Must admit the videos shown so far do raise concerns regarding the multi ball feature in song modes. I’m guessing the idea is that during a song all band members are active hence lots of balls in play? The Buffalo stream should answer some questions.
1. How much of the game takes place outside of songs. From what I have read of the rules you don’t need to complete multiple songs to progress to wizard modes. So if the song modes are just an additional rather the primary objective maybe the multi ball heavy focus won’t be such an issue. Maybe it’s a case that on an average game you only playing one maybe two songs , with the rest of the time focused on other sub modes/objectives.
2. From reading the rules I was under the impression that any song can be stacked into a multi ball. For the le/ce this would be based on how many physical balls where locked prior to starting the song, for standard balls would be virtually locked. However when watching the short video above, it’s clear that additional balls where added to the start of the song then the two held in the guitar lock. I can see the rules working if the number of balls you lock prior to starting the song determines the balls in play. This makes sense in terms of risk reward I.e do you go for more ball locks then activate song. However if it just spits out 6 balls at the start of each song regardless that would be concerning.
3. 100% agree with other posts regarding the ball save time and the seemingly unlimited add a balls in the song mode. It came across as though the player had to actively try drain in order to end the game. Maybe not I’m not getting the complexity of the rules but from the video the game just kept spitting balls continuously into play. Even when balls had been locked in the guitar , the play didn’t return to single ball, the machine just kept shooting more from the trough. I’m sure I’m missing something as the video just did not make sense from a typical multi ball progression.
4. The rock meter is aimed at punishing players for trapping up during multi ball which hey that’s fine, force players to change play style. But don’t compensate by giving them unlimited balls in play. This doesn’t encourage playing on the fly, it just removes any skillful approach to shot making.
The only thing I can bank on is that keefer is a extremely good player and rules designer. With this knowledge I am sure that there is something I’m missing some context or nuisance that has not come across in the gameplay videos posted so far. I doubt the game will be a continuous multi ball flail. Either songs are few and far between or the song modes we have seen are been shown out of context I.e the player did a lot of work to load balls prior to commencing the song.
For myself the one major take away is that you cannot deny the atmosphere the game is creating. The light , audio, display integration is simply on another level. It really feels like a concert is going on live before your eyes. As long as the rules are implemented so that there is enough downtime in single ball play to build up to these big song multi ball moments I think it will all work well.