I think the roster is great! They could sell the game as is with the roster they have right now and I would be satisfied (I would only be a little disappointed not having Game & Watch and Jigglypuff). The newcomers look great, I like how a lot of them are representing a Nintendo franchise that has been missing from the series like (Animal Crossing, Wii Fit, Punch Out). Also the veterans look great and most of the important ones are in the roster already (Like I said the only ones missing that I would miss are Jigglypuff and G&W).

I can see people just really love to complain... the roster looks great! Just because its missing 1 or 2 characters (That no one seemed to car about until now) doesn't make the roster horrible. Its most likely those characters are already added anyway (Ness and Captain Falcon basically have a 99.9% chance of being in the roster).

Also peoples expectations were way to high... who really thought characters like Spyro, Crash, Goku etc. were going to be added!? There is no way they would be in the game, people need to be more realistic.

I want Ganondorf and Captain Falcon before I can be completely happy.

i have never been under the impression that Nintendo picks characters in Smash or that Nintendo's opinion of a character or franchise significantly influences Sakurai's character decisions.

i kind of think that people are under the impression that Sakurai's goal with succesive Smash titles is to just "add more".  Sakurai has said several times that that is what he wants to avoid with future titles.  i.e. it seems to me like a lot of people have been assuming from the beginning that all, or almost all characters from Brawl will return which i don't think would be accurate.

Who here has assumed that all of the characters will return?

Indeed, I'm expecting Wolf, Snake, and possibly Lucas to be dropped. I could also see ROB and/or Meta Knight being dropped, although less likely than Lucas. Also note that Pokemon Trainer was dropped in favour of just Charizard.

And I know that Sakurai's decisions aren't made solely based on Nintendo's opinion of a character, but it's certainly a factor - if Sakurai said he wanted to leave Mario out, Nintendo would say no. More importantly, Sakurai chose to have Ice Climbers as starters. It'll have been based on Nintendo's view of the characters, but starter vs unlockable decisions would be up to Sakurai, and he made that choice.

The only way I could see Ice Climbers not making it is if he couldn't get them done in time, in which case I'd expect to see them made into DLC characters (based on recent rumours).