Argentus said:
But first and foremost, the main appeal of the holds, imo are that it forces people to learn how to play better
It honestly doesn't. If anything it makes people complacent on honing other defensive skills.
Argentus said:
Restrict the holds and all you get is people mashing attacks trying to mash out whatever combo they spent all their time in the lab practicing instead of learning how to deal with opponents.
Improve blocking skills, improve spacing skills, get good at timing fuzzy guards. There's a whole mountain of things that you can improve on defensively that require significantly more skill and reading than a hold and I'm 100% for defensive holds. Its a unique mechanic to DoA, but I just firmly believe the stun system should go back to the old doa games and there should be less chances to hold while stunned.
People need to learn to improve their neutral game instead of wanting a back door to everything after they got out played at neutral. Not that you have to worry about that anyways as there is no way they are gonna change the stun system. As it stands though, it seems we're going to mostly have what was in DoA5, which imo is perfectly fine, especially if its true that stagger escape is being removed. If thats gone, that opens up a whole lot of stuns that you could only hold out of if you SE'd out of it.
Argentus said:
People just tunnel vision on "guaranteed setups" and holds help temper that bad habit.
People who "tunnel vision" are going to get steamrolled by someone with a good defense.
Argentus said:
1) "Its Random" which sure if you never learned to read opponents, or are just super predictablr yourself, it could seem like that I guess.
It is random. In neutral you can more or less get a feel and read somewhat what your opponent is trying to do. That's not really a thing in stun when they just pop out of it with little animation to really follow since holds pop out at 0 frames.
Argentus said:
And 2) "You can just mash holds ", which, look. If you're getting beat by someone just mashing or throwing out holds willy nilly, that means you were just throwing out the same attacks over and over without paying attention to your opponent , and honestly you deserve to eat a hold for that.
You're taking this completely out of context. People are not saying they are getting beat by random holds. The point is that random holds in stun are exactly that, random. It kills the flow in a situation that shouldn't exist to begin with.
Argentus said:
The reward IS that you hit him. Why do you need more of a reward than that?
I fall back to my Hitomi example. If I make a read and go for 46k which is unsafe on block, what reward do I get if that spin stun doesn't give me anything for the risk I just took? Why would I bother doing that kick if (like you could in doa4) just stagger out of it, immediately turn around and block or hold the follow up. In what world is that ok? You made the mistake and let yourself get hit by a high kick thats unsafe on block. Why is it ok that you can recover from that mistake in the neutral game?
Ahhhh yeah I unfortunately skipped over 3 and 4 so I'm ignorant on what they were actually like. I guess since most of my actual I'm paying attention and trying to learn time with DOA is with 5 the prospect of a guaranteed long ass CB combo into a juggle and stage hazard off of working for a single fast poke doesn't sit right. If the game were a couple quick stuns after the poke, launch, and just CH launchers as you say I'd be down for holds not being thrown out in the stun.
EDIT: Actually the more I think about it I agree with you. Removing holds from stuns makes the neutral more pronounced and raises the viability of characters that don't necessarily have complex move-lists at their disposal like Tina. If Tina who is a defensive character is able to poke in and then not have to worry about her linear move options getting held to interrupt her damage options prior to launch it adds a lot of weight to her. Yeah no y'all are right. I retract my statements from the opposite end of this debate. Shorter more impactful stun combos into launch with diverse juggle options to take advantage of stage hazards for extension or added impact sounds a lot more fun.
Tina was pretty scary in DoA3.