Notice of IDOLA Phantasy Star Saga Service Termination

IDOLA Phantasy Star Saga will be discontinued on January 12th, 2022. New user registrations will continue to be accepted up until the end date.

End of Service Timeline

  • Star Diamond purchases will be disabled on October 31st, 2021 @ 12:00 JST.
  • Idola Points can no longer be earned after December 13th, 2021 @ 4:00 JST.
  • The Idola Point Exchange in NGS will be removed on January 12th, 2022 @ 11:00 JST.
  • The game service will be terminated on January 12th, 2022 @ 12:00 JST.
  • Star Diamond refund requests are planned for January 12th, 2022 @ 17:00 JST.
    • More information regarding refunds will be detailed at a later date.

Additional game content is still planned for release in November.

42 thoughts on “Notice of IDOLA Phantasy Star Saga Service Termination”

  1. AHahahahah, first Sakura Kakumei, now this.
    Modern Sega CAN NOT manage online games, mobile or otherwise.
    NGS only exists in the accumulated impulse from PSO2's continuous success, and it runs out fast.
    With Nagoshi leaving, this company and its games have no future.

    Reply
    • Oh look, it's you, the person who exists just to spray shit everywhere while their ass hangs out. Considering you said you would shit talk NGS even if it gave you everything you wanted, could you please just leave and troll some other place? You're not here for any other reason.

    • Jesus, Roxadoo, can you take a breather? He's critical of Sega's practices so you attack him personally? It's more than a little pathetic, dude, you're acting like a baby. Why don't you take your own advice an leave, because if people being critical of NGS is gonna put you into a seething rage like this every time, you're just gonna give yourself aneurysm, because the state NGS is in, there's gonna be a lit of criticism from a lot of people for a long time.

    • why wont you work in Sega to show off your genius to worldwide? Even Sega won't hire you nor Square Enix xDD

    • If I didn't know any better I would have thought SEGA beat you up and took your wife and kidsπŸ˜‚ from the way you talk about about them. Although I see afew problems with what you said and it probably has to do with this grudge against sega.If you really want me to bring up some successful mobile sega games I could bring up smt dx2 which single handedly help the megaten series surpass the persona series in sales(Still on going for about 3 years).I could also bring up the sonic ports that are considered the best way to play the older sonic games. And honestly this year sega has help published some heavy hitters like guilty strive one of the most anticipated fighting of the year, lost judgement a sequel to judgement a spin-off series of the long running yakuza,Super monkey ball, and even had their hands in a demon slayer game,etc. And later this year they plan to publish smt5 and king of fighters 14. So to be honest they could be doing much much worst.

    • "With Nagoshi leaving, this company and it's games have no future."

      You mean the dude partially responsible for the entire Sakura Wars reboot blunder and the one who greenlit only a gacha game for the 30th anniversary of an IP that was already running two gacha games and did not need another?

      You mean the dude who was responsible for the bulk of the decisions made by Sega as the chief creative officer of the company for almost the entire past decade? You mean the dude who outside of creating the Yakuza series, is responsible for the weakest entries in the series and had little to no real input in any of it's recent successes?

      You mean the dude who invested a bunch of money into a now already dead IP because his obsession with celebrities tied the company's hands from releasing the new IP on PC; at this point Sega's main platform? The same dude who while mutilating Sakura Wars corpse decided in his infinite wisdom to revive an IP heavily focused around the japanese Otaku market yet avoided bringing it to the prime Otaku platform of choice with a 90% marketshare in the domestic console market?

      We are talking about that Nagoshi right? Just making sure we are talking about the same Nagoshi here.

    • I give it another year, probably less. "Desert" update will be a disaster. People will squeeze "content" that has been developed for 6 months in a week or two, and then will be stuck with nothing to do for another half a year. By the time second "big" update will arrive, there will be nobody playing, no revenue, no nothing, it will shut down.

      Unless Sega turns their development strategy 180 degrees, NGS is done for.
      The sad part is that PSO2 classic will sink along with it.

    • Oh shit new bumped post I wonder what rent-frees are going to doompost about this time.

      Please find some new material. We have had way worse content droughts in JP than this, I.E. Episode 5 where we had to run busters for a year with no major variation between them outside the scenery.

      Complaining literally is only going to accelerate this thru erosion of brand trust. Stop whining, give Sega your feedback through the proper channels, and stop ruining the game for people who actually like it in the first place.

    • Yeah a year of buster quests is when Sega hired NEW DIRECTOR for episode 6.
      Maybe it's time to call for that director again.

  2. Nonono my IDOLA no! Why SEGA why?! I knew I should have gone to sleep, why did I have to open Bumped?! TTnTT

    Now… this is personal…

    Reply
  3. I think they will focus more and more on PSO2 NGS development and with every extra zone the game will just become better. It's a slow rampup but once we've got the 3 zones and extra classes/triggers/UQ's the downtime will be shorter. The game won't feel finished until third zone imo. So around summer 2022? From a different perspective. It's kinda nice to be in early on and slowly get used to the new systems. Rather than the 20 systems PSO2 dumped on new players all at once, which was kinda overwhelming.

    Reply
    • Agree, it's not on best condition, but what works, works pretty well.

      Well, except Wired Lance, Partizan and Dual Blades. Man, those need updates.

  4. Lack of game is not content, the world is not content, 'I' am not content. When will sega and the world start spinning around me and fulfill all my wishes? Don't they realize that I speak for everyone and that if I'm not happy with the game then no one is? *sigh* Everything is dead, love, humanity, PSO2, even my ability to enjoy life, and if I can't enjoy life, then no one is allowed to. The planet was a mistake…
    From your friendly neighbourhood, Whinerman

    Reply
  5. I think the reason PSO2es is still alive and well is cause it's more of a direct connection to the game than Idola was. It also makes it WAY easier to buy AC for the base game.

    While I'm not a fan of Idola for that reason and cause I'm not a fan of mobile market, it does feel odd to see another free SG source dwindling away.

    The ones I know of now, at least of the higher output; is casino, pvp (does anyone legit still play these in the game's current cycle?) and badge drops.

    Usually on pso2 day, folks cradle trig it up to stockpile the badges till either the 22 of that month (for member extra pso2 day) or till next month.

    Is there another source I might have forgotten?

    Reply
    • If Idola is treated mostly as free SG source, then people to play it at bare minimum and not scratching at all, thus might be the reason why it got cancelled.

  6. The story and idea of developing your characters is quite okay and keep me with this for a while but the game itself not really have much for me to sticking with

    Reply
  7. NGS will more than likely not fall because of how big the brand name for PSO2 is. People still play the english version and the japan version too. I do agree that the actual content drought IS driving the game down to it's ruin, and that they need to step it up. If they need to scratch Idola then so be it.

    The other problem is though is that NGS is pretty much a shinier, newer version of PSO2 with new graphics, new characters etc. Since people were able to bring their gear from PSO2 over to NGS, a lot of people's grinding was skipped because they automatically had powerful gear like 15*s that turned into 4*s from the transfer.

    In hindsight, I think Sega at the beginning of NGS would've been better off just having all the gear just stay back in PSO2 while you have to grind new stuff in NGS. It would've elongated the game a fair bit and the only stuff that would carry over is fashion based things and lobby actions. Having all the units and the weapons carry over pretty much cut the grind in half for a lot of people I feel.

    Reply
    • Saying that your β˜…4 Cras weaponries "powerful" is misguided. It's only strong as max limit breaked β˜…2 Zwia/Tsuvia/Suvia series, tho closer toβ˜…1 Prim series.

      I can't say much, but the same might be applicable about your carry-over units.

    • They become nerfed 4* weapons with the same base attack, the same potential and nerfed megalo abilities that will hold you for a while till you grind a proper NG 4* weapon. Early 15* will be equipped on Lv.10 while the rest can be used on Lv.15 while all the units can be equip at Lv.10

      Yes they will hold you for a while but don't expect to run Tower Defence of fight a Gigantix with this. The good thing is that this will save you meseta for the gold prim weapons to use as grinding fodder later on.

      Also the units should be replaced as soon as possible to Alga, Belta and Sheza

    • I imagine that you probably won't care about what i have to say and that I probably wasted my time in writing this but here goes anyway.

      The only problem with that statement is that believe it or not, NGS isn't actually a shinier, prettier PSO2. It's actually inferior in almost every single way. The worst part is, Sega was completely aware of how little NGS actually brought to the table so instead they did their very best to hide that fact. One by severely reducing the graphical qualities of PSO2 (The most blatant hint of this lies in the preview images of PSO2's outfits when you browse thru them in salon. They purposely made them look like atomic crap so the NGS stuff could stand out that much more).

      They changed the lighting in base PSO so that it looked 'off'. It was like a "Did pso2 always look this bad?" "I guess NGS just looks that good." Case when in reality, While NGS does look pretty good, Pso2 was downgraded just enough to widen the gap without causing too severe a noticeable difference.

      Mechanically, NGS is actually inferior to base PSO2. There are quite a few settings that are outright removed from NGS which could have still worked with if nothing else, minor adjustments and the targeting system, A lock on system which was actually extremely reliable in PSO2, is now beyond worthless in NGS. It's glaringly awful. On pso2 retargeting is as simple as pointing to the direction the part you want to lock onto is but in NGS You'll pretty much target anything BUT your intended target.

      Episode 1 also had much more content then NGS did at launch. You run out of content within 3 days of playing the fully released NGS product and everything that's come after are little more then the same enemies with emoji's on their heads. It's been 5 months and we still don't have a proper content update. It's been nothing but an endless barrage of gacha the likes literally 3x worse then Base PSO2 and to add insult to injury, they completely undermined their own 'pro-consumer' free daily SG pull by endlessly increasing the pool by adding 'new' content to the previous ones, making it increasingly harder to get anything new. A fair counter balance would be to allow for free daily pulls to count towards a free pick ticket but it doesn't.

      Further more, the game further restricts players from naturally acquiring any cosmetics in game by completely shutting out FTP players from accessing shop. In short, no matter how dedicated you are to grinding out in demand affixes, You cannot sell them without paying for premium, and thus, you have to rely entirely on weeklies to make money. Something which was also nerfed. So you can't even offset that strikingly massive restriction by having multiple characters because its limited to one clear a week.

      In short, you can make 2 million a week now when literally everything desirable costs between 700k-5m. And with the amount of scratches being dumped on us on a consistent basis, players are rapidly finding their ability to acquire the things they want before they invariably are beaten to the bunch by paying players is quickly dropping every day.

      Another massive problem is, there's no actual lobby nor can you actually interact with your team in a meaningful way. There's no team room , no benefits that come from being in a team, no nothing. All you can do is talk to teammates. At this point, it's little more than an extended friends list because this game is so strikingly easy, you don't need another player for anything save for EQs which you get matched with anyway and are literally just "Fite the dude". I'm not counting the "new EQ" in this as the damages I'm referring to and will bring up have already been dealt prior to it's release.

      That being said, Most if not all players have reduced their playtime to "Do dailies, do weeklies, eff off till they reset"

      This is specifically due to the problem mentioned above. There's no lobby. You could count the city space as a lobby but it doesn't provide the same atmosphere that enabled PSO2's incredible longevity.

      The fashion and social aspects of the game turned PSO2 into a sort of modern day IMVU. Friends would sit around and chat for hours. The atmosphere of the lobby naturally enabled this. The atmosphere of NGS by comparison is quite dour. The day and night cycle change so fast you have barely a few minutes with a single skybox before it shifts over to the next cycle so the lighting is always changing and those people who enjoy taking screen shots of their creations find themselves returning to base PSO2 because it provides a more stable environment to take these screencaptures.

      In addition, given how NGS does away with it's quest counter and has no internal spaces (like My Room), You can't make use of the increased Graphical Fidelity to further increase the quality of your screen shots.

      I get that particular point might be weak since you might not care about screenshots or fashion but fashion is an insanely massive part of the PSO2 player base. Otherwise they wouldn't have 10 scratches up at any given moment = 3=
      So to access My Room. An extremely popular feature of PSO2, you have to return to the base game in order to use it and thus, back to a game that's had it's graphics basically sabotaged.

      Pre NGS, the game had over 100k average players logging on every day. Post NGS (as of last week anyway) That's dropped down to an alarming (less than)3k a day.

      That's an extreme plummet no matter how you look at it. As long as 2 or more 'people' are playing your argument is technically valid. but a less than 3,000 average compared to a 100k+ average, is nothing to feel optimistic about.

      The only reason they told player they could keep their outfits and gear is that had they not, a titanic number of players would have simply walked off right then and there. A bunch of people from the early days of PSO2 were already getting sick of pso2 due to how stagnant it's become and how it had glaring not to mention incredibly lazy issues that impeded enjoyment. NGS was a hope that all those glaring issues would be corrected in one fell swoop. And in a way, It kinda was. Sorta. The truth is, it was a half truth. Only the new shit would be corrected and the old shit would serve as an artificial pedestal for the 'new' stuff. Also your old gear was largely inferior to the basic prim stuff save for the select few that went full destiny on making the best possible gear and even then, the affixes and stats were all severely nerfed to the point where, in theory, it wouldn't take too long for them to be severely outclassed.

      As for your final point, That's more or less incorrect. NGS has a double floodgate system that's designed to overlap and force players to carry a ball and chain everywhere they go. The first Floodgate is the BP. You can only access a large amount of content if your BP is at a sufficient level. Which in all honesty, is a really good system. Your BP is determined by your affixes, grind level across all your gear, SP points allotted and your own level. It's possible to have a BP of 1300 by lv11.

      The problem lies in the second flood gate. you cannot properly harm enemies if their levels are 5 or greater than yours. So even if you have a BP of 1300, you're worthless to everyone else in an EQ because you aren't able to match their fire power. so if someone's Battle Power is the bare minimum for an EQ, and yours is 200 higher than theirs, but your level is 5 below the enemies' You will be dead weight, not them. So even if they have random worthless affixes, even if their gear is totally worthless and they are actually dead weight, you, a player who knows exactly what they're doing and is extremely efficient and optimized, are punished and are made, artificially, into dead weight. A genuinely worthless player, as you, have single handedly, dropped the MPA's total DPS down significantly. instead of doing your normal 300-900 damage, you're doing 10-50 damage.

      All of this also ignores the heavy amount of bugs that are still prevalent in the game to this day since launch.

      TL;DR: Unfortunately, This game is trash and given how it's average number of daily players has dropped by roughly 100 thousand a day from the time NGS launched till today, it probably doesn't have very long to live.

  8. Why this SEGA decision will be due to the launch of Sin Chronicle or because in the game many are those who left for the Gameplay, History etc. I liked it at the beginning of the story until the end with the final Boss Dark Falz, then in the second part they got our character to take center stage because they didn't do it from the beginning, instead of putting Iori as MC? Then Rosalinde's Ship with the purple hair guy earned me an @ # E @ I really didn't give it any importance, at first the PvP for me was great but later they put the Popona's, Matoi, they had all three and if you weren't you Well, they broke your a$$, maybe they didn't know how to cope with the game, like other SEGA mobile games are doing, or goodbye SG mode for free to find another way. What do you think?

    Reply
  9. I dont get when people say "nothing to do", there are few repeatable quest but there are, there is always gameplay skill improvement (dont stuck just with doing what "have to do", improve yourself lol, investigate, grow) I dont know, my goal when playing is not just "complete quests", my goal is be very helpful in battle and have fun. There are gigantix that you can fight, there are farmeable stuff to open batledia… Yes, they started slowly, but cant people understand that the beginning can be more complicated? specially on a new game and engine(?, this is not like another year of pso2 that they re so used to work with… also, getting good ideas is a very hard part.

    Reply
  10. Why people are surprised of this and go post WHINEs? This is realy a forgone conclusion since it's a mobile service-based RPG game, whose main character must be gacha'd to be obtained.

    Reply
    • I think it's more about what we're going to lose when Idola is gone. One of the easiest way to get SG is gone, and we got no alternative for that. I mean, sure, it's even easier to just buy some SG, I suppose.

  11. Honestly, I'm more amazed to the fact that the game lasted this long. PSO2 itself has been a mess, and NGS is like an attempt to hide a messy house under a beautiful rug.

    Reply
  12. I hope SEGA will give us NGS x Idola EP2 collab (like Idola's 3rd anniversary) for the last time before Idola goes terminated.

    Reply
  13. Honestly, I knew this game was done the moment they started releasing Season 2 gachas … and the characters didn't have individual Law/Chaos outfits and animations. Just the original model and a new picture.

    Like, how do you expect people to spend money on a mobile gacha when you can't even bother to make IRL cash characters appealing? Sega just lazy and incompetent at this point, let's be honest.

    Reply
  14. I actually love this game and I'm so glad that it will get terminated. The game become cash grab so hard since the EP2 release. New unit = new meta and that totally destroy the fun of arena. If your opponent have phoenix bitch gisel, new uly, popona in their team it will become really difficult to make everyone in your team survive. especially, if those fuckers are on their 2nd party.

    Reply

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