The goal isn't to have everyone top tier Melee level. That would be a dumb goal. Power wise, they are probably aiming for a Peach, Marth, Mario, or Wario kind of level. The process you just described is very slow for a game that does not have patches until many MANY months have passed. It might take you multiple years to have a game that has 10 "Spacie certified" characters at that kind of rate if you try to get it right for a few characters at a time. It's not efficient and it's much more painful to do it that slowly and let so many characters lag behind. Buff the wahzoo out of everyone, give them all CG's and free combos and blah blah. Destroy the character's original personality and feel, but possibly manage to get everyone on a higher level. It's not hard to come up with crazy ****, but it's hard keeping the game feeling like any shade of Melee at that point.
OR, you could buff everyone up over time in a non top tier severe way, make sure you also take care of the Squirtle players in the process. Maybe give them a free evolution to Wartortle? Give D3 a refund on his mallet and instead equip him with a giant rubber chicken? Cmon there are some great ideas out there.
2.1 Ike was an abomination
