Free Step Dodge

Despite DOA technically existing for 22 years, it's only been the last 6 or so years that it's gained any sort push towards being competitive (aside from the first couple of years when DOA4 was a joke of an "esport" on CGS and the like).

DOA5 started the effort but DOA people can't even accept the reality of their game. Other people have been saying since 5 that the DOA girls were just copies like how Nico is to Marie and it is painfully true. But in here that's not true and only the new girls are doing that. Then you have the things people say about DOA players and my experience here made me realize just how right they were.

You can't expect people who don't care about DOA to like DOA for "what it is" when the DOA people themselves can't even accept DOA for "what it is".

That is correct that it is indeed paramount that DOA players not act ashamed about DOA at all if they want to have a chance to appeal to other gamers and create a positive impression with people that may be potentially interested, however who are the "DOA people", whom can't accept DOA for what it is? If you're talking about the people bitching about the "toned-down" fanservice, they're not real fans.

With regards to Marie Rose, Honoka & Nico, the movement towards loli moeblobs started with DOA5UA, the arcade release in Japan at the end of 2013. DOA was never really about those types of characters. It was about knocking your opponents off buildings into explosive dangerzones, usually with kickass ninjas.

See how you grouped Marie, Honoka, and Nico together? The same has been done to the other girls by other people so the Nico thing is nothing new to them. In here the reusing of faces and bodies is only an issue with the new characters but not the old characters. E.g. Koko and Leifang, Momiji and Mai, Kasumi and Ayane. Before the theme of the character is even considered, the model themselves already look too alike.

DOA may never have had those characters but their inclusion did not make other people lose their respect for DOA. There was none to begin with. People just went "haha DOA has a loli now" and moved on. As for what DOA is really about I wouldn't know. I started with 5 so adding characters with the same body and face is how I see DOA characters.

Characters looking alike or using similar bodies/assets has nothing to do with DOA not having respect or "never having any in the first place". DOA doesn't get respect because DOA was mostly directed by the egotistical douchebag scrub Itagaki, Team Ninja marketed the game terribly, especially with DOAXBV's promotion, and the game possesses a controversial mechanic that turns off typical FGC players, 'The Hold'.

Essentially DOAXBV was created and promoted in both Japan and the West at a time when DOA had not quite established a reputation as a reputable, legitimate competitive fighter. This game had commercials that basically buried DOA's reputation into the ground: "Play with yourself or play with a friend". DOA2U also started the whole shitton of costumes for the female characters trait of DOA including bikinis.

Unfortunately DOA doesn't really get respect because the competitive community can't seem to do enough to counter the massive reputation hole and stigmas that DOA is plagued with. I.e. the competitive community isn't large enough to kind of force the FGC to respect it or at least acknowledge it, like the Smash Community did for Smash.

However when all is said and done, especially in 2018, Nico will not be the reason people "don't respect" DOA6 if it doesn't garner respect.

Wait why are we making it sound like there's a relation between the new characters and the "knock your opponents off buildings into explosive dangerzones" gameplay? Although there's indeed a strange lack high places to knock things off in 6, you were always able to do that in U and LR.
It's funny how Itagaki claimed to have made XBV as a way to keep the mainline clean, but it ended up making things worse.

Aside from a lot of stage transitions and the dreadful hold, DOA was about simplistic, conventionally attractive, archetypal girls, and the new ones fit right in with this. What they're doing with 5/6 is simply exploring more types after exhausting the basic types that are popular in versus games. This turned out to sell like hotcakes and as a business, it's too obvious what they needed to do with it.

I do think there's a severe overreaction since they were using the "add to" approach, not "replace". What's already there will still be there (aside from an actual replacement which is the only time i was pissed off about a character decision in this series). We're only at the second Marie lookalike (who is a womanlet more than a loli) after years of 10+ Kasumi/Tina lookalikes, so I can live with it for a bit.

"especially in 2018, Nico will not be the reason people "don't respect" DOA6 if it doesn't garner respect."

Let me guess, it's the way some """fan of the series""" lunatics act? Because this line always comes to mind whenever I read what they say.

Itagaki was the guy that went "A wrestler can never beat a ninja." I mean sure, in a realistic portion I can't see how a wrestler can beat a true ninja, but for the sake of balance and diversity, you'd have to create balance and compensate equally. Itagaki was that guy that borrowed VF's source code from Sega and decided to make a game based on how overly edgy he was and to brag his coolness really.

Itagaki was an action-adventure hack-N-slash kinda guy and he's unfortunately not a fighting game player, so you can see why it's a milestone and a struggle to get DOA to what it is now in even a "decent" spotlight.

As for DOA's stigma, it's almost like racism in real life, you can't exactly get rid of it. Top of that, TN decided to continue Itagaki's legacy by continuing DOA since it's the fighter they are already familiar with. The only way that stigma can be resolved (maybe) is if TN creates an entirely new fighting game IP by taking another example of VF's source code, but even then, that's a stretch with TN reputation atm.

Still makes me sad and cracks me up at the same time that DOAXBV's purpose was to separate the fanservice element from the fighting game element of DOA, but what it ended up doing ironically was making the general public associate sexuality with DOA more so than fighting combat. Of course I wish DOAXBV never existed, but what's done is done. Upon reflection, it's Itagaki direction and attitude towards FG's...

that has shot DOA in the foot more than anything, including the fanservice. SNK's KOF series isn't hurt by the existence of SNK Heroines because KOF (and Fatal Fury/Art of Fighting, etc.) got established first as a legitimate fighting game. Itagaki created DOA because he hates Tekken and the way it's played. DOA is created to his vision of what a casual fighting game should look like (culminating with DOA4).