Rock Band 4 Just Dropped A Major Update, Here's What It Does

Harmonix is still updating the music-rhythm experience provided in Rock Band 4 for the home consoles. The latest update adds some major new changes that have rolled out for gamers still putting in some time and play sessions with the title.

Over on the official Harmonix website the changelog for the update was revealed, including some new changes to the online portion of Rock Band 4. The developers promised a big overhaul update for early 2018 and that included adding the all new Online Quickplay option, which allows players to quickly add customizable lobbies where you can easily start up a game and invite friends or strangers into the fold.

Additionally, Harmonix added the option for gamers to join in on sessions via invite. So, you can have your favorite buddy or longtime rival hop into a game via invite. Alternatively, you can setup the private or public games and change the length of the sessions along with what songs will be played through the playlist. Hosts also have the ability to set preferences based on player stats, skill level and whether or not they own certain songs. It's a great way to further refine the matchmaking process so that you can match up and play with the exact kind of players that best suit your playing preferences. There are a lot of quality of life upgrades added to make the gameplay experience more open and versatile for gamers when it comes to the multiplayer online mode, such as being able to save the settings for a session and having those settings stay as the default for the next time you log into the game.

If you're waiting in a session for a song to finish while in the Green Room, you can back out mid-song without having to wait for the song to finish. This is a neat little feature in Rock Band 4 so that players aren't beholden to sticking around to see a set finish out if they don't want to.

Another new feature is that text-based messaging is now present. So if you're not keen on chatting with people via voice-chat you can use the text messenger to communicate in a room without even joining a party.

But it's not all just ease of use and better access to multiplayer in Rock Band 4. Harmonix also took some time out to improve the quality of the game's presentation by upping the character animations in the game, along with improving the game's surround sound and adding an all new song filter for the Challenge songs.

The trill and tremolo lanes have also been fixed up along with a visual bug for the guitar and bass.

To help newbies get going, Harmonix also added some new loading screen background tips so that gamers can hit the ground running when they boot up Rock Band 4.

The rest of the post goes through setting up the all new Sessions mode, where you can create and customize the kind of Session you want to start and how you want to play through the mode with other players who join in on the fun. The big new update has gone live for Rock Band 4, so you can play with the new features right now.