While we don't know how a character's design is focused, we can make assumptions.
We do know that the game is considered for more than just 1v1s with most game options ignored.
Logically, they always would be appealing to the widest/grandest audience.
For it's own longevity, a balance team are going to "fix things not truly broken" and focus on the
middle class (applicable majority);
just like economics assures us India and China are going to dominate markets in the coming generations, anything but gearing towards them is insanity. We are playing a game with downloadable content, and
they want us to continue purchasing this content, the likelihood of us doing so hinges on interest not only maintaining itself but also growing!
Character balancing is just a marketing strategy, and (painfully) they don't provide patch notes likely for increased social media exposure that results from widespread placebo outbreaks (it's deadly and contagious!).
Sakurai has frequently implied other ways of playing the game that he prefers when queried about balance. Free for alls, items, doubles, varied stages, different
scrub win conditions, engine options, NON-BATTLE MODES (single player, etc), heck even 5+ player games may be considered, and likely a lot more than we'll ever know for certain:
online interactions.
Unlike previous Smash games it seems there has been more focus on keeping character's capabilities to passable in the most frequent multiplayer options, some characters being particularly more capable than the average in the more "fun" types have seen reservation from the balance team. Certain characters who have been overtuned by our perspective have more issues in free for all than they end up having in singles; for example (not necessarily still, but at least at game release) Falcon's disadvantage state, Ness' recovery and poor mobility, Diddy's batmanesque prep time requirements etc etc.
Meta Knight in Brawl was particularly average in the non-battle modes [and with items] if you consider his normal took kit rather than his specials, I assume most agree he's awful in those areas now. His low damage, transcended priority normals and all specials putting him into free fall just screams "weak" when you compare to how strong we feel Ganon and Bowser can be in those contrasting situations. The compensation they gave him was not very well thought out; shuttle loop and tornado were so strong (almost like how they are in Kirby games) that they nullified a lot of the cast in multiplayer modes without real counter play.
Just like how we have to consider viability with the perspective of multiple grades of tournament and multiple levels of play, we have to realise this game isn't being changed for us but all the varying demographics. It's feasible things change by our actions, low level replicable strategies spread like wild fire and the original source may be a zero video or someone like you or me, but I can't truly imagine we would be even an eighth of the equation let alone half or a majority.
So what are we meant to do?
We'll likely only ever have assumptions. But we have objective data on which characters are getting changed, the patch cycle is closing in on a year now and certain things stick out for what actually happens verses our opinions (Zero Suit and Mario, Jigglypuff and Dedede). I've always stipulated a correlation between Japanese tier lists and patches, but it could only be coincidence; their tier lists do take into consideration online competitive play, they may naturally reflect the statistics we can only dream about knowing. If a character is not receiving love, then there is enough to analyze with varied or personal anecdotes to bolster the idea
they are happy with where they are for the sake of something other than offline 1v1s, or like any balance team is afflicted with how to cater to minorities without negatively impacting the majority.
We don't know how much longer content is going to come for this game, but as a group of people trying their best to understand the game, we do have to accept the product we receive and mold a "metagame" around is not going to have the same field of view as Nintendo. If we can understand why a character is low tier, while assuming the paradoxical idea that Smash4 is a "very well balanced game for
competitive play", then the only conclusion is they are balanced --
just not for us.
