YMMV / Dead or Alive 6

• Awesome Music: The DOA Colosseum stage theme has an incredibly dramatic feeling to it. Fitting music for a big, flashy arena.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Ironic, given how DOA6 was the one and only game that tried not to be this trope, but ended up fitting the most over any individual game. The most infamous incident regarding the game if not the best-known part in general, was the "core values" at EVO Japan 2019. Two gravure models emulated the Jiggle Physics in the game by shaking their breasts, and were playfully touching each other in the process, and it got sexual enough that the stream was taken off-air by organizer Joey Cuellar, who then proceeded to apologize with the infamous line. It's also speculated that this was the cause for 6 not making the mainstream EVO championship that year despite the developers trying so hard to get there.
• Fan Nickname: English-speaking fans may sometimes refer to Honoka as "Honkers", "Ho Knockers", and so forth.
• Fridge Horror: Ensuing from the explicit reveal of Honoka's father. Given the circumstances of Ayane's conception by Raidou, how likely is it that Honoka's own conception was consensual?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Team Ninja's and Shimbori's attempts to court the eSports crowd by going Tamer and Chaster resulted in a complete embarrassment when EVO 2019 (considered the Super Bowl of fighting games) completely passed over DOA6 for Soulcalibur VI, Under Night In-Birth, Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Tekken 7, etc. Adding salt to the wound, some of these competitors went Hotter and Sexier and still got into EVO 2019 with absolutely no fuss.
  • The "Core Values" incident has often been cited as one of the biggest blows to the game's reputation and potential as a competitive eSport, as well as its eventual ceasing of support. The meme would later take on both a darker and tragic turn in 2020 when Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar, then-CEO of EVO and the very man who started the incident in the first place, was fired over multiple harassment allegations that resulted in every single developer that had planned to support EVO cutting ties with the event, and EVO itself being canceled that year. The tragic part being that Team Ninja's attempts at appeal ended up being All for Nothing.
• I Knew It!:
  • A lot of people have already speculated that Kula Diamond is the second KOF guest character in DOA6, ever since she was featured in KOF x DOA Collaboration Special Campaign and paired with the current DOA Series Mascot Marie Rose, not to mention Token Mini-Moe-looking girls are currently the main spotlight for the DOA series. By the time Tecmo released Kula's reveal trailer in June 2019, more or less everyone saw it coming.
  • While Mai's guest return was already predicted, many assumed that her DLC costumes were recycled from Last Round. As expected, her DLC costume pack remains the same, although her Santa dress and cheerleader costume have been replaced by wedding gown and pirate ones.
• Informed Wrongness: Helena condemns NiCO's research into resurrection technology on the basis that "people grow strong by overcoming sadness". This lesson makes more sense in a world where resurrection is impossible but the game makes it clear that resurrection is very much a reality and apparently comes with no drawbacks. That NiCO resurrected Raidou, a man who raped his sister-in-law and nearly killed his nephew, is certainly deserving of admonition but Helena seems to see the very idea of resurrection as a bad thing.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A common complaint regarding the game itself is that very little has changed beyond some minor mechanics, with the game even graphically looking all too similar to 5, especially compared to the graphical evolution that 5 made from 4. Yet many things were taken out of the game, like Tag Battle, many different costumes, characters, and general options, all of which were set up by Last Round. Considering the Sequel Gap (four years after Last Round, and seven years after vanilla 5), quite a few were hoping for more than what they got. On a similar note, they were not pleased that the $92 season pass was released right off the bat, continuing the overpriced stagnation that 5 became infamous for on top of feeling underhanded.
• Memetic Mutation: Core values. ^ExplanationAfter an... unfortunate PR mishap during Koei Tecmo's EVO Japan 2019 showcase of the game, EVO lead organizer Joey Cuellar decided to cut the stream and release an apology stating that what was shown "did not reflect the core values of the FGC". Needless to say, this apology was subject to much ridicule, especially given how he only apparently found DOAs fanservicey nature offensive, but not Mortal Kombat's extreme Gorn factor - in fact, the DOA stream was quickly replaced with gameplay of Mortal Kombat 11 with no censorship, which only added more fuel to the fire. The Streisand Effect quickly kicked in, and DOA6 would receive an unintended Colbert Bump as a result of this fiasco - especially given how Shimbori's planned toning down of fanservice didn't exactly amount to much. Harsher in Hindsight thanks to Cuellar facing multiple sexual harrassment allegations a year later, leading to his firing.
• Never Live It Down: Before launch, Dead or Alive 6 underwent a painfully bad promotional campaign in which it thoroughly failed to juggle its attempts to court the eSports community with its attempts to maintain its existing audience, resulting in many embarrassments that won't be recovered from any time soon.
  • The announcement that Dead or Alive 6 was going Tamer and Chaster did not endear itself to much of the Dead or Alive community, given how core sex appeal is to the series; that the Xtreme side of the franchise was diving full-bore into even more Fanservice at the same time was beyond ironic.
  • Following the initial backlash, Director Shimbori subjected everyone to months of ongoing Flip-Flop of God regarding the place of Fanservice in the series in his attempt to do damage control, up to and including accusing the fans of misunderstanding him, which likely drove away more customers than he would've ensured by picking a consistent direction of more or less and sticking to it.
  • The "core values" incident, where, in their attempt to highlight their support for Fanservice at EVO Japan 2019, the DOA stream provided entertainment in the form of two real-life models mimicking the soft physics in real time and touching each other playfully, which provoked the shutdown of their stream for failing to align with EVO's now much-discussed "core values".
  • Getting passed up by the mainstream EVO 2019 held in Nevada, not Japan. A major reason why DOA tried to go Tamer and Chaster was in order to get into eSports (EVO being the Super Bowl of fighting games). The fact that it still didn't get in despite all their efforts, when the noticeably Hotter and Sexier Soulcalibur VI got an easy ticket without sacrificing an ounce of fanservice, made for quite a few jokes about how it was All for Nothing. While it was arguable that the game had a decent fighting chance to make it on the main stage in the first place, the "core values" incident was likely the straw that broke the camel's back and killed off its chances for good.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Whether it's due to going Tamer and Chaster against the series' core identity and appeal, the removal of key features in previous entries, Yohei Shimbori's Flip-Flop of God, or the very shady business practices put in place, it is far easier to find the controversy and backlash among fans than it is to find any discussion related to the game on its actual merit. That's not even getting into the aforementioned whole "Core Values" fiasco, and the fact that it still failed to make EVO after all of that.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Unlocking alternate costumes in Dead or Alive 6 is done through a pattern points system. Each costume requires a certain amount of points to unlock, which you earn by completing certain modes and challenges. At launch, several problems arose from the first version of this system — the costume that the points go towards earning was completely random, so if you didn't get points for your favorite character's costumes, too bad. Additionally, there was no overflow, so if a costume needed 200 points to unlock and you got 500 points for it, for example, the extra 300 points were lost and wouldn't carry over to unlocking other costumes. Finally, the pattern point payouts for anything but DOA Quest was so small that it would have taken a very long time to actually unlock a costume, if at all. Thankfully, Team Ninja addressed the issues in a mid-March update — now points go to the costumes of the character you're playing as if possible, overflow is taken into account, if you've unlocked all the costumes for a character the points would now go towards unlocking other characters' (albeit randomly chosen), and point awards are greatly increased, bringing the unlock rate to something close to previous games' unlock systems.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus. Controversy surrounding the game aside, there's nothing that's outright bad about the game itself. However, there's nothing especially great about it either, and while definitely playable it's considered a little lacking compared to both previous entries and competing fighting games.
• Uncertain Audience: A major source of why Dead or Alive 6 was so controversial all the way up to release, and why the sales have fallen short considerably compared to its predecessors and competitors, is that it couldn't decide who it was trying to appeal to. It tried to be Tamer and Chaster despite that being core to the series similar to Gorn in a Mortal Kombat game. But then Shimbori would then backpedal and state that they're standing their ground on the fanservice despite their earlier statements and even concurrent ones. The "core values" incident at EVO Japan 2019 and the fact that for all that trouble, the game failed to make EVO 2019 in America — getting passed up by comparatively niche fighting game series like Under Night In-Birth and Samurai Shodown, not to mention its competitor Soulcalibur VI (which incidentally not had any pretense of being tamer and actually being the opposite). The very thing it set out to do failed, attracted a bunch of unneeded controversy along the way, and its chances at EVO died before it could ever really take off, all because Dead or Alive 6 wasn't clear about its market. Then when the game came out, DOA6 debuted outside the UK's Top 20, and while it fared moderately better in Japan as it barely topped the Japan charts, it was still much lower than previous entries as a whole.
• Unexpected Character: Few were seriously expecting that Mai Shiranui from The King of Fighters would actually return in 6 after appearing as a DLC guest in 5, as many assumed she was a one-off like many guests previously were. Not only does she return as DLC again, but she's joined by Kula Diamond from the same series.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: NiCO is supposed to be seen as a villain whose research on resurrection technology is emblematic of her refusal to deal with pain and loss, and the audience is supposed to agree with Helena slapping her and calling her out. Many audiences saw Helena's words as empty platitudes and saw NiCO as a traumatized young woman who never really learned to deal with grief, and whose good intentions are ignored by the writing in order to make her seem more villainous than she actually is.

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