Not every character should have a gender swapped alt. Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, Inkling, and Pokemon Trainer I'm fine with, but Robin should be strictly male, and Corrin should be strictly female.
Smash Ultimate looks more like Smash 4.5 than a whole new game. Compare the first four installments with each other. You can see a major difference in terms of graphics. I'm not saying that Smash Ultimate's graphics are a problem, they're fine as is, but I honestly can't help but see Smash Ultimate as an enhanced version of Smash 4.
I'm not too ecstatic about Ridley getting in Smash, and I deem his inclusion unnecessary. It seems to me that Sakurai finally caved in and added him in so that he could stop getting Ridley requests for Smash. But I'm still happy for Ridley fans/mains nonetheless.
Clones/Echo Fighters aren't a problem, but I do feel that they should be paired up with their original fighter. With such a big roster, it'll certainly help reduce the roster size, which in turn will make the Character Select Screen look better. Too many icons on the screen will look crowded and cramped.
The inclusion of Fire Emblem characters aren't a problem either, nor are their choice of weapon. Although it would go without saying that it wouldn't hurt to have an axe or mage representative, Nintendo needn't force themselves to include them purely for the sake of representation.
That being said, Gen 3, Gen 5, and Gen 7 don't need to be represented in the Pokemon franchise as fighters. Simply sticking to the more well known Pokemon should suffice.
Robin doesn't need a running speed buff. Ignoring the fact that Awakening removed the weapon weight mechanic, he's already carrying 10 different weapons (Thunder, Elthunder, Arcthunder, Thoron, Arcfire, Bolganone, Elwind, Nosferatu, Bronze Sword, Levin Sword). To buff his running speed would mean making it easier for him to distance himself to spam projectiles from afar at low percentages and quickly go in for the kill at high percentages afterward. Robin's Bronze Sword needs a buff to make it more usable than the currently spammable Levin Sword. Something like better frame data should do the trick.
Starting with the original 8 in order to unlock the rest of the fighters is something that I'm not too particularly fond of. About 1/3rd or so of the fighters should be available at the beginning. Brawl's starter character selection screen is a good example. And if we're going by how I said Clones/Echo Fighters should be paired up with their original fighter, players should be exempt from having to unlock the both of them. For instance, unlocking Marth should also grant access to Lucina.
That's all I have for now.