While I see where your coming from, and admit that I'd ask the same question, when it comes to cross overs like this I usually worry less about how many characters and more as to how well they represent their games.

That being said if they add more characters, I'd like them to add more series as well considering that not even half the cast consists of different games last I checked (haven't played in a year, could be wrong). Plus with more games to draw off of, its easier to make the characters more unique.

The characters are finally going to be balanced, but we won't be getting that many new characters. Wow, that's cool.

As TerminX said, the characters DO matter. Without a good roster, SSB4 just won't be as good as the first three. We already know he's going to be less concerned with the number of secret characters, and now Sakurai's going to stop caring about the number of newcomer's too? If they don't have a good character to go with this game, I'll be very upset, and I might just die a little inside.

Agreeing with what TerminX said, I am much more interested in newcomers than balance. Not to say however that balance is unimportant; there are few things worse in a fighting game than heavily spammable attacks and characters being underpowered or overpowered. But I'm not going to hate Nintendo for it. In the end, I'll still probably end up getting the game, whether there are a ton of new characters or not.

To add to that statement, I'm not a dev for SSB4, nor am I Sakurai. I may not 100% agree to putting MOST of the focus on balance instead of the addition of characters, but again, it's not my idea or my project. I feel as though I need to give game devs some slack when they try something new, even though I may not agree with their decision. Who knows, I may just end up loving it!

Same here. Even if they do all that, you can't ruin Super Smash Brothers...well...unless you're Sony.

Oh yes you can ruin Smash Brothers, but lets hope it doesnt come to that.

oh sup every single person exaggerating what the article said

he just said he was more interested in balance and that huge casts are hard to make feel unique and balancing. at no point did he confirm that there would be 0 new characters. there won't be 0 new characters. sakurai knows full well that that's a hype-kill.
for f***'s sake, he said in an interview not two weeks ago that he was looking forward to bringing back old characters like he did with pit and ice climbers, so obviously he has at least one or two more characters planned.

brawl was basically broken and people bought it anyway, the roster itself matters about 1000X more
people buy a nintendo party fighting game to beat jigglypuff to death as bowser with a fan, every smash bros game i bought was due to the characters that were in it
the handful of people who took it seriously enough to actually learn which characters where overpowered were a niche group of aspies and psychopaths

a legendary game designer would obviously know this, he most likely just said that to get credit with competitive brawlfags

That is pretty much what SSB is. Its never been perfectly balanced, but never been disgustingly out of balance either. It kind of falls in the middle.
Ive never been one of those people who meticulously studies "techniques" in fighting games, I usually just play games to have fun, not to necessarily "win" or be really good at it. As long as I can have a fun time playing a game, Im going to play it. If I dont have fun with a game at all, its just a waste of time.

Oh so true.

brawl was disgustingly out of balance actually.

I've never played Brawl, so I don't now how OP MK is. Can someone tell me?

For one, his moves had no Transcendent Priority, which meant that his moves went through everything. Plus, all those recovery options he had; U-Special, D-Special, S-Special (for the horizontal recovery), etc.

Couldn't find helpful reasons but this video hopefully tells some of it

Meta Knight's the best~
Gonna beat you with him even if he's nerfed~

It's been a while since I played Brawl, my Wii wont read it... But I still had fun with the characters that weren't messed up.
Anyway, while I still dont consider SSB to be totally broken, it has its fair share of problems, but every game does in some way.
Its still fun in the times I get to play matches with my friends. Therefore I still play when I can and gaming mood permits.