Hopefully I won't have to explain this more than once and people will help me out lmao:
There are ground rules and good judgement put to work. We don't slap characters together and throw a big mess out.
Anime characters, which (obviously) are the majority of the hate-mongers, are in because SSF1 had them, and back when SSF2 was a direct sequel, the game basically sucked up all of the SSF1 characters and added more to them. Quite a few updates were done and quite a few characters added before an actual team formed, and once we had an actual team the direction of the game was modified heavily. At that point though, as any game developer has to do, we assessed our target audience.
One of the reasons why SSF1 was so popular actually were the anime fans. To dangle forbidden fruit in their face and then rip it out of the game after multiple releases would alienate our current fanbase in order to appeal to a new fanbase, and that is probably one of the worst things anyone creating a work to be widely enjoyed can do.
So, to meet in the middle, anime/manga characters in our planned roster were SUPER cut down. Basically the ones that were already done were just polished instead, and we've gone to extreme lengths to make them feel at home in a Smash engine and bring unique playstyles to the table. And for those looking for a more realistic Smash roster, we've added not only underdogs such as Chibi-Robo, but also the big players such as Isaac that everyone's been craving.
Our rule is that potential characters must have appeared on a Nintendo console for a major release. Don't get us wrong - this is still a Nintendo beat-em-up, but our rules are a little less restrictive is all. That rule coupled with good judgement has made our roster into something I'm VERY proud of, and I can't wait for everyone to see everything else.
The idea of a "4th party" is something completely invented by the Smash fandom, anyway. 2nd party characters are characters made in-house or in-partnership by Nintendo, 3rd party are licensed characters. Even the off-the-wall characters still fall under 3rd party, and are definitely still being kept to a reasonable level, less than half in the public release iirc and that's not even considering what the full roster looks like.
this looks like a big angry rant tho <3 but <3
