Hello there Lloyd fans! As a fan of a fellow character who's been waiting a very long time, I come bearing you the best of luck!
I don't have any personal attachment to the game or the Tales Of series at all, but I have someone who I once considered a friend who's been through a lot who would love nothing more than Lloyd's inclusion. When you mix that with generally loving every character we get and always rooting for long-term fan requests, no doubt you guys would have my support, not that it really means all that much.
What I will say though is that I want to share something with you guys, something I didn't realize until last December after a dark period, something I think needs to be said due to some of the posts I've seen and the title of this thread.
Lloyd's Mii Costume is going to return, but it doesn't affect his chances at all.
I know it sounds weird, but it's true, as there are many ways Lloyd's costume can show up and yet still have him be playable, one of them being his costume shows up in the Mii Costume Wave that comes with Lloyd as playable. It could show up in another MCW because Lloyd could come with a crap-ton of costumes and they won't have enough space for them, or Lloyd could flat out be after this pass somewhere but his costume returns with one of the next two characters.
However, the chances that his costume shows up with either MCW 10 or 11 is nigh 100%, and the reason for that is because literally every other single third party costume has made a return other than his. It's clear that a negotiation was made to have them all return within the first two passes as they couldn't make base game and all but one of them have returned within 9 MCWs. This is obviously just recycling assets and touching them up a smidge to make more money off of something you didn't have to put too much effort into.
I hope this doesn't come off rude, because in essence I'm saying that as someone who has little attachment to the character, even if his costume shows up in a MCW with a completely unrelated character I would still expect him to become playable down the line. I know with absolute certainty that Sakurai wouldn't let a slightly-touched-up recycled asset to prevent him from putting in a character, especially someone like Lloyd in which he expressed that it was the only choice for a Tales Of costume in Smash 4 despite having a wide variety of popular characters to choose from. I say all this because I wish someone had been as open-minded at the time to see such a thing and to share it with the Geno Thread so that we wouldn't have collapsed into such a heaping mess and basically fracture and break apart in terms of support over seeing his costume return when it literally means nothing. I don't want to see another support group go through the same thing when they can instead stay strong knowing they haven't lost anything at all.
Good luck to you Irving Lads!