THE iDOLM@STER 2 Gameplay Thread

[Himitsu]

Honestly, i never noticed something like that, mostly because it simply doesn't matter. If you are not playing hyper mode, the game is really easy once you know how to do it and have the right items (most importantly, the item that lowers the decrease rate when using a certain appeal type). You can get the necessary stuff in your first playthrough if you know where to look for it, as they are rewards for "winning" an area iirc, you just need to win the right areas. From there on, with the right strategy, getting the true end is really easy, regardless of the idols, songs and even costume you are using.

Well, I agree that it is insignificant for completing the game and I'd argue that even getting all S on hyper is pretty easy once you know what you're doing (unless you get unlucky and never trigger a status).
But I am someone that likes to try to optimize games beyond the goals the game itself sets, so with that kind of mindset it is hard to comprehend why they would give some idols such an obvious advantage. Like the different kinds of bursts are more ambiguous, so even if one turns out to be stronger than another you have to figure that out first, but simply giving some idols higher stats with no compensation, not even an ambiguous one?
I guess in the end I don't have to understand it, maybe Chihaya is just the waifu of one of the game designers and he also happens to REALLY hate Yayoi.

On another note, does anyone know if it's ever worth using your tertiary appeal to increase the multiplier on your secondary stat? Like say your primary stat is vocal, and your secondary stat visual is pretty high aswell, would it be worth using some dance appeals at the beginning to get a higher visual multiplier while you're using visual to boost your vocal? And if so at what point would it be worth?
Or maybe mroe general did anyone do some hard-numberchrunching for this game?

[Naryoril]

Sorry, it has been years since i played im@s 2 and i don't remember the details, and what i remember i'm not sure if i'm confusing parts of it with OfA. But if i remember correctly, by the time your visual appeal multiplier gets too low, you are ready for a burst, which resets the multipliers, but i'm really not sure about that.

I haven't seen any real dissection of the im@s 2 scoring system though, i only did it for platinum stars.

I guess you know this website, right?
http://imas2.wota.info/

[Himitsu]

Yeah, I've been using that site, but for score tactics I only found basic information (FC, get the multiplier for your mainstat to 1.5 and profit), which admittedly is enough to get the bulk of the possible points, but I'm kinda interested in what perfectly optimal play would look like.
Maybe I'm gonna play around with it a bit myself, but I'm probably too retarded to get a useful result out of that.

[TheTanStar]

The typical scoring strategy is to focus purely on 2 stats, (e.g. Vocal/Dance) with a character that has a burst for the 3rd stat. So for my example, Miki is a good character for Visual burst. Burst scoring is based on your danketsu value (hidden within the game). If I recall correctly, the optimal scoring strategy outside of burst is to boost the main stat to 1.5 (Dance, in this case) by appealing with the first stat (Vocal). Build the multiplier back to 1.5 after it hits 1.45 to maintain maximum burst value. Also, with the meter building reporter, you can get 3 bursts in 1 song (assuming 150 appeals).

[Himitsu]

Well in most cases that's certainly the best. (though in my case I build the primary stat multiplier back up when it's at 1.46 since from 1.45 it usually goes to 1.49) But if you do a lot of lessons and your secondary stat is also very high I'm not sure if it may be worth building it up just a little bit. Maybe I'm just stupid for thinking that, not sure.

I didn't actually realize you could get 3 bursts with the reporter. Does it require extra memory appeals or could you do it in a song with less than 150 appeals by using extra memory?

Oh also I just remembered something I was curious about: In the begginers guide on the wiki http://imas2.wota.info/strategy/beginners-guide it says for your third and fourth song "choose a personal song of one of the members of the unit and, if possible, one which does not match your specialisation." and I don't understand why you would prefer a song that does not match your specialisation. Any ideas?

[Naryoril]

The typical scoring strategy is to focus purely on 2 stats, (e.g. Vocal/Dance) with a character that has a burst for the 3rd stat. So for my example, Miki is a good character for Visual burst. Burst scoring is based on your danketsu value (hidden within the game).

Ah right, the burst score depends on danketsu, that was the piece i was missing to make sense of what i was remembering. Let's say you focus on visual, then your secondary stat is dance (the one to the left of your focus), and you dump vocal (the one to the right of your focus). At the beginning of a song, you use your secondary appeal to boost the multiplier of your primary appeal to 1.5, and then you use your primary appeal a few times until it drops to 1.46 or 1.45, and then use your secondary appeal once to get the primary multiplier back to 1.5.

Iirc i kept using the primary appeal for a bit when a burst was coming up without raising the multiplier again. When the burst is ready, use it, with an idol with as many appeals in your dumped stat and as few appeals in your secondary stat as possible. The reason for this is, that the score only depends on the multiplier and danketsu, the fact that you dumped the third stat doesn't matter at all. By that time the multiplier for the dumped appeal will definitely be maxed (and doubled during the burst), and the multiplier of your secondary stat will be really low. If your dumped stat is vocal, then Chihaya is the best idol to burst, Miki for visual and Hibiki for dance.

After the the burst, your mulitpliers will be in a bad spot. For example for Chihaya (PS3 version) they will be 0.9 dance, 1.0 visual and 1.2 vocal. So your secondary stat is already quite low, and the dumped stat you are not going to use anway is already at 1.2. If you use a memory appeal right off the bat after a burst, you reset all the multipliers to 1.1, so you can raise dance and visual, and the loss in vocal doesn't matter at all (it will be 1.5 anway by the time you burst again).

Oh also I just remembered something I was curious about: In the begginers guide on the wiki http://imas2.wota.info/strategy/beginners-guide it says for your third and fourth song "choose a personal song of one of the members of the unit and, if possible, one which does not match your specialisation." and I don't understand why you would prefer a song that does not match your specialisation. Any ideas?

Iirc every girl has exactly one personal song, but not every of these songs matches the stat you are focusing on. What the guide is saying, is to save the song which matches your focus stat for last. Of course, if 2 or even all 3 songs match, you can use them earlier. But to be honest, it's not necessary to use these songs. Iirc the only advantage of using the special song is that you have a higher chance to get a break and such.

As for building up stats, iirc i did lessons on my primary stat until image level 10 or 11, then switched to my secondary stat until the image level is at least 14 on normal (since you need that to get an A ranking after the playthrough), and never did a lesson for the third stat, since i never used it anyway.

[Himitsu]

Iirc i kept using the primary appeal for a bit when a burst was coming up without raising the multiplier again.

Man I have no idea why I didn't think much about this earlier, with some simple testing it really doesnt seem worth keeping the multiplier at 1.5 for the burst. Even with maximum unity of 499 the loss at a multiplier of 1.46 with Chihayas burst would be 9*499-8,76*499 = 119,76 Points lost, which would in most cases be less than what you gain for using an extra Visual appeal. (assuming your primary stat is visual of course)
With the amount of variables I'm starting to think that calculating what method is best for the specific stats you have is the best one can come up with, rather than a general guideline for perfect play.

After the the burst, your mulitpliers will be in a bad spot. For example for Chihaya (PS3 version) they will be 0.9 dance, 1.0 visual and 1.2 vocal. So your secondary stat is already quite low, and the dumped stat you are not going to use anway is already at 1.2. If you use a memory appeal right off the bat after a burst, you reset all the multipliers to 1.1, so you can raise dance and visual, and the loss in vocal doesn't matter at all.

Hmm, so far I've been using the memory appeal right at the start of the song to get my multipliers to 1.1 at the start, since I was disregarding the earlier point, so Takanes burst appeal would net the same amount of points for visaul focused style as chihaya, since I kept building my visual multiplier back up to 1.5 and then after the burst the visual would start out at 1.1 and not require another memory appeal.
However with the previous point in the equation your way of playing is probably better. Honestly if I wanna make any calculation worth a damn, I need to check how exactly the multiplier build up works (I remember sometimes you would build up 0.04 and at other times 0.03 but I don't know what the exact pattern is).

Iirc every girl has exactly one personal song, but not every of these songs matches the stat you are focusing on. What the guide is saying, is to save the song which matches your focus stat for last. Of course, if 2 or even all 3 songs match, you can use them earlier. But to be honest, it's not necessary to use these songs. Iirc the only advantage of using the special song is that you have a higher chance to get a break and such.

Oh that makes more sense, though I still find the wording kind of misleading.
I wouldn't say that a higher chance for song status is something that should be overlooked too easily though, I found that on HYPER it was basically required to get a status to get to rank 1 and earn that S in the producer assessment. (maybe I'm just shit)

As for building up stats, iirc i did lessons on my primary stat until image level 10 or 11, then switched to my secondary stat until the image level is at least 14 on normal (since you need that to get an A ranking after the playthrough), and never did a lesson for the third stat, since i never used it anyway.

In my HYPER playthrough I actually got to image level 12 with just practicing my primary stat and assumed that it was probably maxed out at that point, I guess I'll test if you can go higher (counting dots on the dotted line seems like too much of a pain in the ass and being able to just base it on your image level would be nice).