Gotta say I highly disagree with you dude ^^, on the contrary online play is the future and especially in Nintendo's case, I must say although ALL fighting games lag online it'll be awesome online. Nobody is going to want to go to tournaments, in this point in time tournaments is ridiculous. Nobody is going to fly to another country, state etc just to play in a SSBB tournament, even if it is for money or whatever. Every fighter is online right now or going to be (ie..VF 5, Tekken 6 even...) and of course SSB series.
Who the hell wants to play the computer or beat the snot out of your 4 best friends 100 times or travel many miles or god knows where just for tournament when you have online play and can play from home?
Online play is the way to go, every fighting game is online now or going anyway so why not SSBB? I really don't see making this game offline logical to be honest.
Besides, nintendo has great online play. DS play is great online I can tell you since I play every day Mario Kart, Puzzle League, etc.
I don't see how SSBB going online can be the downfall of this series, if anything it's the best thing for SSBB overall.
Nintendo's fighting game going online finally...it's about time if you ask me.
As for more secret characters, I think the game at this stage has enough characters lol. Mega Man, ehhh honestly I couldn't care less if he makes the cut or not, then what's next? Ryu, Sub-Zero.... lol since Snake made the cut and all.
This game will be lots of fun, I won't play it nearly as much as my MK games online but I'll play it.