This is a fair stance to have and all, but my point in bringing up SFIII in particular isn't that Smash can or should do something like this. It's more an extreme example that cuts are not purely subtractive, just as inclusions aren't purely additive. The individual choices made matter more than the very existence of cuts themselves. You can argue that more is more and cuts should be avoided if possible, but frankly, I can't agree.
I also disagree with the idea of "slots" and find it's usually a way for people to scapegoat singular characters for the sins of the game itself. I've seen it happen enough with the likes of R.O.B., Dark Pit, Duck Hunt, Plant, even Arnold's freakin' Grandma in the funny SpongeBob wavedash game that I frankly just view crossover roster discourse as toxic. It's a big part of why I've grown to vastly prefer games with original rosters over crossovers; people don't have a personal attachment to every character who gets announced (or doesn't get announced) by default, making people more open-minded and generally understanding of roster decisions. You also don't have to worry about juggling characters you like for their source material with characters you like for aesthetics, gameplay reasons, etc., and if a character you do like ends up getting cut, it's as simple as finding someone else who scratches the itch. Not quite like Smash where if a Xenoblade superfan loses Pyra & Mythra, there's not exactly another Pyra & Mythra to go to.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by "individual choices made matter more", but I thought I had tried to communicate that cuts are natural, it is just a process that needs a lot more careful planning to handle with in Smash than with an original cast. While I
do think the team will try to avoid cuts, I think it is okay to also assume some characters are low priority or even unnecessary next time as well.
As for slots...I apologize. I am not the kind of person to scapegoat characters normally, but regarding this subject I feel there is a hard truth here to be said here. A Smash game's cast doesn't operate on "the devs just add what they want until they feel like they're satisfied". Sakurai doesn't go and say "actually, I want to add 10 more characters to the game, could you move the release date up a year pretty please?" Fact of the matter is, space for characters on Smash's base game is limited; there may not be a hard, defined character slot limit, but it is apparent that characters have lost out on appearing because they were outprioritized by others, and subsequently left behind so that Smash can arrive on schedule. It's less about "slots", and more about the time the devs are allocated to work on the game. In fairness, I do think it is silly and unfair to scapegoat clones since most people are very familiar now with the idea that they are thrown in as something extra for players.
I don't really know what else to say here, but I think it is clear that we see things from different angles here, and considering you outright say you prefer original cast fighters now, I'd be a fool to try and take that away from you. I'm mainly just presenting my observations and analysis on how Sakurai and the devs appear to view the Smash cast.
No, as someone who was there for the whole mess, it was a case of pure emotional attachment to the individual picks and not just people throwing peanuts from a distance. People were out here genuinely saying NASB2 is a downgrade because it doesn't have Hugh Neutron in it. Even if people were saying that, though, that's still a pretty foolish thing to say. A 36-character roster is not necessarily better than a 25-character roster; I'm in the camp that thinks nothing of value was lost when Lincoln was cut, and a bunch of the other cut picks didn't do anything for me either. (Yes, I think adding two Turtles and cutting the other two was a perfectly defensible decision. Crucify me.) And sorry, NASB2 is not "mostly iterative." If it was, we wouldn't have lost 11 characters. The devs made a huge deal when the game was announced of how they completely overhauled the gameplay and systems from 1's. Nearly every character got a visual overhaul (shoutout to Stimpy no longer looking like roadkill), the movesets saw drastic changes (partially in service of alleviating the "Two Flickies syndrome," as you called it), most of the stages are new, and that's to say nothing of the addition of an actual story mode. NASB2 was hurt in a lot of ways, but the roster isn't one of them - consider that another unpopular opinion.
Well, I have to owe up, I honestly didn't even know there was a social thread on here for the game until it was brought up in here. I was mainly echoing the discourse I saw on other sites, where it was very much peanut-throwing from people already dissatisfied with the first game who found it incredulous that, from their perspective, it couldn't even keep its "impoverished" roster intact for a single sequel. And again, I mainly put the blame on Viacom, because they would've been more than capable to foot the bill for all the upgrades you mentioned still happening without a double-digit cut count. Smash Brawl was an overhaul from Smash Melee in quite a few ways, and the only non-clone we lost there was Mewtwo. And that game was around 12-13 years older.
I think what also doesn't help is that Viacom historically has a track record of treating its properties pretty crappily at times in general, so things were already a bit volatile in that regard when most of your audience is one that shares the view that Viacom's insistence on SpongeBob killed a lot of other Nickelodeon shows in the crib. Even disregarding the situation of cuts, I distinctly remember people getting hopes up high with NASB1, thinking about how it would look as if HAL or Sora LTD was developing the project, only for expectations to be dashed since...well, Viacom. While this is something you can disagree with personally, I do think it is reasonable to assume that a lot of people were burned by both games because of failing to meet expectations cast-wise.
Also re: "Two Flickies syndrome", as
Wario Wario Wario
put it, 2 still has that problem with certain characters, it seems. I honestly think TV show characters would work better with the 64/Melee approach of being general fighting archetypes. Patrick is a big, chubby dummy who has moments of superhuman strength for comedic purposes, make him someone who throws his weight around, is a bit unrefined in his fighting, but is dangerous up close. That move where he manhandles the hat rack
almost works--instead of him hitting people with the rack, that could've been a grab/throw move where the manhandles the opponent
like he does the rack in the source episode. It would be more subtle a reference and tie in better to Patrick's character of being comically strong when upset.
I think that you might've misinterpreted something, Diglett is saying "this is what I think Smash should be doing." but you're saying "But that isn't what Smash is doing right now."
I brought up that it wasn't what Smash does mainly to back up why I disagreed with what Diglett said. With the way the series has built itself up now, like it or leave it, it would honestly just be too volatile to suddenly copy Street Fighter's approach without some safety net (like making a 3D spinoff game with a different lineup unconnected to the main 2D Smash that eventually takes over for it, or something like that). To me, Smash feels more like it is trying to emulate classic King of Fighters when approaching rosters, keeping and nurturing a big, healthy legacy cast while a small portion of characters are shuffled and replaced. It isn't always perfect (pour one out to fans of the American Sports Team), but I felt like that approach is easier to stick to at this point than the Street Fighter "start all over from the drawing board" mentality. Smash is something I'm fine with remaining relatively simple, and mods like Project M and HDR Remix show to me that just tweaking some things around to make gameplay flow better would leave most people satisfied. But I think I'm going off into an unrelated tangent at this point.
I feel like this line of thinking actually works better in Smash. Since these are all established characters, it's not as hard for established characters to "make up" for the loss of a cut character. Plus, the games cut characters are in still exist, so it's not at all like we've lost anything. Sure, we can't do some specific matchups, but we can get characters we didn't get at all if we prioritized never cutting ever. I'm not talking about just cutting the "unpopular" characters, nobody, except a few essentials like Mario, is exempt from cuts. But I feel like some Smash fans seem to think that every character is essential, and I feel like that's hurting the series in the long run
This is where I'm going to have to disagree on. With an original character who is disliked, it is easier to make a character in the sequel who is more-or-less a refined, improved take on the concept--and this is a statement that goes well beyond even the realm of video games, let alone ones with playable rosters. To keep things small-scale example-wise, however, I'll bring up Street Fighter 6's JP and A.K.I. here. The former's considered to be the best example so far of a non-Bison villain (to the point where I imagine people were frustrated that Bison actually came back this time after his supposed death in V), and the latter's considered an improvement on F.A.N.G.'s concept from V. Conversely, I have seen people quick to throw shade when Smash characters get "replaced", most infamously when Lucario got in Brawl and Mewtwo was nowhere to be seen--even if they are similar archetypes, it's clear that a sizeable chunk of fans did
not see Lucario as a consolation prize to be happy about. And to bring up another example, I remember seeing a "reboot" Smash video not too long ago that proposed adding Waddle Dee at the cost of getting rid of Meta Knight, which, to me, sounds like a massive flame war waiting to happen--people do support Waddle Dee quite a bit, but I imagine a lot of those same people would be unhappy at the thought of BWD "replacing" Meta Knight to get in.
While I do think it is unreasonable to try and keep
everyone in the series, I also think the balancing act of newcomers and veterans is still one that should be handled very delicately. I personally think there are other ways to circumvent veteran losses, but that would be another conversation in itself about post-launch content and DLC practices I imagine some of you would probably have choice words about.
