Suggestions for Rocksmith

By Jesse Morgan

After trying to contact Ubisoft to provide them with feedback on Rocksmith (and receiving little more than an automated response,) I figured I might as well put my feedback here for all the good it’ll do. So here’s a list of things that I think they could improve.

  1. Why do I have to press 3 buttons to get into the game? Press A, Press Start, Press A… come on, I got 10 minutes to get my fix, and it takes 2 minutes to load up and get to a song.
  2. Consistent UI- press start, press A, make some noise- choose one and stick with it.
  3. The ability to navigate the menu with the guitar: pluck red open to select, purple open to go back. slide to scroll left or right (remember us lefties though).
  4. After finishing a song, the ability go back to the library, centered on the song you just played.
  5. After finishing a song, riff repeating.
  6. More lives/ easier method to reselect that riff.
  7. You say intonation is important, but provide no way to check intonation. Give us a way to check it.
  8. A mode where you can use the controller to rewind or fast forward, even use the left and right bumpers to skip sections of the song.
  9. The ability to string a couple of sections together for riff repeater.
  10. More games- “Name that Tone” might be a good one for teaching note recognition.
  11. Remember, most users are playing with their guitars, not their controllers- I good portion of them are using their toes to operate the controller. Plan accordingly.
  12. $3/song? That’s a bit steep. Give me a discount for buying in bulk at least. How about a discount if you buy all new songs at once?
  13. “Favorite songs” option in the main menu, as well as a “recently played”.
  14. When doing technique challenges and such, after I see the video the first time, I don’t care to see it a second time, ESPECIALLY if it means another load screen.
  15. Speaking of loading, restarting in the middle or even near the end of a song is instantaneous, but after finishing a song and hitting “play again” it loads… that seems silly. I don’t give a crap about your menu, keep that song in memory if it means no load time.

I’m sure I’ll have more as I continue to play the game.

Update (20111201)

I have a couple more I’d like to add to the list:

  1. Ghost mode- Show the full note patterns, but at 30% opacity. If you play a section correctly, your mastery is adjusted accordingly.
  2. Assessment mode- If I know a song 90% of the way already, it’s infuriating waiting for Rocksmith to “catch up” to my knowledge. This was a major turnoff for an excellent guitar player that I showed the game to. One note every three seconds for someone who knows the song by heart? (I hadn’t played the song yet myself.)
  3. Riff repeater, Riff repeater, play full song, continue journey, songs, song x, riff repeater. The bolded sections shouldn’t be required- I should be able to go from the finished song back to the riff repeater without all that other crap. Actually, Riff repeater after any finished rehearsal should be available.
  4. Saved playlists- I’d like to be able to select several songs and queue them up so I can play them back to back without it being an event. I’d also like to save that queue for use later.
  5. Rehease any song for an event- I see 4 songs for an event, 1 is qualified, 3 are not. I’d like to rehease those three. It should be trivial to navigate and select them- get a cursor on that list and let me select any of them right from the main menu.
  6. Rehearsal Reversal – ever screw up part of a song and be upset about it? Imagine being able to use the controller to reverse the music like a tape player.
  7. Better communication- I just downloaded a 4 meg update and have no idea why. Did it fix something? Communicate that info- I’m a big boy, I can take it. Gimme technical details.
  8. Open Tuner mode – Some times I just want to mess with my tuning. The current setup is very restrictive.

Again, great game, but I’d like to see some of these warts removed and make it an exceptional game.

Update (20111203)

Add to the list:

  1. When you finish a song, show your score, your last score, and highscore. Gimme some stats man, show me that I improved!