Something I wrote when my internet died.
Note. values mentioned below are mostly exagerated or unconfirmed but should still give a decent view on why something is or isn't awful.
Though unscientific it should still shed a new light on certain aspects people tend to forget.
Scoring and me
iM@S2's scoring system is needlessly complicated and badly worked out. NBGI programmers in charge of it should be sacked.
There are many songs one can select in the game, though it might seem that it doesn't matter which one one should select, it's in fact wrong.
There's a great difference in scoring potential between songs with a high bpm and songs with a low bpm.
Songs with a high bpm give less score and voltage, but has more appeal chances when compared to a song with a low bpm.
NBGI poorly thought up a way to counterbalance the difference between the amount of appeal chances and scoring;
Combos and bursting1
Songs with a bpm of 120 earn 1.5 times the amount of points a 180bpm song gets. NBGI doesn't use exact differences as modifiers but uses some other vague value.
While this sounds fair on paper; 150 chances to appeal with a 1 multiplier vs 100 x 1.5 multiplier it doesn't because NBGI forgot to factor 2 elements in, namely combo bonuses and burst appeals.
Because the combo bonus is calculated as combo+5, having a longer combo will give more points, in the long run it'll be a difference of a few thousand points.
The biggest problem however's burst appealing. Bursting score is based on a special stat called "danketsu"(and nothing else!) times the stat multipliers x2 times character based bursts.
The way danketsu can be acquired is mentioned in an earlier post.
The biggest problem is that because bursting eats up approx 10 appeal chances AND because danketsu doesn't get offsetted by the low bpm bonus multiplier, you'll basically be spending 1.5 times more time to get the same amount of score as a faster bpm song.
Memory appealing and bursting2
For dual route users who use a special charm, there's nothing more pointless than memory appeals outside of fes's with the exception of bumping up your multiplier after a burst.
Using a memory appeal will give a good amount of points but it eats up 6 or so appeal chances after your initial usage and gives out a mediocre amount of points during those missed chances. Not only do you lose the chance to raise your combo bonus with 6 but you've missed out 6 chances to get more score by using your main stat.
Characters with a 6/2/2 burst, Chihaya and Hibiki, set your multipliers to 0.9 0.9 1.3
Using a secondary stat to raise your main stat back from 0.9 to 1.1 takes 0.2/0.036 or approx 6 appeals. Using a memory appeal not only gives you a good amount of points initially but also sets your main and sub stat back to 1.1
Though it's also usable on Miki with 5/3/2, you'd be losing out a 3x multiplied burst chance so Miki isn't really recommended anyways.
I'll laugh at you if you use a char with a 4/3/3 burst, not only won't they need the mem appeal because they'd be faster off doing 3 regular secondary appeals, you'd be losing out tons of points on bursts.
You're a fool if you burst with anyone other than Chihaya, Hibiki or Miki and the latter's already debatable. Mami sucks too if you can have Hibiki instead.
Multipliers.
Assuming one uses a dual appeal route, one'd use approx 0.08 secondary stat multiplier to bump up main's with 0. 36, but is it really worth it?
CaelK already showed us that one'd need approx 32% of a song to max out one voltage bar.
What this tells us is that assuming one bursts immediately, one needs to win back the difference between the scores gained from secondary and the gained difference with main.
Or, assuming appal chances= 0.85x bpm (this is a rough number, don't take it too seriously) we'll see that a 180bpm has 153 appeal chances and a 120bpm 102.
Again, these values aren't correct but are a quick mock-up for easier calculations.
It takes 14 secondary appeals to get main to 1.5
For slower songs that mean they need to spend 14 out of 120*0.32 or 38-14(38 in incorrect but let's use this number because I didn't feel like looking for the actual one), meaning they have 24 appeals left to win back the lost stats.
For faster songs this means 180*0.32 or 58'ish to get a full bar. 58-14=44 appeals to win back te difference.
How much you'll need to break even depends on the difference between your main and secondary stat; assuming your main's on 250 and secondary on 90, after one secondary appeal you'll bump the main multiplier with approx 0.036. In case of 250 it means you gain 250*0.036 or 9 points per appeal. This means you win back the 160 in 18 appeals (160/9).
For a 180bpm song this means that you'll win back the costs after 18 appeals, thus leaving you with 26 appeals with 9 profit.
For a 120 bpm song assume you have the same stats, but you get the 1.5 multiplier. This means you'll spend 18 appeals out of 24 to break even, thus giving you a profit
of 13.5 for 6 appeals.
Doing more secondary appeals to bump up main should produce similar results, faster good, slower bad but with far greater value differences.
When wanting to burst more often one needs to determine the hotspot between secondaty and main, cost and profit.
Tldr; faster songs have better scoring potential than slower ones.
Bursting, the early weeks.
Because you start out the game with 20 danketsu, one doesn't need to be a rocketscientist to notice it sucks early in the game.
For people who're using specialised dual route gear it means that bursting early on in the game's just retarded.
Don't burst because I've seen many people doing bursts that give less score with the 3 multiplier than just using their main appeal on yt and livestreams.
For a quick reference, assuming one wants to break the charts by getting in the top 20 asap, one has approx 33 danketsu in week 3.
Bursting with 33x 3 would be stupid if your main stat gives 200 with a 1.5 multiplier when using a slower song.
In week 6 you shouldnt've shortened the distance between the 2 by a whole lot, you'd have approx 45-50 danketsu by then and it should give 150 at most with the highest multiplier..
Because bursting also lowers your multipliers not only do you lose out on points, you also will be killing your multiplier.
Many people seem to have a hard time getting 30k only because they burst.
Assuming one uses up their slow songs asap, there's even less reason to burst!
Only burst near the end of the song!
