Why can't people see merit in one character without completely discounting another? Why can't more than one character from the same game be seen as viable options? Why is being a significantly more popular character not something of merit? Why is that not something that warrants breaking a "rule"?
The famous Smash x Persona 5 advertising surrounding Joker suggest to me that it wasn't a cynical advertising campaign for a 3DS spin-off (although fair-enough, I did forget about the musou game, but same logic there). And have they even announced platforms for KOF XV yet? We just got a splash screen at EVO, there was no mention of Switch anywhere (and last time we assumed a character meant an imminent port, P5R happened).
And to be fair to your point, there are a shit-ton of those retro KoF and Fatal Fury games on the eShop. I guess my main point is when they're pushing a game, it's generally not subtle (queue Sakurai saying "Dragon Quest XIS Definitive Edition Only for Nintendo Switch" 20x in the trailer) but for other small releases they probably wouldn't bother with a whole Smash character just for relatively minor third-party releases that won't move hardware units and won't bring in much revenue (as Nintendo only gets a fraction of those sales).
Would've way preferred her than Ken tbh
The thing is, no one has to argue in favor of perceived guidelines. When people propose characters for representation, they want to keep things in the spirit of Smash as closely as possible while opposing any restrictions that prevent diversity from happening. If you don't like an idea, you don't support it. No one needs to be told how unlikely a characters is, because it doesn't change whether or not they think a character should be playable. Any of these characters can be "justified" in some way.
It's less a rule and more I simply don't want them to make more then two unique fighters from the same third party series. There are to many Capcom series I'd rather see before giving Street Fighter another character Chun-li or no.
I think the framework you went over earlier went overboard, as it excluded PoC almost entirely. You didn't even allow room for more Zelda, Punch Out, or Wario characters. That's not even "protagonists first" at that point.
I'm not a Street Fighter fan and even if I was I still would rather new franchises get in first. I simply prefer getting potential new characters. I say this as someone who would be ecstatic if Zero got in.
Hey, Edelgard is my favorite too! It's either her or Claude. Or all of them.
Most recent poll had Edelgard in fourth behind Dmitri, Claude, and Female Byleth.
... Wut?
This took a fun turn!
That sounds like arguing for the sake of arguing. It always devolves into "it won't happen, end of story" which is far less productive. Not to mention the hostility from people saying that others' unlikely wishes are "absurd" regardless of whether those proposals are even speculative. Discussing probability makes sense here, but the topic can always be applied better, even when it's not about representation (no one likes to talk about KOS-MOS). Not every Smash discussion calls for speculation anyway.
Even with Simon Belmont it felt like a good chunk of the people reacting to that Direct were only aware of him because Vergeben leaked him or something.
Yeah, I thought people would at least recognize him from the meme, but no.
I thought so too, but I know so many people who are like nintendo only or who have never touched a Castlevania game, it's insane
Wouldn't the Skyward Sword design make more sense as the default since we already have two OoT characters? Plus you'd represent a different Zelda game.
It's still a mainline Zelda game, & OoT is already represented plenty (Young Link, Ganondorf, I guess Sheik even though her design is BotW, Ganon boss). Plus her SS design is the fan-favorite outside of Hyrule Warriors (which, again, Smash is currently ignoring), a game that's already inspired by Impa's physique from Skyward Sword.
