CounterTerrorist
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A perfect fighting game.
This game was a real treasure.
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MasterHavik
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A treasure that introduce me to the series and Zack but overall sucked balls when I played 5.
Raansu
Well-Known Member
The lobby was the only interesting thing about DoA4. Fast is not something I'd put in the same line as DoA4. Movement in that game felt sluggish, and neither was it a very competitive game.
Raansu
Well-Known Member
What? The lobby? I wouldn't mind a lobby similar to that or doa online's lobby, but only if they fix the lag it caused. DoA4's lobby's caused a lot of lag.
Raansu
Well-Known Member
Not even sure how you came up with such arbitrary numbers, but this has no basis on character movement. I also never said it actually was slower. DoA4 simply FELT slower in movement such as moving forward and backwards compared to doa 2 and 3. It had an awkward stiffness/unresponsiveness to it like you were moving through molasses, and I'm not the only one that has felt that way about it.
DoA4 could barely get 8-10 people to show up. The tournament I went to barely got 30 something people, and a good chunk of them were not even doa players. They just signed up because TN was there promoting NG3. It didn't really have much of a competitive scene, just us few die hard's trying to keep the franchise alive in hopes of getting a better game out of 5.
Ya, that's great for him. MASTER is a great guy and I hold nothing against him, but CGS wasn't a legit tournament. It was invite only leaving out the majority of the top players.
Uh, tracking was just as bad in DoA4 and FSD only moved around linear attacks just like FSD does in 5. DoA4 also had SS attacks.
Ya, and that's perfectly fine.....but that's not what I mean when the game felt slow. Again, it was the feeling of unresponsiveness.
Training mode in DoA4 was about as basic as it could get and extremely limited.
Oh boy lol
Raansu
Well-Known Member
I prefer to play offline, but I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with anything.
Of all the bizarre things I've seen people say to praise DOA4's "greatness" over the years, this has go to be the most confusing and objectively wrong one yet.
This just doesn't make any sense. Yes, that is a "feature" that was removed in 5, but it wasn't a useful feature anyway. Simply recording yourself performing the move on your own is a much faster alternative than scrolling through an entire movelist to find the one move/string/throw that you're looking for. Not to mention that if you record it yourself, you can do things that the AI isn't going to, such as delaying certain hits in a string, or following up an attack with another attack, or performing a specific movement option before or after an attack, etc.
Let's also not forget that the option you're referring to didn't even have any character's entire movelist in it. It only had about twenty attacks/strings to choose from, if I remember right.
"Hmm, let me set Tengu to do 2F+K2KKKP. Oh, wait. I can't, because it's not on the list for some reason."
Putting that matter to rest, there's also the fact that DOA4's training mode did not have any of the incredibly important features that were added in DOA5. In 4, you can't make the AI tech roll, preventing you from seeing what ground throws or FT tech options are guaranteed. You can't make the AI stagger escape, disabling you from seeing how effective any of your stuns actually are. You can't set the AI to break combo throws/holds (from what I remember), making it harder to practice getting the timing down, because you can't even tell if you're doing it fast enough to beat the opponent. You can't see frame data, launch height, range, or any of these other vital bits of information. And there's also the fact that DOA4 had an oddity in which the AI's reactions would always be delayed by 1 frame.
DOA4's training mode (and the training mode of every DOA before it) was absolutely terrible and objectively worse than DOA5's, which is probably the best training mode in any fighter to date. All of the few useful things DOA4's had were brought into DOA5, along with a plethora of essential additions, including an actual, detailed tutorial to teach the game's system and mechanics.
d3v
Well-Known Member
And most high level players adapted by peacing out (unless they got paid to still play it) until some sensible people at TN (Hayashi, Shimbori) listened to their complaints.
Dead Or Alive 4 is what you get when you let the game's Triangle System run rampant and unchecked, to the detriment of the rest of the game. Risk vs reward is skewed because every reward you get, just leads back to a 50/50 situation. Holds can save you from every single possible situation in DOA4 (including situations you cannot hold out of in other installments), this makes trying to put players in those situations pointless. Even KI, a game where you can guess to combo breaker out of combos lets you lock opponents out of using specific breakers if they guess wrong. DOA4 has no such system. The game devolved into pure RPS, pure guesswork. How do you win in DOA4, by guessing correctly.
"Dead or Alive 5 is literally a more broken version of Dead or Alive 4".
What in the hell is this thread...?
Someone please tell me that this is an elaborate troll.
What in the hell is this thread...?
Someone please tell me that this is an elaborate troll.
Raansu
Well-Known Member
What? You asked me a specific question and I answered it directly.
You realize people you are replying to played doa4 at a high level right? DoA4 worked around whiff punishment and force tech loops because it was the only reliable damage in the game, and even then only a handful of characters could take advantage of force techs because they had setups that guaranteed it.
Despite that, not every character even had reliable throw punishment either. Tengu's fastest command throw was 8 frames, and Bayman's, an intended grappler, was 12 frames lol. 12 frames! And I don't recall which throw it was, but one of Brad's throws guaranteed a free throw from his opponent right after lol.
Raansu
Well-Known Member
It was his low throw. Recovery was so long you could tech roll and grab him with a low throw (I actually completely forgot about that to, poor Brad lol.). Brad Wong was screwed in general in DoA4. I mean that situation was ridiculous, but the fact that everyone had a low OH just screwed him over since half his setups were him laying down on the ground. Low OH were almost guaranteed to grab him every time.
How is anything you just wrote “intuitive” to either experienced or new players? I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about in regards to 5's training mode, I don't know how you'd consider that accessible to people even less knowledge than me. How does that not make sense to you?
Except that's not what he said.
Wholesale changes for the better, but wholesale changes nonetheless.
1) Dead or Alive 4 had little to no strikes - let alone guard breaks - that were actually safe on block, let alone allowed significant frame advantage to catch opponents who mash out of stun unawares. This ultimately led to throw punishment being the most effective way of dealing guaranteed damage making the game more defensive and slower paced in higher levels of play. Dead or Alive 5 fixed this by allowing guard breaks and some strikes to become safe (and even neutral) on block, balancing DOA5 out to be just as rewarding for playing offensively as well as defensively.
2) Dead or Alive 4 had universal offensive holds. In theory, it would sound great at first because everyone has a command throw that goes through attacks. But combined with having every move track, the meta was exactly the same for the entire cast to deal damage, and whatever individuality that strikers and grapplers had was lost with this universal mechanic. Dead or Alive 5 not only fixed this by having only some moves track the opponent, they gave the offensive hold mechanic to all the grapplers, Leifang, and Hayabusa.
3) Dead or Alive 4 - at least after the 4.1 patch - removed all unholdable stuns, which would've opened guaranteed situations for non-grappler characters. Furthermore, you could even hold from a wall splat. The reason these were bad design choices competitively was for one reason: It defeats the purpose of the defender trying to avoid being put in such a dangerous position in the first place, and does little to award the aggressor for putting them in that dangerous position. The defender could simply hold without fear of being jeopardized for guessing too much out of stun, and without unholdable stuns to set up, the aggressor still has to fear having the offensive pressure lost through one lucky hold. Dead or Alive 5 balanced this out by not only adding several types of unholdable stuns, but making it impossible to use holds from a wall splat since your body won't be touching the ground, rewarding the aggressor for putting the opponent in that position. Of course, the defender could still hold out of some stuns, but they have limited times to guess depending on the setup.
Before you make assumptions about me and my intentions here, I am in no way, shape, or form saying that DOA4 was not a fun game to play, and I'm not "trashing" the people who still enjoy it. For me, this was the first DOA game I truly started leveling up at with the competitive community, and I had my share of friendships made along the way. I have lots of fond memories of it during that time, and I'll admit I have a little fun going back to it from time to time for nostalgia's sake.
Furthermore, I'll go so far to admit that like some who defend this game to the death to this day, I too thought the game had no flaws on a competitive level. But as DOA5 came along and I was shown DOA4's flaws compared to 5, it gradually started to make more sense why - despite its big push in CGS and one-time showing at Evo - it was a flawed competitive 3D fighting game. I was proven wrong, and I felt compelled to at least try to share my flawed perception of the game then compared to now through this post. It also didn't help that throughout DOA4's entire lifespan, it has only received one patch, and it worsened the game's competitive nature as opposed to improving it. DOA5, in comparison, had far more support from Team Ninja to address and even balance the game further, especially with the inclusion of new DLC characters.
If there is one thing I can say I preferred to DOA4 competitively compared to 5, it was its use of the ground game. It was consistent, and easy to understand across the board: If the opponent doesn't techroll, it's a free 2k, and a second low attack of your choosing to force the opponent up in a specific position. THIS is the ground game I would personally love to see come back. Also, tag was more balanced here than in DOA5, as the gravity in tag was unchanged from the singles format. However, these the only good things I can say about DOA4 competitively.
All things considered, Dead or Alive 5 is not a broken game, no. If anything, it was the game that broke the shackles that were holding back DOA4 competitively. However, I still believe DOA4 is still a fun game to play in its own right, and if that's what you prefer to play, you do you. I'm not here to judge anyone's tastes, only provide understanding of why competitive players don't think highly of DOA4 as a competitive game compared to 5.
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