DOA5LR Tom Lee discusses Raidou, Honoka, and the Casual audience

In a recent article on Dead or Alive 5 Last Round by Siliconera, Tom Lee is interviewed and discusses some of the reasoning for Raidou's return and Honoka's selection. Be sure to read the whole article for full details, but here are some notable quotes by the Creative Director of Team NINJA:

I asked Lee why Team Ninja brought Raidou back. "Raidou was brought back because he is a fan favorite. Team Ninja definitely wants to see more villains in the line up. I personally love seeing more characters like this it brings balance to the cutesy girls [in Dead or Alive]," Lee replied.

Lee explained Team Ninja looks at stats and player feedback when creating new Dead or Alive fighters. Team Ninja’s data says in the Western market people have been playing wrestler type characters like Rig while in Japan they favor the female characters. "There are many guys on our team. I would like to see more characters like Raidou, for instance. But at the end of the day I think the numbers support the Honoka type of character," Lee said when talking about creating Honoka. "Maybe its a cultural difference, but sometimes in the East it’s dictated by aesthetics first and then the story is developed through character design. Rather than saying, the sister of so-and-so just got messed up by him, so let’s create a revenge story. Lots of times we review character designs and she seems like a 15 year old school girl, she’s coming home from school, let’s create a story about that."

"Interactive touch points have been switched up and added. Hot Zones have changed for some stages. There may be an addition to existing hot spots and it won’t be in all of the stages. Without telling you exactly where they are, we want fans who have been with us for the last two years to enjoy finding new things," Lee said.

Tom Lee also discussed the casual audience, sometimes eerily seeming like a direct response from Tomonobu Itagaki's recent comments towards the fifth entry of the series.

While it might feel broken for competitive players, one of the reasons why Danger Zone, a stage from the original Dead or Alive with explosive traps, was added was to appeal to casual players. "I think we learned is one of the things we wanted to do better is we’ve focused on giving competitive players. Making sure it’s balanced not just for players in the East, but players in the West. That was one of our biggest focuses in the last couple of years," Lee answered when I asked how Dead or Alive 5 evolved from from 2012 to now. "With Last Round, one of the things we wanted to do is not lose focus of our casual audience as well. When it comes to game balance and even the presentation of the stages we wanted to reel back and make the experience enjoyable for casual fans."

"We want to maintain that DOA has an easy point of entry for beginners. We want it to be an intuitive sort of experience instead of learning the move list for 30 different characters or whatnot. They can come in the beginning and button mash their way through, not only having success but looking good while you’re doing it. We want people to have a great time whether they understand a character or not. In mastering it, they will learn in trial and error," Lee elaborated.

Be sure to read the full article from Siliconera for further details.

 

The east loves sexy girls. The west loves big sweaty guys.

At least...it certainly sounds like it each time a female fighter is announced.
Ha

I think it's more along the lines of wanting "Badass" characters in the roster, as Tom brought up about adding more "villians".

 

The east loves sexy girls. The west loves big sweaty guys.

At least...it certainly sounds like it each time a female fighter is announced.
Ha

Indeed I think it's more a "We get requests for cool male characters overall from the West": when Tom Lee later say that the numbers are more toward an Honoka type of character, he is just saying in a polite way that the fans requesting male characters are anyway a minority without considering any regions matter.

 

Indeed I think it's more a "We get requests for cool male characters overall from the West": when Tom Lee later say that the numbers are more toward an Honoka type of character

i dont think the letters asked for a copy paste fighter

 

So wait... there's more Danger Zones in existing stages of DOA5 Last Round?

 

That is all people.

 

Since Honoka is being brought up again here, I don't hate her design despite how relatively generic it is. Generic isn't always a bad thing; you don't need to reinvent the wheel to generate appeal. I would go as far and say a good portion of the roster was already generic designs from my perspective, but that is besides the point. Like Raidou though, the mimic gameplay turned me off fast. MR is just as generic, but the difference between her and Honoka was MR has relatively unique gameplay for the DoA roster which made her infinitely more fun for me when I played around with her a bit.

i dont think the letters asked for a copy paste fighter

Be honest. Those letters didn't put gameplay potential as a priority.

 

In his own words, they want mashers to be successful

 

In his own words, they want mashers to be successful

he wants mashers to have fun. a big problem with fighters is when you go online you typically get destroyed and it turns off a lot of people. that doesn't really happen with DOA that much and the easy execution makes it easier to fight against better players so it doesn't feel like an impossible feat.

 

Glad to see that we'll be getting more stages in the future!

 

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That is all people.

This almost makes me regret never finishing Yaiba

 

Indeed I think it's more a "We get requests for cool male characters overall from the West": when Tom Lee later say that the numbers are more toward an Honoka type of character, he is just saying in a polite way that the fans requesting male characters are anyway a minority without considering any regions matter.

I think it's moreso saying something we westerners hate to admit: In the east it's 100% normal for an adult to play video games (just not excessively), while in the west we're still looked down upon. As a result, despite the population density not making up for the land mass, Japan still has more customers than the US. This is also probably why localization of so many games doesn't hit the US: it's just not worth it. I'd love to see some numbers to confirm it, though.

he wants mashers to have fun. a big problem with fighters is when you go online you typically get destroyed and it turns off a lot of people. that doesn't really happen with DOA that much and the easy execution makes it easier to fight against better players so it doesn't feel like an impossible feat.

Speak for yourself.

I'm glad they admitted that Honoka was for the pedos, though (you can argue Marie isn't, though since she looks like she has an evil side to her). inb4 Raidou turns out to be a good guy for honoka, because he feels for her like Bass does for Tina.

 

he wants mashers to have fun. a big problem with fighters is when you go online you typically get destroyed and it turns off a lot of people. that doesn't really happen with DOA that much and the easy execution makes it easier to fight against better players so it doesn't feel like an impossible feat.

More like it doesn't happen as much because the netcode is sub-par.

 

i dont think the letters asked for a copy paste fighter

It's not just this, many people asked for an old character of DoA, boss and villain as Raidou, that from the DoA fans is usually recognized to be cool and popular. The choice of TN fell on him even because considered one of the most sure choices for releasing a male character in comparison to an original new one, being sure of his success for a large part of this category of fans.

Notice how I'm saying "many people", "large part of people" and so on. I can't know the exact number but I suppose that many fans of DoA wishihing for a "mainly character" were fond of the character and asked for him. But there is no need of stats for making me certain that definitely not all this part of fans wished for getting Raidou or a character with a moveset summa of the other characters. It's inevitable that not everyone can appear satisfied, this time you were one of them, hopefully next time another person will be in your place and you will be glad of the choice done.

To try to appeal everyone can't mean satisfy always everyone, because this is impossible. The most that people can do is just being fair and trying to release equally contents for all the people. It's this the reason because I don't try to ask for stopping to release swimsuits for the girls (when I think that they are already enough), rather to release them together with proper outfits for girls and contents for male characters (that I'm missing as part of the fans of them).

EDIT:

I think it's moreso saying something we westerners hate to admit: In the east it's 100% normal for an adult to play video games (just not excessively), while in the west we're still looked down upon. As a result, despite the population density not making up for the land mass, Japan still has more customers than the US. This is also probably why localization of so many games doesn't hit the US: it's just not worth it.

I think that you could be right on this, in general anime, manga and videogames are seen as something very different from the way that a Western person could think to the majority of them. I don't think that it's a casual thing that for the movies happens the exact opposite.

inb4 Raidou turns out to be a good guy for honoka, because he feels for her like Bass does for Tina.

I'm sorry but this is exactly what will happen XD

 

i wasn't talking about Raidou kronin, i know why he's a copy paste fighter -_-

 

I don't really care what type of character they create, be it female or male. At the end of the day, I'll just be going back to Busa anyway xD

 

Read the whole thing. Tom Lee is right we need more Raidou's. And preferably more male DLC. @werewolfgold where did you get that picture from? He looks just like this boy that goes to my college. Lol

 

i wasn't talking about Raidou kronin, i know why he's a copy paste fighter -_-

Ok, sorry then I misunderstood your last post.

In that line of course Tom Lee was only talking about the physical design of Honoka (young schoolgirl) but I can't think that Team didn't receive requests for peculair fighting styles (at least on FSD, many people expressed in more threads wishes for a kind of martial art rather than for another).

I definitely agree that to release another mimic character like Honoka after Raidou was a very strange move (putting aside the fictional background of the girl), surely it's possible that this was dictated from a lacking of time or a decision to save resources for the future, and I don't hide that when seeing that she was a mimic character I was deluded me too, expecting to see a new fighting style in the game. By the way after to have seen the character in action I really liked what I saw in her gameplay and now I continue to be sure (but of course I expect the answer of the expert players from FSD and not only) that even if getting a shortcut with Honoka, TN could have been able to realize however a funny and unique character, different from both Raidou and the rest of the cast (in addition to be effective). Of course I could be wrong and in the end this is just a personal opinion.

But surely I'm expecting for the eventual DLC characters to see original fighting styles included with them (with the exception of Genra's moveset).

 

I already know that the clown cannon will do more damage. I wonder what other environmental changes there will be.

 

Ok, sorry then I misunderstood your last post.

In that line of course Tom Lee was only talking about the physical design of Honoka (young schoolgirl) but I can't think that Team didn't receive requests for peculair fighting styles (at least on FSD, many people expressed in more threads wishes for a kind of martial art rather than for another).

I definitely agree that to release another mimic character like Honoka after Raidou was a very strange move (putting aside the fictional background of the girl), surely it's possible that this was dictated from a lacking of time or a decision to save resources for the future, and I don't hide that when seeing that she was a mimic character I was deluded me too, expecting to see a new fighting style in the game. By the way after to have seen the character in action I really liked what I saw in her gameplay and now I continue to be sure (but of course I expect the answer of the expert players from FSD and not only) that even if getting a shortcut with Honoka, TN could have been able to realize however a funny and unique character, different from both Raidou and the rest of the cast (in addition to be effective). Of course I could be wrong and in the end this is just a personal opinion.

But surely I'm expecting for the eventual DLC characters to see original fighting styles included with them (with the exception of Genra's moveset).

I remember calling that Raidou was next. Now Genra and/or Shiden on the table.

 

I remember calling that Raidou was next. Now Genra and/or Shiden on the table.

To be fair Raidou was the next because one of the characters owning a serious chance to become part of the game (completely or just through his moveset). Genra and Shiden are less popular and now we enter in the field where the new characters have to be interesting for calling arcade players and DLC purchaser. But of course I really hope that we will see at least a male character and I would be glad if he was just Genra or his moveset for completing the boss legacy (but I would like even a new male character with an original moveset).

I liked Shiden's character in Dimensions and the idea to use an old ninja (more now DoA5 include also his counterpart Raidou in the game, the equivalent to get Kasumi and Ayane), but unless to create a clone of Hayate there is no reason for bringing him back, especially when parts of Hayate's moveset are already in other characters (Kasumi, Ein and Raidou).