Yep, Those MM Encores Really DO Suck! Got My First One Last Night. . . | Forums

[Jokco]

I've actually grown to love the master mode encores, surprisingly. It has helped me remember songs, as attempting to play them whether I'm prepared or not helps me single out the sections I need to work on. And when memory fails, I say forget the score and just jam, lol. Occasionally, trying to stay in key jamming will lead me to what I need to be playing. The only time I really feel frustrated anymore is when they throw a song at me I've not played in well, months, or songs that are still difficult even with the notes. It would make more sense to me if master mode encores had some kind of bar for accuracy, as well as score.

[strick95]

I got hit with Plug in Baby by Muse for my second MM encore, I gimped my way through it. Next Girl was my first. I do think we have the capacity to commit more than twenty songs to memory, but its like anything else you can't do them all at the same time or they all get lost.

[Ezios_Axe]

This topic is making me think it was a mistake to start mastering stuff without having unlocked all of the hidden songs first.

[pick__pocket]

This topic is making me think it was a mistake to start mastering stuff without having unlocked all of the hidden songs first.

Unfortunately this is probably true. I am in the same boat, I still don't have Star Bangled Banner unlocked.
I am in the similar situation Seattle with about 170+ mastered arrangements, so I think I am pretty much hosed.
I have tried a few events again recently, but I battle the PS3 freeze bugs, swap out songs where the event freezes and then finally get an MM encore I can't remember.
Even if I do remember the MM encore song how am I supposed to remember which one was Combo or Combo2?

One other suggestion I would add to possible changes in the MM encore paradigm is that the game should give you an MM encore using the last (or near to last) arrangement that you mastered. This would be more fair than the current seemingly random selection process, because at least there would be some reasonable expectation of still having the song in your memory and be able to play it off the top of your head.

One trick I have tried is pausing the game once the MM encore is shown.
I then go online find a youtube video of the arrangement and practice it to the video in order to refresh my memory of the basic arrangement and chord progressions, riffs etc.
After that, I restart the game and try to play the song from ( my recently refreshed) memory.
I think you need 90% on the MM Encore to get the double encore. Even after I pulled this off (once!), the game still didn't unlock SSB for me.
I have a suspicion that the game developers thought of my "strategy" ahead of time and cancel out your efforts if you pause the game in the middle of an event.
This is the only explanation I can come up with.
If anyone else has either tried this trick ("cheat?") and had success (or similar failure), I'd like to hear about it.
If I ever want to play SSB, I'll probably have to start a new profile (ugh!). I think this is what a lot of folks have done to unlock all the bonus songs.

[strick95]

Unfortunately this is probably true. I am in the same boat, I still don't have Star Bangled Banner unlocked.
I am in the similar situation Seattle with about 170+ mastered arrangements, so I think I am pretty much hosed.
I have tried a few events again recently, but I battle the PS3 freeze bugs, swap out songs where the event freezes and then finally get an MM encore I can't remember.
Even if I do remember the MM encore song how am I supposed to remember which one was Combo or Combo2?.

I actually started a new profile to unlock all the songs after I had a good handle on most of them. I had my original profile up to eleven when I started over and was getting the MM encores, ofcourse I couldn't do well enough on the fly to get a double encore. So I created a new profile and played events just above the needed level. I had everything unlocked around level 6. Then I started focusing on "mastering" songs. Im back up to ten again at this point. My PS3 hasn't froze since the patch a few months back, but I haven't purchased any dlc since the Judas Priest pack. I plan to do so just haven't yet.

[Ezios_Axe]

This is a real shame. It's like being penalized for getting better. I only have about a dozen arrangements in MM but there's no way I am unlocking SSB now. I wish I could just buy the thing as DLC. Either that or I have to start all over. I am sure I could tear through and level back up again but it is annoying.

[pick__pocket]

This is a real shame. It's like being penalized for getting better. I only have about a dozen arrangements in MM but there's no way I am unlocking SSB now. I wish I could just buy the thing as DLC. Either that or I have to start all over. I am sure I could tear through and level back up again but it is annoying.

If you only have a dozen or so arrangements mastered maybe all hope is not lost. One strategy for you to consider is the following, 1) don't master any more songs. 2) Learn the 12 you already have mastered by playing them in master mode until you get them up to about 90%+ each. You mastered them, so you can obviously play them quite well.
Then go back to events, maybe add an extra song to the event to make sure you reach the event points quota for getting an encore and then you should get one of your 12 reheased songs as the MM encore and hopefully pull off the double encore and unlock SSB. It will be a bit of work, but I think you will feel pretty good having really learned 12 songs.
After this you can make your own event using a selection of your favorite songs from the 12 you have mastered and learned and do your first master mode event. New Trophy!

[Ezios_Axe]

Good points. I am truly torn between doing this and just starting over as you can see from the thread I just started. I want to learn the songs long term but I don't have the practice time to do all of them over and over enough to learn all of them or maybe I am selling my memory short.

[GuitarNub]

I would love to see a line item in the event play list showing you the possible 2 encore songs. This only makes sense as a band would never play an encore song that the guitarist couldn't remember. They'd be like, "okay guys if we decide to do an encore we might do song 1 and song 2."

[JTCoop]

I do think we have the capacity to commit more than twenty songs to memory, but its like anything else you can't do them all at the same time or they all get lost

Right. Also, there's a practical time issue. I can only rehearse so many songs in a night. I can't run through 12 - let alone 180 - arrangements in a night plus work on new stuff. Scientists say we could use a lot more of our brains than we do, but I'm standing by my point that even professional touring musicians rarely play more than a dozen or so songs from memory in a night. I think Metallica plays, what?, 12 songs exactly in concert? And several of those they've been playing since 1990. In 20 years, I could probably have Next Girl pretty well burned into my brain!

This is a real shame. It's like being penalized for getting better. I only have about a dozen arrangements in MM but there's no way I am unlocking SSB now. I wish I could just buy the thing as DLC. Either that or I have to start all over. I am sure I could tear through and level back up again but it is annoying.

I think it's more like we get penalized for not cheating or gaming the game. I view this whole thing as an unintended consequence - something nobody at Ubisoft anticipated working out the way it did - and there's no reason they should have anticipated it. The secret squirrel songs were intended to be a "prize" for reaching a certain level of accomplishment during events. As it happens, the algorithm that triggers the prize can also make it nearly impossible to do once we have mastered more than a couple of songs. A pretty simple tweak to the software could easily eliminate the problem. Meanwhile, there are ways around it. But, I'm really not convinced that it's really a bg deal. A lot of guys on here have said that they don't even care much about the songs they unlocked.

I would love to see a line item in the event play list showing you the possible 2 encore songs. This only makes sense as a band would never play an encore song that the guitarist couldn't remember. They'd be like, "okay guys if we decide to do an encore we might do song 1 and song 2."

Absolutely! (Quite often in days of yore, one of those songs would be a reprise of something they had played previously THAT NIGHT! Literally, an encore - a replay of a crowd favorite. Not suggesting that for RS. Just driving home the point that a band isn't going to pick a song they haven't played for 6 months to do for an encore.)