Hello Rocksmith fans!
Welcome to another edition of Rocksmith 2014 Remastered hype. Following on from last weeks reveal of some of the changes coming to Nonstop Play, the @UbiSoftStudioSF team decided to treat us this week to some details of the changes coming to Dynamic Difficulty.
Here we have the familiar tools menu that is (on PC at-least) accessed by hitting the Space Bar.
We have the same tuner in the lower left (preferred by a lot of players since it displays more accurately than the pre-song tuner), same Ernie Ball poster on the wall, same guitar case and stool and the same Rocksmith pedals pick logo. What is different are just the bottom and top menu items.
For more on the Stats see our write up on them here.
A straight on or off option for Dynamic Difficulty (DD)?
An interesting addition to the game – given the amount of time and effort that is put into the difficulty levelling process in the first place. One of the biggest reasons I think Rocksmith has been so successful (I myself am a player that has learned 99.9% via Rocksmith), is that it gets new players playing songs they can recognize from day one – without being horrendously overwhelmed by the things they don’t yet have the skills to play in real-time.
It’s sure to be a bigger hit with the much more experienced players that prefer to use Rocksmith like a pretty version of Tab however, but not as much as one of the options lower down the list will be.
Where this should be really useful is for intermediate players, perhaps ones that have used Riff Repeater to get certain phrases to one level and just want to be able to practise the song at that point.
Think of it as a global PAUSE button for the dynamic difficulty system.
The awesome dirty riff in Philip Sayce’s – Out Of My Mind, is one that I like to play at around the 75-80% level. It’s a good “guitar store” riff to get under your fingers and the slightly lower levelled version of it doesn’t rely on pre-bends and unison bends. Using this option I could set the level for the song and sections as I want it – then the game won’t make me attempt to play the more complex version of it after I’ve nailed the easier version 3 or 4 times.
Do you love using the the DD system, but think that it currently levels you up too quickly? Too slowly? Well you will soon be able to adjust that behaviour more to your liking.
Just like levelling up, the speed at which the DD system will now level you down is adjustable to some extent.
The Sightreading Level setting is an interesting one. Currently the game uses some guesstimations of your playing ability and uses that to determine what you see on the first play of a new song. Instead of the DD system handling that calculation, you can now set it to be over-ridden by you.
The game has always had 30 “levels” of difficulty available to it for any one phrase of a song. Very few songs use all 30 – or even get close to that – but the intent has always been that “level 5” difficulty is fairly similar across the board on ALL songs. If you can play around the “Level 5” mark on Blitzkrieg Bop – the game will give you Satch Boogie at “Level 5” if you were to play that next. “Levels 15-20” are usually used for technical solo sections, so rather than give a slider that goes all the way to 30 – they figure anyone actually wanting a sightread that high – probably wants 100% of the notes anyway, so 15 and then MAX are the 2 highest setting options.
The Sightread Level and Level Down Speed settings when combined, would potentially allow players to be shown a Max difficulty chart initially, that levels them down to a level that they are hitting a majority of the correct notes pretty quickly.
“Let the user personalize the way they choose to use the game” seems to be the motto the remastered team are working under.
It is worth noting that this setting applies ONLY to arrangements you that haven’t already played. If you’ve played the arrangement previously, then your existing “Level” is what the game will continue to use.
This wasn’t really mentioned during the stream – but a notification about the modified sightreading level was seen when they went into the next song. No idea if these notifications can be disabled, but it only showed for a few seconds anyway.
OVERRIDE TO MAX!
Are you a “Give me 100% of the notes, all the time – no matter how much I suck,” kind of player? Tick this box and be done with it. No DD – ever again for you.
The really good news is that Rocksmith will remember what level each arrangement of every song was at before you ticked this, so if you decide that 100% of the notes all the time isn’t the best idea for you afterall, you can disable it and go back to the DD levels as they were before.
It’s also worth noting that you can’t set this on a per path basis. So really good Bass players that dabble in a little 6 string now and then, may want to hit SPACE and disable this setting whenever they plug in the 6 string (or vice-versa).
All of the above settings are set per-profile, they are not a global setting for the entire game – therefore if you are getting your multiplayer session on and one of you wants their DD locked/disabled/100% or forget it mode – and the other doesn’t – then that is totally doable.
There has also been some tweaking of the DD algorithms to smooth out some of the idiosyncrasies that occasionally popped up. One of the benefits of this is that the transitions into and out of Master Mode should be smoother and more logical now. Perhaps this may mean I can finally get that first and last phrase on Renegades Of Funk to go into full Master Mode so I can get above 109.6% on it!!!
Bonus mention – something about “Rocksmith Guy” is getting changed in remastered. We were not given any details, just a passing – vague mention of some work being done, no doubt this is one of a few extra bonuses we will discover on patch day.
Perhaps a @DanAmrich voice pack? Some clips from this weeks live stream alone could be; “I’m gonna punch you so hard” or”I was better at this in practice.”
How about a Dethklok voice pack? Just imagine the giggles from – “What is aco-ostic? Oh, you mean a grandpa’s guitars?” instead of the “Could be better“….
I want this more than can be imagined, I disabled the Rocksmith Guy voices ages ago, but I’d turn them back on for some proper scorn from a Dethklok character. No idea how that ESRB rating would hold up mind you, especially if the clips went on for more than a few very short seconds, but it is the kind of fun that one might hope for from the same studio that is creating a South Park game, named the “Fractured But Whole.”
@UbiSoftStudioSF are holding out the “big update” for next week – the changes to the Riff Repeater (in the game, they haven’t acquired this web site!), but so far we have seen some really impressive tweaks and new features – made even more impressive by the fact they are coming as a free update.
- What one of these changes are you most looking forward to?
- Are you a 100% of the notes 100% of the time kind of player – that will be over the moon at the Override to Max setting?
- Do you think the altering of the DD levelling speeds is the more useful change?
- What about manually setting the sightreading level?
- Is there a voice pack you would really love to replace the Rocksmith Guy?
- Do you think some time should be spent on the Guitarcade – to remove the painful wait times?
- Or do you just want to see whats being fixed with the Riff Repeater already?
I’m glad we’re getting an update after all this time, but tbh, I was hoping for something more. This seems like stuff that should have been in the game in the first place or released as a small update, not a “remastered” release. I was hoping for changes to guitarcade, session, lessons, perhaps a new look. I may be alone in this, but I feel like this update should have been bigger.
What I want to be changed in the riff repeater is to remove the bundling of sections
Hey, I spy something on the OVERRIDE TO MAX screen that wasn’t mentioned in the article: Master Mode will not engage. This might be a quicker way to disable MM when I learn the sections in RR but am not ready for the notes to go away when I start hitting them during regular play. I like it.
I’m glad they are still putting out updates to the game and I like the “increase to max level” and “skip tuning” options they have added but I’ve never used nonstop play and have no reason to start. The other improvements make things a little easier but that’s about it. Best thing about this update are the new songs that are coming out with it imo.
Something I wish they would add on is to be able to just listen to the song. That would be very useful for songs that I’m just not familiar with or haven’t heard in a long time. I’ve noticed that I advance much faster when I’m playing something I know already, no matter the difficulty.
Play the song and don’t touch your guitar
I know, but that counts as a “play” raising the amount of tries.
Do it in riff repeater, it doesn’t count as a try there and won’t lower your level.
So, what if I like DD, but have a very different level of competence between bass and guitar? Is there still no way for the game to recognize these paths independently? This would seem like VERY simple code.
“seem like”
Treating guitar and bass as “subprofiles”?
I think I’m likely to slow down the levelling up of the Dynamic Difficulty, it was often the case where new notes were being added before I’d really got the hang of what I was doing. Also looking forward to playing with Non-Stop Play with the tuning restriction.
I’d be curious to know if there’s been any tweaking under the hood with note/chord detection to make things a little tighter. It’d be a difficult thing to test myself as perception is likely to play a big part there.
A feature I’d like to see in the game is a chord training mode, where you simply select two or three chords from the chord book, and the game puts these into a track (with the chords evenly spaced out, gradually getting faster with success) to train your transitions between these chords. But I think I’m a bit late for suggesting features.
i hope this is an other “Paul Taylor” or rocksmith is making fake post on here
Damn… he’s onto me!
Nah mate, you should know that there’s Paul Taylors everywhere. Common as muck, us lot.
Love the improvements, almost 5 years since Rocksmith was released and I’m still rocking out. Was wondering if we can we get a better crowd too? not sure if this was already added but id like to have more options then a hazing crowd background or the apartment.
Sorry, I’m not sure if this is the right place to air this grievance,
but I figured since we’re discussing improvements/changes/updates I
figured I’d ask.
I have a question about the controller for XBox One. If I’m playing in non-stop mode or just playing a long song or session mode, the second the controller turns off a message pops up and stops me in mid song that says “Controller was disconnected” even though I am using the guitar and don’t need the controller at that time anyway. This never used to happen with the original Rocksmith on the XBox 360. It’s so annoying to just have a song cut out on you in the middle for no
reason, especially because Rocksmith is supposed to work with the Kinect so even if the controller is off I shouldn’t need it, so why does
it matter. Is this something that other people have run into (is this an issue on the playstation as well)? And is Ubisoft aware of this issue and if so are they planning on fixing it? Honestly if they fixed this issue and nothing else I’d be happy, even though some of the new improvements look pretty cool.
Thanks.
What I would like is more control with the band in session mode. For example, being able to select each note they play.
I often find that DD doesn’t increase fast enough for my tastes so I think I’ll be increasing it’s speed.
The problem I have with DD is that it doesn’t always seem to distinguish between fills and main riffs. Fills are typically faster or more complicated that the main riff. So, I often find that DD keeps me one note shy of playing the main riff right just because I haven’t mastered the fills. Maybe this will change that.
I like the idea of maxing out difficulty and then having the game level down during the more challenging sections…
I rarely play in LAS though unless I need to get to TRR. Hard score attack is my go to method of play BUT being able to max every song without manually going into TRR is def going to make Non-Stop Play A LOT more appealing to me (plus sort by tuning!)
player chooses…..I love that.
DD off, thank you I can choose the level myself
The only thing worse than sucking, is sucking and having the notes change mid riff on you.
Update = cool
10 days
Can’t wait…
I know this is a little off topic, but the continued posts about upcoming upgrades spured this on. (Like the posts btw. Keep ’em coming).
Are there going to be any upgrades or additions to the Guitarcade? Will there be any updates or additions in the Lessons area, Session Mode, or the inlays? Sure that last one is minor. Had to ask. Anyway, I was just curious.
The family and I have learned a lot from the Lessons and Guitarcade.
Dan has mentioned on Reddit (see the link in the Guitarcade question) that there isn’t any changes to Guitarcade coming as part of remastered. No mention of the others at this stage.
No, you are not alone in wanting some much needed updates to guitarcade – a simple “jump right back into it” option would be sufficient for most of us!
I am turning off Dynamic Difficulty first thing. I DO like the levels, I just want to decide when the new notes appear (manually). At this point, I only play in Riff Repeater, so I can really do this already. But I’ll be able to try Non Stop Play, which will be good.
Looking forward to the update!
I plan on overriding to MAX when playing on my bass, while on rhythm and lead I plan on just setting it to level up faster.