who I do harmonies with infrequently, are both high level solo vocalists, but have a tremendously difficult time separating harmony parts when they hear the lead vocal being sung right beside of them in the same room. That is the true difficulty of harmonies and what makes it harder than solo, especially for those who are not used to singing in that environment.

And it's not like the bonuses for harmonies are a little bit less than the other pro instruments. They are ridiculously lower when compared to the final results on songs. I think that the bonuses should have been a minimum of 2x higher and possibly as much as 3x higher.
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