Oh man, this has been beatin to death so many times I'm almost tired of explaining it. You should listen to a few of the podcasts and see why most of us dislike doa4 and prefer doa3.1.
I'm barely awake and I'll probably add to this tomorrow, but for now I'll keep it somewhat simple. We dislike doa4 because it's not a competitive fighting game. They took a lot of tools that made doa3.1 so great, and completely removed them, added in a bunch of universal tools, and turned DoA4 into a random crap fest.
The entire game is 50/50 situations
theres no frame advantage
guard breaks/crushes are useless
They changed back turn's(turning around) from 5 frames to 2 frames, so now you can turn around instantly. There is no risk involved in leaving your back open, no form of punishment for player making a mistake and using a move that leaves their back to their opponent. Because of this, and the over powered slow escaping, back staggers are non existent, and punishment in form of attacks is non existent.
The game is too stun heavy, everything is a critical hit.
Wake up kicks are like projectiles.
The wall game is a joke. Wake up kicks off the wall, slow escape instantly to the ground, hold immediately after the wall bounce. No reward for pushing your opponent to the wall and using proper positioning. It's just more 50/50 situations. In fact I'd prefer you put me into the wall as I have more options than the attacker does. He's taking more risks, yet I'm getting rewarded more than him.
Went away from doa3.1 side stepping, made stepping more or less useless in doa4 aside from SS attacks.
Every attack is negative on block. The only good form of punishment are throws and whiff punishment. Attacking is near pointless, and because everything is negative it turns the fight into a random crap fest.
The game is slower. Movement in general was much quicker in doa3. DoA4 stepping/moving around in that game is like walking around like a snail in comparison.
No true combos/2-n-1's/unholdable situations, which again, just makes the game more random.
Very limited guaranteed punishment, theres a back door to pretty much everything, which again, leads to making the game extremely random, turning everything into a 50/50 situation.
DoA4 completely butchered the triangle system. The risks are too high and the rewards are too little.
-----------------------------
DoA4 might feel balanced to you, but on a technical level, doa4 is a joke, and all those other fighters you mentioned are better games on a technical and competitive level. They are better fighting games, period.
And don't get the wrong idea here. I love Dead or Alive as a franchise, but I dislike doa4 because of the changes they made to the game. DoA4 was a complete step BACKWARDS from both doa2 and doa3.