Contributing to the community doesn't necessarily mean attending an offline tourney. It means doing something positive that boosts DOA's profile and levels up the game, whilst strengthening its presence in the FGC.
This is what I've been doing as best as I can since I cannot contribute to going to offline tournies or write up strats and guides.
I'll try my damnest to explain how I play characters and how the game works. My brother is also a fan of DOA but to the same extent as I am and he tries to atleast be good at it to mean something. My friends are also interested in it...but MKX, SF5, T7...and trying to keep their game up at UMVC3...yeah, it's going to be pretty hard actually getting them to buy the game and get more newcomers.
And whenever I'm on stream chat, I do my best to combat trolls and tell them what's up and funny enough, I have plenty of people who do the exact same thing...
Rant incoming:
My real major issue...is the people who try and speak for the community and fuck up bigtime. I HATE bringing this back up...but the costume ban is easily one of the biggest blackeyes we got. Now some will say we got exposure...except from the wrong sources. Kotaku is seen as the joke of the gaming community filled with people who either don't care or never gave a shit but EVERYWHERE ELSE the ban was seen as a joke. I literally could not go nowhere without seeing people on stream say how dumb it was, random forums saying how dumb it was, people who make videos say how dumb it was, streamers, bloggers, etc.
And this decision was made literally only accounting for offline player input without even trying to make it something to even VOTE for. Which if anything pissed off the players even moreso because it said fuck the input of ANYONE ELSE but certain people because fuck you...it may not have been directly but that's exactly how it was seen.
You have people whining about DLC even though you don't need to buy it, you have people whining about breast physics even though you can turn it OFF, you have people whining about the Triangle system despite the fact that the only way you can abuse it is if you was a Piece of Shit cheating AI, you have people whining about Destructible Clothing even though it was a shoutout to Senran Kagura and apparently will be the only cloths with the feature, etc.
There are certain types of people we want:
-Those that want to play the game but is on the fence.
-Those that are interested in it.
And there are those we shouldn't give 2 shits about:
-Those that want our games to be like Tekken, SF, etc.
-Those that never cared about the game at all, will never care but believe they know better because.
We should NEVER cater to the latter 2 because they will not care. Every other fighting series community doesn't cater to these people so why should we?
As I stated before, this community needs a massive facelift, but we need to see one thing before we even try:
What are we aiming for? Legitimacy? More open community? Our game being accepted?
This is something I want people to think about before we move on because this is honestly a serious question.
I NEVER want something like the Costume Ban shenanigans happening again because that will not only damage our credibility of even liking the game for all it's worth, but also damage those who feel slighted because they have zero input because of something they cannot do YET.
Now let us figure out our path and let's walk it.
Rant over.