There's a million things Rock Band can add:
Better playlist sorting. IE: By specific instrument difficulty, play count, release date, friend's popularity, total popularity.
Allow friends and you to rate songs.
I mean, REALLY focus on getting your friends together. Beatles Rock Band really added that with the Top 5 scores next to each song.
And can we get a fucking JUKEBOX mode, please?
I'd also like an ability to support seamless song playback. Right now if I want to play Judas Priest's Electric Eye, I have to play The Hellion first and I can't play them separately. The same would happen if we got My Chemical Romance's The End/Dead! (Dead! was GH2's DLC) I'd like to be able to jump right into Dead! OR play both. Why not?
Oh and fuck the Wii. Supposedly Nintendo is releasing a new hard drive-based one at E3, but fuck it.
Add voxtar support so that guitar players can sing along easier. THAT is a major feature but one I hope makes it in. They hinted at it in RB2, but I want them to take it all the way.
Also allow vocals to participate in the group overdrive thingies. It always sucks to feel left out.
Oh, and UNLOCK THE FUCKING SAVE FILE. You can protect them to gamertags/PSNIDs to prevent sharing.
Add more DLC outside of music. Allow me to buy clothes, venues or characters or shit. I'LL DO IT. Or just bundle some of that shit WITH the songs.
But seriously, DISPLAYING NEW SONGS and SORTING BY NEW SONGS is fucking damn near MANDATORY. After 1200 songs, you can't simply rely on memory to figure out what's new. And don't give me that 'metadata' bullshit. PATCH IN THE DATES for the OLD data and include it on the new. It's NOT HARD.
I'd also like the ability to create, save and share playlists and SMART playlists, similar to iTunes or any decent audio player. You set some criteria and instant playlist. Like all drum songs level 0-3 that I haven't played in 2 weeks. That shit is easy to do. (Also a shuffle ability for said playlist)
Sharing a playlist would be awesome and a great way to expose friends to songs and encourage them to buy ones to match you.
On that note, BETTER ONLINE MATCHMAKING WITH DLC. Do it automatically, based on the songs you play most, or specify a minimum song count for someone to play with. (IE: filter out idiots that can't even fucking export RB1)
And straight up copy the party mode from Guitar Hero 5. Get players into the game, constant stream of music, but take it one step further and throw in song selection without leaving the song.
In the same vein: ANY mix of instruments.
Also add vocal harmonies outside. (100% Expected, but hey, gotta say it)
Free patches for old songs to ADD harmonies. (And fix a few broken songs where the overdrive section is overlapped by the drum fill)
Venue selection is nice, but also make more MEMORABLE venues. Fuck, not hard to do.
Better and more faces for your character and LET YOU CHANGE IT.
Allow a ridiculously higher decal count. What is it now? I think it's 20 per location. That's distinguished mentally-challenged. There's a hard drive. Allow 500, save the result to a jpeg and display that SINGLE COMPRESSED IMAGE as the result. There's no reason why not, except there wasn't time to add it.
Also add in the "stupid family mode" which RB2 was supposed to have. Read: ONLY band leader's buttons can cause shit to happen on the menu screen.
Additionally, in No-Fail mode (Which Beatles added as a toggle on the song screen, thankfully), SAVE THE SCORE IF IT WASN'T NEEDED. Seriously, if it didn't need to get tripped, that score's legit.
Also bring over the auto-kick cheat from Lego AND add the Location directory of LRB to the song screen.
On the PS3 branch, ALLOW SONG DELETION and fix the "Singstar mics require sixaxis on Port #1" bug. Plus fix the fucking voice chat. It's so broken it's not even funny. AND PUT THE FUCKING MESSAGE OF THE DAY IN THERE. Jesus Christ, you snotty fucks. And add Rich Presence support. It's not hard at ALL. (That's the text that's WHAT you are doing in the game that your friend can see.) I want to see WHAT SONG they are playing.
For all platforms, allow the players to filter songs in career mode's randomness, PLUS substitute DLC songs IF applicable. Don't make the DLC only appear on the random and choose-your-own setlists. That's lame.
Better score/star tracking. Really, not hard to do. Yes, there's many scores for each song, but let's get serious now, the current implementation is a fucking joke.
Realistic trophies/achievements. Some of them are getting fucking evil. 100% the Final Countdown Solo? Master all the Beatles Beats? Gold Star a shitload of songs? Trophies should be tough, but not nearly impossible.
ALSO, occasionally add Trophy DLC. I mean, you spend $20 on a Queen pack, at least throw in a fucking trophy or two.
Things I DON'T want to see are the textured highways that Beatles had. That shit is WHACK bro. You added it back the same fucking year that Guitar Hero finally removed it. So distinguished mentally-challenged.
If they want to spice up Career mode, they can copy what DJ Max Portable did, though. As you play, you earn EXP. When you level up you have access to more items. These items affect the song, like your life bar, allow X amount of notes to automatically play if you miss them during a song, or how fast you recover. (Or EXP/Gold multipliers) So give players a reason to want different fretboards. Makes the game deeper, but would need a little more thought to handle how scoring on leaderboards would play out. (Maybe track two scores constantly. One without mods and one with. So the mods ONLY apply in career mode, but are simply visual in quickplay on your character.)
And ANY future band expansions (The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Steven Seagal) should export the venues, UI skins and characters as optional.
On the main menu screen I'd LOVE for DLC to also be able be the sample music you hear. Just makes sense.
And Dan Teasdale needs to get off his fucking high horse and fix how they handle displaying song difficulty. The ON-DISC songs are chosen by designers and the DLC is by the charters. That creates PROBLEMS and he's OPENLY ADMITTED that you shouldn't compare the two. How the FUCK am I supposed to know that?
Add in camera support for PS3/360. I know they are going to. Microsoft is pushing it like a bitch and STRONGLY encouraging every publisher to do it. Allow photos of your rock finishes and send them to your friends. See the leaderboards of you pissing on Green Man's high score on Poker Face you just beat.
(Their previous games supported EyeToy stuff)
This is all stuff that's easily done and quite probable. I didn't even ask for uncensored music because I know that's a long shot. But I hope I've proved there's a lot more they could add to the game that DOESN'T involve more music OR peripherals. I also don't want better rap detection. Look at Singstar if you need a reason why.
Actually, that's a good thing to do. Look at Singstar if you want an idea of how to make the game more social. You can upload pictures and videos and song recordings. You can even EDIT THE VIDEO on the PS3 itself and change the entire UI/Theme and make YOUR OWN THEME. There's even their own Singstar Viewer on the PS3 that lets ANYONE look at the pictures, videos and preview/purchase songs. It puts the 360 App stores to shame.
There. I've had that built up for a while. It's out now.
