Thanks for that, lots of good points made.
The point is that, in order for the game to be taken serious at a competitive level, there need to be way fewer instances where a player can hold out of a stun state. ...If you really, really just want doa to be doa--and it is a unique game--then it won't be played very much at high levels. There is so much precedence and history and naked fact backing that up that it's pointless to protest.
I still don't see where the actual logic is... that holds in stun state prevent the game from being taken seriously. Why exactly?
I was thinking a bit about it today and I did think that the reward for counters is relatively high compared to the reward for a strike because
1. damage scaling causes pokes, and even launchers, to entail usually less damage than the successful counter hold.
2. a successful counter cannot be reversed, but a failed counter has no additional drawback than if you simply hadn't countered
Of course you can go for a throw to heavily punish a counter attempt, but I can see how constantly guessing whether opp will counter or not, and whether they'll counter standing or crouching, can make even a good read not necessarily rewarding, and lead to a straight continuous loop of 50/50 mindgames lacking any genuine strategy.
So I see your point. But I don't think it's because you can hold out of a stun. Say for example, that holds did not guarantee damage, but instead just retaliated by putting the defending player at advantage (I think this is how they worked in DOA1). This would help, but also would lose the 'feel' of the high-paced action in the later DOA games.
But by limiting the damage dealt by a successful counter, and by increasing the recovery frames of a hold attempt (so that the attacker could more easily punish with a throw), this would make the random guessing strategy much less effective and much more risky, right? I think they have done both of these a little bit in the DOA5 demo, though I think they could increase the recovery frames more than they did in the demo.
Another thing would be to introduce some kind of penalty for a failed counter, like say increased damage on pokes/launcher, or heavily increased critical state time, or vulnerability to another type of attack. For example, if a failed counter made you vulnerable to the Critical Burst attacks, I could see this as being a step in the right direction.
Getting too long-winded here, my point being that I don't think that being able to counter out of hitstun prevents DOA from being a serious competitive game.
My ultimate point was that there's really no problem with doa being a more casual game. It might actually be healthy for the market and fans, and it obviously didn't stop anyone who enjoyed the games from enjoying them (including me).
Yeah I agree, I'd rather it were a good game than a game exclusively designed to please a minority (in this case tournament players).
