[quote name='grap3fruitman']The active window for counters is still 22 frames just like it has been since DOA2 in 99, which is a major complaint.[/quote]
Except to do any serious damage you need to hold in the first 11 frames, ideally in the first 4(?). Combined with the faster pace of DOA4 and the timing feels much tighter, even if framewise and ignoring damage it is the same.
Forward to counter mid kicks was also present in DOA2 in the arcades but counters were dumbed down for the Dreamcast and PS2 games but the arcade versions were still included as optional control choice. DOA3 also featured the simplified counter system but didn't have arcade holds as a selectable option.
Yeah, but let's be real here: very few DOA2 players would have used the arcade versions, and DOA3 still outsold 2 to a large degree. For most gamers up until DOA4 DOA was DOA3, period.
And the hold window was and always has been 22 frames and the hardcore DOA community has been complaining non-stop for years about it being too long.
Very few of the people complaining about one of DOA's fundamental gameplay aspects are still in the hardcore community at this point! As Itagaki has said in interviews, "DOA is for people who like DOA."
They experimented with 11 frame hold windows in prototypes for DOA4, and as expected it broke the gameplay. (This is why a lot of people think the frames were changed.) Making them active for 11 frames makes as much sense as making command input throws escapable or giving the characters a powerful sidestepping option - some DOA players may whine about it because they don't understand the gameplay engine, but the hardcore either get it or move to other fighting games.
Well, I only started with DOA2 so I'm not sure about any of the DOA1s or DOA++ but yeah that's a short DOA history lesson for you guys and the DOA4 counter window was never shortened so I don't know where you got that from.
Totally different systems pre-DOA2, more like parries than anything else. DOA2 is really the foundation for the series and its design philosophy (with DOA4 actually removing many of the design principles present in later versions of DOA3, the most conventional of the series).