People saying DOA4 is bad mentally disturbs me.

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WebHead

Active Member
I find it completely insane that people are calling one of the best fighting games of all time a bad game (Np, don't continue reading if that triggers you). Not even JK, DOA4 is one of the MOST POLISHED video games I have ever played. The developers really made the most of EVERY aspect, big or small, offline and online. Remember how every character had WIN STREAK icons that stacked up at the bottom of the screen? Remember how many avatars, animals, lobbies, hats, clothing, they made? They created the rotating shop 14 years before Fortnite did. How many online modes did this game have that were all interconnected and could be changed at any moment in a SINGLE 16 player lobby? That is actually insane to me. No fighting game (and I'll even say in any genre) has ever come close to creating an online mode as good as DOA4. And this was a LAUNCH title.

DOA4 created its own unique online community outside of DOAcentral because of the avatar lobby that supported text chat with KEYBOARD, with over 50 avatars to choose from. That was a once in a life time experience.

If you think it was bad because of the gameplay, think again mate. Force teching your opponent off the ground made it a fast paced fighter that really put your opponent on the spot to make a right decision. The highwake up kick being removed from DOA5 immediately disappointed me and dumbed the game down for knocked downs. I've seen some people say it made for more of a "guessing" mechanic. Wrong. It added another element to knockdowns for offense and defense for BOTH PLAYERS. It always felt rewarding when you knew your opponent was going to do a high wake up kick and you punished it by STUNNING them with a low crush (which was risky but PAID OFF).

Also remember in 2006 there were only about 5% of the gamers today. I was probably one of the 4 kids in highschool that owned a 360. A ton of people missed out on this masterpiece of a game. I hold DOA4 as one of the greatest games of all time next to DIABLO 2, HALO 2/3. What those games all have in common was not only were they polished to the gills, they all had their own online communities.

The ranking system is hands down the best and MOST ACCURATE ranking system I have ever come across in ALL ONLINE GAMING. Your rank truly represented your skill in that game. The B+ were noobs that knew how to play DOA but not yet at a competitive level. The A-'s were progressing from noobs and starting to hold their own but still made mistakes that would be punished by good players. A+ had many kinds of different players. There would be the A+'s that lost to other A+ and would hover around 50, 000 - 60, 000 points. There were the A+'s that only lost to S players and other pro A+ players which would have them sit around 65, 000 - 80, 000 points. Then there were the S players that played DOA2/3 for years online, and finally the SS players that lost to no one.

Those SS players had true skill. I remember witnessing a DOA4 player called EvilDancer27 in a 16 player lobby filled with nothing but S and SS players. EvilDancer27 was actually going on a 15+ win streak defeating every single S and SS player lined up to fight him/her.

Playing DOA is like riding a bike, you never forget how to play it. The way I remember playing DOA4 is exactly how DOA6 is played today (except for obvious changes to mechanics that don't actually make it better game). Stun game is still there, combos are still there. The characters moves are still the same. To say its a bad game really makes me ponder. You can say "I think DOA6 is better" but to say DOA4 is BAD makes me wonder what you are trying to make up for there, lad. Was it that you couldn't afford a 360? Was it that you couldn't get to S or SS rank?

Bottom line, the top DOA6 player will also be the top DOA4 player. The game is almost exactly the same but slower paced for reasons said above. Watching old youtube videos makes me wish Itagaki was still in charge. He was a perfectionist and it showed. DOA5/6 has never showed any signs of perfectionism. DOA4 felt like an AAA game. DOA5 and 6 feel like low budget company games that are always missing critical features.

DOA is starting to head back in the right direction with 6 but they still have a long way to go to reach the peak DOA4 was at.
 

Raansu

Well-Known Member
DoA4 was fine casually and it was well made in that regard.

DoA4 was trash competitively. End of story.

This has been argued to death for years, and you wont find many veteran DoA players that actually competed in doa4 who will say it was good competitively. No one really cares about the opinion of online warriors with an easy to get SS rank because anyone could sit in a small lobby all day and farm low ranked players and keep their win % high.

The only thing doa6 has that is similar to 4 is the fact that normal stuns are basically all escapable, which is overall a bad thing. What makes DoA6 put above DoA4 is that BT combos and other unholdable situations still exist on top of the shorter stun threshold which lowers the amount of guess work because you can stun~launch like in doa2 and 3, unlike DoA4 where everything was escapable unless you played Helena, Gen Fu or Ryu which were basically the only characters that could actually take advantage of the force tech system to get unholdable tech options. The rest of the cast couldn't do that. Add the change of the stun game in doa4 which increased the threshold to get max launch height which required you to make multiple guesses in stun in a game that had no unholdable stun scenarios.....ya it was just all around a bad game competitively.

If you liked doa4 then that's great. If you thought it was a good competitive fighter....well you likely were never actually good at the game. DoA3.1 and DoA5 are still the top DoA games. DoA6 is a mixed bag atm.
 

WebHead

Active Member
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Rikuto

P-P-P-P-P-P-POWER!
The ground game in DOA 4 was good.... except for all the characters it gave nothing to. Which was basically everyone, if you weren't Helena, Hayabusa, or Genfu.

Dangerzones that didn't kill, wall hits that didn't combo properly, hold system was out of control.... definitely not a good game competitively, sorry. Fun times, though. It was a product of its era for sure.

DOA 6 needs help at the moment, but I'd easily put it above 4.
 

Virtua Mima

Active Member
At least we had a Gen Fu (may his soul rest in peace). Now we got Honoka and Marie Rose, the game caters to the japanese and lolis entirely, and for the rest of us who aren't on the FBI's watch list it's annoying af. DOAX completely leaked into the fighting series, lame! The only eyebrow-raising aspect of DOA4 and prior games was probably Kasumi's 9T. Also DOA6 is barely playable! DOA4 was a completed game, looked gorgeous, and the online community survived for years. Oh and DOA4 had LOBBIES... And they were extremely creative lobbies too!

It was trash competitively, but it craps on other doas in every other aspect.
 
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Raansu

Well-Known Member
At least we had a Gen Fu (may his soul rest in peace). Now we got Honoka and Marie Rose, the game caters to the japanese and lolis entirely, and for the rest of us who aren't on the FBI's watch list it's annoying af. DOAX completely leaked into the fighting series, lame! The only eyebrow-raising aspect of DOA4 and prior games was probably Kasumi's 9T. Also DOA6 is barely playable! DOA4 was a completed game, looked gorgeous, and the online community survived for years. Oh and DOA4 had LOBBIES... And they were extremely creative lobbies too!

It was trash competitively, but it craps on other doas in every other aspect.

2U was far superior in every aspect than doa4 imo.
 

PhoenixVFIRE

Well-Known Member
im beginning to think that these threads are a bait more than anything.

the only thing doa4 had that no other game has really done better, is it's online lobby system imho... and even then i still love doa2u's system where you had your own online doa profile that was separate from your gamertag + the voice changing system that was fun.
 

Onryoki

Well-Known Member
Standard Donor
At least we had a Gen Fu (may his soul rest in peace). Now we got Honoka and Marie Rose, the game caters to the japanese and lolis entirely, and for the rest of us who aren't on the FBI's watch list it's annoying af. DOAX completely leaked into the fighting series, lame! The only eyebrow-raising aspect of DOA4 and prior games was probably Kasumi's 9T. Also DOA6 is barely playable! DOA4 was a completed game, looked gorgeous, and the online community survived for years. Oh and DOA4 had LOBBIES... And they were extremely creative lobbies too!

It was trash competitively, but it craps on other doas in every other aspect.
You can complain about those characters all you want but you aren’t forced to play them. The ending of eliot’s story already hinted that Gen fu wouldn’t be in DOA6, so him not being in shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

DOA6 is still in it’s early phase, DOA5 Vanilla is a whole lot different than DOA5LR. You can shit on 6 vanilla but we all know by the time 6 is near the end of its life cycle the game will be different. So far DOA2U, 3 and 5 are at the top of the chain. DOA4 only had a fun lobby system and stair throws, and that’s literally just about it. DOA6 is one of the most balanced DOA’s we have, too bad the ground game is nonexistent.
 

Goarmagon

Well-Known Member
Standard Donor
Why does everyone have such a hard on for the ground game in 4? It doesn nothing but obfuscates the game and make it more complex than it has to be...unless I dont see something that you guys do.
 

Awesmic

Well-Known Member
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Why does everyone have such a hard on for the ground game in 4? It doesn nothing but obfuscates the game and make it more complex than it has to be...unless I dont see something that you guys do.
Because it was at least universally consistent, and it was possible to force tech the opponent in the position you want them to depending on the low attack you used after landing a free 2k if the opponent chooses not to techroll.
 

Jared

Member
You can say "I think DOA6 is better" but to say DOA4 is BAD makes me wonder what you are trying to make up for there, lad. Was it that you couldn't afford a 360? Was it that you couldn't get to S or SS rank?

I had an SS rank and was even paid to play the game for a short time, and to me DOA4 is the worst DOA game to date. The logic you're using makes absolutely no sense. The lack of guaranteed damage, the need to extend the stun multiple times to get a launch height worth anything (unless you were a higher tiered character), the joke of a wall game, and almost everything in the game being unsafe made it a chore to play competitively.

The first two things I mentioned above took an emphasis away from the neutral game, and made it so even if you had poor neutral, you could guess your way out of situations and be ok. As a competitive player, I thought this was horrible design and didn't reward the player who outplayed their opponent in the neutral.

The wall game was horrible because it took away the offensive player's reward for positioning and punishing a player by hitting them into a wall. This again made the game extremely forgiving for the less skilled player, as they yet again get another chance to cover up their mistakes.

Now with all this said, I could use your logic against you, and say that because you were a lower skilled player, it made you like the game more because of all the escape options players had for getting out played, but that would be irresponsible and a bit presumptuous of me since I've never played you and don't know this first hand.

Only a few characters were really able to take advantage of the force tech system, as has already been stated, and unless you played Helena or Hayabusa, the strategy was not a big part of competitive play since characters didn't have a consistent way to set up a force tech situation, or the damage being lost to get a force tech was too much to be viable.

Aside from that though, the lobby system was fine, but everyone who cared knew that if you had a lobby exceeding 5-6 players, the lag would be unbearable, and the game's net code was already quite poor.

It's fine that you like DOA4, and part of me enjoys it as well since I played so much of it, but I know that the game is objectively poor in terms of competitive play.

Also the "in 2006 we had 5% of the gamers we have today" line is laughable and extremely anecdotal. Sure the gaming industry has grown a lot in the past 13 years, but your numbers are extremely laughable.

I look forward to your well articulated gif response.
 
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