The scene wont get better known at this rate.
The scene doesn't need to be "better known" anymore. The og melty players worked their asses off to get the game to EVO. This game has been a main stage game at EVO before. Pretty much anyone you ask at a tournament will be able to tell you at least something about the game. A lot of players seem to think that the game just deserves to be run for some reason, when nothing else is being done with the game. Barely any content is being produced for the game, I see socal post about sessions and a few other isolated communities in NA posting about sessions, I don't see any in the northeast. I have a god damned venue in Philly that charges no venue fee and I haven't seen melty played there since the last tournament I ran.
The problem is that nothing happens with this game on a local level. I saw a lot of slop at NEC. I don't see any local tournaments going on except for when myself or tsb runs it and even then it doesn't happen a lot of times because of equipment not being supplied. If melty wants to survive this needs to change. This has nothing to do with "hype". This has everything to do with players actually improving and playing their game on a regular basis. Running majors where half of the people who entered haven't practiced is not "hype". I know that a player who got top 3 doesn't even practice this game anymore. Why are players losing to that? Why is Tenryo, one man putting in more effort to represent his game than all of EC melty?
So I'm done running melty at majors for now. I will revisit this situation if one of three things happen.
A.)UNIB comes out on console
B.)Melty HD comes out
C.)The community puts in a serious effort to represent their game.
A and B are pretty self explanatory. A console release is much easier to maintain for a community. UNI is a fresh start, and maybe Melty HD will bring back that hunger that the old players had.
C is the one that I really really want to see, but I'm somewhat hesitant will happen. This is a complicated issue, you can't buy the game, it's pc only, lugging around pcs sucks, the community has gotten lazy. Those are all valid concerns here. I really appreciate everyone who has supplied a setup to help me run events. A laptop is a lot more expensive and harder to replace than a ps3, and it carries a lot more personal information on it most of the time. Nadakai and I had to yell and kick and scream to get confirmed setups as late as the Wednesday before NEC to get setups. I've been told "there will always be melty setups! Why bother asking". That's a sorta shitty way to run an event, you don't just assume hardware will be there without confirmation.
So c'mon guys. Step your shit up. The oldheads worked their asses off with pc releases before, and kept the community thriving. I'm not asking for even that level of commitment, I'm just asking for this corpse to give me a good kick.
If you're wondering how to do this, reach out to your local TOs. Find where people play casuals, see if you can bring melty out to those gatherings. I don't know a single TO who will turn down players hungry for games.
Myself included. If you live in the Philly area like I said we have a venue that we play games at. You are more than welcome to bring melty. All of the communities need to step their shit up, that doesn't exclude ours. That doesn't mean I'm going to carry it though. I don't even carry arcana in Philly, I have a lot of help on that one.
This post has gone on long enough and I've said everything I have to say. A lot of people are just telling me to flat out drop it and never look back, I want this to succeed though. I've met a lot of really cool people in the time I spent running melty. People I'm still friends. If it never picks back up that's really sad, but I had fun while it lasted. If it does pick up then awesome, let's push this shit forward. I'll revisit this after Winter Brawl to see what's going on.