Idol Showdown: Next Fes

Idol Showdown Next Fes

SUN, MAY 5TH 4PM PST
SUN, MAY 5TH 7PM EST
SUN, MAY 5TH 11PM GMT
MON, MAY 6TH 6AM WIB
MON, MAY 6TH 8AM JST

New Features

Several new features have been added to Idol Showdown Next Fes. They include the following:

Quick Play

A new online option that allows players to swiftly join an Elo-based matchmade lobby. Players can now utilize the training mode while awaiting a match.

Extras — Shop and Achievements

A shop has been added to the main menu. New cosplays, music, stickers, online lobby titles and more have been made accessible for purchase using Nenecoin - an in-game currency that can be earned by playing the game in a variety of ways.
Achievements have also been added to the main menu. Players can test their skill & resolve, and earn extra Nenecoin by redeeming completed achievements.

New Stages

Three new stages can be purchased through the newly added shop.

• Hololive Office
• KINGWORLD
• Beyond Time

In addition, Eternity Bright can now be unlocked through the shop and various stage variants can be selected on Stage Select.

4 New Cosplays Per Idol and Default Palette Adjustments

Stickers

Several stickers have been added for use in online lobbies. They can be purchased through the newly added shop.

Various Performance Updates And Improvements

Tutorials Update

We have updated the tutorials to reflect the new & altered gameplay mechanics discussed below. We recommend that both new and returning players visit to see what has changed.

Universal Gameplay Changes

Thank you for continuing to support Idol Showdown.

We have been working hard on delivering a new Idol Showdown experience based on player feedback. This update is a major revision to almost all aspects of the game. Our goals with this update include:

• Encouraging more interactive play through:
  • Providing more defensive options.
  • Reducing the number of “checkmate” situations.
  • Creating a less volatile and more stable game.

• Improving balance between characters.
  
• Improving balance within a character’s kit by nerfing dominant and oppressive tools while also buffing underutilized options.
  

Lots of changes have been made within Idol Showdown: Next Fes — too many to easily fit into patch notes. Much of the frame data within the game has changed, so we’d like to ask our players to explore themselves to find out exactly what is different. Throughout these patch notes we will highlight the biggest changes within the Next Fes update.

New Mechanic: Super Chat Reversal

While blocking, if you hold forward and press M and H at the same time, you can do an invincible attack mid-block that does no damage but pushes the opponent back. This costs two superchat bars. This gives an additional option to get out of an opponent’s pressure.

New Mechanic: Jab chains

You can chain light attacks into themselves - even on whiff. Certain characters will have different limits on how many times they can chain jab into itself.

New Mechanic: Invulnerable Backdashes

Backdashes now have full invulnerability on startup up to a certain point. This can help escape some oppressive situations.

New Mechanic: Additional Simple inputs

You can now perform different strength variants of special moves by pressing the special button in addition to the strength of the special move you desire. For example, if you are playing Korone and hold back and press special and heavy at the same time, you will get EX chainsaw.

Various other universal changes

General Balance Changes

• You are no longer able to combo off of one meter frame 1 invincible moves.
• You cannot superchat cancel or call a collab during a frame 1 invincible or armored move.
• Moves with frame 1 armor now lose their grab protection on wakeup.
• Generally, EX moves that provide frame advantage on-block have had their advantage dramatically reduced.
• OTG moves now have an IPS limit of one. After a move hits OTG, the opponent will be sent instantly into the IPS state.
• Moves with disjointed hitboxes have been given proper hurtboxes with a few exceptions.
• There are no longer any frame 1 head invul moves. The fastest head invul moves in the game now come out on frame 3.
• Now, when performing an instant block, the rewarded superchat will vary depending on the damage of the move blocked.
• Burst has a slower startup but a slightly bigger hitbox.
• Grabs have a shorter range.
• Grab tech has a longer time before both players can act again, increased pushback, and increased superchat gain.
• Frame data of all universal overheads has been standardized.
• When moves are blocked in the corner, they now have more pushback.

Other Changes

• You can no longer steal the corner by jumping into the corner.
• There is now a buffer for being able to perform dashes. This should help with micro dashes in certain combo routes, notably Ollie’s.
• An additional visual effect has been added: a lightning effect to signify moves with unusually long hitstun.

New Character: Ninomae Ina’nis

Witty Artistic High-priestess

Ina is a midrange charge character who controls space with her tentacle attacks. She unleashes latent power from the Ancient Ones when the opportunity arises, leaving her opponents without an inkling as to what hit them.

Something unique to Ina is that she has visual indicators for when she has charged her charge attacks. If you have down charge, the halo will glow. If you have back charge, the book will glow.

Existing Character Changes

Fubuki

We wanted Fubuki to be a versatile well-rounded character with a particular strength in patient, reactive play. While Korone was shaped to be more pressure-focused, we wanted to emphasize Fubuki’s power in neutral.

In addition, several changes were made to help Fubuki make better use of her Idol Skill. These changes help Fubuki feel more distinct as a character and also help compensate for some tools Fubuki lost due to universal system changes.

Highlights

• New Mechanic: When performing a special move using simple inputs, the move will never be an SSR. This allows players to hold onto stocked Burger Fox or Pity SSRs while still having access to Fubuki’s non-SSR specials.
• Fubuki’s Burger will now grant 2 guaranteed SSR charges instead of 1. However, Fubuki is now capped to holding only 2 guaranteed SSR charges at once.
• SSR QCB: The SSR variants of the move will now cause a wallsplat instead of wallbounce when performed near the corner, and no longer cause a midscreen side-swap. This will prevent the juggled opponent from being put into impossible follow-up positions when the SSR occurs at specific parts of the screen.
• SSR DD L/M: Frame 1 full invulnerability removed. Changed to reflect non-SSR DD L/M head invulnerability frames.

Korone

Changes with Korone are focused on making her less “all-around” powerful and more focused.

Korone is currently a strong character due to her high damage and oppressive pressure. However, Korone also has very strong neutral and defensive options, making her overshadow many other characters.

In this update, we wanted to provide Korone more of an identity as well as give other characters a chance to shine. We are doing this by accentuating Korone as a powerful offensive pressure character, while nerfing her neutral and defensive game.

Highlights

• New Super Input: Korone can now access her supers separately with QCF S and QCB S.
  • QCF S performs her X-potato super directly without performing the uppercut super on whiff.
  • QCB S triggers the uppercut super which is fast and retains invul frames.

• Korone’s DD S will no longer cost any meter. This gives Korone a very powerful tool in both pressure and in combos.
  
• Korone’s 5M now has an extended hurtbox and less forward movement, pushback, blockstun, and frame advantage in order to make the move less abusable.
  
• Korone’s Chainsaw special moves have been significantly reworked and also have new sprites. The most significant changes include:
  • All chainsaws have increased recovery time
  • Light Chainsaw no longer has any projectile invulnerability
  • Heavy chainsaw has increased startup.
  • They also deal more chip damage than before.

Suisei

We imagine Suisei as a powerful pressure character with an oppressive vortex and among the strongest offense in the game. However, as a tradeoff, Suisei intentionally struggles with limited defensive options.

We feel like Suisei meets her intended playstyle well and wanted to preserve this identity in this patch. However, we thought that her game plan was too one dimensional and relied on a few particularly powerful tools. To this end, we made adjustments that buffed and nerfed certain parts of her kit to make her use a wider variety of options in her offense.

Highlights

• In order to preserve her identity as a character with limited defensive tools, Suisei is the only character in the game whose backdash does not have any invul frames. As a tradeoff, she retains her backdash speed, which is now by far the fastest backdash in the game.
• New Super Input:
  • Suisei no longer needs to install her supers. She can now go directly into both.
  • The forward super is accessed by QCF S and the anti air super is accessed by QCB S.
  • However in exchange she lost all invulnerability on them.

• QCF H has added armor on top of it, but the armor does not activate immediately. This is to give it more of a use in neutral as well as add an additional call out option for Suisei.
  
• QCF L is now more negative on block.
  
• Crouching M’s startup has been slowed down and been given a hurtbox during its active frames. In exchange, Standing H now connects from Crouching M even at its furthest ranges.
  
• Suisei’s DF M slide has increased frame advantage and a longer duration, giving her another offensive option.
  
• Suisei is cute in this update too. すいちゃんはこのアップデートでもかわいい！
  

Sora

Sora is a hybrid setplay/zoner character who also retains decent pressure tools.

Although Sora is currently a very powerful character, we wanted to preserve Sora’s identity, as she is also a very unique character.. Therefore, Sora remains relatively unchanged aside from targeted nerfs to her most oppressive and non-interactive offensive options.

Highlights

• Forward M’s hurtbox has been extended and given a much slower startup.
• QCF L is now a single-hit projectile with a hefty attack level.
• QCB L/M mines now go away when Sora is hit.

Ayame

Ayame was previously a character that relied heavily on a few powerful tools such as her DD H invincible reversal, which could be combo’d out of.

Due to universal changes to invulnerable special attacks, Ayame lost what was previously a core part of her identity. In order to compensate for this change, we decided to buff other parts of her kit to more evenly distribute her power across her kit.

Our goal was to make her feel mostly similar, but use a wider portion of her moveset.

Highlights

• New Rekka Followups
  • Ayame’s Light Rekka Series now has additional followups:
    • M follow-up is a low.
    • H followup is an overhead.

  
  
• The additional follow-ups have been removed from her QCFH rekka series. However, this Rekka now pops up opponents for additional combo opportunities.
  
• Jumping Special saw little use. To remedy this, her Jumping Special will now groundbounce when hitting Aerial opponents. In addition we have given it an increased downwards hitbox.
  
• Sweep is also a move that saw little use. It has been given additional range as well as been made easier to use in combos.
  

Coco

Due to universal changes to OTG, we had to rework some of Coco’s combo structure. As a result some of her moves have fairly different properties.This new combo structure allows Coco to land more fire attacks than before within a single combo.. Due to this, we have added scaling to fire damage when used within a combo.

Highlights

• Sweep now vacuums opponents in, allowing it to be used in combos.
• QCB M now counts as a projectile, giving it the ability to clash with other projectiles.
• To replace OTG no longer being able to combo, 22H now applies fire damage. 22G also places the opponent slightly closer to you to help keep Coco’s pressure going.

Aki

We felt that Aki didn’t have a clear vision and relied too much on gimmicks. In this update Aki has been significantly reworked to fit the role of a proper zoner. Her fireballs were tweaked to cover more approach angles as well as do more chip damage against blocking opponents.

In exchange for additional zoning options, we have toned down her ability to mix up the opponent.

Highlights

• New Specials
  • Aki’s projectiles have been reworked. QCF L and M go diagonally downwards at slightly different angles.
  • QCF H is a straight multi hit projectile.
  • The QCB series are now projectiles as well, the L and M version serve as her anti air projectiles.
  • QCB H is a delayed multi hit projectile.
  • Muki moves have been moved to the down down inputs.

• Aki’s teleports have a new charge motion input (down -> up). In addition they were reworked to move her backwards instead of forwards. EX teleport is now invincible on startup.
  
• Aki’s normal attacks have increased in attack level, improving her blockstrings.
  
• DD S now has a different buff. Instead of making her projectiles home in, it instead adds an additional hit to her projectiles, giving her an edge in projectile wars as well has giving her better frame advantage on both block and hit.
  
• j.2M is now more plus on hit and less punishable on block. Hitting at the right angle allows for followups.
  

Botan

Botan has some awkward parts to her kit, but overall is a solid character.

Most of Botan’s changes have been made in order to compensate for Botan’s losses due to universal mechanics adjustments.

Highlights

• New Super: Botan has a new super accessed by QCB S. This move has an invincible startup, followed by a barrage of bullets.
  • As a result of the universal changes to frame 1 armor moves on wakeup, Botan's shopping cart is now weak to meaty grabs and cannot be made safe or combo'd off of using Superchat Cancels.
  • The addition of this move provides Botan with a new reversal option as well as an additional option to convert from longer ranged pokes.

• DD M has received an additional low followup by hitting light. The jump arc of DD M also goes further.
  
• Crouching M’s hitbox has been extended. It also has more hurtbox and slightly increased startup to compensate.
  
• Grenades now go away on-hit.
  

Pekora

Pekora had some really good pressure but suffered from an unbalanced moveset, with certain extremely powerful tools overshadowing other moves. Also due to universal OTG changes, she lost some of her power so changes were made to help keep her OTG useful.

These changes were made to reduce her oppressiveness in both her pressure sequences and her zoning. We targeted the most powerful moves in her kit, while also rounding out moves that were previously overshadowed. She is still strong in both areas, but should be easier to deal with.

Highlights

• QCB L: Pekora moves backwards less after launching a rocket.
• DD H TNT now goes away on hit and has reduced frame advantage.
• QCB M now puts the opponent into a hard knockdown state when hitting OTG, giving time for a mixup afterwards.
• QCB H now shoots faster, does more damage, and can now be kicked. The move is also air untechable and as a result should be easier to combo off of.
• DD L: Can no longer place another TNT while the previous TNT is being kicked or launched.
• DD S is now air untechable, making it easier to combo off of.
• Super is now air untechable, which should resolve issues where opponents could hit Pekora even after she lands her super.

Ollie

Ollie remains mostly the same, with some changes targeting her midrange capabilities. We wanted to make sure that Ollie’s offense remained powerful, but make it more difficult for her to start it.

Universal changes also do a lot to make her less oppressive. We’ve also done a few things to aid her quality of life.

Highlights:

• Increased recovery on 3H and 5H, but both have increased hitstun and blockstun to compensate. 5H now connects to her specials that lead to knockdowns at further ranges.
• DD S now deals recoverable health damage during the initial laser. The big attack at the end still deals normal damage.
• QCF L hitting grounded opponents now puts them in an air untechable state.

Collabs

General Collab Changes

The following changes apply to all gameplay involving collabs:

• You can no longer hit L and H at the same time to perform an off-collab; you must use the collab button instead. We removed this macro because we noticed it would often cause players to mis-input Light or Heavy moves when attempting to summon their collab.
• We have added new moves to some characters which now utilize the QCB S input. As such, call-ins are now performed by holding forward and the collab button at the same time.
• In order to reduce resource competition between off-collabs and superchat cancel/reversal, the player will now always have 3 maximum bars of superchat. The cost of an off-collab will still vary depending on the collab chosen, and the UI will indicate when they can be summoned.
• If a player is hit within a short window off time after summoning a collab, it will disappear. We’ve made this change to attempt to provide increased risk and counterplay to utilizing collabs.

New Collabs

New Collab:

Fauna

• Off Collab: Fauna releases a pulse that pushes the enemy away and turns half the partner's damage taken into recoverable health.
• Call In: Fauna summons 3 saplings from the ground that pull the opponent closer upon stepping on them.

New Collab:

Subaru

• Off Collab: An idol is on the loose... the Oozora Police starts chasing them around, hitting everything in the way.
• Call In: Subaru slams a big sausage onto the ground, hitting everything on the ground.

Existing Collab Adjustments

While we still want collabs to play a large role in gameplay, we noticed two consistent issues with them:

1. Collabs were being used as general win conditions in a way that we felt often overshadowed the kits of characters. We’ve attempted to tune collabs such that they now either serve a consistent small benefit, or provide win conditions that can be accessed more situationally.
2. We identified a few collabs (Ame, Miko and Roboco) that were being consistently chosen over the others by almost every character, with the remainder either being niche picks for certain characters or outright ignored. In this patch, we’ve attempted to level the power of all collabs.

Mio

• Call in: Scaling reduced to 1.1x.

Marine

• Off collab: Now costs 2 superchat bars.
• Off collab: No longer puts the opponent in hitstun. No longer gives the opponent increased chip damage. Now reduces the opponent’s movement much more even including certain mobility special moves.

Kanata

• Off Collab: now costs 3 superchat bars.
• Call In: Reduced range.

Risu

• Off Collab: Now costs 3 superchat bars.
• Off Collab: Greatly increased hitstun and blockstun on nuts.
• Call In: Now has normal scaling (0.85x).

Kiara

• Off Collab: Slightly increased startup time.
• Call In: Opponent falls out of this move less.
• Call In: Spawns closer to the player.

Amelia

• Call-In: Now ground bounces when hitting aerial opponents and puts standing opponents in increased hitstun.
• Call-In: Reduced startup.
• Call In: Now has normal scaling (0.85x).

Iroha

• Off Collab: Hitbox extended further down.

Moona

• Call In: Now produces a purple flash on the screen when summoned to help with visibility.
• Call In: Now has normal scaling (0.85x).

AZKi

• Off Collab: Now costs 2 superchat bars.
• Off Collab: Has increased range, increased duration, and can debuff opponents on the ground.
• Call In: Now has normal scaling (0.85x).

Kaela

• Off Collab: Now gives 20% attack and 30% defense as well as lasting longer.
• Off Collab: The buffs now last for a longer duration.

Roboco

• Off Collab: Interval between missiles is lower now, effectively shortening the duration.
• Call In: Greatly increased startup. Slightly increased hitstun.

Miko

• Off Collab: Now has a limited range. Has a longer startup before falling.
• Call In: Increased startup.

We wanted to highlight some of the bigger changes that each character received, but even these only account for a small percentage of how each character has been changed to fit within the new system of the game.

Online Changes

• Titles, stickers, and banners display within game lobbies
• All Elo reset to 1500
• Custom border for Elo 3000 and above
• Decreased the time for match timeout, preventing hard freezes when an opponent disconnects
• Pregame and postgame stickers have been added for interaction between matches
• Added an Elo penalty when quitting during an online match
• Optimized the artificial delay during frame drops to more accurately calculate the delay
• Various fixes to ensure lobby connections work as expected

Quickplay

• New option quickplay to automatically match players based on Elo and ranges
• Includes an indicator when people accept, estimated ping, and search status
• Option added to switch to training mode as well, and start search from training

Virtual Frontier Changes

General Change

Our goal for Virtual Frontier was to make it more resource management focused and provide players with more meaningful decisions to make, as well as provide the information necessary to make those decisions.

In addition, we recognize that Virtual Frontier may be played by players of many skill levels and therefore wanted to add a wide variety of difficulty options and modifiers so players of various skill levels can tune the mode to their liking.

New Content

New Bosses

A Boss character can now be fought at the end of Virtual Frontier run. These bosses offer a unique experience that contrasts with normal fights and can provide a new test at the end of every run.

• R-Trus
• Fubuzilla & Kurokami
• Kronii

The boss: “Error Sora” will no longer appear at the end of a Virtual Frontier run, but will still appear as the final boss of Arcade Mode.

New Shops

In addition, we have added new Shops to the virtual frontier. These shops are intended to allow players to have more control over their Virtual Frontier runs.

• Shion Shop
  • This shop provides several options to transmute their current items into new items. Players are limited to 5 actions per visit.
    • Enchant: Upgrade an item to another item of a higher rarity, in exchange for a large fee
    • Disenchant: Downgrade an item into one of a lower rarity, but receive Pekos in return.
    • Mutate: Change an item into a random item of the same rarity in exchange for a small fee

  
  
• Rio Shop
  • Rio’s shop allows you to store items in one run and pick them up in a subsequent run. This can be used for highly customized builds or to target difficult achievements.

Gameplay Updates

We have now added “stat” items that can be received as rewards from fights; these provide the player with small but consistent upgrades to basic attributes. In the last version of Virtual Fronter, we noticed that it was often possible to “snowball” very quickly due to how frequently opportunities were given to pick up new items. We thought that this was good, but should happen further into runs; we hope that ‘stats’ will accomplish this by diluting the frequency of item pickups.

We’ve also added a variety of new snacks and accessories to the game, and made balance adjustments to pre-existing items, fights and game economy.

Finally, we’ve added several new fights, and made difficulty adjustments to pre-existing ones - including tuning the AI to be susceptible to fewer “degenerate” counterplay strategies.

New Difficulty Options

• Players are now always able to toggle the following options on:
  • Auto-block: This is the old effect of the “Light Armor” item and will automatically block incoming attacks if the player is not performing any action
  • Auto-combo: This is the old effect of the “Glove Cloak” item and will automatically create a combo when mashing the same button.

• In addition, there are new starting items that allow players to customize their difficulty
  • Light Armor: Reduce incoming damage by 25%
  • Glove Cloak: Increase damage by 30%
  • Plastic Ball: No effect
  • Gladiator Chains: Increase incoming damage by 30%, but increase damage by 20%

• “Milestones” have been added.
  • Milestones are additional difficulty levels that can be unlocked by completing Virtual Frontier
  • Each new Milestone adds an additional unique difficulty modifier which stacks upon the previous modifier.

More Mid-Run information

Several changes have been made to help player make more strategic decisions when planning out their Virtual Frontier Runs

• There are now icons that indicate the “effect” of a reward from a fight. The icon will indicate that at least one reward from that fight will be of a certain type:
  • Sword Icon: Offense items that either directly increase damage or create perform attacks
  • Shield icon: Defense items that can either block damage or heal the player
  • Wrench Icon: Utility items that have a variety of effects such as generating pekos, providing meter and more.

• Players can now return back to the map screen after selecting a fight. This allows them to choose the preferred fight when given multiple options.
  
• After every fight, players will now receive a “Stats” display that shows the performance of their items in the fight.
  • Offense items will display the amount of additional damage contributed by the item
  • Defense items will display either the amount of damage blocked by the item, or the amount of damage healed by the item.
  • Items that hurt the player or reduce damage will be shown with negative values.

• Players can now see the “seed” of their run. In addition, players can specify a map generation seed when starting a new Virtual Frontier run.
  

Other new Content

• There are now “stat” items which can be received as a reward from a fight. These stat items provide the player with small, but consistent upgrades to basic attributes
• New Fights have been added.
• New Snacks and Accessories have also been added.
• Balance adjustments have been made to items, fights and game economy.

UI Changes

• New Splash Screen assets
• New Main Menu assets
• Settings Menu has been overhauled
• New Input Selection assets
• New Tutorial assets
• New Training Mode assets
• New CSS assets
• New gameplay HUD assets
• New Online lobby assets
• New Victory Screen comments

Audio Changes

New Tracks:

• Violet Blossom (Meconopsis/Kanalumi)
• Time of Death (Daydream)
• Flayon X Showdown (Dead World)
• Kon Kon Beatdown (Kon Kon Beats)
• Terminal Velocity (Gravity)
• Kusa Garlic (Halloween Night)
• Canvas of Journey (Palette)
• id:ol Battle (id: entity voices)
• Planting Joy (Let Me Stay Here)
• World Takeover (Dark Breath)
• New School Euphoria (ユーフォリア)
• Next Fes (New Main Theme)
• Wait, Did This Change? (A New Start)
• Tick Tock Reggaeson (Chikutaku)
• Sunny Side Up (Pineapple)

Removed Tracks:

• Paintbrush
• Ding Ding Ding
• Peko Miko War
• Amelia Reggaeson
• I Forgor

Various miscellaneous voice lines, UI SFX and Gameplay SFX tweaks.

MISC

Note: The current live build v. 3.0.15 will be added to the IdolShowdownBeta for players to return to.
You will be able to access the build by doing the following: Steam -> Right click Idol Showdown -> Properties -> Betas -> Private Betas Code “IdolShowdownBeta”