Free Step Dodge

@Hold_Junkie93 Onryoki is asking for more difficult, i.e. high-execution characters in DOA6, though DOA's never really been about "high execution" in the traditional sense because there are more elements to account for in a given match than most FG's including relatively large movesets and environmental interactions for instance, which adds to DOA's complexity.

By "difficult," he could be referring to the "which button should I press?" challenge rather than the "can I press the button I want to press?" challenge.
Granted, I think Akira's difficulty is more on the "can I?" end compared to someone like Brad or Nyo who are closer to the "should I?" end, but I'd welcome an emphasis on either front over NiCO and Diego, who avoid touching either to any degree.

IMO they’re budget additions. They only have like 60 moves and animate rather poorly in some areas. Some more effort could have been put into giving their moves more personality and flavor too, ESPECIALLY Diego holy shit

TN: "Our focus group said you'd like him!"
Playerbase: "lolno"

Yeah I sure do miss my boi Akira. Kokoro's fun and all but it just ain't the same without them 1 frame knees.

Akira's a solid character in his own right, but I feel that he can place a little too much emphasis on the execution focus making it seem like the player gets more caught up with trying to perform a technique properly over the focus on neutral or meta-game of a fight. Compared to a character like Ein, where the focus is almost entirely on neutral and "the fight". (or I should say "the struggle" in his case...)

As for Diego, his personality is pretty bad, almost to the point of being derpy (but it would be giving TN too much to think that they were being self-aware), though NiCO is pretty meh also. She's just as "focus-grouped" as Diego, and well, Honoka & Marie Rose too now that I think about. But out of all the additions since DOA5, Diego & NiCO are defiinitely the most "budget"-looking. Some terrible animations.

Both NiCO and Diego were created to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The difference is that at least in NiCO's case it seemingly worked. I hate the character, but she's quite popular with a lot of players. Same can't be said for Diego. He's just a sad, failed product of a clueless corporate initiative.

It's Koei-Tecmo though, so I can't say that I'm completely surprised. Honoka's moveset is basically tossed together.

@Force_of_Nature Oh...Copy. That's not Akira's issue, it's just his nature rather. Once you learn the execution, it doesn't bug you anymore. Akira always has to be 2 steps ahead to get a hold of a mix-up. He has to take risks with his linearity and that would either kick his ass in 6 or people may get blown up more because of the hi-counter damage on top of his damage. He's like a less threatening Zangief.

@Hold_Junkie93 @Force_of_Nature I mean Akira is the epitome to what neutral really is and has crowd control of cheers for over 3 games now. VF, Dengeki Bunko, DOA etc. That character teaches you proper offense and defense at the cost of your fingers. Is it worth it in a fast paced game? possibly, though execution varies since there's a reason why some of his shit was hard to do due to the reward system he has.

But then you have Gen Fu who makes similar damage with hardly any effort at all, so execution really isn't a big factor to draw in a crowd and why difficulty doesn't matter much, however Akira makes his shit look cool unlike Fu and most games there was an actual reason for it (Yu Suzuki explained this on why he made Akira hard in that panel interview many years back @Hold_Junkie93).

@Brute Even though Marie Rose caters to a certain demographic I thought she was pretty unique, though just me on that aha.

Problem is execution doesn't cater to most once they see someone who can do the same or more for less effort. I was telling @Force_of_Nature that Tekken would be in the same boat as VF, being thought of as overtly difficult. It's just Tekken has, Animals, lolis, robots, titties and testosterone lvls over 9000. 50/50s and easy to pick up damage at lower levels/silly juggles. So, they get casuals' interests.

People feel like they, "know" Tekken because they do a couple tricks, so, it keeps people playing.

^ Yes, I see this a lot with Tekken 7 players, especially in my scene. It's an easier game to look super competent at compared to some other FG's, whereas VF and to a lesser extent DOA scare those types off.

@DestructionBomb Fair enough dude. GenFu is pretty boring in general, and good to see him gone in DOA6. Akira does look mad dope when the player is able to swag with him. JC Akira made NEC16 crazy hype.

Btw thanks @Onryoki for hosting this long ass conversation. I would love to talk about this in more detail.

On topic, it's also one of the reasons why I don't mind guest inclusion and why it's the norm these days. 100% chance to be unique but a 50/50 chance if the character included is epic as nuts or not. Akira just happened to be epic, Naotora however did not meet that specific. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Execution idc but make the character look sick in the movekit like a certain legendary headband warrior.

@DestructionBomb You really aren't the only one on that. I would say alot of the new characters in DOA5 caught on with plenty of people outside of Mila(whose really only popular in the West) and Diego(whose not even on the radar) but it's easy to understand how others may not see it that way by primarily only visiting most of the competitive DOA channels.

I ultimately feel some are beginning to hit that wall where

They want more characters to either scratch the itch and actually go full out with giving them something unique or give them a whole new style in general.

I think NiCO's charge abilities is definitely a small change of pace due to being able to fake out Hold users in a game like DOA but I can also understand that it's not enough either when she and the other characters have such small movesets.