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Guitar Hero Live iOS Touch Mode Discussion

 
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KrohnIndustry  





Joined: 08 Oct 2008
Posts: 17

PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 1:42 am    Post subject: Guitar Hero Live iOS Touch Mode Discussion Reply with quote

I have never been very involved with the GH community, but I have always followed it closely since 2007.

Before I go on my rant, I want to provide some context for those to understand I don't just suck at rhythm games on mobile devices. Since 2008 I played and worked on Tap Tap Revenge for iOS. I won three consecutive official world championships from 2009 to 2011, and I am currently working on a new game similar to Tap Tap Revenge. For gameplay if anyone is interested, my channel is http://youtube.com/krohnindustry

I recently downloaded Guitar Hero Live on my iPad Air 2, and I really want to like the game because it has TONS of potential, but the game engine is extremely flawed for those that prefer to just tap and not use a guitar.

First things first, I cannot stand the fact that I have to play an enormous amount of songs to level up on GHTV and obtain coins to unlock "upgrades" so I can compete on the leaderboards. Every game should allow users to turn it on and have the ability to compete for a high score. How is it fair that I can FC a song, but get 100s of thousands of points less than someone who got maybe 90%? If that wasn't bad enough, I am limited to "plays" and although I get points to buy more "plays", that takes away from investing in "upgrades" so I can play competitively! And you only get like 1 bonus play everytime you level up? I am only level 14 right now and it takes at least 20 songs or so to get to the next level, and I only get 1 bonus? So I guess the solution to that is paying real money to buy "plays", which is complete freemium game-ruining nonsense. But I am fortunate to have a lot of iTunes credit accumulated over the years, so I didn't have much problem buying more plays.

Oh yeah, I get connection errors ALL THE TIME with GHTV, and a lot of the time it happens when a song is loading, and it wastes a "play". I have probably lost about 10 plays because of connection errors..and trust me it is not my internet connection, as I have never had issues before and this is the only game that has problems. Not to mention often times new high scores do not register on the leaderboards.

Secondly, why do the lanes only make up about 30% of the iPad screen? Four lanes, and I'd like to think my fingers are fairly average in size, and it's SO easy to tap out of the lane window, and miss. Why can't they expand the lanes across the entire screen? Or better yet, do what Rock Band Reloaded did and have options to play in landscape or portrait mode? When you play expert and play certain songs with "fast strums" (many consecutive notes in the same lane, like in TTFAF) it requires you to tap with two fingers in one lane, as demonstrated here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZKraTABkI), and that is nearly impossible to do.

So my solution? Turn on Zoom mode in the iPad accessibility settings, and that does indeed help a lot. The problem is it can be very easy to accidentally tap three fingers on the screen at once, and it shifts the view around and subsequently completely screws you.

The game engine is extremely unforgiving. I don't even know where to start here. I have only done minimal self-testing and experimenting to figure out how certain mechanics work, but I am thoroughly convinced the two types of sliding notes cause tons of problems. For "hammer-ons", you are capable of tapping individual notes rather than sliding (which I prefer to do in most situations), but in order for this to work, you have to COMPLETELY let go of the screen after tapping a note in order for the next note to be registered. I find that this is the case whenever there are "descending" note patterns. This causes major problems for fast sections because it is nearly impossible for a human to COMPLETELY lift their fingers off an iPad screen for each individual note tap. The tap window for "hammer-on's" seem to be extremely small as well. The game engine needs to be much more forgiving in Touch mode, and allow users to hold down notes that have been tapped while tapping other ones. Rock Band Reloaded, and Tap Tap Revenge had this mechanic and both were by far the best game engines for any rhythm game on iOS.

Yeah yeah I know I probably just need to adjust to actually doing what I should do, which is sliding, but even that system is extremely broken. There are certain sections where you can literally "spam-slide" and the game will say you hit everything perfectly. Also some charts utilize the hammer-on's in strange ways and almost require two fingers to slide at once, but this becomes extremely difficult and problematic, especially with ascending patterns that start and end on different lanes

Then, there are "strum-slides" which are the arrows pointing in which direction you need to slide across. This mechanic actually seems to work as it's intended, and it is the only "forgiving" mechanic in this game. I don't necessarily dislike "strum-slides" itself, but the problem is how charts utilize them. First of all, you should be allowed to tap them. Also, having chords being strum slides (or even hammer-ons) going back and forth very fast brings up lots of problems because it is SO EASY to accidentally move a finger into the wrong lane. I don't mind a few "strum-slides" here and there, but some songs (Cowboys From Hell, Before I Forget, Stricken come to mind) overly abuse them, and it makes very "petty" sections of the songs extremely difficult.

Also, wtf to no practice mode? No quick retrying songs on GHTV without wasting "plays"?

I think I have just about covered everything.. if there are solutions to any of the problems I have addressed, I would love to hear them.

tl;dr....Guitar Hero Live on iOS looks great and has LOTS of potential, but the game engine is broken for Touch Mode, and it's frustrating because a few very simple tweaks could make the game a LOT better.

edit: context
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parzrevenge  





Joined: 12 Jul 2008
Posts: 404
Location: Las Vegas, NV

PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 9:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You hit the nail on the head for the gameplay issues. Not gonna go over the ghtv plays, etc since thats been beaten to death already but anyways:

1. Yeah my biggest gripe with the engine is the fact that you have to let go in order to tap the next note. Makes you way more cautious than you should be.

2. Agreed with the sliders about how bad they are plus how easy you can spam them at times. TFFAF is a great place to spam lol

3. The swipe notes (strum slides) are a good feature also implemented poorly imo. They feel very broken at times no matter how small or big or normal sized I make my swipes.

4. I will say this: this game engine is a step up from the GH ios game they previously had. Now THAT engine was really rough. Almost everything got slightly improved for this game, but yes only slightly. Still pretty rough and inconsistent, especially when going for fcs.

Very interesting tip about the zoom mode. I'll have to try that
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