maimai DX:1st/Changes

Location test changes

Sources:

Ariesu's location test report

Team FT5's video of JAEPO 2019

DX Charts

• It seems that the names "DX Chart" and "Standard Chart" weren't decided yet as of JAEPO. What would now be called "DX Charts" are just called "charts with new/touch notes".
• The concept that there would be a full set of DX Charts from BASIC to (Re:)MASTER wasn't there either. Instead, DX Charts and Standard Charts share the same BASIC~(Re:)MASTER slots.
• Some DX Re:MASTER Charts available at the location tests are just small variations on Standard MASTER charts, using touch notes in some places to replace other notes. These are probably just proof-of-concept charts.
  • However, DX Re:MASTER Charts written from scratch existed too, like DRAGONLADY.
• There were also existing (old) songs with only DX Charts and no Standard Charts.

UI

• In the Area running screen, the rainbow that indicates progress was shown beneath the Tour Members; they were on-screen at the same time.
• Tour Members awaken after only one song. This might be to accelerate progress due to the limited play count each player can get, and was probably never intended to be the final form.
• At the result screen, the last two decimal digits were displayed with a smaller font than the first two.
• Touch notes were closing with linear speed. In the final release, it was changed to accelerating speed according to user feedback.

Options

• In the options screen, the default option was indicated by a 【標準】 suffix. In the final release, it's indicated by a different color (light blue).
• The size of tap notes was adjustable (small/normal/large).

Misc. changes

• EASY charts and UTAGE charts are removed.
  • Lowest difficulty is now BASIC; new BASIC charts can be as easy as level 1 (LOSER).
  • UTAGE-only songs are also removed.
• MASTER and Re:MASTER difficulties for all pre-DX songs are unlocked by default; these difficulties for new songs still needs to be unlocked by getting 97% or better on EXPERT as usual.
• Freedom Mode added (Japan only). Basically Premium Free in IIDX. Insert 2 credits to play for 10 minutes. (Can be extended to 12 minutes by using a Freedom Pass)
• The new maimaiDX-NET doesn't have the usage rights (利用権) designation that was in maimai-NET. Instead, most features are available for free with no time restrictions. Some features can be enabled with a "Geki! Chuumai-NET Standard Course" subscription for 300 Yen + tax (330 yen as of 2020), only available in Japan.
• ちほー (地方, maimai DX:Area) added. It's similar to Maps in CHUNITHM, and serves as the main unlock system, including for limited-time events. つあーメンバー (Tour Member) and オトモダチ対戦 (Friend Matching) are added as part of the system.
• The concepts "DX Charts" and "Standard Charts" are introduced. Standard Charts are existing charts before DX. DX Charts are new charts added since DX, and contain touch notes and EX notes. Songs added since DX only have DX Charts. DX Charts can be added to older songs too.
  • Internally, DX Charts for pre-DX songs are treated as a different "song" than the Standard Charts. In multiplayer mode, all players must choose either DX Charts or Standard Charts; they cannot be mixed. DX charts for pre-DX songs are treated as new songs for rating calculation purposes.
• The gauge at the top of the bottom screen is changed. It now displays the current achievement rate, and has a separation line at 100%. The 100%~101% range is noticeably wider than what 1% would be in the 0%~100% range.
• Menu UI changed to horizontal scrolling like CHUNITHM and ONGEKI, instead of vertical scrolling like how it has always been before DX. Buttons 3 and 6 are used to scroll, 2 and 7 are used to switch between DX and Standard Charts, 1 and 8 are used to switch difficulty, 4 is confirm, and 5 is back.
  • The 1P and 2P buttons in the middle, originally intended for player selection at login (since there's only one Aime reader now), is now used to enter the sorting menu only.
• Sorting and filtering in the song list have regressed. Now the player can only choose a grouping method and a sorting method for songs in each group. Filtering is completely impossible. This makes many sorting/filtering tricks impossible:
  • In FiNALE it was possible to choose multiple filtering criteria to further narrow down the selection, for example "Genre: Touhou Project, Level: 12". The closest equivalent in DX is "Grouping: genre, Sorting: level", but the player would have to scroll through other levels (10→10+→...→12, or 14→13+→...→12).
  • In FiNALE it was possible to filter "Difficulty: Re:MASTER" to see a list of all Re:MASTER charts the player unlocked. In DX this is no longer possible.
  • Grouping: Genre / All / Version / Level / Song Title
  • Sorting: Recommended (default sort in pre-DX) / Level / Rank / AP/FC Mark / Sync / Song Title
• "Full Combo +" introduced, which means a full combo without Good judgments, equivalent to "Gold FC badge" in FiNALE.
• The "Please wait until the current game is finished" banners that are displayed on the unused side in single player mode are moved further away from the center, allowing 16:9 background videos to be viewed unobstructed.

Options

• Options can now only be adjusted after selecting the song and difficulty to play,same as the CHUNITHM and オンゲキ series. While this could prevent players from forgetting to adjust options before playing the song, this also made it impossible to adjust options directly from the song select screen. Therefore, it should be considered a regression.
• In-game UI can be customized.
  • Judgment line: there's a design for each version from 1st to DX, a "simple" design (same as what it always looked like before DX, but in white instead of the chart's color), and "off" (judgment line is hidden completely).
  • Note skin: "Classic" (pre-DX look) or "DX".
  • Judgment effect: "Classic" or "DX".
  • Star color: Blue or pink.
• The speed of touch notes can be adjusted separately from other notes.
• "Slide display timing" is added. This can make slide notes appear earlier or later than the star tap note.
  • Making it earlier could be useful for playing fast songs (about BPM 240)
  • Making it later could be useful for playing songs with halved BPM like Our Wrenally
• Choices for "Movie brightness" is renamed to Dark / A little dark / Normal / Bright. Normal (equivalent to -1 before DX) is now the default.
• "Reaction effect" added.
  • "OFF": no graphical effects at all
  • "ON: outside only": graphical effects are on only when the area corresponding to the 8 buttons are touched, same as before DX
  • "ON": graphical effects are on when touching other sensor pieces as well.
• (not completed yet, TBA)

Multiplayer changes

• The choice between "Sync mode" and "VS mode" is removed.
• Sync rate is removed.
• Fever is renamed Sync.
• "Max Fever" is now "Full Sync"; similar to Full Combo +, there is now a "Full Sync +" badge, which is awarded when both players full combo without Good judgments.
• "Full Sync DX" is introduced, equivalent to the old "100% Sync".
• Two-cabinet multiplayer no longer uses synced whole game sessions. Instead, it's now song-based: when a player chooses a song, other cabs in the same arcade can go to the local matching tab to play together.
  • This means that, if one cab has two players while the other cab has one, the two-player cab would have four songs while the one-player cab would only have three, due to the cab not recognizing a multiplayer game session.

Collections

• Most Collections were removed. Only a small number of Collections were transferred to DX.
  • Achievement Collections (極・将・神・舞舞・覇者) were absent in DX too, but were added back in DX PLUS.
• Compared to Collection types in FiNALE, Frame and Big Icon (Deka Icon) are removed. Transferable Big Icons from FiNALE were transferred as normal Icons.
• Name Plates are smaller.
• Break and Slide sounds are no longer unlockable items, and are no longer considered Collections.
  • Compared to sounds in FiNALE, some sounds are missing in the China version of DX. Not sure if the Japan version removed them too.

List of Break sounds in DX CN

默认
イヌ
刀
ソニック（リング）
ソニック（エメラルド）
PSO SOUND
MI・TSU・YO・SHI
はっぴー
タンバリン
DARTSLIVE
カブキ
SEGA
ぷよぷよ
DIVA SOUND A
CHUNITHM
オンゲキ
でらっくま

List of EX note sounds in DX CN

Interestingly, these are translated.

默认
电子音1
电子音2
歌舞伎
猫

List of Slide sounds in DX CN

默认
イヌ
刀
ソニック（ダッシュ）
ソニック（ゲート）
PSO SOUND
MI・TSU・YO・SHI
はっぴー
タンバリン
DARTSLIVE
カブキ
SEGA
ぷよぷよ
DIVA SOUND A
CHUNITHM
オンゲキ
でらっくま

Rating

• Rating is changed again, and is now called DX Rating. The calculation is similar to jubility in jubeat festo.
• New songs + Old songs + Grade (段位) bonus
• Rating for charts is now determined by highest score only. The "recent" slot (as it was called colloquially) in the old Rating system, that measures a certain number of recent playthroughs, is gone. This means that the Rating does not decrease unless your Grade drops.
• The exact Rating values for each chart is now viewable with the Standard Course subscription. This makes it possible to deduce the formula used to calculate the Rating.
• Internal level * rank constant * achievement rate

Rank constant (DX)

• D: 4
• C: 5
• B: 6
• BB: 7
• BBB: 7.4
• A: 8
• AA: 9
• AAA: 9.4
• S: 10
• S+: 11
• SS: 12
• SS+: 13
• SSS: 14
• SSS+: 15

Rank constant (DX+)

• A: 8.5
• AA: 9.5
• AAA: 10.5
• S: 12.5
• S+: 12.7
• SS: 13
• SS+: 13.2
• SSS: 13.5
• SSS+: 14

Hardware

• The old camera with recording abilities is removed, because it was specifically made for maimai with hardware encoding capabilities, and couldn't be newly manufactured.
• A new camera, labelled 思い出カメラ in Japanese and 玩家摄像头 in Chinese, is added in the middle of the cab. It can be used to take souvenir photos before or after a playthrough, and cannot be used to record videos.
• An earphone jack is added under the circle for each player.
• At where the old camera was, there's now a piece of plastic for players to attach their smartphone clips to record videos by themselves.
• Japanese cabs have a DX Pass reader under the Aime reader. DX Passes can be printed from the CARD MAKER.

Touch sensors

• Changed mainly to accomodate touch notes. (See the 1.02-A announcement post linked on this page for a picture.)
• C sensor is split into two.
• D sensors are added between A sensors.
• E sensors are added between A and B sensors.

Regional separation

• maimai DX is released in China under the name 舞萌DX, 7 years after 舞萌, which was the first game in the series, and the only game that was released in China before this.
• Server is now separated into 3 regions: Japan(DX), China(CH), and rest of Asia along with Australia(EX).
• Server maintenance for maimai DX is performed everyday, at 4:00~7:00 UTC+8 for China, and 4:00~7:00 UTC+9 for the other two regions. This affects both maimaiDX-NET and the game itself; the game cannot be played during maintenance.
• Aime cards are used for Japan and Asia; the same card can contain data from both regions, saved separately like Taiko. Data transfer from FiNALE is possible in both regions.
• WeChat accounts and QR codes are used for China. maimaiDX-net is only viewable from the WeChat official account. No data transfer is possible.
  • Interestingly, in the location test at an exhibition, when trying to login with a new account in event mode, the message displayed was "cannot transfer data in event mode".

New scoring system

• "Critical Perfect" judgment added. It's equivalent to "Break 2600", except that now it can be enabled for other note types as well.
  • "Break 2550" and "Break 2500" are not differentiated however, and shares the Perfect judgment.
  • Normal Perfect judgments still give full achievement rate for non-break notes.
  • Turning on "Critical Perfect" for other note types is functionally equivalent to the "Judge Style" feature available for the old cab. Therefore, the latter is removed in DX.
• "DX score" (でらっくスコア, DX分数 in Chinese) added. It's similar to the EX score system found in IIDX and DDR.
  • Critical Perfect = 3 (differentiated from Perfect even if not enabled for other note types)
  • Perfect = 2
  • Great = 1
  • Good/Miss = 0
• Max achievement rate is now fixed at 101%.
• When transfering data from FiNALE, only scores higher than 100.00% will be re-calculated, with the part higher than 100% being treated as the break bonus score. That's because the exact play results weren't saved; only the scores were saved.
• Raw score is now gone; only achievement rate is visible.
• Achievement rate is displayed with 4 decimal places instead of 2, making it function like the 1 million score in many music games including CHUNITHM and ONGEKI.
• The base score of Great and Good judgments for break notes are not changed. The 2000/1500/1250 distinction is not shown anywhere in-game, and can only be figured out via trial and error in calculation. (1.02-A added bonus score for Great and Good judgments; see below)
• The 100 point bonus of Break notes is counted separately in this new system, comprising 1% of the total achievement rate.
• At launch, the scoring of Break notes is as follows:
  • 2600 = 1% bonus
  • 2550 = 0.5% bonus
  • 2500 = 0% bonus

1.02-A update

• Ver.DX1.02-A, released on 2019/08/08, changed the scoring to be as follows: (Announcement)
  • 2600 = 1% bonus
  • 2550 = 0.75% bonus
  • 2500 = 0.5% bonus
  • Great = 0.4% bonus (unannounced)
  • Good = 0.3% bonus (unannounced)
  • source
• This change was made to decrease the influence that Break notes have on the total score. The exact value was picked because the average of max achievement rates of all charts in FiNALE was 100.49%, and that 100.5% was the border value of rank SSS+.
• Chinese and Asian versions use this new scoring since launch.

Note types

Hold

• Hold notes can now be released after they end and it would still count as a Perfect.
• If released before it ends, the hold note would not disappear, and the player can still press it again. If it was not released for too long, it might still count as a Perfect.
• If the hold note is only pressed after it turns grey (indicating a "Miss" judgment for the start of the hold note), the ripple effect would be white.

Touch

• New. Works like the jubeat shutter marker. It's blue like star notes by default, and is split into four parts, approaching the center to form a square.
• Touch notes appear larger in BASIC and ADVANCED difficulties than in EXPERT or higher.

EX notes

• Exists for all note types except Break. All non-Miss judgments become Critical Perfect, except for EX HOLD.
  • For EX HOLD: the starting point is still the same as other EX notes. If not released midway, the ending point is also CP. If released midway, judgment for the whole note might decrease to Perfect or Great, but never Good.
• EX TOUCH and EX TOUCH HOLD notes have special graphical and sound effects when successfully hit. Cannot be turned off.