NOTE: Before I begin, I want to stress that my views and opinions are of my own individual accord and don't represent the views and opinions of the DOA community, nor any other part of the fighting game community.
Dead or Alive 5. A spectacular 3D fighting game spanning 3 years, 3 revisions, 34 characters, hundreds of costumes, and over a million downloads of the free-to-play model, DOA5 Core Fighters. This is quite telling of the series' resurgence, relevance, and lasting success in the current gaming market in its own right, despite the departure of the series' former figurehead Tomonobu Itagaki.
But the game isn't without its detractors. Many believe that its reputation of bringing "fighting entertainment" to the game was lost in translation because of the abundance of fetishistic DLC costumes being offered, while others believe the game is doomed because better netcode isn't being provided. A more recent example, however, are the hostile reactions to the decisions made when re-balancing the game with each revision... some justified, others unreasonable.
The issue regarding the DLC costumes are among the decisions that could not be helped, because ironically, the fetishistic costumes are selling quite well, and because Koei calls the shots on how they market the game, TN doesn't have much leeway for creative freedom for the costumes. In addition, it's ironically because of the DLC sales that Team Ninja was able to offer pot bonuses for a few offline major tournaments in order to promote their game to the more competitive audience. As a result, Dead or Alive 5 has been doing fairly well in its own right as far as turnouts.
And speaking of which, despite numerous great turnouts in the EC tourneys - even gathering more numbers than other games, including Tekken - the higher-ups at the Evo circuit have yet to accept our game in the main roster of competitive games. At this point, we can only call out bias, because they were willing to put not one, but TWO separate Super Smash Bros. games in the main roster, effectively removing KOF XIII. In addition, Tekken 7 has been added even though there is no console release planned.
It's not all doom and gloom for the DOA community at an Evo spotlight though. Big E - a major tourney organizer for the EC - is going out of his way to promote a side tourney for what will be the next and final iteration - DOA5 Last Round - at Evo. All that's left now is to support the cause and hope it'll be enough to get their attention to consider DOA to have a main shot at Evo once again. And this is where I open my main subject... how can we make the last round count?
Making plans to go to Evo and support that side tourney is just one way, but for many of us, it's not reasonable, feasible, or conflicts with plans we already set in stone. But that alone shouldn't discourage someone from finding another way.
1) Going to a local tournament,
2) Gathering, networking, and socializing with folks who share common interests in order to build the scene,
3) Bringing awareness online by promoting your local scene through social media,
4) For those who don't have much of a scene offline and can't afford to freely travel for an offline scene, uploading some of your exciting replays, tutorials, or tech videos,
5) Learning the game for yourself and diligently seeking assistance from those who know better, be it through casuals online or offline.
6) Traveling for other major tournies that're reliable for supporting DOA.
In the past few weeks, I've been trying to improve on two things for this occasion. One is to expose myself more as a player by showcasing replays where I am both winning and losing. The other is networking and socializing in general, which I have more freedom with now since I only need one job to keep afloat financially these days.
The former was the more intimidating of the two, as I had an overwhelming fear of exposing myself in a bad light as a player, afraid of what others will say or think. The result of all this has been positive so far, and it's greatly helped my own confidence, overcoming my fear of playing on stream day after day. I wanna thank all the players and friends who took part in this, y'all don't know how much I appreciate the push.
Thanks to NuJin and Fred Campbell finally meeting each other in person through my willingness to help NuJin get places, the latter is one step closer to building a legitimate DOA scene in Georgia. It's been going steadily well in Lithonia in particular, where most of our ranbats have been taking place the last several months. (Shoutouts to everyone whose been supporting the scene by far BTW).
With DOA5 Last Round just around the corner and TN giving it everything they have to make sure this stellar sequel to the DOA series goes out with a bang, let's focus more on what we can do to make the last round count, and focus less on why our rounds are numbered because of said shortcoming. Yes, you may have not got the costume you wanted, the buffs you wanted, the nerfs you think other characters deserved. Hell, I didn't get everything I wanted, and I'm not even sure if we'll get the music from DOA1 in this iteration of DOA5.
But you know what? That's why I thank TN for at least giving us a PC version to rectify these shortcomings through modding up the ass. It doesn't get any better than that. Granted, it's not something we can do on consoles, and not everyone has a high-end computer to play it at its best, but the option is there, and if you're willing to make that jump, be that go-getter. But at the end of the day, we're all playing the same game at its core, and what should matter to us is the mark we make in our community that shares a love for the game in one way or another. Will the mark be a good one, or a bad one? That's what we should ask ourselves when making the last round count.
For those who took the time to read this (heck, it may be common sense for a lot of you), thank you and take care of yourselves.
