Hi!!
In order to avoid necroposting and also in a way to motivates more movement here, I decided to leave this thread for questions about the Great Dead or Alive 4.
1.- Is there any documented differences between DOA 4.0 and DOA 4.1?
2.- The Trial/Demo of DOA4 comes six months after the official release of the game. Do you know if this version was based in the 4.0 or 4.1 of the final game?
3.- Do you know if there was any plans back in the day for any expansion pack (like the hurricane packs of ninja gaiden or the booster pack disc of DOA3) for DOA4?
3.- Is there are any hidden/unused/scrapped stuff in the data info of the game?
Well, those are my question. If you don't know about anything im asking and just wanna talk about DOA4, it's also welcome
Greetings!
1) I dunno about 4.0, but there was at least a document of frame data based on the 4.1 patch in Tecmo's old website before the merger (the address escapes me ATM, can anyone else direct to it?). As far as I know, 4.1 removed whatever unholdable stuns there were in 4.0, such as the limbo stun.
2) I believe it was based on 4.1, given the timing.
3) AFAIK, Kokoro's kimono from the game's attract mode was unused. But with a little modding wizardry, the assets can be extracted and used in the actual game. Christie was also going to have purple lipstick and matching fingernails to go with her revealing blue blazer outfit (her Costume 1, I believe), but for whatever reason, this didn't make it to the final game.
DOA4's reasons for not being as competitive as other entries were for the following reasons:
1) Lack of reward in the wall game. In DOA3 (and now DOA5), you got free damage off a wall stun, guaranteed. In DOA4, you could use holds even if you got wall stunned, leaving little to no fear of corner pressure even then.
2) No unholdable stuns to guarantee a combo. After the 4.1 patch, just about every unholdable stun was removed, making your only option for guaranteed damage punishing unsafe moves with command throws. Beyond that, you were in constant fear of a lucky hold at any given time playing the stun game, rendering strategic pressure almost moot.
3) Everything tracks. There is no true sidestepping in the game, so attacks that should be linear automatically retrack, which makes the game feel more like a 2.5D fighter sometimes outside of positioning yourself to certain areas when at a distance.
3) Lack of character individuality due to the universal offensive hold system. In previous entries, offensive holds (throws 12 frames or higher that could go through certain attacks) were exclusive to grappler-class characters like Bass and Tina. In DOA4, everyone has a high and a low offensive hold. The problem with this is that like all strikes in the game, these offensive holds also track the opponent, and the overall game meta felt similar for every character as a result. Slower characters such as Bass struggle with this mechanic now being shared across the roster. Thankfully, this was corrected in DOA5 onward.
If there's anything good I have to take away from DOA4, however, it was that the ground game was arguably more consistent and easy to understand. You could position force techs the way you want when you want because it was similar for every character (2k, then any low to force tech in a certain direction). Personally, I would want this take on the ground game system back for the next installment of DOA.
