I'd have to go with pause also.

Well i would think a pause as well if there were any button presses after the dots. So in essence the move calls me to pause for... well... nothing really. I'll look it up when i get home this evening, hopefully i read it wrong. That and hopefully my bloody EBgames will get the guide in.

I think it means you need to pause before you begin to pull off another move/combo so you can string them together.

"Three Black Bars" ;)

I still blame Beandip for those oddities. He was the only person in the lobby both Strange and i couldn't see. Checking his connection showed 3 black bars and when we went into a game with him it locked up.

My favorite thing about the evening though was everyone telling me he was the tree - as if i, the hippy treehugger that i am, wouldn't recognize a big ass tree in the middle of a bunch of ninja avatars. I mean for heaven's sake my avatar is a butterfly! I would have noticed a tree :p

LMAO!! fkn hippie............yeah he couldn't see either of you either and he's been having connection problems since last night so I don't know what's up with that he says he keeps getting disconnected from live, his router is to blame, but why? I had the same shitty problems with my Netgear router a month ago the damn thing wouldn't assign IPs to any devices for some reason.

Are you guys gonna give it a go again tonight? I'm up for it if you guys are, I'll be playing story mode trying to unlock the remaining stuff so shoot me an invite when you get on [up]

What time do you guys normally get together around? I know it was around 8pm est when I jumping in with you last night. The time difference is the one thing I hate about living on the east coast.
I used to love Halo 2, but staying up till 4am 4-5 nights every week started to take its toll on me. I couldn't believe that up until last night I hadn't played Halo 2 in 9 months...........although I'm sure my stats made it pretty obvious to everyone else.

some help...
 

I thought I could make a mini faq to help out a bit.

First of all, if you're really interested check out the DOAcentral.com forums. Great place for strategies. Another very easy, very helpful feature of the game is the sparring mode. What you wanna do is go to sparring and choose the character you'd like to learn the most. Once you're in press start and a menu will pop up. Go down to the option for "attack attributes" (I believe) and change it to the second option (there are only two). The reason for this is that as you practice your moves, at the bottom of the screen it will show each of your attacks heights; high, medium, low. Next, in that same menu you will have the option of turning on the "exercise" feature. This will take you through the majority of that character's moves, combos, throws and counters. A must for beginners and a good place to come back every now and then to brush up.

The DOA has rock, paper, scissors system. Basically an attack will beat a throw, a counter will beat an attack, and a throw will beat a counter.

Throw button will of course throw your opponent. Depending on the directional input before the throw is done different moves will come out. In DOA more than any other fighting game throws can be a pain to use... until you learn when to use them. If your opponent is guarding a lot, go for the throw. He likes to counter a lot? A missed counter is a guaranteed throw. Also, pressing down + throw or down, forward + throw will throw a crouching opponent.

Counters. DOA is known for the countering system (and bouncing tits). Know it, learn it, love it. It's actually extremely satisfying when you learn to read your foe and counter them at just the right time, crushing their life bar and their pride all at once. The "free" button + a directional input initiates a counter.
High punch or kick = upback+free
Mid punch = back+free
Low punch or kick = downback+free
Mid kick = forward+free

Hope this helps. Let me know if you guys have questions and wether or not it helped you out.

SteelgearX

That's very helpful. Thanks.

Good games last night :D

I can say now that I have a number of different combos down with few of the players (Kokoro, Hitomi, Christi) so I'm not button mashing with them at all, although I am still occasionally trying to figure out new ones in game from time to time which is usually when I get my ass blown out.

If I can become consistant with blocking and countering I may actually be decent at this game, but it seems like some fights it's no problem I see a low kick coming so I quickly hit Down/Back+X and Bam! counter no problem :thumbsup: at which point I'll do two or three counters in the match without fail, but other matches I might as well set my controller in my lap and just let my opponant kick the shit out of me because nothing I do seems to work.

Great job getting the ten wins achievment last night goLucky!! although I must say I'm glad you got my PM in time because I was starting to really feel bad for a couple fellas who shall remain nameless; and it was time for the punishment to end ;)

Edit* I don't think anyone has posted these yet so here is a list of the grade levels for Live *please note these have not been doctored in any way* ;)

SS = 196,500
S = 96,500
A+ = 46,500
A = 36,500
A- = 26,500
B+ = 16,500
B = 14,500
B- = 12,500
C+ = 10,500
C = 10,000
C- = 8,500
D+ = 7,500 (Strangehate THX) rotfl
D = 6,500
D- = 5,500
E+ = 4,500
E = 3,500
E- = 2,500
F+ = 1,500
F = 500
F- = below 500 (BeandDip0001) rotfl rotfl rotfl rotfl

Trying to beat Time Attack with default settings is a bitch! I'm trying to finish off the costumes for Spartan and it took me 22 and 30 minutes :lol: for costumes 3 and 4. When I think I get Alpha's pattern down, bam, she does some crazy-ass combo. Namely that jump on your head, bend it back and take all your health combo. :mad:
I had to stop after beating it twice. You'd have to be a badass player to get the Gold or Silver achievements using the default settings.

Screw that! You should be thanking me and Mr. D+ for sucking for 10 straight games. :) I couldn't get into any type of groove last night. I think I need to stick with one or two characters and work on getting all of their moves down rather than using 5 or 6 and having only a slight clue as to what I'm doing. Still had a great time though and hopefully we'll meet up again tonight or tomorrow.

Sheesh, one of the nights i don't play online and i miss out on getting to practice on some rookies. By the time i get back into playing online everyone will be way better than me. :(

Well, luckily there is still Martin for me to beat up on. ;)

Sounds like I bailed out at just the right time last night. I'd only like to be part of one 10+ win streak per night, and last night I WAS Canis' 12 game win streak, so I don't think my new arcade stick would have survived another one. Although, I was able to earn an achievement (actually two if you count the negative 10 loss one) by finally beating Canis after 12 straight wins. I found out you get a bronze star achievement for beating someone with a 10-14 game win streak. I imagine the silver and gold stars come after beating even longer streaks.

ROOKIES?! Oh, it's on butterfly boy, it's on big time. :p

So for those of you that have had the Arcade stick for a couple of days, is it hard to get used to if you've been playing with the regular controller for a while?

rotfl I see you're taking the same approach as our friend Strangehate (Mr. D+). He says "All I want to do is kick the shit out of MARTIN" I accepted the challenge and I'm quite sure he's still curled up in a ball whimpering like a little bitch from the relentless ass waxing I layed on him last night. :hump: BAM!!

Bring it Hippie ;)

BTW "Three Black Bars" was trying to get in on the action last night, the one time he did hook up with us our game froze then after sending him 3000+ invites he wasn't able to get back with us, somethings fucked up for him.

killer did you get a bronze acheivment for ending our 12 game streak last night or does that only work for single battle matches?

I can't really answer this question because I only played the game for one night before I got the arcade stick, so I was a total noob from the very beginning. I can tell you that it is awesome and I'm glad I dropped the $60 on it when I did. After playing so much Halo for the last 16 months, it was quite weird holding the stick in my lap and playing with an entirely new button layout. There is definitely a learning curve, but after 2 nights, I'm comfortable with new controller and wouldn't want to go back to the wireless controller to play DOA. I can imagine that it would be extremely difficult to switch from the 360 controller to the arcade stick if I were to have learned more about the game beforehand. I would say that the stick is completely worth it and anyone thinking about getting it should, no matter how long they've played DOA. At this point it can only be a month or so, right? I will be interested to see if I can use the stick for more games in the future. There is only one joystick/control pad on it, so playing Halo is definitely out because both are needed to move effectively, but it may work well as a substitute for games like PGR or next month's Full Auto.

Full auto is Drive with LS Aim with RS so I don't think it would be a good fit.

No......which really upsets me because trying to gain that achievement was the sole reason why Strange and I dropped 10+ in a row to you guys. ;)

Damn :sad:

Well that sucks......you know maybe we could try again tonight and you guys could drop like 30+ to us and try to get the gold achievment ;)

I bit the bullet and picked up an arcade stick on my lunch break. I lucked out because the gamestop closest to my work was the only one out of the half dozen or so in the area that had one in stock.

Great, now it's going to be my fault you wasted $60 if you don't like it. Well, the upside for me is that I'll actually be able to win a few matches until you fully adjust to the controller. You gonna be online tonight? ;)

I'll probably be on later on, but I think I may be stopping by the local watering hole after work, so I don't know how effective I'll be. I'll have to use Brad Wong, it'll be the perfect combination!

If I do play I'll be on live sometime after 9pm est.