Still on team no cuts just saying. Been getting cutspec content recommended to me more often so just wanted to cheer for my team! Ultimate 2/DX using Ultimate + DLC as a base and using same resources you would a hypothetical Smash 6 without Ultimate base.
Who actually wants this game?
I don't really. I want to see the series move forward, not stagnate, and the herculean effort required to bring back everyone again and again will definitely do that.
Cutting characters seems to carry a weird kind of hype among the Nintendo/Smash community and I just can't help but feel sorry for this attitude. What a waste of talent and resources is almost all I have to say after that. Smash is game of grandiosity and I hope Nintendo can be bothered with all their profits to appreciate that more than the community expects. It's the first real platform fighter, the one that defined the subgenre, that still has its original creator that's carrying it on to this day and has a whole hell of lot more potential to be expanded upon I think. Quite literally cheapens the game to eschew all that in some misguided attempt at profit maxing.
Speculation itself is hype, not necessarily the cuts themselves. Very few people are rubbing their hands together like "ohoho finally we're getting rid of [insert X character]!". Heck, we have people like DarthEnderX, the guy who openly despises quite a few character inclusions, is the most vehement that everyone comes back. So it's not that anyone wants to hamstring the roster, it's that we want a new game, and you can't get that without sacrificing at least 20 or so characters.
I also don't like the certainty people speak to this supposed profit maxing. Nintendo can certainly afford to make Ultimate 2/DX with more than enough high quality dev work put into it. There's quite literally no reason NOT to use Ultimate + DLC as a base to make an even bigger Smash 6 than one starting from scratch. And it would maintain the legacy of the franchise all the while. Whatever would or wouldn't make the most profit should be a lower priority than what makes the brand function in pop culture. It'd still be Smash and it'd maybe be much more profitable Smash but something important would be lost if Smash takes this direction. Fans shouldn't expect this much less want it because I think that expectation very likely let's Nintendo get away with mediocrity. Doesn't help the AAA space to give Nintendo an easy excuse either.
The certainty exists due to Sakurai himself saying that "Everyone Is Here!" cannot happen again. 69 full characters was too much, and caused a huge development sync, the effects of which can be felt throughout the game. There's only 6 full newcomers at launch, a lot of series staples in terms of single player content are just not here, etc. The logical response to this is to expect less than 69 characters, not more than 82, and that's even assuming they use the previous game as a base like they did for Ultimate.
A Smash from scratch with cuts would have to have a heavily expanded moveset arsenal to be worth it to me. That's what I would want most of all. In addition to overhauls for the characters that stay in the game they'd all need to a plethora of added actionable options for me to think it was worth losing a lot of beloved characters over. Easy examples being giving everyone a Shield-Special and Back-Special and more. Universal counter option perhaps? There's so much that could be added.
I dunno about universal shield specials (sounds clunky), but new mechanics and overhauls for older fighters is exactly what people are interested in when they talk of a reboot.
Side Tangent: Smash isn't going to reboot. It's far more likely that we'll see about 20 characters dropped, just enough to make development run smoothly, and in exchange we see a natural evolution of the franchise like we have before.
And I wouldn't want dev time and resources wasted on Single-player content along with Trophies coming back because the former is overwhelmingly not as replayable as the Multiplayer content inherent of Smash (and it goes without saying it's not even close in comparison) and the latter is literally unplayable. I also think Spirits were just a cooler/better collectible overall in how they worked to augment the actual play and feel of the game itself rather than simply as some strict viewable reward collectible.
This is all just preference talking. I will say that objectively, fighting games benefit massively from single player content, and a lack of it is a common criticism of the genre. Heck, it's a common criticism of Ultimate.
It sucks too because while I would very much appreciate a hypothetical from scratch/cut-heavy game with a stellar new direction like that I also know the speculation for new characters would really suck after that because it'd be a long Veteran vs. Newcomer debate that would frame all speculation from there on until Everyone is Here is potentially achieved again if ever at all.
The veteran vs. newcomer debate will probably only exist for DLC. For base, everyone is going to expect the vast majority of the roster to be veterans, with the normal amount of newcomers Ultimate notwithstanding. DLC for this game in particular will probably be kinda rough, with people very much wanting their favorite veteran and some people very much not wanting that favorite veteran, and others still preferring that DLC is all newcomers. I think the game after this will probably settle down though, and depending on how they structure their DLC, the debate could simply not happen because we know what to expect.
Side Tangent: You know, that would be a good compromise, show all the veterans in the season pass, but keep the newcomers secret so you can have the hype reveals as well. It's not like the veterans really need the big CGI trailers anyhow.