It got "supported" with minimal-effort copy-paste characters and stages. The actual gameplay arguably got worse with every iteration.Um no. Buying the dlc does in fact support the game. Why do you think this game got supported this long with more characters, stages, tournament money, etc? It sure wasn't the game software sales which was worse then previous games. I'm not defending that the shit isn't overpriced/bad quality/whatever, but overpriced or not the money does not disappear in thin air. It goes to the upper management pockets and that money revenue is justification of them giving the go ahead for TN to keep supporting the game.
As you alluded to, KT knows that pure gameplay is not making them much money. Selling lazy DLC is. So they pay little focus to refining the actual game and instead prioritize stringing their customers along with the DLC and 4th-over re-releases. You are right in that the DLC money probably goes right into the pockets of the upper-management, and they probably think: "Wow, cool! Let's force TN to keep making sexy-DLC (despite a clear effort in NG3 and DOA5 Vanilla not to focus purely on that) so we can get more of this stuff!"
You can make a pitch for the pot-bonuses at live events, but if we're being honest, most of the same people would show up to said events if they contributed the pot-money bonuses or not, valuing the sense of community and social element of the event more than their own minuscule chance of winning and making money rather than losing it (especially considering most people aren't aware of the pot-bonus until after they've already made travel plans and often times registered). Regarding players who don't go to events primarily for DOA, the potential people brought in from the pot-bonuses probably doesn't outweigh the potential players lost from stigma reinforced by the DLC practice itself. Whether that stigma is valid or not is irrelevant. Taking a look at FGC players' opinions of DOA who are not fans of the game show that some of them are indeed put off by the DLC practices.
DLC supporters are just as redundant as their perceived adversaries, and in this case it was actually a DLC-supporter (you) who decided to audaciously incite the topic when faced with frivolous sarcasm (cabbage). Ironically, the DLC-supporters here seem to be the only salty ones (something you actually address as the opening of your own post). The points you addressed are irrelevant at best and hypocritical at worst.No, Brute what makes people salty all the time is that the same people keep griping about the same thing over, and over and over and over and over again, I see the same complaints from the same people even though they know how things are working. The complaining isn't doing anything productive for the community. And it tends to be several individuals that feel like they need to keep doing so even though people have already heard the spiel many times over.
Buying DLC is supporting the DLC. No one is telling you that you shouldn't buy the DLC (or be happy others are buying it, for that matter); I'm merely saying that buying DLC isn't necessarily going to result in a better game or community (ie: "supporting the game"). Now, if everyone is as tired of this debate as they claim to be, feel free to leave it there.
And, to be perfectly clear, I do not support piracy. Actively supporting piracy is against FSD policy, but Cabbage was alluding to a potential explanation for the apparent lack of attention given to the PC version, not explicitly supporting/condoning the act of it.