Why do you guys hate DOA4¿

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
I've seen on my only two days lurking around here that most of you talk much shit about DOA4. Now I wanna make clear that I'm not a pro at the game, I consider myself very good and I even won two national tournaments in my country but I'm sure you guys know much more than me in terms of gameplay, framedata and the such.

I understand that the game is not perfect but trust me when I say this, DOA4 is MUCH better than most of the fighting games of the generation. I've tried my hand at VF5, Tekken 6, SC4, BlazBlue, MvC3, SF4, MK9 and others and I always end up going back to DOA4 because it feels much more balanced, fast-paced and has more stuff to do on it (Though I admit I'm a huge fan of VF5).

So, please explain to me why do you guys bash DOA4 so much¿
 

grap3fruitman

Well-Known Member
Standard Donor
DOA4 basically removed anything advantageous to knowledgeable players and relies sorely on guessing correctly to win. The more knowledgeable people here could probably give you a lot more in-depth explanation than that though.
 

Raansu

Well-Known Member
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.
 

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
Alright, I suppose you are right given the experience you guys have with the game. Still, I love it more than the other franchises and will keep playing it a lot until 5 comes out.
 

Raansu

Well-Known Member
Alright, I suppose you are right given the experience you guys have with the game. Still, I love it more than the other franchises and will keep playing it a lot until 5 comes out.

That's fine, play what you like, no ones telling you not to play the game. In fact, as much as many of us dislike DoA4, we want people to play DoA, whether it be DoA 1,2,3,4 or dimensions. We don't want DoA to die, we are simply just more vocal than others because we want the series to be taken more seriously. We were given a taste of what a competitive DoA could be like with doa3.1, and doa4 was heading in that same direction, and then stripped of everything, and we felt betrayed when the game came out and had nothing of what we had been reading about or even saw in the x05 trailer/gameplay features. So yes, some of us are a bit more vocal and a bit distrusting of TN because of doa4 and doad, but in the end, we all want doa5 to be great.
 

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
I do agree on Dimensions being full of bullshit but you're probably exaggerating a bit on the DOA4 thing.

I'll always be part of the DOA community, I've always watched everything from the background because I live in Latin America and playing online with you guys lags the matches because the Internet down here is much slower than in the states and Europe and traveling up there to play offline or participate in tournaments is way too expensive especially knowing that I could easily get my ass kicked. Still I'll try to be more active from now on and try my best to play 4, Dimensions and 5 with you all.
 

Raansu

Well-Known Member
I do agree on Dimensions being full of bullshit but you're probably exaggerating a bit on the DOA4 thing.

No, I'm really not. The x05 demo of DoA4 played much closer to DoA3.1 than retail of DoA4. The game was stripped and dumbed down when it launched, and then it was stripped even more with the patch that came out. Go delete the patch and play 4.0. Its significantly better than 4.1 in several aspects. Several 2n1's still existed, there were actual strings that gave real advantage that were all changed to be negative on block like all other attacks, a bunch of a unblockable setups were removed, guard breaks worked without needing a full charge. The game was dumbed down to nothing, so that every situation was a 50/50.

http://www.gamershell.com/tv/3265.html

Watch this video. Even with a bunch of people who have no idea what they are doing, you can see some major changes from this x05 demo to retail. Stun animations were different, the game seemed less stun heavy. Several attacks had good launch height of CH without needing long stuns, bounces bounced farther away, charged attacks were much quicker, stepping movement was much smoother. And this is just basic stuff from a demo of two randoms playing. We don't even know how the game dealt with guard breaks or if it had any frame advantage or not, but even with those little changes x05 was immensely better than the retail.
 

Allan Paris

Well-Known Member
Everyone is a winner in this game (DOA4) and it's bullshit to players that are actually good at playing fighting games.

I can put in 10 hours a week into this game and a friend can put in 5 hours a week, over the course of 3 months. Competetively playing, we still will be on the same equal footing as if we just started out playing with each other.

It seems that you like games that don't restict you to anything and puts you in no real danger to losing a fight, and that's fine. But for most players hardcore players in particular, games like that are garbage. It is no fun to sit and put time into a game if you can't truly seperate the unskilled from the highly skilled.

Holds in this game are ridiculous, the damage output of them needs to be fixed as well as the recovery on them.

The characters lack uniqueness, you have to play them all the same. Gameplay wise Zack and Jann Lee are the same, neither of them have tools in any situation that will give them the upper hand on the other.

I too enjoy DOA as a franchise and I only play DOA4 to either help out other players or to host online tournaments. For competetive play myself and plenty others are waiting for DOA5. Hopefully the game comes through with solid gameplay.
 

Rikuto

P-P-P-P-P-P-POWER!
Well, the guys already said it best... but with DOA 5, we will either be in a state of rejoice at the revival of our game, or a state of mourning at the permanent death of it.


That's just how good 3.1 was compared to 4.

We all love the series as a whole, its what got many of us into fighting games to begin with. We just want to see it done the proper justice.
 

x Sypher x

Active Member
http://www.gamershell.com/tv/3265.html

Watch this video. Even with a bunch of people who have no idea what they are doing, you can see some major changes from this x05 demo to retail. Stun animations were different, the game seemed less stun heavy. Several attacks had good launch height of CH without needing long stuns, bounces bounced farther away, charged attacks were much quicker, stepping movement was much smoother. And this is just basic stuff from a demo of two randoms playing. We don't even know how the game dealt with guard breaks or if it had any frame advantage or not, but even with those little changes x05 was immensely better than the retail.

That was very interesting to watch.
 

Matt Ponton

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Standard Donor
That was very interesting to watch.

I just noticed that the ground-tech game is totally not there.

And damn, did you see how high Ayane ground-bounced in the first round of the Hitomi v Ayane fight?!

And limbo stuns were in it!

Man, I wish I could have tried the X05 build :(.
 

Rikuto

P-P-P-P-P-P-POWER!
I wish I could've owned the XO5 build..

We should re-iterate how awesome that was to Shimbori-san =)
 

Awesmic

Well-Known Member
Standard Donor
I overlooked this topic...

I wish I could force myself to genuinely hate the very game that helped me gain an identity as a Christie player.

But I cannot. It's all I currently have. Had it not been for DOA4, I'd still be a nobody like I was 6 years ago.

What a harsh realization of irony.
 

Rikuto

P-P-P-P-P-P-POWER!
its the same for me, awesmic.

The game builds upon you. That doesn't mean we must lie to ourselves about what it is, though.

DOA 4 taught me some very important lessons in yomi that can be transfered to any fighting game out there. Few games thrust that upon you as quickly as DOA 4 does, so there is that benefit in training. Those who are top in DOA 4 that went on to other games have done very well for the most part, and I like to think it is because they already overcame the yomi barrier that eludes itself from most midlevel players of other games.

Beyond that, it is a terrible game and we need not defend it.
 

Rikuto

P-P-P-P-P-P-POWER!
Yomi means mind games. It's literally all high level DOA 4 is, as the only way to win consistently is to mindfuck your opponent into losing rock-paper-scissors the majority of the time. Most people can't do this, and if even if you're a top player and happen to wake up on the wrong side of the bed your mindset for it can be completely shot.

I'm nowhere near as good at this as I used to be, nor do I have any desire to get that good again anytime soon. It was really mentally taxing, and very frustrating on days when I just couldn't get into the mindset for constant conditioning, re-conditioning, fakeouts, fake fakeouts, whatever.

There are no really worthwhile setups in DOA 4, or very few. Just constant mindgames...

Okizeme means ground game. Getting an untechable hit on a grounded opponent and forcing them to guess defensively as they pop up would fall into this catagory. Kasumi jumping over a wakeup kick and punishing it from behind would count as well. Guaranteed ground throws/pickups/whatever also fall into this spectrum of the game.

The undeniably best character for oki in DOA 4 is helena. After that i'd say spartan, than perhaps a tossup between busa and genfu.
 

Matt Ponton

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Standard Donor
What is Yomi? And Okizemi?

Japanese terminology. Too many people think that they're something really special if you use it instead of the English terminology, but it's really nothing special. Yomi comes from the Japanese verb base Yomu, which means "to read". It was shortened from the full verb Yomimasu (stating present tense: reading). David Sirlin is probably the guy who coined it for the Fighting Game Community and it has become a noun in English for what is essentially "Mind games".

Similar manner for the Japanese word "Okizemi", or sometimes you'll see it as the word "Oki". It's basically the same thing, where it's simply talking about the ground game. The ground game could differ depending on the title in question, but it's still a covering term for the entire ground game.
 

Drem

New Member
Sorry for bringing back a dead thread, but this seemed like the most relevant topic to ask this question. I've been taking Raansu's advice and have been going through the podcasts slowly but surely (which have been pretty nice and enlightening, although I feel I lack the knowledge and context to properly understand some of the technical discussion), but I have a question that I've been wondering about for a while. I don't have a 360 on me so I can't try and figure this out myself at the moment. I'm just trying to get a better grasp of the game's faults compared to previous entries (namely 3.1) and what people are hoping gets changed in DOA5.

What role does throwing playing in DOA4?

I understand one of the fundamental flaws of DOA4 was the disproportionate risk reward between offense and defense. The player in stun's reward for a successful counter hold far outweighs the damage he'd receive from failed counter holds (right?) and the player on the offense has to work extra hard to achieve that same level of damage. But theoretically, throws are supposed to beat out counter holds. If the player in stun is trying to counter hold, the offensive player theoretically is supposed to be able to see that and throw him (granting extra damage?). Does this not work well in practice? I can see how this could still make offensive play extremely stilted and risky, but at a glance this seems like the intention of the triangle system. Or is the issue that throwing still does not provide as much damage as a successful counter hold?
 
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