Zack needed his pumpkin hat removed on the halloween costume a long long longgggg time ago. It killed the costume entirely
I mean to an extent if you drop a combo in DOA you're trash all round lmaoooo the combo system in this damn game is soooo smooth and easy like wtf. But you know, at least in DOA5U onwards, KDs didn't give you straight guaranteed FTs (A change that I didn't really agree with) like Hitomi's 3H+K KD>FT psuedo-vortex (I abused this shit soooo much when it was in I got accused of hacking). Hard KDs should give you the FT imo, but idk about if you combo drop because that really just proves the player is doing something wrong because execution (sans Akira and Raidou maybe) is not even much of a barrier to get over.
The solution to the "problem" at hand would be to still allow hits on the ground, but not force-tech them. Therefore, if you choose to stay on the ground and get smacked up, you'll continue to get chipped until you do something to get you up. Then we'll need more strong mids to hit on the ground to enforce the "get tf up bro!" tactics. For example, if Zack's 33P had ground properties and flipped the opponent over, the enemy would think "Shit, if i keep getting hit I'll be at a big disadvantage, let me tech". This is kinda like Tekken's already existing Oki. In Tekken the air and the floor are the worst places you could be as you already know. But we don't want DOA to be like Tekken.