beatmania IIDX INFINITAS (PC)

Long time lurker here. I got to try out one of the Alpha test rounds, but man, Infinitas is really a disappointment.

I WILL NOT be playing infinitas. I'd rather fire up C++ and fix all the crashy garbage that is LR2 than play Infinitas at this point.

I am lucky in that I have a IIDX 23 machine within driving distance. For those that don't though, Infinitas is just Konami spitting in their customer's eyes and yelling, "GIVE US MONEY WE INVENTED BEMANI 20 YEARS AGO YOU UNGRATEFUL PEASANT!!" Seriously, what the HELL is going on with Konami? The whole company seems to be crumbling.

At this point there are 3 person, first time indie game dev shops doing a better job creating games than Konami's broken garbage.

What Infinitas SHOULD be:

- $50 base game with at least 200 songs + 5 exclusives
- $5 song pack DLC released monthly (You could pay $30 / year for a "season pass" which would get you all of that year's song packs for cheaper)
- Offline play
- Available on Steam worldwide
- Built in controller bindings
- PC / Mac support

What Infinitas is:

- $13 per month
- Song packs are released based on if you have a subscription in a current month, no way to spend month to get previous song packs.
- Online only subscription MMO (WTF it's a rhythm game, not an MMO)
- Only available through Paseli (Even if you speak fluent Japanese, it's a garbage point system)
- Japan only (you have to lie when you sign up and say you live in Japan, and knowing Konami, at some future point they will likely ban you if you have a non-Japanese IP)
- NO built in controller bindings, recommending you use Joy2Key. LOL.
- Windows support only

Somehow I'm reminded of Sim City with all of this.

^: echohack, while I admire your courage in voicing your reasonable opinion, I forewarn you to brace yourself for a flamin' here.

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I know that he didn't post that big but I just had to emphasize it.

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You should do that anyway. LR2 is crap. I'd like it to not be crap.

Infinitas is disappointing. It's got too few songs, too few good/replayable songs (Flowers from Albion, Gambol, earth scape, Chocolate Dancing, just a lot of boring easy songs with no 7A charts), and it's missing some important online features like rivals and UI customizations that we're used to in the arcade. But I think your expectations are off. What you find disappointing in Infinitas isn't what I find disappointing.

Steam offers nothing to Infinitas. Steam is a marketplace for cheap games, games that need a publisher, and Valve games. It's a miracle that MGS is on there. Steam also offers its community, but they aren't interested in Infinitas at all. There's no reason for Konami to give Valve a share of Infinitas when it doesn't do anything for them. I don't think Blizzard games are on Steam either, for example. Why would they be?

IIDX is an MMO. Look at the arcade version. Constant updates. Pay per play. The credit system in the arcade may as well be the energy system in a mobile game. Plus there's an extra fee for premium website access. Players are encouraged to look each other up on the website and compete. And IIDX is a grind if you want to clear every song, unlock all the songs, or improve. And I'm happy with IIDX being treated like an MMO. It matches how I've been playing it. So I like the pricing model. And expecting 200 songs for $50 is a bit cheap anyway. Empress CS was more than that, and that was awhile ago. Maybe $75 for 75 songs would be about right if IIDX was still being treated like an offline packaged game, but it's not.

PASELI isn't required for Infinitas. You can pay with a credit card too. However, Infinitas was never released outside Japan. That's another major request of mine - officially launch the game in the USA please so I don't need workarounds. I hate how the server goes down every afternoon, which definitely affects me, but what can I do. SFC games don't fit in my SNES. Of all the things I can easily fault Infinitas for, I can't blame it for being Japanese.

By the way, I disagree that they will ban you over your IP address. I think they'll let me keep playing this way forever. But then if Infinitas does ever appear in the USA then there will be no international data transfer option. I'll need a separate, American Konami ID to connect to the American server and I'll have to start over. Oh well.

Controller Bindings - what controller? They haven't shipped one yet. You want them to officially support Daos? Every PS2 converter? The arcin? I think Joy2Key is amateurish, but I understand the problem here. They could give us generic joystick support and let us map joystick buttons the same as keyboard keys. I'd use that. But if I were the Infinitas director I'd just ship the controller, let the fans reverse-engineer it, and then they can patch their various custom firmwares to imitate it. (We will!)

But mostly I think you're looking at the monthly fee, multiplying that by several months, feeling the pressure, then looking at the crappy small songlist and freaking out. Which is fair. Infinitas isn't finished yet. The mode select screen currently says "Standard" "Championship" "Closed" "Closed". Like how hard is it to get Class Mode and Free Mode working again? (I guess they need more songs for Class Mode.)

I think that's the biggest problem that Infinitas has (other than the other downfalls others, myself included, have mentioned): It doesn't even play like a full-fledged AC IIDX game at the moment. Class and Free mode aren't even in the game (so far), and if there's no incentive to play Standard mode (i.e. an Extra Stage system, a post-game minigame that lets you unlock stuff for your avatar/songs, etc.), why should Free mode even be there in the first place if the only difference would be not having to re-enter the game after 3/4 songs?

The saddest part is that unlike most MMO music games, let alone MMO games in general, I don't think Konami is planning on making servers outside of Japan anytime soon. X_X

http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/eacloud/p/common/info/news.html?news_id=20160129_iidx_update
http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/eacloud/p/common/info/news.html?news_id=20160129_iidx_ms1602a

The latest update added the ability to skip the opening sequence (finally!) and some bug fixes, as well as announced some more songs to be added on February 3rd, 10th, and 17th, and then an unlock event at the end of February.

February 3rd songs:
GOLD RUSH
電人イェーガーのテーマ(Theme of DENJIN J)
A

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The site also mentions that the unlock event will also allow players to unlock songs they've missed (which would just be the January distribution songs). I'm interested to see exactly WHAT the unlock event is, too.

Also it's interesting that now they're doing a better job of hiding what the monthly distributions are. But if last month was any indication, they're probably already present but unplayable in the game's files or something :v

The bug fixes are:
- Fixed a bug where the songwheel might flash on a screen for a moment when transitioning to the result screen. (I've seen this one on stream.)
- Fixed a bug where the server kicks you off when you've been playing for awhile. (I've seen that one on stream too.)

9 new songs were patched into the client. I can't decrypt them, but it's obvious what they are. So there will be 3 per week.

14021 - Laser Cruster (I thought this was already in the game, but it was only in the Alpha)
14007 - Gold Rush (confirmed for 2/3)
13039 - Harmony and Lovely
13034 - tripping contact
7024 - Love Me Do
7002 - A (confirmed for 2/3)
6028 - Theme of Denjin J (confirmed for 2/3)
6005 - Colors (radio edit)
17024 - D

Also the first Infinitas unlock event might happen at the end of February. Their wording is intentionally vague, as in "we might not finish it or we might decide to delay it". They also said that it would allow unlocking both new and "missed" songs, but left that part intentionally vague too. "Missed songs" could mean the January songpack or the Championship Mode songpack, or both. I'm missing neither, so idc!

EDIT: Also a prototype controller was shown on stream. http://www.konamistyle.jp/sp/bemanifactory/index.html It's pretty much a C22. Shiny metal top. Still no order date, but it will be pre-order only. You'll need someone in Japan to buy it for you, probably, unless something changes.

http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/eacloud/p/common/info/news.html?news_id=20160203_iidx_ms1602b

The February 3rd songs are out, the February 10th songs were just announced to be: Colors (radio edit), Harmony and Lovely, and LASER CRUSTER, and we can reasonably speculate that the February 17th songs will be: tripping contact, Love Me Do, and D.

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I wonder if that 2016 ASC is going to be similar to the original for the PS2.

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Q&A for the controller got published and there are two English questions at the bottom:


http://www.konamistyle.jp/sp/bemanifactory/index.html

Key points are pretty much:

> Doesn't include the EMP sheet for the turntable.
> Buttons are not Sanwa.
> Turntable is the same size as PS2 but distance is to arcade spec.
> To switch turntable sides, you have to use an allen key.
> Not possible to adjust how loose the turntable is.
> 3m cable.
> Uses DirectInput.

Good to know Konami cares about their fans, and giving us hope we'll see a western release of Infinitas!

Sarcasm aside, why do I imagine the controller looks like it would be uncomfortable to play with after a while? Specifically, from the pictures I've seen, it looks like the turntable is raised very high compared to the AC controller, and not to mention the turntable itself is smaller.

In one of the answers, it says the height is actually the same as AC.

Huh. I guess it looks higher because the turntable is smaller? Either way, I'm gonna be curious to see how people are gonna import the controller if it's going to be on-demand/pre-order only; I can imagine it being a nightmare. >>

So...Is that unlock event ever gonna happen? It's almost the end of February...

http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/eacloud/p/common/info/news.html?news_id=20160229_iidx_ms1603

Well, it looks like the event has been delayed into March, but in the meantime, we do get three more songs announced for March 2nd.

PARANOIA MAX～DIRTY MIX～
bit mania
quell～the seventh slave～

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The program update is still not there yet

Looks like the Premium Controller is 100% funded now: http://www.konamistyle.jp/sp/bemanifactory/index.html

This leap day patch is amazing!

Failing or cancelling any song on stage 1 or stage 2 will now take you back to the songwheel and the next stage. NOT the "card out" screen!! This change is not mentioned in the patch notes, but it is a huge improvement! A previous patch made it so that the card out screen would return you to the songwheel, but now we don't have to see at all except every 3-4 song attempts/restarts!

Maybe someday we can get that CS feature where holding 2+4+6 as you cancel or hard fail a song causes it to immediately restart and skip the results screen?

NEW OPTION: Movie on/off. Obvious. Leaves a placeholder texture in the movie area and also cancels all overlays.

Remember how the old UI used to have a space for "CLEAR RATE %" and there was no number there? Now there is! For singles play Bad Maniacs has the lowest clear rate at 29%. Red isn't far behind at 33%. Clearly Infinitas is only for hardcore players.

Some new pacemakers were added. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but they work. I thought one of them was server best, but then it showed me that DJ "AAAAAA" had a low AA on V 7A, so I doubt that's right.

But mostly the first thing I wrote in bold.

APPEND EDIT

You know what a new patch means? Datamineing! And I see a lot of stars! Actually, just 4 of the same star. I suppose there are technically 5 "stars" in this patch, but the 5th star is of a different type from the others. I wouldn't bet it all that they're related. There are multiple instances of symmetry in these songs. Not literal Symmetry, more like doubles. What does that have to do with giant spiders? I don't know.

There are four more unannounced songs in the Sirius folder. From Parallel Rotation alone, there ar three. The last other Sirius song is from a well known star who is soon to be over-represented in Infinitas. (Which I just mentioned.) But this is Sirius CS, so everything from Sirius is required even if the sound director is over-using his favorite artists. It's like he's trying to erase IIDX history and replace it with just his favorites. We don't need 6 songs from the same artist before each member of beatnation has two! And we never needed a 5th copy of the same song. But who am I to judge?

The patch notes also say: "Oh yeah that song unlock thing at the end of February? We are super, formally, Japanese style sorry that we delayed it. We will provide more information about it later." So I guess standby for action!

> sees the 2nd march update songs

welp, weren't naoki and mr. yamaoka blacklisted by konami after they left????

EDIT: okay, the songs are still in ac iidx games.