THE iDOLM@STER 2 Gameplay Thread

[DJStarstryker]

Second run and I'm beginning to think that Strategy posted on the Wiki is impossible. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to break into the top 20 by end of week 8 www

Unless you have good stats on the outfits, accessories, and amulets you have, you most likely won't be able to do it. Honestly, this is something you can't really expect to do after a few playthroughs under your belt due to trying to learn strategy and getting stuff to put on your girls.

Now that that's out of the way...

Those of us who put together the English im@s 2 wiki still do NOT have the PS3 version. So anything for Hyper or the Extra Episodes will not necessarily be there for a long time (if ever?), unless someone else wants to add pages for that. Treat any strategy suggestions/advice there for the normal mode.

I am hoping to put together something about unlocks and changes up in the future, based on what I can find on the Japanese wiki and such.

[mallory627]

Well I did my first playthrough....didn't win any awards...

I felt sooooooo bad for my team!!!!!!!

[BT2]

What we know is that burst only checks for raw danketsu points and that it takes 10 appeals.

From BT2 of the future to BT2 of the past: That's untrue.
A burst always takes 10 seconds and another second or so to restart with the appeal circles, thus effectively wasting more time depending on BPM.


I've also made a couple of new interesting observations, namely another BPM/ appeal one.

First lets start out with my original observation: Some songs end sooner than others.
2nd observation during a Fes: The AI stops appealing when your song is over, even if they just started bursting. They sure are polite for stopping.
3rd observation: Bursting takes around 11 seconds.


Because I'm a Visual unit user I'll be using the three 150 appeal Vi songs as examples.
First I clocked the time your final appeal chance happens for Ai LIKE HAMBURGER and MEGARE! starting from when the appeal circles start pulsating. It was around 1:34 and 1:40'ish respectively. With these values known it's easy figuring out the formula for final appealing being: (60(bpm/2))*appeals= time. We'll get 1:33.75 and 1:40.00 for both songs. Shiny Smile would take 1:45.88 with the formula.

Now back to observation 2 and 3. The AI stops appealing when your song's over and bursting takes around 11 seconds.
If you're playing a Fes and your opponent is Shadow★Mars, Hibiki using Shiny Smile, you'll know that her song takes 1:46'ish. If you're using Ai LIKE HAMBURGER your song ends at 1:34 so if you can do a burst at 1:23 you effectively stop the AI from appealing for 23(!) seconds.
If we modify the earlier formula we can make a formula for lost chances; ((appeals/2)/60)*seconds= appeals lost or ((150/2)/60)*23=28.75 appeals. For a song with 150 appeals that's around 19% scoring potential lost at best.

Also, Shiny Smile is a mere 170bpm song, whereas Hamburger is 192 even though they have the same appeal chances. We already know voltage rise is based on the amount of appeals during a song and the max appeals it possesses. Or 192/170*100-100=13% faster. What this tells us is that Hamburger gains voltage faster than SS with the same conditions and can do a burst when SS is still stuck at 170/192*100= 89% voltage.


Back to the formula ((appeals/2)/60)*seconds= appeals lost.
If we want to see how many appeal chances you lose during a burst we'll use 11 seconds (I don't have the actual value, so let's assume 11 is correct)  and we'll get the following results:
Shiny= 15.6, Megare= 16.5, Hamburger =17.6
This means that even though they have around the same scoring potential without using bursts, Hamburger loses 2 extra appeals when compared to SS because it's faster.

With the knowledge we obtained with final appeal chance time, appeals, bursting and voltage it means that songs with the same appeals and a higher bpm is more suited for Fes's but for general scoring purposes the same amount of appeals and a lower bpm is better for general scoring purposes because its relative bursting time is less, thus wasting less appeals.


Useless info:WaO loses 23.3% of scoring potential when GMW bursts at 1:19, though no AI opponent uses WaO as their song.

Code: [Select]

GO MY WAY!! 1:30.67
relations 1:41.41
Me ga Au Toki 1:40.14
Kiramekirari 1:40.00
Kosmos, Cosmos 1:41.31
Meisou Mind 1:34:74
Do-Dai 1:45.26
My Best Friend 1:31.72
Shiny Smile 1:45.88
my song 1:41.54
i 1:42.86
LMG 1:31.56
Hamburger 1:33.75
Nanairo Botan
SMOKY THRILL 1:38.63
THE IDOLM@STER 1:30.00
MEGARE! 1:40.00
WaO 1:47.78
Honey Heartbeat 1:41.41
READY!!
Kami SUMMER!!
Vampire Girl 1:42.62
L.O.B.M 1:38.82
Colorful Days 1:30.57
I Want 1:41.12
Shiny Smile 1:45.88
MEGARE! 1:40.00
Hamburger 1:33.75

[Byuusan]

i been talking to a friend and now we're both confused about revival, break, superbreaks and keeps.

this is what we have atm.

{Day 01} - Pick Song
{Day 04} - Song Released, Pick a festival (Super Break)
{Day 05} - Normal Live (Keep)
{Day 15} - National Audition/ Festival (Revival/Break)
{Day 16} - Normal Live (Keep)

Does this seem right?

[BT2]

Does this seem right?

No it doesn't.

{Week 01} - Pick Song
{Week 04, CD release week 1} - Song Released, Pick a S. Live(Super Break)
{Week 05-07} - Normal Live (Keep)
{Week 10+, CD release week 6} - Festival (Break) or if you switched songs this'll be the first day you can obtain a revive by doing a non-national audition.

Pretty sure you can't get a keep during another special condition, also pretty sure keep can only trigger when you actually still have a sales coefficient, though it is possible to get multiple ones.
Also, just because it's possible to obtain a special condition doesn't mean you'll get one.

[Setsuna]

The schedule looks something like this (Times may be wrong, I'm sort of running from memory.)

Week 1 - Pick song.

Week 3 - Single gets released - This is the first point where you can attempt to apply any modifiers. If you try a festival, you CAN attempt to super break it. Don't expect it to work, but if it does, the sales will go through the roof.

Week 4 - From here on, Lives can be performed to attempt a repeat of the sales modifier. Every successful keep extends the sales period by repeating the modifier that it was activated in. (In absolute theory, you could run a keep forever at the 1.0x multiplier, but probably not a good idea even if it did work.)

Week 8 - Sales stop. For every successful keep, an additional week is added to this.

During the sales period, ONLY keeps can be applied. Attempting to apply a revival will HALT the sales of the single that was on sale (And if you're lucky it MAY apply the revival. If you try to apply a Revival during a successful break, the reverse can happen, but the halting is a guranteed action - in short, don't unless you know what you're doing.)

Week 15+ - Single is eligible (This is NOT subject to how long the sales period is) for Revival as long as a) it is NOT the last single and b) you haven't started producing another single.

If successful, you get a second sales period, which keeps can be applied from the next week onwards.

Week 15+ - Single is eligible (This is again, not subject to how long the sales period is) for Break as long as a) it IS the last single you released and b) you haven't started producing another single.

If successful, you get a second sales period, which keeps can be applied from the next week onwards.

Super breaks are special - they can happen during the regular break, but they also (oddly enough) can happen if a festival is successfully won the week the single is released or maybe the week before, my memory's fuzzy.

The odds are low, of course, but if you pull it off, the sales multiplier is effectively 2.5x normal for that sales period. However, no other actions can be applied to it.

[BT2]

To Setsuna, song release week 10 equals CD sales week 6.
You can obtain a break 2 weeks after your sales stop if you're lucky.

[Setsuna]

To Setsuna, song release week 10 equals CD sales week 6.
You can obtain a break 2 weeks after your sales stop if you're lucky.

My times are off. (Then again I'm sort of tapping this in while writing up an assignment, so all sorts of errors are probably in play.) I'm fairly sure there's a timing error or two, but the flow looks about right.

I have seen a successful revival after 3 keeps were made, effectively making the song releases back to back. It's a poor strategy, but it was done just to prove a point.

[Byuusan]

ok i see, maybe i should really go to the source of my friend's and my arguement, which trigger superbreaks, festival or S.lives? Really i think this the only thing that we're really confused about. If i take both Setsuna and BT comment, it still conflicts on which one should trigger the break since BT say S.Lives and Set say Festivals.

[BT2]

BT say S.Lives and Set say Festivals.

Festivals trigger breaks, the final battle vs Jupiter is the last chance you can obtain a break and I've gotten it a couple of times there.
S. Lives, or quintet lives trigger Super Break.

[Setsuna]

Festivals trigger breaks, the final battle vs Jupiter is the last chance you can obtain a break and I've gotten it a couple of times there.
S. Lives, or quintet lives trigger Super Break.

I can confirm a super break CAN be triggered by a festival (on X360 anyway), since I was busy doing a chain of IA regionals, and one of them coincided with the IA regional. It then super broke by accident, resulting in it scoring about 1.3 million. (edit: it's 130*1000. Lousy Japanese numbering system) in its first week. (It was song 4.)

This resulted in me having half the IA regionals AND the IA main award before being nominated at week 41, which was amusing to say the least.

[BT2]

in its first week. (It was song 4.)

You might've done a Quintet Live in one of the 4 weeks before the release and forgot about it. People have gotten a Super Break by doing a S. Live in the 1st week only.

[Setsuna]

You might've done a Quintet Live in one of the 4 weeks before the release and forgot about it. People have gotten a Super Break by doing a S. Live in the 1st week only.

Not likely - I don't generally do quintet lives in my games. (They pay well and all, but I generally end up doing those at week 40+ since I'm usually either using paid promotion, National Audition or doing the festivals themselves for IA regionals to show up although in PS3, beating up Miku in Festivals is a good place for 40000 fans at a time.)

That's why I'm sure that a festival can do it. It may be that the IA regionals themselves (I did 3 in a chain) are classified as special. It wouldn't surprise me TOO much if they did.

[mallory627]

I heard that for the PS3 version, you can have your team do the dancing lessons in the Honey Heartbeat extend outfit.

Is that true? And if it is, how do you do it?

[TheTanStar]

I heard that for the PS3 version, you can have your team do the dancing lessons in the Honey Heartbeat extend outfit.

Is that true? And if it is, how do you do it?

For any alternate costume/outfit, it is applied in the options menu (the second section of the menu on the 360). The options go as follows:
1. Summer outfit
2. Winter outfit
3. Swimsuit
4. School (Uniform)
5. Lesson (aka Training outfit)

Therefore just change the last option until Street Hopper (In Japanese, of course) appears.