Just wanted to come in here and clarify about patches.
A patch would only be introduced under the most
extreme circumstances. The final release of the game would settle for a really, really good while more than likely. The chances of a patch after 6 months of the final release are pretty slim unless there's a huge problem with
actually being able to play the game.
You can look at our
first patch for Demo 2 for an example of that. There were some serious gamebreaking bugs with the demo we didn't get to iron out before putting it out there. Such as Wario's bite freezing the game when inputting the Bthrow on a certain frame or Falco's hurtbox not allowing Marth to tipper him. While yes there's some other changes in that patch, you wouldn't see such a large scale of little changes like that in a patch for the final release; because all of the gameplay elements would (hopefully) be 100% matched to Melee and/or fixed.
I think it's a little crazy to expect us to have matched everything to Melee in Demo 2.1. We're close, but not 100% there yet in many areas and we're well aware of them! It's why we didn't put anything out for a long time, because we're striving for perfection (at least as far as the gameplay goes, obviously, character balance can never really be perfect).
So, again, for TL;DRs: final release won't see patches for a long time unless there's stuff that makes the game unplayable in some instances. Obviously at some point, if the community wants it and if a character is deemed too overwhelming based on MUs and tournament data,
then a patch would be made to adjust where necessary. But otherwise, I wouldn't worry about patches out the wazzoo, we know how those things go already.
Still don't have a completely 100% solidified plan for final release, but pretty much what I said about patching should be correct. Only when completely necessary.
It's pretty heartwarming to read some of these posts in this thread, by the way.