Well Tekken is a different beast entirely. For one, you can react to throws in tekken based on which arm is coming out to grab you and break it. As such its good to use on people with slower reflexes, but typically it's going to fail most of the time at the higher end of competition there.
In soul calibur I use Astaroth and his throws are all 50/50's with nothing different visually between the break animations, so it's a lot more viable there. Of course, I have to use strikes as a way of ringing people out, or to scare my enemy into standing so I can set up my throws more easily. Environmental setups can sometimes also make great use of astaorths longer wall combos (which use a combination of strikes and throws to keep going), but its all very situational. I use both parts of his arsenal pretty evenly though, sometimes shifting from one or the other if its going to be more effective in that particular matchup.
In DOA I use Bayman, who is super reliant on grappling. In DOA 3 and previous games, his throws are used primarily as punishment for unsafe attacks, and baiting a counter for a high-counter DDT hurts more a ton.
In DOA 4/D, he's pretty much a Hold beast and his throws were converted into offensive holds which are much slower to start and lose to regular throws, but can beat out strikes if they were fast enough and result in higher damage when they did. So it gave him a bit of unique pressure in a lot of situations. He has juggles too, of course, but they are short and not really big on damage. His strikes are more of a way to piss off the enemy so they ball up and get too scared to try and duck/throw. When that happens, he starts up with his grapple game which hurts the most.
So yea, there is tons of room for alternatives to traditional combos which are just as viable and take on an entirely different approach.
I do think being able to get smacked by the start of a combo then reversing it and sending someone flying off a ledge as they lose like half their health is stupid though. To be fair landing a hit only for you to get interrupted almost everytime feels just as shitty as being trapped in a seemingly endless juggle combo in Tekken 6. And obviously you wouldn't want it to be a game where anytime someone gets hit they can just mash out a counter, least in MK9 you lose meter doing that and can't do it anytime you feel like it.
Dead on, and that's pretty much what we're dealing with right now and trying to emphasize. We'd love other people to come play the game competitively so we can hang out and have bigger tournaments together, but we aren't saying this all for their sake either. We're the guys who have been playing it competitively for like a decade, and we hate seeing it in its current play state. The game currently feels exactly how you just described, its just way too easy to get out of any stun. Sure, they nerfed the damage down to a respectable amount on SOME counters, but they are still so easy to pull off it feels hopeless as an attacker for gaining any real traction at times.
To make it clear though, if our game is good and people still hate it, we will like our game and support it as best we can with everything else we've got going on. We've never been ones to go with the flow "just because". Sorwah made this site before DOA5 was even announced. The previous doa community site was in shambles, and there was absolutely zero interest in the game. We're here for the love of the game, even if that isn't DOA 4/D in particular.
The only reason you see us blasting the game so much right now is because in its current state we don't feel like it's worthy of its own potential as a fighting game. DrDogg, Chris Harris and I are all competitive players and we will be spending time on whatever has the scene worth playing in that also matches our personal interests. And we play a lot of games. I got my start in DOA though, and I'd love for DOA to be a part of all that, but currently the game just isn't.
When you're trying to be the absolute best at a game though, you have to devote a lot of time to it, so the game's scene has to make it worth the time you put in. This is why you see such a hard push out of us to make it better and more appealing overall. The fundamentally broken shit from previous games, especially DOA 4, has simply GOT to go to make that happen.
system that I mentioned before ... it gives strikes the edge they need without making it too complicated ...
