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I mean, I think there's a lot of risk involved there, as well. Veterans don't take as much time to make as newcomers do, so dialing that far back on veterans could lead to a much smaller roster. A veteran and a newcomer surely don't have the same amount of cost-intensiveness. There's also the tremendous risk of things backfiring severely. If they cut a lot of popular mainstays to give some D-List character a chance, I can't see people reacting well. Take your Fire Emblem example. Why cut Ike, the sole most popular character in the franchise, and add Leif, a significantly less popular character and the lord from the least played Japan-only game in the series? Why cut both Awakening characters when Awakening was the game that catapulted Fire Emblem back into the mainstream?People worry about where Smash goes from here but I'd love to see what they could do if they stopped pandering to the Smash community's "don't throw out our old toys" mentality and just shafted half the roster for entirely new characters. Think of it as an opportunity to do something new instead of losing something old. (You can always go back to an older game to play as characters you miss, after all.)
Imagine if Marth was the only FE character guaranteed to be on the roster and they could add anyone else to join him. Leif as a Master Knight who can use an armory by himself or Micaiah as a light mage, or the Black Knight in full armor. If they focused on new characters each game over old ones you'd see a lot more out-there interesting choices. Zelda characters that aren't The Big 3 would finally have a chance of getting in. Each game would have it's Ridley or Snake, a character so good you play the old game just for them.
Obviously certain characters are more expendable than others, but cutting the overwhelmingly popular and important mainstays will probably cause a reaction similar to MvC:I.