Oops i'm dumb, MLG 2006 was invitation only, but I'm still pretty sure whatever the largest tournament from that era was, it was probably around 200 entrants

Most of the top Smash heads are dedicated Melee players so you can't really take their opinion with as much weight, it's like in SF how many of the old disappear as they can't adjust and are replaced, those players themselves showed disdain for newer games, if you even look at SF only a select amount of players ever make the transition to newer games and many end up just playing casually as they're replaced by newer faces, trust me the faces of Smash now will be different to the faces of Smash in 10 years with only some OGs about. It's why the meta game itself is what determines outcome, Smash 4 is more agrressive then Brawl which was heavily defence based which is why the latter slowed down as it was figured out while having that worry with Smash 4 is jumping the gun as it's meta is more diverse and matches seem to be more down to the player's style. In Apex an Olimar/Rosalina made the grand finals, while Pacman, Mac, Sonic, Sheik/Falcon, Duck Hunt made it there with only 2 Diddys, non of these characters in top 8 share movesets or fighting styles either which highlights the diversity in the match ups.

Like it or not Melee is a relic of the past now which isn't a bad thing as SFII was still in EVO when TS was prominent, the newer generation of Smash won't just have Melee in their faces as the symbol Smash the will be a competitive alternative with a different approach and meta and no documentary is going to alter things this time. Most fighting games are larger then ever when their replacement comes along it's happening with SF again right now.

Perfect Pivots work a bit differently in Smash 4 to Melee, they retain the same property but alow wave dash like movements (Fox's in 12:02 is scary) and they're 3 frames in S4, just check the link below, now combine this with some of the newer techniques that are unique to S4 and you have quite a way to go before the meta is even close to developed in S4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_ZzAvSFis

Edit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spHWz-9F7cQ , Falco specific mechanic so people are learning.

This has been known for a while, the Melee fanbase has been called toxic since shortly after Brawls release. Even the well known Smash documentary touches on this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-KTCH3tJ9WvsWWPEgUu-y6d check it out if you havn't. Its a great watch.

Part of why Smash fans get so crazy and sometimes downright nasty over Melee is just due to how they've been treated for a long time. A lot of people thought and still think that Smash is not a competitive game, that its easy or is too simple or has no depth. Melee players and fans have been through a lot to grow their game and the smash scene. Hell, even the creators of the game have been against them at times. Imagine helping to grow and nurture something you love only to be told over and over again that your stupid for doing it or loving it. Then imagine that even the people who made the thing you love come out with another thing that literally takes away everything you loved before.

Don't get me wrong, that sort of behavior is bullshit and needs to stop, but I do get both sides of the story here. Hell look at CT ISAI, he loves SSB64 more than SSBM and went back to it after a while. Everyone has their own favorite Smash game for different reasons and thats what makes the game and the Smash scene so great imo. People would do good to remember that.

Yeah obviously the top Melee players are Melee minded, and similarly Melee minded players are going to listen.  Their voices personally have no impact on me or what game I choose to play competitively.  But they will on many Melee players who are considering jumping to SSB4.  If a player like Mang0 says he dislikes SSB4, a lot of the people who follow him will be dissuaded from playing it.  Also I'm not saying SSB4 is not diverse, there were definitely a lot of different characters and playstyles in top 8, but if you look at the best Melee players, there is just as much diversity.

We can go back and forth all day about whether Melee is a washed up game or not.  But from a strictly statistical point of view it is healthier than ever and shows no signs of slowing down.  If you add up the attendance total from the 6 largest tournaments on January 24th of this year alone, its probably about equal or larger than the 6 largest tournaments in all of 2012.  For reference from Melee's release until the end of 2013 (12+ years), there were 77 100+ entrant tourneys.  2014 had 63 100+ entrant tournaments alone including 3 of the 4 largest ever up to the end of 2014.  1 month into 2015 and we've already had about 10 more including APEX 2015 (largest tournament ever), Beast 5 (largest European tournament ever and 6th largest ever overall), Norcal Arcadian (11th largest tournament ever, and no ranked players were allowed to enter), and Paragon 2015 (15th largest tournament ever).  I know 100 entrants is an arbitrary cutoff, but I think from these numbers you should get the idea.  Considering last year APEX had 620 entrants and EVO had 970 entrants for Melee, EVO will almost definitely break the attendance record again.

I really want SSB4 to succeed as it would definitely bring more exposure, more players, more tournaments, etc. to the smash community, but SSB4 becoming big won't cause Melee to die out.  A pretty reasonable (in my mind) guess is that about 30% of the competitive Melee players switched over to SSB4 with the rest of SSB4's numbers coming from Brawl and new players.  Despite this Melee still managed to break last years EVO attendance record.  Melee survived Brawl despite being much much smaller back then (largest tournaments had about 200 players), it will probably survive SSB4.  The difference between Melee right now and other fighting games when new editions are released is that Melee is currently growing exponentially, whereas those games experienced pretty minor growth and then drastic decline several months after the new game is released.

Also I'm aware of the differences in perfect pivots, and SSB4's perfect pivot is still roughly equal to Melee's(SSB4's allows you to perform it without using a move, but can only be done in the direction you are facing), but it is usable in a game with fewer movement options so it is relatively more useful.  It still hasn't seen much competitive use, I never saw it during APEX top 8 but you can correct me if that's wrong.  I'm also not trying to argue which of the games is more competitively viable or any of that, in a perfect world both succeed and no one bitches about which one is better.  I'm just saying it's pretty unlikely that Melee goes under in it's current state.  The community has pretty much already splintered such that Melee and SSB4 don't really affect each other (pretty unfortunate imo).  The difference between now and when Brawl came out is that the community is big enough for both games to possibly survive a long time.

Perfect pivots were used but the players who did weren't aware of the new properties and used them in how they would in Melee, I don't know if Melee will survive S4 as it's a much more competitive and technical beast then Brawl was and has a meta game that can go on to be equal of even better then Melee. Most Melee players may not make the jump but a large number of Brawl players will with little issue. I'll also add that the won't be same rift with the FGC like the Melee crowd had for years opening another avenue fornew players, someone earlier hit the nail on the head that these players are so reliant on Melee's approach that they're destined to fade with the game until a new game using its approach arrives, it won't disapear but it'll become a relic like Third Strike and being a relic doesn't mean washed up, trust me it will be replaced one way or another. People like Mang0 saying they don't like the new game is no different to someone like Sanford Kelly a top MVC2 player and Multiple EVO champion moaning about MVC3's differences as in the end it made no difference as he was replaced on his pedastal by the likes of Chris G, F Champ, Rayray etc... these are the guys I'm talking about who will be replaced by newcomers in newer games.

On tournaments I'll point out the is a large factor in Smash tournaments being more successful and that is Nintendo themselves, in recent years they've acknowledged the fighting scene and worked to push and help it unlike before and this is one thing that also falls into S4's favour as well as Brawl never got this support and this is a key factor in Melee not surviving newer games like it did Brawl. Everything before were left to the Smash community who were dominated by the Melee crowd, S4 will grow just as big or maybe even bigger given current conditions as new things are found out each week and it has a better platform to launch from with an immediate presence in big tournaments and a far better and stable online then its predecessor which is also a strong tool in roping in new people to the scene, all of this is on top of being a more balance and competitive game then Brawl which the latter was never intended for any proper competitive scene unlike S4 , this is why Brawl's meta game ended up like it did and Melee has grown to what it is today. We're seeing an equal level of diversity from S4 this early on in it's life, difference being in Melee I tend to see the usual Fox, Falco, Peach, Sheik combo making the top 8, in S4 I've seen different supposed low tiers make top 8 with one even winning.

Yes a lot of Brawl players will make the jump, in fact my guess is that about 90% of them already have, like I said the communities are heavy splintered and very few players actually played both Brawl and Melee competitively (Mew2king the only of note).  Brawl attendance fell off a cliff in about 2013, long before SSB4 had been released and Melee reached new heights in the meantime.  Their attendance figures are completely unrelated.  At the tournaments I attend (most recently SWEET XVII about 2 weeks ago), almost all the players play Melee exclusively or SSB4 exclusively and have no plan to switch the game they're playing.  I personally play Melee competitively but have no intention on playing SSB4 competitively just because I don't have the time.  I play with a group of about 12 others and about 8 of them started playing Melee in the past year and afaik none of them are going to switch to SSB4.  Everyone who wanted to play SSB4 has already done so in all likelihood (a couple of my Brawl friends have).  Wait until EVO numbers come out, I would be surprised to see SSB4 numbers surpass Melee numbers. It's definitely possible, but I would still put my money on Melee.  Even if they did, like I said in an earlier post Brawl numbers dominated Melee numbers for 2-3 years before Melee attendance began skyrocketing.  

Melee is actually very easy to access contrary to popular belief.  It is actually much much easier to acquire a Melee setup than a SSB4 setup (HDTV+WIIU+SSB4+adaptor is well over 400$).  Literally everyone has a Wii (or has a friend who doesn't want theirs anymore), and CRT's can be acquired for about $10 at a thrift shop, disc is probably between $30 and $60 depending on where you live.  The other option is just to buy a $15 controller adaptor for your computer so you can play on a platform like dolphin or Anther's ladder (albeit probably illegally, but no one is cracking down).

Regarding Nintendo support, as a part of the community I actually dislike Nintendo support and would be willing to bet that attendance at APEX decreased because of the Nintendo sponsorship.  The 2nd or 3rd most popular smash game is Project M (attendance figures projected approximately equal to SSB4), and that game was blacklisted due to the Nintendo sponsorship.  There was a massive outcry from the Smash community and hundreds of players boycotted APEX because they felt PM deserved a spot.  I'm a diehard Nintendo fan (have owned every console and handheld since SNES, and no other consoles), but I kinda want them to leave Smash alone tbh.  From Nintendo we received setups and had to drop Project M as well as have a bunch of dumb 3DS ads slow down bracket.  The setups would have been provided by the community as they always have, and Nintendo didn't do anything when the venue was in danger, Twitch and Red Bull did.  Is it really worth it to drop one of the most popular smash games for extra setups? IMO no, but thats just my opinion, a lot of people think otherwise.  If you go on reddit or smashboards or MIOM, alot of people will echo this sentiment.

Sure I'll give you that SSB4 is probably a lot deeper and more competitively viable than Brawl, but the community nowadays is probably about 6 or 7 times as big as it was back then, and SSB4 is just about as different from Melee as Brawl was (slightly faster, but different ledge mechanics and rage mechanic) and if you ask anyone in the community it probably has roughly the same pull as Brawl did.  Any Melee players that wanted to switch already have since the games been out for like 4 months now (counting 3DS release).  As someone who's local Melee community has probably grown about 6 times as big in the past  year alone, I doubt this game is going anywhere.

Also about Nintendo support, Nintendo actually hosted many many Brawl tournaments at gamespot themselves when it was released and supported it with their own national spotlight tournament similar to how they did for SSB4.  Their sponsorship also hardly affects Melee attendance since they literally contributed nothing to the prize pool, Melee setups, venue search, transportation, etc.  APEX 2015 is the first tournament that Nintendo was a main sponsor for, and practically everyone I talked to in the smash community, including SSB4 players, thought it was negative contribution.  

But anyways I already gave you all the numbers and statistics that show why Melee is primed for it's greatest year ever and if you don't believe it then that's your opinion but I can tell you as someone who currently actually attends competitive Melee tournaments and has no plan to stop in the foreseeable future that it's not going anywhere.  I personally know 3 people that plan on attending their first ever Melee tournament this month, and many more who plan on starting later this year.  The fact that a freaking Arcadian nowadays can have as many participants as the largest tournaments hosted in the golden age of Melee is astounding.  I'm not exactly sure why you seem to want Melee to fail (not sure if you actually do, but it comes off like that), but I personally am rooting for SSB4 to succeed even as a Melee player, and I know that my local community at least won't stop playing Melee any time soon because of SSB4.

This is a criticism I have for Melee fans as they think anyone who doesn't see things the same way wants Melee to fail, I'm an FGC member and see things from that point of view and not how Melee fans personally want to see it, I assure you Nintendo's involement has more then what you want to acknowledge for a start it's them simply allowing the game to be at Evo in the last two years when initially they wanted to block it had a big factor. Evo gave Melee massive exposure, I even remember FGC memers saying Melee was a waste of slot for the tournament and still do, those two Evos did more for creating exposure then any other tournament or any documentary, a promotional at gamespot pales in comparison to what Nintendo is doing now to push the series. Melee fans may not like it but it's the future and it's something SF fans went through over a decade ago, they were a splintered community as well with fans who even held SF2's approach as gold the same way Melee fans do with their game.

You seem to think that we're saying Melee is going to stop over the next year and are arguing from that view point when I'm pointing out Melee will enter the same mode of transition as other big fighting games, everything you've highlighted statistics, hype and so on games like Third Strike etc... had them, non of this that you've said convinces me otherwise that Melee will still be the most prominant Smash game when the next Smash game arrives. In the long run I don't see it, even if Melee is able to run along side S4 it'll be replaced by a game with a similar approach, SFIV took SF2's approach and put its own spin on it replacing the latter game completely, if you think people want Melee to fail I'll simply say you're coming across as how another user put it earlier as fearing Melee not being as releveant in the long run.

Melee is not as easy to access as you think I'll point out one massive factor that Melee fans are overlooking, the Smash scene outside the US, over here in Europe access to Melee is trickier and the PAL version of the game is patched differently so if you want to be competitive you either need an NA copy of the game with hardware that can play it or you're exclusively stuck to the EU scene, this also mean Project M is non existent over here as you need an NA copy of Brawl for that as well. The Smash scene over here is growing as well and it's easier to connect with S4 then Melee as the latter you need to actually go to active communities who before this year had no proper way of connecting with each other like people in NA do. The Melee scene here is still very much underground with some elite groups which is why a new site had to be launched to connect the Smash scene through out the continent, as a result the scene here is more open to anything that isn't Melee. Japan also seem more open to S4 as well and the vastly improved online helps connects communities, Melee is a strong force in the US which is its main region but the community growing doesn't mean NA only, in the long run communities outside NA which are more open to other approaches will grow to sizes where they can compete with US. The Luigi player who won a tournament weeks back in S4 was a UK player who beat the likes of Leffen who was using Diddy, I can tell you as a UK resident local Smash communities are not easy to come by over here which is why the aren't many UK based Smash players despite the fact we're prominant in games like SF, if you want to be competitive you have to grind with a friend, S4's For Glory mode is a God send for competitive players over here and can help S4 overcome what Melee couldn't over here.

I've been reading the debate between you and Wyrdness and I just want to applaud your informative and factual posts in general in this thread. I didn't know that Brawl dominated the competitive scene for a couple of years, and that Melee was dying out and has had a revival. And with the viewing figures you quoted, the SSB4 figures aren't that bad when you consider its new, and that Melee is enjoying a huge surge of popularity at the moment.

"Melee is actually very easy to access contrary to popular belief.  It is actually much much easier to acquire a Melee setup than a SSB4 setup (HDTV+WIIU+SSB4+adaptor is well over 400$).  Literally everyone has a Wii (or has a friend who doesn't want theirs anymore), and CRT's can be acquired for about $10 at a thrift shop, disc is probably between $30 and $60 depending on where you live."

A good point well made, and could become even more influential as the years go by if a new competitive player has to make the choice as to which game he's going to play. It would be a shame if the popularity of a game is dictated by the availability of the setup in this way.

(EDIT: - As pointed out by Wyrdness - things may go a very different way in Europe, because of the differences in set up accesibility)

"Yeah obviously the top Melee players are Melee minded, and similarly Melee minded players are going to listen.  Their voices personally have no impact on me or what game I choose to play competitively.  But they will on many Melee players who are considering jumping to SSB4.  If a player like Mang0 says he dislikes SSB4, a lot of the people who follow him will be dissuaded from playing it."

This I find very sad. Of course, high profile players have a right to state their opinion, and whether intended or not, whatever they say is going to influence many people. But it's the idiots who just won't give a new game a chance, and seem to think that anything that deviates from Melee is immediately substandard, and deserves a subjective bashing without any form of rationalisation that cause the real damage to the game.

We've seen evidence of that behaviour in this very thread - calling SSB4 'some new casual bs', 'more casual than brawl', and implying that tourney players who play anything other than Melee are not real tourney players.

And I do wonder whether there are elements of the Melee community who may feel threatened with every new iteration that comes out, and feel the need to fiercely defend themselves. What you say about Brawl dominating in 2007 when the Melee scene was weak, and then the problem with Nintendo attempting to ban streams of Melee at EVO a couple of years back, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, at least to some degree.

I want to give a perspective from a 'casual' player, and I hope it will be respected by anyone reading it, despite me referring to myself as 'casual'.

I have never played Melee, but I've watched a lot of recordings of tournament play, and while my eye might not be as well trained to recognise all the nuances of the game, I enjoy watching it. With Brawl I (and the kids) made use of every feature and mode in the game. Almost always, items were turned on and we just mashed buttons until somebody won. It was fun, a laugh, but that's what casual is all about.

SSB4 has changed the way I (and the kids) play Smash. For Fun mode is shunned. Items are turned off when we play. I've noticed that the kids (if playing solo) spend more time 'training' or going one-on-one online than engaging in any of the other features like they did with Brawl. I'm finding myself doing the same. We are becoming more competitive in the way that we play. We find ourselves talking about moves and tactics and trying out new combos, something we never did before.

Why? I don't know - it's just that with SSB4 it feels more like it lends itself to exploring and improving your technique than Brawl ever did. Now you could probably point to various technical reasons why that might be so (and I probably won't understand them!) but my point is this:

If the way SSB4 has been designed can influence people currently at the casual end of the spectrum to make the transition and become more competitve in the way that they play, then there is potential for SSB4 to be as successful as and co-exist with Melee on the tournament scene.

Sadly, there are factors which stand in SSB4's way, and not least is the elitist element of the Melee fanbase who seem bent on not giving it a chance by badmouthing it simply because it is "not Melee".

But, like you, I sincerely hope that SSB4 does find its form, and I'm fascinated to see how the game will develop. I've watched recordings of some of the more recent SSB4 tourneys and they're just as enjoyable for me as Melee.

Ok as someone not explicitly part of the Melee community I can excuse you for thinking that Nintendo allowed us to be at EVO the past 2 years (soon to be 3), but that statement is just not true.  For EVO 2013 the TO's had room for one extra game and they held a facebook poll to see which game it would be.  Melee fans came out in full force and dominated the poll, but they thought we were just botting so they decided to hold a fundraising campaign (supported breast cancer I think, not 100% sure) to see which game would make it.  Melee was in a close fight with skullgirls but just barely won out in the end and so they finally allowed us to be the last game at the tournament.  Nintendo as a company couldn't stop us from playing in the tournament since they can't legally stop us from playing the game.  But at that time they thought we were fanatics (thats a quote), so they did the next thing they could which was they tried to stop EVO from streaming Melee.  This led to massive backlash from thousands of people, even many not in the Melee community.  Nintendo was forced to withdraw the ban in about 5 hours to avoid a PR scandal.  In summary Nintendo not only didn't help us get into EVO, they actually tried to hinder our community at EVO, so I think you can understand why almost everyone in the smash community, especially Melee and PM players, dislikes Nintendo involvement.

Europeans actually are not required to acquire a version of NTSC as the PAL version is actually the tournament version there.  When Americans and Japanese people travel to Europe they play using European rules, including the PAL version (which many think is more balanced since Falco, Fox, and Sheik all received nerfs).  Plus only the top 10-15 or so European players ever travel to America for tournaments and they are all good enough to adjust to the difference.  Regarding the SSB4 scene being larger than the Melee scene in Europe, I would say evidence shows otherwise as at BEAST V (largest euro tournament to date), there were 140 SSB4 entrants and 370 Melee entrants, which is a much bigger difference than at APEX (1030 Melee entrants, 800 SSB4 entrants).  I'll type a longer response later tonight since I'm busy rn.  I don't actually live in Europe so I don't have first hand experience, but again the numbers seem to say that Melee is perfectly fine in Europe.