Team Ninja recently asked us for feedback regarding holds, and which system we preferred. Many of us told them we were not satisfied with either 3-point or 4-point in their current implementation as the ease getting damage from it was just plain ridiculous, and is one of the core reasons DOA is not taken seriously as a competitive fighter.
If Hayashi-san and Shimbori-san hold good to their word, that means we will be seeing a good old fashioned nerf to counters coming soon to a DOA 5 near you =)
Meh, I won’t deny it. I love DOA as a series, 3.1 (jap version) being my favorite… but DOA 4/D are the worst offenders by far… DOA 1 2 and 3 have ways of getting around that triangle nonsense, but 4/D just cram it down your throat with no possible way of escaping the continuous guessing.
That’s part of what we’re attempting to get nerfed.
3.1 had situations where you could get guaranteed damage/launches without the threat of being countered after the first attack. It also had the threat of getting high-counter thrown by certain characters for 75% of your lifebar if you were spamming counters, which actually sort of made you want them to do it.
It also had a working sidestepping engine that actually evaded shit, frame advantage off of block on tons of moves… beautiful game really. It punished ignorance at every turn.
Most of us who are advocating for changes are fans of 3.1, and we’re getting a lot of communication from team ninja… its about the first time in 8 years I’ve actually had hope for a new game to not suck.
Those of us in the competitive doa community who had the privilege to play 3.1 want to see the game return to that type of play (with improvments for a 10 year gap). The game has everything a competitive fighting game needs: Pressure strings, true combos, environmental positional play, and punishment to name a few. You could play the game like DOA2 but it wouldn’t be taking it to its limits. Gen Fu for example (hate using him as an example as he was hands down the best character in 3.1) had P+KPP string which if the opponent was standing then the final hit was guaranteed after the second, but if the opponent was crouching (or low holding) it would be all guaranteed, did I mention that it also causes knockback and wall damage? how about the fact that a wall hit guaranteed a free attack - typically a launcher. In 3.1 you could legitimately punish holds WITH attacks, hell, because of throws being as fast as they were, you could punish holds properly with throws as well. If you got held? Well it was a slap on the wrist - typically - unless it was a strategical hold that grants combo potential.
But I could go on forever about 3.1. So I won’t. Point is, the game was legit and it’s sad it never made it over here in the states. If you have a modded Xbox I highly recommend trying it out, or attending one of our Philly events (NEC or GVN) as we always have it there for anyone who wants to play it. If you want to learn more about 3.1, just head over to FreeStepDodge.
The problem with watching footage of DOA is that a lot of the systems that have changed or have been requested to change can’t be seen through video. There have been stuns in the past where it’s delayed on how you can hold, then there are stuns that are legitimate option-selects for the defender (DOA3 only so far), so without hands-on you really can’t tell.
In the DOA5 trailer it shows Hayabusa hold Hayate’s high-punch twice but once doing the Izuna and the second doing a standard back-flip. This implies that the Izuna may be an advanced hold now but it’s really difficult to tell by footage.
As for holding during hit stun, the funny thing is that you cannot hold during hit stun in DOA. You can hold through critical stun though. I know that’s what you were referring to about hit stun but I just wanted to clarify that there is a hit stun property, especially in DOA1-3, but in DOA4 they made it so nearly every move is critical on hit. That of course negated any of the possible frame traps that were able to be done in the other DOAs. Also prior to DOA4, as I mentioned earlier, each type of critical stun animation had a certain amount frames before you could hold out of it, DOA4 practically removed this feature to the point where they even made guard breaks a “Critical State” so the player could hold out of their broken guard (seriously? yes.).
Not sure what you mean Maria. There are barely any unblockable moves in the game. I mean jann lee’s dragon kick comes to mind but thats about it, and you can duck that on reaction 100% of the time offline.
If you’re talking about guard breaks, nearly all of them have an obscene amount of chargeup with a big visual effect on them… you just end up getting held when you try those most of the time. 3.1 had Leon who had a lot of guard breaks, but he was also a heavy so it made sense. He was nerfed incredibly hard in DOA 4 having almost all of his guard breaks removed, and not only are they no longer frame advantage, but they are now UNSAFE.
EPIC WIN!! Can’t wait for DOA 5 to come out. I can finally get back to playing it xD
I stopped playing due to too many restrictions noobs make on kasumi, and lag. Lag on there is horrible so I hope they fix their networking.
My top 3 fav fighters are Guardian Heroes HD, Dead or alive, and S Street Fighter 4. I also do like Smash bros melee and soal calibur but I can’t dedicate all my time on all of them so I just pick 3.
That’s an integral part of DOA’s system and it’s what makes DOA…DOA. The counter window is the real problem. The active window is way too long, shorten the window and throwing out random counters become very high risk.
^ That sounds like an interesting fix, because you do have a point…
Without that in place, DOA does kind become a clone of other 3D fighters…
DOA4 counter window is still too lenient, but if they can restructure the game mechanics, then DOA5 is more than worth a buy…
But they need to slim down the counter window 10-12 frames(it’s what it felt like to me) is way too fucking much… cut that shit down to 4-5 frames… possibly even 3f… just-frame counters is pushing it as far as slimming it down goes though, because then you might as well not keep this mechanic in place…
That was actually a fix i proposed years ago. A 4-8 frame window is large enough IMO, but they’d have to tone down on the number of moves that stun and give more advantage on hit for moves that don’t stun.
It’s 22 frames just as an fyi. 0/22/8 on high/mid and 0/22/5 on low. In Dimensions they extended the recovery of a hold being done while in stun by 7 frames.
They’ve been asked numerous times by various people, including me, to lower the active frames of the hold. Suggestions have ranged from 8 to 12 active frames. It’s not like throws and attacks have more than 5 active frames…
That’s the idea. Right now in the pre-alpha build pretty much all of the guaranteed damage scenarios are coming from environmental aspects of the game… juggles off of explosive walls, for example.
I’d like to get it to the point where every full-height wall impact gives a guaranteed launch.
DOA is THE game with environmental dangerzones, so it should get its biggest most guaranteed damage from that. That doesn’t mean it needs random cheetahs and cars to just come out of nowhere and piss you off though. It’s also “That game with all the fucking counters”, so that needs to remain intact, but brought into line so that it serves a meaningful, limited purpose instead of some rock paper scissors bullshit.
As development goes on it will be interesting to see just how much sway we’ve got over them. They are certainly openly communicating… which is a lot more than I could say back when Itagaki was in charge.