This really. I played UMVC3 and it had like 50 characters. Thats twice what this game had...except HALF the cast was redundant. Oh wow Iron Fist and Felicia are in this game! Oh wait Wolverine is better at his gameplan even if his damage and pressure are lower because he has mixups and longer combos. Oooooh Chun Li is in this game and has great air dash and pressure! Except C. Viper does everything Chun does plus a million other things as well.
UMVC3 had a ton of characters but after a roster expands past a certain point it just gets to the point where cast start stepping on each others toes and doing the same jobs as other characters. In such scenarios generally one is clearly more useful than others due to various things like matchups, or mixup options. Usually the redundant character just has ONE tool or something that makes them distinct...often its not good enough to matter. Anyone here play Jill? No? Thats because even though her Cartwheel beat EVERYTHING in the game she was bogged down with a bunch of weird stuff to try and make her distinctive which just made her too difficult to use. Rather than fish for gun spiral resets, cartwheel punishes and mad beast pressure folks would just say fuck it and use some other fast character with strong AA. The game had plenty who were easier with far less risks in their offense.
More doesn't equal good. You often just have characters trying to be unique without trying to be designed to be good above all else. Redundancy and flawed gimmicky playstyles are often the result of oversizing your roster.
IGAU is fine.
That's some really flawed logic here. Your point just centers around character's viability. Fighting games are not just about tier-whoring. Not all people play FGs in order to be the best or win some tournaments. The more characters, the better. ALWAYS. You think when a person who really wants his favourite character always cares about him being viable ? No, he/she just wants him in game. Because he/she likes the character. Doesn't matter why, because of design or his story or just because he acts like a badass. Not all people care about their characters being able to do 100% combos. Please, I would take a game with shit tons of characters over some "everyone is original" game any day. Because I don't f*cking care if they are all original, I like only like 3-4 characters from the game. Now if the roster was bigger, there would be chance that I liked more characters, so PROFIT for me. Comon, MK9 has 32 characters, I really like only like...1 character, really. The game got so boring it's not even funny. Same shit all over and over, I started to use some other characters, learn them a bit, but what happens when there are no one to learn ? Plus, I don't learn everyone, just the characters that I like. Because when there are lots of characters, like in SFxT for example, there are so much to learn, so many characters you can master, so many combinations, the game will keep for you long. And 24 characters, even less than MK9 had ? Comon, man. What's next, new generation fighting games having roster of MK1 ? Give me a break, I'm pretty sure some people play Chun-Li, Felicia, Jill, because they like the character. I don't think someone really likes Vergil or Morrigan as a character. (as a character, not as a boobie shaker soul-fist spamming smexy succubus).
