Epic Freddy ESL 2 Runs

[bigfish]

A space for stats and stories on Freddies ESL2 runs. Tonight may have been the first performed by random Freddies. Tonight's line up.....

Vox - bigfish
Guitar - Tackhead 311
Drums - Funkdiggity
Bass - Eric1963

Just to make things interesting Funk was playing drums on a 19" black and white TV. That is not a joke. No, seriously. I'm sure there was a reason behind it, but i really don't know.

Band Gold Stars = 32
Vox FC = 13
Guitar FC = 1
Drums FC = 6
Bass FC = 13
Beers drank by vocalist = 9
First Fail #33 American Woman due to controller issues.

Ok, so with Bladder of Steel off the table we can focus on having more fun. Now those FC stats may look a little light. What I didn't mention is that is for the first 47 songs. During #47 Alive, Funk was disconnected. Just past the half way mark. So all is lost, right? Wrong.

What I didn't know is that you can continue without the lost player! Although there are some side effects:

1)You will get the player disconnect message at the beginning of every song and that players icon will stay at the bottom of the crowd meter, but you will not fail from them not being there.

2) Your crowd meter starts at about the top of the yellow for every song, and can not get any higher. Huge disadvantage.

3) You will not hear the track of the missing player. Their avatar is still on screen, but they aren't even playing their instrument. Funk's avatar, spun in his chair and waived his arms in the air for 38 songs. The drum solo on Spoonman was especially hysterical, since the camera was on him the whole time.

4) You are still judged and scored as a 4 peice. So 4 and 3 stars are the norm. and some 2 stars toward the end.

5) Luckily unison OD phrases will only require the remaining players to hit it. Thank god!

So we decided to play it out and it was truly epic!

First hurdle was Shackler's Revenge. equally tough on Bass and Guitar for the first 20% of the song. We attempted this one at least half a dozen times. The vox OD won't come into play until the song gets easier for the rest. Kudos for toughing it out guys. I thought for a second we might have to give it up! On the plus side I can now sing this one flawlessly.

Smooth sailing from there with a couple minor saves here and there. Not to mention me failing Rob the Prez-O-Dent twice!

Last 4 songs
Battery - Peice of cake. You'd think we wrote the friggin thing.

Visions - Made it on our 3rd attempt. And let me say these guys played it like i have never seen them before. The tough part is you really have to work out a plan for OD usage when you are starting at disadvantage with the crowd meter. I was skeptical we would pass this. 1st try was 47%. 2nd try was 92%.

Panic Attack - Passed in 2 tries. Eric crushed this on Bass. We had a plan all worked out and because of my lack of knowledge of the vocal OD activation lanes, i botched the deployment. Eric pulled us through the last 40% of the song when i had no chance to activate due to the percussion section. Awesome dude.

Painkiller - Passed in 4 tries. After the solo starts it's all percussion for the singer. Also there are no OD phrases for the bassist during the solo. I still think BlackCherry played it on the 4th run, but i'm not gonna press the issue. These guys rocked!

Here is a tip on how we did this on the last 3 songs. We all hoarded OD to full meters. Or at least as long as we could before deploying. In Visions they would use their OD to save themselves from failure, but not each other. If one failed I would let the crowd meter go down as far as possible, to give that player a short break, and also let the song play out before bringing them back. This would still leave me with a half a meter and opportunity to build it again. This may be a really good strategy for full band play as well.

On Panic Attack and Painkiller, everyone hoards. The vocalist deploys at the last place before the solo. Then the guitarist deploys to save himself. The Bassist with full OD can let him fail twice and bring him back in after a short delay. This will get you much further through the song if you are struggling to keep that crowd meter up. Worked like a charm.

Kudos to both you guys. Was an awesome run. Enjoy your shiny platinum medalllions!


One thing of note i forgot to mention. 84 song setlist plus probably a dozen or more retries.... right around 100 songs.
# of shaky arrows = 0

[funkdiggity]

Jun 29, 2009 2:31:40 GMT -5 bigfish said:

Just to make things interesting Funk was playing drums on a 19" black and white TV. That is not a joke. No, seriously. I'm sure there was a reason behind it, but i really don't know.

My family had a lot going on today, and I didn't want to be in their way, so I switched my entire setup over to a different room/tv. im pretty dense with anything even remotely electronic, so i wasn't able to get all the wires right. i found a way to make the ps picture in color, but with no sound, or in black and white with audio. probably could've found the middle ground if id mixed and matched wires some more, but i was already holding you guys up so i opted to just play in black and white. There. Now you know it really wasnt that much of an issue, we all know which note lanes match up with which drum pad/guitar button, right?

Adding to the ridiculousness of this esl run, i would like to point out that i was playing on a drum set with two pads that began to go bad on me early on, getting progressively worse throughout the set. obviously, the failure due to a controller issue was all on me. At one point i requested a break so i could rotate my pads (like rotating your tires, but with drums) hoping that a different set up would improve my situation. As things turned out, it didn't really matter lol.

[dcnjack]

Jun 29, 2009 2:31:40 GMT -5 bigfish said:

Funk's avatar, spun in his chair and waived his arms in the air for 38 songs. The drum solo on Spoonman was especially hysterical, since the camera was on him the whole time.

This thought made me laugh out loud for several seconds. I have no idea why.

And no shaky arrows?!!! You lucky bastard.

[tackhead311]

that was freaking epic ,erock was playing out of his mind and fish was killer. songs72 to 79 i was cramping in my legs and hands. i play standing up so it was a long time .i was looking at my chord hand being all lazy just not moving fast enough. i started to get my doubts because of my playing. during steely dan i was so impressed with erocks playing i was like ok tuff it out deek. these guys got some problems as you then came battery and we blew thru that so easy. then visions i don't know what happened but it looked slow and the chart made sense that i got a times 4 thru the hammer on run in the beginning and erock and i hit every unison bonus. visions i did have a lil help BC would tell me a- if e was out b-when his od was over c- when some hit the red so i could launch. ok panic attack i was freaking impressed we destroyed the the 1st 78 %the the solo happened with no od fail . then next attempt erock decides fuck dream theater and there crazy 6 string bassist and does the whole song with no od just one deploy to save me in the solo. that was the shit right there!!! painkiller got the plan it was easy and i just got thru the endless with 4 then 3 of some of the greatest rockbanders and people i know!! kudos to you guys you rock. i did play pain kill but BC beat boxed both of the drum solos for me lol!!!


thank funk erock and bigfish we going to disneyland and i am getting us ripped wooooo

ona side note that was the first time i ever seen funk get lower then a 95 on a drum solo ha

[eric_1963]

Let me start this by saying, I have turned down many offers to do the ESL. not because I didn't want to or not having time. I did non believe that I would get through Visions period.. I knew I would not get thru it by myself.. now I believe I can. It may take quite a few attempts but I can do it.. I accepted to do it this time because I had faith in my bandmates and I still wasn't sure if I could hold up on my end..

MY heart dropped when funk disconnected.. I did have the belief that we would be able to continue on but like anything else in tour mode you don't get that player back..

When I get some time I will write some guidelines on doing the Esl online to minimize the risk of being disconnected..

The part I love about this is we do have to work together to get through or to get a great score .. it is All about the teamwork and to me that is Camp Freddies strength..


I think the next platinum I get will be Vox cuz Bigfish made it look so easy.. The drums will take me a couple of years but I can get there if i ever put the guitar controller down.. plus trying to play with a guitar hero set on rockband isn't doing me any good..

Funk we will get you a platinum one way or another even If I gotta fly over and help ya get it done.. no worries..

A big Thanks to Tackhead for bringing us all together and rockin those solo's !!

And also thanks to BC for helping and keeping track of our insaness...

Camp Freddy rock's the best

Platinum Erock out

[jesse1367]

I did The ESL on every inst. by myself when RB2 came out and a few months later, my PS3 died so there went my plat. status.
i got another PS3(Thank god for Best Buy's two year product replacement) and i won't take the 6 1/2 hours to play that crap again.

[funkdiggity]

I did an esl run tonight, here's the rundown:

The lineup was me, on drums. Also Ron's mom, cheering me on.

Ok, so this was my fourth attempt at an esl. I finished one on my own a few months ago, but I didn't get the steel bladder trophy and when I switched hard drives on my ps3 I lost access to that character, so I'd been wanting to take another stab at the esl for awhile. I also tried it a couple more times with online bands, one of which you can read about on this very thread. Both times ended badly for me. So I said "enough of this team work shit, I'm going it alone, I hate all of my friends anyway. Bunch of slovenly gadabouts and louts. Grrr, I'm not a people person. I'm a curmudgeon."

I had one false start four songs in when my son realized he'd left the house without his keys and I had to stop and let him back in the house. That's what you get for having family members, my friends. Shitty Rock Band experiences. Take my advice and never fall in love with anyone or have children. Your scores will be way better, believe me. Anyway, since the point of this evening was to get the steel bladder trophy I went ahead and restarted after my kid left.

Here's my star rundown:
Total Stars: 407 out of 420
Number of golds: 29
Number of 5 stars:44
The rest were four stars, and a couple of three stars.

I didn't bother keeping track of fc's and note percentages. My drum set has started doing this thing where it registers all my hits but it'll sometimes register extra hits too. I had about nine billion 100%'s on this esl, but hardly any of them were true fc's. This issue was worse on some songs than others. Sometimes it didn't effect me at all. Sometimes it cost me a note or two. It actually got so bad on That's What You Get and Jagged Gorgous Winter that I couldn't even get five stars, which any drummer will tell you is pretty ridiculous. Finally out of desperation I switched to a spare set of drum sticks that I never use because they're a lot heavier than I like. For whatever reason this really minimized the glitch. It wasn't completely gone, but it was rare that it stopped my note streak more than once a song. I got quite a few golds after doing this, and I even managed to get gold on Give It All, which I hadn't done before tonight.

Mostly I drummed the songs as I normally would. I did shamelessly cheat/hoard overdrive throughout much of Ramblin Man, Bad Reputation, and Let There Be Rock, because those tracks wear my right arm out, and I wanted to save some strength for the last stretch of songs. Also like any sane person who managed to get through 80 something songs without failing out, I saved od on Visions and Panic Attack for the rough patches.

I had one close call in Panic Attack where I fired od one activation earlier than i meant too, ran out way too soon, panicked about running out, froze up, and nearly failed because of it. It was nothing but dumb luck that I didn't blow the whole thing right there, really.

So I finished, got my platinum medallion back, got the steel bladder trophy, and for the first, and probably only time, I got all the trophies you can get in a video game. I really wasn't sure I could do it. On a good day, when I'm totally rested and relaxed, I can beat any of the disc songs. But obviously playing drums on something like Visions or Battery when you're fresh is very different from playing them 80 something songs into an 84 song set.

Eventually I'd like to try this on bass, guitar, or vocals, but I don't see it happening anytime soon :

[eric_1963]

That's awesome dude.. It is quite a feat to accomplish.. It does take endurance and shear willpower to get through. and I think doing it alone is harder to, no one to save ya if you need it..
Great Job Master Funk!!!

[tackhead311]

wtg master funk and my mom

[funkdiggity]

Um, ok. So I did another one tonight. This was me on vocals.

Here's my stats:
358/420
Number of fc's: 4
Number of golds: 10
Number of 5 stars: 22
Everything else was 4's and 3's. But more 4's. Truly
Number of meals cooked in between songs: 2
Number of pieces of fried chicken ate between songs: 5

Anyway, there's no big epic story here. I just sat down and did it. Since I already had my precious, precious steel bladder trophy, I totally took advantage of the fact that I could pause the game, which made this pretty easy. Like I said above, I made myself dinner, and made a snack for my daughter a little later on.

Oh, and I fc'ed Shackler's Revenge....wait, no I didn't. I failed it three times, then passed it with three stars and spent half the song in the red. I actually made it to Alive before failing at all, which is better than I expected myself to do. I also failed a few times on Rob The Prezodent before figuring out that I could do the singing parts normally without making a goofy awesome voice like the real singer does.

So even though I did this, I'll be the first to admit I'm not a very good singer. I struggled through quite a few of these songs, and even with the ones I did well on, I'm sure a more competent singer could annihilate my scores. I really just did this because I wanted an excuse to sing more. Its dumb that I spent so much money on this game, and an entire 1/4 of the gameplay barely gets touched by me. So now I can start to rectify that.

That's pretty much it. After the last esl I made a goal to get platinum on vocals and bass by the end of the summer. Vocals are down, now I have a little over a month to get Visions down on bass. It's on!!!

[icculus1097]

We made a pretty epic run today in The Bath of Khan. 4 players, no glitches!!!! The lineup was:

Guitar - Me
Drums - Maarten
Vocals - Luxe
Bass - Lebanion

Out of the 84 songs, we gold-starred 80, with a final star total of 419/420 (damn you Visions!). The songs we didn't gold-star were Peace Sells, Shoulder to the Plow, Visions, and Painkiller. We had 4 full-band FC's, and, if it wasn't for me, we would have gotten the Bladder of Steel. I failed out during the Painkiller solo because my fingers were too tired to do what they should. Yes, we were literally 2 minutes from the BoS trophy and I screwed it up. Talk about FAIL! In reality, I should have been thinking and saved star power, but I really never fail out of that song, so it didn't cross my mind.

Anyway, we really tore it up and had no problems in terms of glitching and disconnects. The key for us was making sure that all other computers were off during the run. It went incredibly smoothly, and now THE, BATH, and OF all have plat icons! Now we just need KHAN to get his, and we'll be all good!

[tackhead311]

awesome job guys