Of course, but Smash in distinctly unique compared to other games. Who "gets in" and who doesn't always dominates discussion about the series. Other games can replace a character with a different one of a similar archetype and sill satisfy fans of that character somewhat. If Chrom gets cut in the next smash game people will be asking for him to return until the end of time even if Roy is still in the game.
"Who's getting in" is common discussion for fighting games in general. I would argue that that's not really a distinction for Smash and more of a difference in scale. By nature of being a crossover and casting as wide a net as it does, the discourse for Smash is going to naturally have a much wider reach.
Same goes for the second point. Some people who liked playing Fei Long or the twins in Street Fighter are okay with picking up Jamie or moving on to another character/playstyle, but you still get people who are upset by his absence and refuse to play the others. It's the exact same situation. People who played Fei previously are attached to him in the same way an Awakening fan likes Chrom specifically. They want Fei Long not a character who is "kinda similar" or "close enough."
I 100% agree that lots of Chrom fans would be unsatisfied with the answer of "but Roy's still there." I just want to make the same point for fighting game characters. I know it's probably not your angle, but you make it sound a bit like you're treating these characters as functions compared to fighters in Smash.
Funny, because I actually think the exact opposite lol. Nerds on smash boards are far more likely to be puritans about what characters "should" be in the game and which shouldn't. The hatred of Clones, Retros, Fire Emblem, and Pokemon reps has always been something I basically only ever see in these types of communities. 90% of casuals I've talked and played with appreciate having more characters to play as. I've seen people get absolutely FLAMED at parties for pulling up with a copy of smash that doesn't have all the DLC characters, even when the missing ones are like Byleth, Min Min, or Pythra.
Different irl experiences I suppose.
I absolutely agree that the more dedicated online communities are where people get really toxic about it, but I would still argue that a lot of absences wouldn't really be seen as a detriment to casuals, not out of dislike but simply not caring.
My experience with casual friends/acquaintances has had people that don't play games as much (or occupy different communities) so they're not really attached to most of the roster. Many didn't bother with the DLC either due to simply not playing the game enough to keep up with it or for not being familiar with the characters. (And even among the most casual of casuals, you still get "why is x thing I'm unfamiliar with here in place of y thing I like more.")
For a lot of these cases, Smash really is "that one party game they dust off once in blue moon."
He could. I just wonder if he'd be willing to take on that kind of project again when he's basically retired at this stage, or at least he's approaching retirement very soon.
I don't think he would either mind you, but it's not something I'd completely write off either. The foundation Ultimate left is right there, but the scope is still pretty large. I could see a scaled back, smaller scope being something he might still be interested in doing if trying to top Ultimate is something he doesn't feel too keen on attempting.
The thing is, I think that tracing what the "average" Smash fan cares or doesn't care about is not that easy. More than 30 million people bought this game. I doubt they all only care about Mario, Sonic and Pikachu.
Frankly, if that was the case, they wouldn't have bothered making these giant rosters (Ultimate, but also Smash 4).
Plus, we've all been average Smash fans at one point. How many people had Ness as one of their favorite characters despite not knowing who he was back on Smash 64?
Honestly, I do think it's kind of fair to say that. The average player is going to skew more casual so while there'll obviously be plenty of variance on an individual level, the average overlap of interests is going to wind up being stuff like Mario and Pokémon.
If Smash only catered to that average, we likely wouldn't have the roster that we do now.
Smash has the roster that it does because Sakurai doesn't cater to the average player specifically. He absolutely caters to them, but he tries to cater to a lot of crowds/niches rather than focusing on one. It's of the reasons he tries to retain as many characters as possible. Dark Pit doesn't necessarily appeal to the "average," but he doesn't want the niche that loves him to lose their character.
That said, the utilitarian approach makes sense...
Clones are more expendable because if you really liked Pichu in the previous game, chances are you'll be decently satisfied by playing Pikachu even though he doesn't offer quite exactly the same experience.
The 8th Fire Emblem character is probably more expendable than the only F-Zero one because that fanbase is still sufficiently catered to by the other seven, even though that would still sting for someone who really likes Corrin and doesn't care much about the others.
But I think it's more a matter of making the cuts sting as little as possible than anything else. People care about the Smash roster. That's been made abundantly clear a lot of times.
I mean sure, I was never arguing that people don't care about the roster. Just that the average player is going to care less because they're not as invested in Smash as a whole or the many series it's comprised of.
You could cut half the FE roster, the clones, the retros/single series (like Wii Fit/ROB) and the average player isn't going to lose sleep over it.
On the F-Zero example, the franchise they're from isn't really going to factor in all that much compared to who the character is as an individual. If they cut Captain Falcon, a casual fan isn't going to lament over the loss of F-Zero, they're going to miss the stylish meme-able Falcon Punch guy.
You're still thinking in terms of a hardcore Smash or Nintendo fan (or a dev too actually). You're placing value in CF being the sole rep of a particular series, but a casual player isn't going to care about his legacy within his own series, genre or Nintendo, but as a fun character in Smash specifically.
Otherwise, I mostly agree with what you're saying here; it was kind of my point.
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