1. Why is nobody playing this game on an arcade stick? I have one at home and It's the first time I see a fighting game where the majority of the community prefers a pad. Is there any particular reason for that?
The competitive community really grew during the DOA3, DOA2U, and DOA4 eras. All of these games were Xbox exclusive. Due to that, there were little to no peripherals provided back in that day that would be beneficial to Arcade Stick. You generally would have to buy a PS2 stick then use a laggy converter to play it on the Xbox. In addition, the game was designed with controller in mind on all three of these games. The buffering system was relatively large, and you could control the character with both analog sticks and the d-pad. The multiple directional control was something that helped out when doing difficult movements such as the raijin by doing the 360 on the d-pad, hitting
on the RS,
on the LS,
on RS, and
on LS with a controller that had its d-pad always take your notations as a suggestion instead of a command.
For the record, I use arcade stick to play on DOA5, but there are some benefits to pad use such as quieter noise so the opponent in a tournament doesn't know you're stagger escaping. I just prefer hitting 3 buttons to play the game instead of having to set up 6 on a pad.
2. What are some easy, basic characters that are good for beginners learning the game. I really like Helena and Leifang because of their looks and move list but I heard they are complex and not beginner friendly. Is there any recommended easy character to pick up before moving to more difficult ones?
Since you have an arcade stick, what kind of characters do you play in other fighting games? What kind of playstyle are you looking to play? There's not necessarily an "easy" or "basic" character as you'll be playing the system more than the character. You'll just be adapting to the system based on your character choice. For example, Rachel doesn't have many strings or attacks and due to that she is able to cause a lot of 50-50 force-guess situations that one can call "simple". Bass plays a very mid / mid-long range game due to his speed defeciency so you'll be playing a very high risk high reward game with him. Akira is technical to control but can get around the stun system by doing launches at any threshold point to cause good damage. Sometimes a character just will click with you. For example, I always have wanted to learn Mila but her game is too awkward for me as I'm so used to slow throwing characters like Bass, but that doesn't mean someone else isn't able to pick her up and make her look god like.
3. Any general tips for a beginner that wants to learn the game would be helpful, I have played a lot of fighting games over the years so I'm not inexperienced with the genre, just this particular game.
Starting off obviously Tutorial mode will help you understand that system as an overview. Then do command training with a character you think you'd like to pick up. Then do their trial combos. From there go into sparring mode and learn their single attack pokes to see what the properties are. Besides checking if they are disadvantage on guard and their hit level of course. Something to keep in mind with DOA is that an attack's properties change by the state of the opponent. What hits on an opponent can change the hit stun animation depending on if the opponent was standing still, crouching, back turned, in critical state, throwing, back to a wall, or the point in the critical threshold. So you may find an attack that works best when the opponent is already in stun, or been placed back-turned, etc. Experiment. I recommend going through the tests on the Sky City Tokyo or Aircraft Carrier Base stages as those provide a lot of room to train in open space but provide walls for practice in that regard. Set the AI to always be counter hit since most times in this game it will be counter or higher. Then learn some combos. Remember that critical stuns have each of their own properties: from length of stun, to being able to be sped up by stagger escaping, to being able to be held out of at some point by defensive holding, to changing the player's state by being back-turned or force-crouched. It will just take practice.
As an example to things to be aware of and going through your character's toolset, here's a tutorial video on Honoka. It goes over her basics but you can apply the thought processes to other characters and see what you find:
