Well a person with any sense would know that someone like Master Chief, Nathan Drake, Jak and Daxter, etc. aren't possible since they are the competitors exclusives. Most people are reasonable enough to know that mainly Nintendo characters will be added (I still think Bub and Bomberman would be cool). There is no getting through with Banjo and Kazooie fans that believe that they'll get in.
Yes, of course most 3rd parties aren't talked about since they really are not possible, as far as we know (?). The problem does mostly come from characters like Banjo or Shovel Knight, since important (in their companies) people having nothing to do with Nintendo talked about their enthusiasm, or just because their fanbases are really committed. Which is perfectly understandable since Nintendo said it was okay. Though we don't know to which extent it was true, and I believe it's in fact not very much.
My opinion is that it was not responsible for them to do it
like this. Somehow it's just going to be unfair and unclear for most of us, and it possibly influenced a ton of votes for nothing. A better solution would have been to make a Ballot with one option for a Nintendo character and one option for a 3rd party character, if they wanted informations about them.
To explain why, I could take myself as an exemple: One of my favorite characters is Sonic. Before Brawl, 3rd parties were a dream but then, surprise, the hedgehog unexpectedly (for me at least) comes to Smash. Though if he was not yet in the game, I would have been
torn between Sonic and Isaac, since Nintendo stated to vote only once, yet also stating that 3rd parties were okay. And since these two categories of characters are in a
way different situation right now in the game, it makes everything way more complicated imo.
I'm conscious it's too late and anyway my "complaining" wouldn't have made any difference, but to me, the whole thing is not clear enough and influenced the discussions/fan polls/community in a pretty bad way, and could cause a lot of disappointment (Eh, maybe I'm a bit overprotective, I don't know). Of course, everyone is free to disagree with me about this.