It’s all about DOA online
It really is all about Dead or Alive Ultimate. (My gamertag is "Sirlin Prime" fyi.)
In this thread, I tried to find a competitive game to play that isn't sports or driving, doesn't reward "aiming" as a skill, doesn't involve "leveling up," and so on. http://www.sirlin.net/.ubb/Forum10/HTML/000040.html
Any fighting game would meet those criteria, except for the online part...until now. DOA is extremely playable online and puts the online implementation of other fighting games like CvS2 and GGXX to shame. Note that MK is a buggy, poorly made game that has put itself to shame without needing any help from DOA.
I always looked down on DOA as the pretty game with no gameplay. I think I now see it for what it is: a very simple gameplay system that is solidly put together. It's a tiny candle to VF's errupting volcano of depth. Even Soul Calibur is deeper (mostly due to sidestepping system based around horizontal/vertical attacks, and the "A" and "B" throws that have to be reversed differently.) Virtua Fighter has an intricate system of throw reversals, evades, and guard cancels (like the k-g cancel) that allows for deep guessing games. DOA just scratches the surface, but it still alows for yomi (knowing the mind of the opponent) and still has some good positional fighting elements (distancing between you and your opponent and your positions relative to obstacles in the arenas).
It's the networking features that really shine. The "arcade rooms" of 2-8 people, all watching, all using voice, and waiting their turn with their "quarters up" is great. It's exactly what my friends and I wanted CvS2's online (or any fighting game's online) to be in the first place. More importantly than any of that, though, the lag is amazingly low. It's proof that fighting games can work well online...something I was beginning to seriously doubt. Some people have said it only works well beause DOA has "not many inputs compared to other games." This is totally false, as the smoothness of DOA during a flurry of fast inputs is far less laggy than even moving your character selection box around in ggxx. I've noticed that in ggxx and cvs2, there are many situations where you see the enemy jumping in and you think "normally I would uppercut now, but because of the lag between my input and the move coming out, I would have had to dp about 1 second ago. Oh well." This is not how DOA works.
When there is lag during a DOA game, it is as if the entire game is in slow motion for both players. This is exactly how it should be. Yes, that means you have more time to input moves (and counters!) than you otherwise would. But that is a much lesser crime than the system other online fighting games have used. If your client has to "skip ahead" in time to catch up to the other player, it's toally disorienting and you can't tell wtf is going on. If the system tries to keep both players in sync by enforcing a lag between your inputs and those moves actually coming out in the game, then you have the very terrible situation I described above. Under this system, you have to do all your moves ahead of time...sometimes so far ahead of time that you have to do your response to the opponent's move before he even does his move. Imagine if you were playing against a friend at your house (not online) and you just set the game speed to be slow. That's what it feels like during the most laggy moments of DOA online. First, the game is still very playable even if the game is slightly slowed down and b) this doesn't happen very often.
Other fighting game companies really need to get their act together. DOA is kicking all their asses in online, and in 3d graphics. They are the gold standard in those areas. If their gameplay was improved (better throw reversals, better sidestepping for starters), they could really rise to the next level.
This has all really snapped me back into reality. It seems like kind of a joke to seek out competition in the form of level-based pvp in an mmorpg. In DOA (or chess, or Magic, Warcraft3), both players are on a level playing field (with regards to the materials they take into the fight) from minute 1. There is no need to "level up" for 100 hours first. There is no concept of fighting when someone is checking their mail in town or caught off guard. You're both ready, you both have equal access to all characters, moves, and techniques, and you don't need to rely on other people in any way. It's a one-on-one game, not a group-on-group game, so there's no concept of "my rock class can't beat that paper class one-on-one."
Anyway, feel free to find me online in DOA.
--Sirlin
July 13th, 2005 at 2:31 am
Actually, I still agree with your former opinion on the DOA series. It just seems incredibly bland and buttonmasher friendly.
I guess that’s what happens to games that use sex to sell.
August 12th, 2006 at 2:16 am
“I guess that’s what happens to games that use sex to sell.”
I think that all good games are hawt.
March 31st, 2007 at 9:27 am
DOA uses controller passing, e.g. lock-step networking. This is the same system Madden employs and involves passing button presses between remote machines instead of volumes of state data. This is perfect for a one-on-one fighter because the game is deterministic and easy to keep in sync, and if one player lags then they both feel it but the occurrence is infrequent.
A ten-player game using lock-step would lag everyone anytime one guy lags, which would suck. As soon as one guy on a modem joins up the game turns to ass. That’s exactly why bigger games like Counter-Strike use dead reckoning: it’s better to have one lossy guy stuttering around than to slow down the whole server. It’s my theory that Gears of War uses lock-step too, which explains the 4v4 limit in MP games. (boo, Gears)
April 5th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Who wants to play DOA Ultimate online?? I have the old black Xbox and this game, and finally got onto Xbox Live as XSPR. PGR2 is a lot of fun too, but I’m interested in playing an acceptable online fighting game system- I know it’s old but if anyone wants to play let me know. I just have the regular controller and am not experienced in any DOA at all but I’ll try to keep up.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:46 am
DOA2U is dead.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I am finding people often, actually. I can’t compare it to doa4 yet since I haven’t tried that one, but it’s a good online game. There is lag, but the rock-paper-scissors game isn’t hurt as much as other games like sf would be by the lag. I.e. there is slowdown and while it can affect your timing and execution, you’re still playing to a very large degree despite that downside. There also seems to be a lot of really good players, at least for me as someone starting out and just trying to get basic counters down.
Does anyone play any of the guilty gears or KOF’s for original xbox?