You're right, I should have phrased things better than that. All I meant was that there are a lot of characters whose inclusion would bring more variety and uniqueness to Smash, but that fact alone isn't going to get them into Smash Bros.
The thing is that we're running low on franchises and hardware and even mechanics to represent. The list of the characters with top priority has been depleted. Thinking about timing, Splatoon is the only big, new Nintendo franchise that made it on time for Smash V.
Look at other examples—Rosalina was a similar fan favorite character, and her inclusion brought more female representation and a completely new mechanic, which is great, but she was also representing Super Mario Galaxy, which is something much bigger than whatever Ashley would represent.
The thing is that there is no new Rosalina. There is no new breakout character in Mario Odyssey. While Ashley wouldn't be representing a game as important as a mainline Mario title, she would be representing Wario Ware in ways that Wario, who only has his Wario Ware outfit despite being basically Wario Land Wario, currently doesn't.
Or let's take Palutena, another female fighter that served as a showcase for custom moves and represented Kid Icarus: Uprising, but she's also the Zelda of Kid Icarus; the titular character of the series in Japan. Plus there's the fact that since Sakurai made Uprising and completely modernized her character, she was a much more accessible, and probably more comfortable, choice for him to work with.
Yes, I agree with you that Ashley would be something new for Smash, and that it would be good, but my argument isn't whether it would be good or not, my argument is whether or not it's likely to actually happen. Ultimately that's what I care about most when it comes to Smash newcomers discussion.
To me it reads like you disguise your own personal opinions and wants behind a poorly defined veil of likeliness, specially now that we're in uncharted territory.
I'd argue that there are still other Nintendo A-listers, though. Most notably, Captain Toad. But what makes you so certain we'll even get as many as 18 characters? We still have no real idea of what the scope of this game is.
Toad, who would have a no effort Toadette alt, is the only A-lister other than Isabelle not in Smash. It's as simple as this, Isabelle is the only non-Mario character that's Mario Kart 8 and not in Smash. As for the number of newcomers, I the game is the Tekken Tag 2 of Smash. They're adding a good amount of newcomers since they're using the assets and the engine from 4.
Even so, it's not like all of the previous newcomers have all been A-listers (and there have been increasingly less with each new Smash game), and it's not like every A-lister has always gotten into Smash. Most of them, sure, and yeah, Isabelle is probably the most marketed Nintendo character currently that isn't in Smash as a fighter, but I'm not convinced that Sakurai would add another Animal Crossing fighter beyond Villager just because of that.
You said it yourself, she is the only A-lister not in Smash.
Isabelle is different, for sure, but I still see her in more of a nintendogs or Brain Age position when it comes to Smash. I'll gladly admit that I was wrong if she ends up getting in as a fighter, but I'm not expecting that to happen at all.
I find it really disingenuous that you would compare realistic puppies and a floating head based on an actual person to a cartoony anthropomorphic dog character.
But yes, your point that the Pokémon fighters in Smash don't really represent the essence of the Pokémon games is correct. Pokémon Trainer kind of did, but we lost that. And the Star Fox characters aren't particularly representative of the Star Fox games either, yes. Those are both different situations though, and neither franchise had a character that already represented their games as well as Villager does for Animal Crossing. Also, Falco and Wolf have both been playable in Star Fox games, and all Pokémon are "playable" as well, while Animal Crossing's only playable character remains just Villager. I know we've gotten a few non-playable characters in Smash before, but I would argue that all of those had more specific reasons for their inclusion than Isabelle when we already have Villager.
And sure, we didn't NEED Fox, Falco, AND Wolf in Brawl. We don't NEED a lot of characters. I'd say we already got the only character that's really NEEDED for this new Smash, which is Inkling. Beyond that, I think we can only really try to determine what's likely or not based on past inclusions, each observed in their own context. That's what I'm trying to say here.
A lot of arguments for characters like Ashley come off as "we NEED this character for more female representation" or whatever (I realize that's not exactly what you're saying, so I apologize for taking it that way), and I simply don't believe that that's the right way to look at it, at least if you're trying to determine what's actually most likely.
If that's not what I'm saying why bring it up at all? Are you arguing with me or with some sort of ghost you've made up in your head?
I'm not sure why that matters for Smash, though. Hell, Tingle was kind of being promoted similarly to Ashley for awhile, and he even got his own line of real games, but even that wasn't enough to get him in Smash.
lol
For protagonists, there's Elma in addition to Rex, Paper Mario, and while Rhythm Heaven doesn't have much in the way of "protagonists" I'd say Chorus Kids could count there, too, if they're chosen to represent the franchise. And moving on to side characters, I'd say there are characters like Dixie Kong and Bandana Waddle Dee that have a much higher chance than a character like Ashley.
Rex might be too recent but let's include him, you've mentioned 6 characters. That's far for being the number of newcomers we're getting for Smash 4. Add 3 third parties, King K. Rool and Ridley; 11. Isabelle and Captain Toad; 13. There are literally no rules for the remaining 3 if we were getting 16 newcomers, and we might be getting more.
As much as I'd like to see more female characters (believe me, I really would want it and would love more diversity in general in Smash), I don't think they should be added mainly because they're female. Given the nature of Fire Emblem and how it's represented in Smash with various characters from different games, Robin had a lot more going for them (and I'm not sure gender was really a factor there, considering there's both male and female Robin with male being the default, but I'd be interested in reading up on it if you have a source), Zero Suit Samus was initially an extension of Samus like Sheik was to Zelda, and Lucina's a very appropriate Marth clone that was originally just going to be a costume. They're all very different situations than Ashley would be, I feel.
You wrote a wall of text to argue against a straw-man argument. Ashley wouldn't be getting in due to being a female character, she would be getting in because she has the popularity and the correct move-set in addition to being a female character. You mentioned the ballot as if it had given Issac a big boost when Ashley, like Takamaru and Isabelle, got turned into a Mii outfit due to placing decently in the ballot.
Now, I do think that a character being female could potentially raise their priority in some cases. For example, that may be part of the reason why Rosalina & Luma was given a higher priority than Bowser Jr. when it came to Mario newcomers (Sakurai has said that Bowser Jr. was a lower priority character that was lucky to get in). But I really believe that a character has to meet certain requirements before getting to that point. Like, Ashley's just not on par with either Rosalina or Bowser Jr.
There are very few characters left on par with Rosalina or Bowser Jr.; I don't get your point.
I know that as the Smash roster grows, there are less and less obvious picks left, and I know that we might see some different kinds of characters this time around. But I feel like there are enough others that have more going for them than Ashley to not consider her a likely candidate.
You mentioned 6 examples.
Maybe a character like her could make the cut if we end up getting a fairly large amount of newcomers (but even then I might expect more third-party characters first), but I really don't think we'll be getting a ton of newcomers this time around. Probably less than 3DS / Wii U, at least.
17 newcomers would be less than 3DS/Wii U; I'm personally expecting the game to be more of a MvC to MvC2 situation rather than a fully new sequel.
But we'll see. Like I said, I'll gladly admit I was wrong if Ashley does end up getting in, and I'm sure I'd love her in the game. But I really don't think I'll be wrong. While I certainly don't expect to be able to predict every newcomer, I'm more confident in my judgement of which characters likely won't make the cut rather than which ones will. We can only wait and see what ends up happening.
Honestly, I'd love to see Lip in Smash! But her complete erasure from her own franchise outside of Japan makes her even less likely than Takamaru to me. She's also not quite as "retro" as all the other retro characters in Smash from the 80s, but that may not mean much at this point, lol.
"I'd totally love (lmao) to see these characters, but they aren't getting in (lmao) because my superior logic that I refuse to explain tells me they aren't, which is good since I didn't really want them over my bros, anyway (lmao)." I'm sorry, but there is nothing that sets me off more than people writing inflammatory things while pretending to be polite. Sit down, be humble. That's real politeness. Nobody made a serious post saying that Ashley was going to get in Smash Switch. You just jumped up on one of many, many posts saying that they would like to see one of many potentially unlikely characters for absolutely no reason at all and decided that you needed to smugly tell everyone that the character wasn't getting in the game because your intellect told you they weren't without ever considering that you were merely talking about your opinion and not about any explicit facts.
