DOA5 E3 Version Q&A

[Rikuto]

Most of the strings in the game are negative frames on block. The problem being that the mixup between delay and free cancel combined with the crush system makes every string on block a guessing game. Pretty much to get out of the situation without holding you have to call the bluff and use your jab or fastest mid to beat them out / try and crush them. Most situation tend to boil down to that I find.

I agree with virtuapai who in another topic was explaining that it is a skill you can develop. Certain match-ups defeat this paper system though. For the most part if you have the character knowledge you can at least make an educated guess.

Reading bad players who never change up anything is a skill. Guessing against good ones is not. We call that "luck".

 

[Matt Ponton]

Someone who consistently attacks out of heavy disadvantage like -12 and loses to the same attacks without change I blame the player, not the game.

 

[EMPEROR_COW]

I am one of many voices that are in-line with what most of the greater fighting game community thinks.

No sir, you are not.


Every game has its own fans and haters. And every game out there has its scene, be it a great game or a piece of crap like DOA4 which is astonishingly being played online to this day for reasons I fail to understand. Also, not every scene has to be huge on the SF4 level.

Every game has people opposing its mechanics, but this does not make these people the VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY.

SF3 fans hate the way SF4 works, and vice versa.
SCIV fans hate the way SCV works and vice versa.
MK fans hate the way SF works and vice versa.

Saying the majority of the FGC don't like DOA has no validity to it whatsoever.

I have never once stated that my opinions are "best for everyone". In fact, I've gone out of my way to make it clear that I think the game caters well to casuals and fans of past DOA titles. My goal is to make the game acceptable by the greater FGC so there's actually a competitive scene. Something that DOA has never seen before.

You're talking about a different generation, a different fan base, a different scene and more importantly a DIFFERENT GAME.

Yes DOA4 was flawed beyond repair and the majority of even the DOA fans can agree on that (this you can actually quote as it is clear as day and nobody would deny it).

The fixes have been made, and it was even clear in the alpha build as there was a much better balance to the triangle system and even more so in the E3 beta.

Give them a month with the game and put them in a tournament environment and see what happens. Most of the people who hate on DOA4 thought the game was okay for the first month or so. It wasn't until we really started to see what high-level DOA4 was all about that our opinions skewed so negatively.

Actually, I think I've made it pretty clear that the underlying problem is the forced guessing. If steps are taken to remove that from the game, I won't have much to complain about. I've also made it very clear that holds do not have to be removed from stun. If you're going to lose your cool and start blindly flaming me, at least get your facts straight.

First of all, after the 1 month gap we had the major fuck up called DOA4.1.
Second, as I said before, DOA5 has tweaked the major things that made DOA4 bad. Stop comparing the two because they are not the same, not even the alpha demo which added recovery, and lowered damage and active frames to holds. That little fix alone made the game 10 times more solid. In addition you have more guaranteed damage situations, more normal hit launchers, unholdable stuns and now bursts.

I will see you in a month from release.

The only way I see this game failing right now would be if it didn't have a good ONLINE to back it up. THAT would hurt the game on every level as there would be no Casual outlet, and no Training outlet for pros unable to attend sessions and yes then I would give it even less than a month, if not a week before it dies.

Just look at KOFXIII. Its arguably the best 2D fighter out there now. Whats killing it? ONLINE. You simply cant enjoy it neither on a casual or a professional level. Not everyone has the offline session luxury as I've stated before, and the arcade scene is pretty much dead.

I'll break it down for you since you can't seem to comprehend.

As Akira, if I'm at +12 and a slight distance, I know I can't dash forward and still beat the opponent's fasted attack. However, I can use a 66P to beat out anything they can do (other than counter). After I hit the opponent multiple times with 66P, they should know not to attack after the guard break. However, in the example I mentioned previously, the opponent continued to attack because they didn't care that they were at -12. Because of how the DOA system works, the risk of attacking from disadvantage isn't very high.

Again I will further explain how stupid what you're saying sounds.

- You did a frame trap and it worked.
- You did it again and it worked.
- You decided not to do it, and you got hit ! well BOO HOO to you !

Has it occurred to you that you CANNOT condition everyone ?

and Has it occured to you that maybe your opponent hit an attack in hope to catch a frame trap flop ? Even the top players including Daigo would be buffering DF DF and waiting for the right moments to tap the P button while getting hit because if there was a chance that the opponent screws up they will get that dragon punch and turn the game around.

This has NOTHING to do with the way DOA works. Every game has mashability. It has to do in an error of judgement YOU made while playing and failing to see that you simply CANNOT condition your opponent. Stop hating on the game because you keep losing.

I didn't feel as though the argument was won, and I also made it clear I had not ignored you yet. But it is abundantly clear that you and I have polar opposite views of what makes a competitive fighting game. I see no sense in continuing to argue the same topics with you over and over again.

I'd much rather skip over your responses than continue the argument because it's not benefiting either one of us. To me it's a waste of time and you seem to have finally snapped from it.

I haven't called you a DOA4 fan boy in a little while. However, I do recall several other people on these boards using that term to describe you fairly recently.

You could always ignore me. I'd have absolutely no problems with that.

This is not about winning or losing an argument.
I said in my previous post that I have nothing against you personally.
But If you say something stupid and start preaching like you speak for everyone, it needs to be pointed out.

I think SC, VF and Tekken play extremely different from one another. If the changes I've suggested are made, it would still be DOA, just like these three games all have their own identity. In fact, at a casual level, the game would play almost identical to DOA4. The only thing you'd find different is that the game would have a solid competitive community and a much larger gap between the casual players and competitive players.

First of all, the changes you suggest will not make the game DOA apart from the title and the faces of the characters. Thanks, but no thanks.

Second, one of the biggest merits DOA was always praised for was how easy it is to pick up and play. Why would you want to create a bigger gap between casuals and pros? The gap is already there and it is big enough. If you can't go beyond that gap that is a problem you have yourself as a player. It is not a problem with the game. You stated several times before how older DOAs don't agree with your play methods. Well its changed quite drastically now in DOA5 so good luck.

 

[Rikuto]

Someone who consistently attacks out of heavy disadvantage like -12 and loses to the same attacks without change I blame the player, not the game.

Doesn't matter if it's -12 or not because you don't (and cant) know that when it's happening during a delay/cancel. You have to guess, and guessing makes advantage/disadvantage irrelevant.

Now if he is truly consistent with his patterns of which moves he will free cancel, then yes, blame the player. For everyone that is actually good at the game though, they are going to be as inconsistent as humanly possible... and that's when the blame is placed squarely on the game and nothing else.

 

[Skilletor]

SF3 fans hate the way SF4 works, and vice versa.
SCIV fans hate the way SCV works and vice versa.
MK fans hate the way SF works and vice versa.

Saying the majority of the FGC don't like DOA has no validity to it whatsoever.

I don't see how you can say that when, out of each of the games you've mentioned, DoA is the only one without a real competitive presence.

 

[Matt Ponton]

Doesn't matter if it's -12 or not because you don't (and cant) know that when it's happening during a delay/cancel. You have to guess, and guessing makes advantage/disadvantage irrelevant.

Now if he is truly consistent with his patterns of which moves he will free cancel, then yes, blame the player. For everyone that is actually good at the game though, they are going to be as inconsistent as humanly possible... and that's when the blame is placed squarely on the game and nothing else.

I was not referring to anything about string delay.

Bryan brought up the scenario that as Akira he'd put a player into a +12 situation for Akira. Since jabbing would not reach he would opt for which I can guesstimate as being ~i15, that would mean it would beat out an attacking player who was at the 12 frames of disadvantage. He stated he did this multiple times, so I presume he was getting counter hit. His complaint was that when he decided to mix it up by crouch dashing during his 12 frame advantage, he expected that the opponent would have caught on by then that the opponent couldn't attack while in said disadvantage. However, based on his wording in his posts, he was upset with the game because the player did not learn to adjust his losing strategy when Bryan expected him to? That doesn't sound like a game issue, but a player issue.

The same situation can happen in any fighting game such as Virtua Fighter or even Soul Calibur. The player at disadvantage can always choose to attack when they're at disadvantage. You can't blame any of the games for the disadvantaged player not adjusting.

I don't see how you can say that when, out of each of the games you've mentioned, DoA is the only one without a real competitive presence.

Virtua Fighter doesn't have much of a competitive presence in the states either. At ECT4 two weekends ago they had a 13 man tournament for VF5FS. Not saying anything bad about VF, just that the game for all its marketing of complexity and game design for which DOA shares a lot, it doesn't get nearly the numbers that any of the other fighting games such as SFIV, MK9, or even SFxT.

As for what you quoted from Emperor Cow, there are players out there who play different versions of SF and hate on other versions of SF. However, that's mainly because there are very different game play mechanics across the series due to the vast amount of games released and the different developers utilized in each.

 

[Rikuto]

No sir, you are not.


Every game has its own fans and haters. And every game out there has its scene, be it a great game or a piece of crap like DOA4 which is astonishingly being played online to this day for reasons I fail to understand. Also, not every scene has to be huge on the SF4 level.

Every game has people opposing its mechanics, but this does not make these people the VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY.

SF3 fans hate the way SF4 works, and vice versa.
SCIV fans hate the way SCV works and vice versa.
MK fans hate the way SF works and vice versa.

Saying the majority of the FGC don't like DOA has no validity to it whatsoever.

Yes it does. A lot of those same people, despite their whining and bitching, still play those games because they are in fact playable. They don't play DOA because of it is unplayable to them, and furthermore the logic you have to use for DOA is so ass backwards that it actually hurts their capacity to play more solid games at the same time. So they simply refuse to do it.

This does not just mean DOA 4, this extends to DOA 2 and 3 as well.

You're talking about a different generation, a different fan base, a different scene and more importantly a DIFFERENT GAME.

And you're playing every argument you have off of a lack of understanding the criticisms people have had with the game since its very inception.

If you actually had experience watching the game be unpopular as shit for the last, oh, more than a decade, you might have an understanding of what it is we are trying to do here. I'm sorry, but we're not going to stand by and watch the game continue to be terrible and unpopular because people with no experience in these matters have decided to be naive about it.

We are right. You are wrong. If we listened to you, history would just repeat itself for the fifth time. Sorry, but there isn't a snowballs chance in hell we're going to be that naive.

Repeating the same action and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

So... are you insane? I'd like to think not.

 

[The HuBBs]

Mr.Wah, the VF tournament at ECT was also on the same week of the game's release. So I was suprised we even managed a tournament at all.

 

[Rikuto]

Mr.Wah, the VF tournament at ECT was also on the same week of the game's release. So I was suprised we even managed a tournament at all.

Hey Hubbs, since you're posting here why don't you give a brief description of what it is like to try and run a DOA tournament at GVN, the "home" of DOA on the east coast. Perhaps that will give some insight to our confused friend.

 

[Matt Ponton]

Depends on what year you're talking about: Pre-CGS, CGS, or Post-CGS.

Mr.Wah, the VF tournament at ECT was also on the same week of the game's release. So I was suprised we even managed a tournament at all.

This is true, but my statements weren't just for VF5FS, but for VF in general. The numbers aren't that much different from what previous iterations have been outputting in numbers for the States.

 

[Rikuto]

Pre-CGS

False enthusiasm

CGS

Bitter resentment

Post-CGS.

Suicidal.


But I'd rather the words came from Hubbs than myself.

 

[akhi216]

What is Critical Burst? And can someone point me to the thread that has all the lingo? I tried to find it on my own but I couldn't.

 

[Matt Ponton]

Critical Burst is a new feature where if you hit the opponent with a specific attack at full critical threshold, then the opponent will be put into a critical stun that lasts for a very long time. The opponent can not hold out of this stun, granting you with a free attack of any kind including a power blow.

I don't believe the terminology is up to date to these DOA5 terms, but you should find the terminology list in the Wiki from the top of any page.

 

[akhi216]

Sounds like a real game changer. Thanks.

 

[Jefffcore]

Reading bad players who never change up anything is a skill. Guessing against good ones is not. We call that "luck".

That's not entirely accurate. The strings that can be delayed huge amounts, can be easily interrupted if you're paying attention, the ones that can't are a game of waiting to hold the follow up. Originally in that discussion we were arguing about whether it was possible to react to a free cancel into a throw, which isn't very difficult either.

I wouldn't mind seeing the delay tightened, though. It get's taxing when someone is delaying every single string. On that note though, everything is - in the game, being able to delay has benefits. Characters need pokes that offer advantage.

 

[DrDogg]

Someone who consistently attacks out of heavy disadvantage like -12 and loses to the same attacks without change I blame the player, not the game.

If the game allowed them to be punished harder for attacking out of disadvantage I would blame the player. In SC5, if you attack my Yoshi out of disadvantage I'm taking at least 30% guaranteed, and a possible ring-out. In VF and Tekken, I have frame advantage at the very least, and get to continue my offense. In DOA, at best I get a stun, which the defensive player can not only escape, but inflict damage to me at the same time.

Just look at KOFXIII. Its arguably the best 2D fighter out there now. Whats killing it? ONLINE. You simply cant enjoy it neither on a casual or a professional level. Not everyone has the offline session luxury as I've stated before, and the arcade scene is pretty much dead.

Most of your post was full of contradictions and inaccuracies that other people have already addressed, so I'll leave them. I do find it funny that Manny agreed with you though. How's that E3 article coming Manny?

On this note I will point out one big flaw in your argument. MK9 has one of the worst online experiences I've ever seen. It's significantly worse than KoF13 from every single person I've talked to who has played both. It's worse than Tekken 6 online before the patch and far worse than DOA4 online. Yet... well over a year after release, it's not only at Evo for a second year it a row, but it still draws solid numbers at majors across the country.

I'm not saying MK is better than KoF, just that online isn't the only factor in nurturing a good competitive scene. But hey, if DOA5 doesn't change, have fun playing against Manny and a bunch of casuals and watching 20-man tournaments... because the only way DOA5 would have a solid competitive scene at that point is if people are only in it for the money.

Characters need pokes that offer advantage.

This is a start, but it's not enough. Akira's P leaves him at +1, but since you can counter in 0 frames, it doesn't really mean much. Even if I had +4, it still wouldn't be all that effective due to 0-frame counterholds. It's a good start though. If characters had maybe 5-10 non-guard break attacks that left them at anywhere from 0 to +4, it would go a long way.

 

[Rikuto]

That's not entirely accurate. The strings that can be delayed huge amounts, can be easily interrupted if you're paying attention, the ones that can't are a game of waiting to hold the follow up. Originally in that discussion we were arguing about whether it was possible to react to a free cancel into a throw, which isn't very difficult either.

Sure, it CAN be done... and it can be done easily.


By guessing.

It cannot, however, be done consistently. And that is what is broken.

 

[Jefffcore]

I guess that really depends on the person, or maybe character choice. I don't find guessing comes into play that much.

 

[Skilletor]

I guess that really depends on the person, or maybe character choice. I don't find guessing comes into play that much.

Yeah, but just from reading your posts, you sound like a person who severely overstates your own abilities.

Are you really trying to say guessing doesn't come into play very often in DoA4?

 

[Chris Harris]

Yeah, but just from reading your posts, you sound like a person who severely overstates your own abilities.

Are you really trying to say guessing doesn't come into play very often in DoA4?

Really. . . .that's what you got from everything he said. . . .lolz