Because more than a handful of K. Rool supporters (weirdly enough it's worse here than a lot of other places) act like everything is a threat or have incredibly shortsighted and entitled attitudes when it comes to character additions.
Everything that debuted after 2008 is "an advertisement." Anything that isn't cartoony is "irrelevant weeb trash." K. Rool "obviously won the rigged ballot." There's no character as "important and deserving" as an obese crocodile who was written out of his own franchise a decade ago.
And it sucks, because K. Rool himself is pretty great. But him getting in means rewarding a bunch of entitled whiners stuck in the nineties and armchair game developers, so the idea gets less thrilling with each passing day. Harsh, maybe, but who cares.
Donkey Kong Country 2 is my favorite video game. By a pretty hefty margin, at that. Going back to that "four most influential games" thing, it'd be Donkey Kong Country 2, four times. No other game has had as strong an impact on me as a gamer, an artist, and a game artist. Everything from the level design, to the art direction, to the score, right down to the movement mechanics, it's all as close to perfect in my eyes as it can get. I (rather unfairly) judge every single platformer by its standards, to the point where I actively struggle to enjoy otherwise objectively great platformers. Tropical Freeze, for example, just frustrates me for being different in just about every way possible, which makes it very hard for me to appreciate the otherwise really clever level design.
I have not, and will not, go into the K. Rool support thread. I've been in the Dixie one once, and that was enough for me. The fanbase for this franchise, at least the ones that overlap with the Smash fanbase, is getting more and more desperate by the day, and its not a good look.
To be honest, though, I feel that way about just about every popular request for this game, even the ones I actively support (but especially the ones I don't; we all have our biases). As a result, talking about newcomers just isn't fun for me anymore.
I'm only here for the leaks.