1/3 of the cast on this show (you know who you are) seemed to just be a Tekken troll there to do nothing more than defend Tekken and spout the usual stereotypical insults at DOA. Not cool.
It was all in jest, and we were interested in talking to someone who was more experienced with another game over DOA.
Also, interrupting interesting discussions on programming issues and technical details of DOA games/internal dynamics at team ninja with random degrading comments directed at Tecmo, Itagaki, the franchise, Hayabusa and Hayashi is not cool.
I would have liked more conversation about the programming and technical details of DOA games, perhaps in a future podcast
One member of the cast needs to go. And Tekken 4 sucked- even Tekken fans know this.
He was a guest, he's not permanent, and he may be in future ones as well. Additionally, much like there are people who don't like DOA4, there are people who like Tekken 4. I personally haven't enjoyed any Tekken, but from what I've seen and played Tekken 4 did a lot of things outside of their normal realm: Environments and the like. I know of a few Tekken players who enjoyed Tekken 4.
On another note, you guys hit upon something really interesting during the podcast- the fact that Team Ninja seems to be able to constantly hit such a high performance bar with their games- more so than Namco. However please note that these days seem to be behind us- Ninja Gaiden 2 was a disaster, and from what I hear DOAD didn't impress on a technical level, either. I suppose Ninja Gaiden 3 will really show us if this new Team Ninja can hit the bar set by previous Tecmo games.
I concur, it feels like this generation Team NINJA hasn't been up to their typical standards. However, the company has gone through some major restructuring and been sidelined with other issues moreso in this generation than the previous. Here's hoping DOA5 meets that high bar.
Finally there was something you said about holds- I've always wondered why most criticisms of DOA revolve around the holds themselves as opposed to how they are implemented. In the end, holds are clearly overpowered in DOA4 and as a result break the flow of the game, but is the solution really to ditch holds altogether? I don't think so. I think the defensive hold is one of the defining features of DOA, and a better approach would be to figure out how to make it such a compelling mechanic that other games feel incomplete withoug it.
I don't think that I've ever mentioned that holds should be removed. In fact, in previous podcasts we've discussed that really the core issue with the holds is the frequency of which you are able to do them. That is, to clarify, the amount of situations a hold can be used. This is a core reason that DOA3.1(and 3.2) are considered competitive iterations to the series: The Hold was still usable to stop abusable moves such as Jann Lee's
or Gen Fu's
, but there were certain states where you couldn't perform the hold. These states include certain stuns, guard breaks, guard crushes, and wall crumples. These situations allowed for strategy, combos, and metagame to develop because you were restricting a core element of the game much like restricting attacks and throws at certain times.
What if the holds were treated like the parries in SF3- expert level techniques that are only seen in tournament level play? With extremely strict input AND execution windows- nearly impossible to pull off reliably, and only offering frame advantage as opposed to damage, but with the possility of enabling some really wicked launches? Also, what if they were engineered specifically to punish hold-mashing? (In SF3, if you make a parry input that is "whiffed", you are punished by an extended period when the system disregards any further parry inputs. This means that even though you can fire off a parry per frame if each one connects on a hit of an enemy's super move, if you miss even one of them you will be unable to parry again for an extended period of time.)
This isn't really a new idea, and I'm not complaining about it being brought up again. In short, Team NINJA has dug themselves in a hole where they want to 'fix' the hold system, but don't want to change what's made the game recognizable. However, while they've been sitting on this functionality for the entirety of the series, other games have found ways to implement similar ideas into their own games with moderate success.
What if whiffing a hold creates an "invisible stun" period when the player can do any other thing except another hold? This would be true even if the hold command was buffered- You could also cancel a buffered hold if the player makes another hold input before the hold takes effect, and cancel all further hold buffering until the character enters another rest state. This would ensure that mashing holds NEVER works, and reward players who learn to hold off a perfect read.
Again, nothing wrong with this idea really, but it would have to require a drastic change to the stun system itself. If every move continued to critical stun, and it made it so easy to grant counter hit attacks, then allowing a one time hold in stun can feel unfair to some competitive players and confusing to the casual. The amount of critical stun threshold would have to be reduced.
