I don't think the list can tell us very much, if anything, at this point; sure, when you pull it apart like that and note that the two most recently added DLC characters are at the top, it can look like there's a little something going on there, but that's only because it strips out a lot of context that is important to reaching any statistical and analytical conclusions reliably. In other words (and said with respect and collegiality for you as a fellow massive fan), I think you are unintentionally
cherry picking through a subconscious
confirmation bias regarding who you think ought to get in. For one, note that there are no fewer than seven characters well below Amy and Cassie who made it into the base game--where was the popularity poll then?
Note that I'm not saying that popularity plays no roll here (clearly it always will), and I'm not saying that there might not be a bit of a parallel between what those few thousand fans voted on that one poll a while back and larger trends in the consumer base for this franchise. But the statistical links there are tenuous and corporation that has decades of experience marketting media is going to know that. Namco probably wants to ultimately hit a sales target of 2.5-3 million units if it wants to consider this entry a run-away success for a game in this genre with the budget it received at this point for fighters in the game industry (though they probably would be quite happy with 1.8 million, all things considered regarding the market and the extra income they will bring in on DLC content this time around). They are right on track to land somewhere in the middle of that range if projections based on past sales for similar games released around this time of year are any indication, but a lot can change in the roughly year and a half to two years when the bulk of the sales for this game will be made--and notably the season pass model
could keep that gravy train running a little longer, though its by no means guaranteed.
Now compare those figures against the largest number of people who voted for anyone remaining on that list, which is roughly 300. With a sales target of 2.5 million, that means those people represent .00012% of the people that Namco hopes will buy this game (to say nothing of the size of the entire pool of consumers whose attention they are jockying for in an extremely crowded industry). That is what a statistician, whether they are a researcher or a marketer, would call statistically meaningless; the
sample size is just too insignificant from the total population to draw any reasonable conclusions about what would pull consumers, especially considering that only a small sub-portion of players who buy this game (particularly if it does well) will be returning players. And Namco is big and experienced enough to know all of this, and to have taken it into account long before the first coder even sat down to work on this game.
Long story short--the poll was a low-cost effort to generate initial marketing buzz among the dedicated fans the devs/publisher knew were dying for any news on the franchise, because some of those hyper fans would go on to work as minute-scale
influencers. to pave the way for Namco's own in-house marketing. Considering putting a poll up online costs them roughly .000000000001% of their annual marketing budget, and it continues to generate buzz for them two years later as players continue to debate its meaning and thus maintain hype for the DLC, it's a pretty cost-efficient form of marketing. But to update an old saying for the modern era, that poll is not worth the amount it costs to light up the pixels on your screen when it comes to the value it has in terms of indicating what characters to expect next. Yes, Cassie and Amy were at the top of that list, but honestly, we would have known that they were coming regardless; they have decently-sized collections of dedicated fans (which we knew long before there was a poll), but they also fit in neatly with the latter end of the narrative being told in the game.
Elaborating on that last point, remember that
correlation is not causation: in other words, Cassie and Amy were selected (in part) because of their overall popularity and they may also appear towards the top of that list because of their relative popularity, but that doesn't mean the list was taken by the devs/publisher to be a reliable indication of that popularity, or that the development team (or Namco in general) have ever used that list to make so much as a single decision on whom to include. In fact, I would suggest that the fact that the initial picks for inclusion came scattershot across that list (especially if you remove the SCV characters that were never going to be included because of the soft reboot/narrative period of SCVI and the fact the SCV is as close to being reviled as any game in the series, for taking things in an odd direction), is rather striking proof that it is has played no role in deciding who comes in and when, and that is has taken a back seat (as one would expect and indeed hope for) to internal development decisions as to which characters best serve gameplay mechanics and creative decisions. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say popularity plays no role--I'm sure it does, especially with key devs having a social media presence these days--but I'm guessing that mental calculus takes place in the mind of the devs based more on a) the troves of other marketting data they possess and b) (probably more important than anything for the creative team) their combined hundreds of years of experience working on the franchise and being familiar with its community. Not some raw figures from a few thousand fans in that one poll, that one time.
Lastly, even if the poll had guided decisions at any point, its now come up against pragmatic marketing and development factors which all but guarantee that the next four names on that list are not going to be the next four in a season 2 DLC pack (if it happens). And yes, I said four there. I know you keep reaching very hopefully towards six, apparently based solely on the fact that Tekken had six guests in its second season pass, but every time you do so, I'm going to (hopefully with good humor that is obvious!) try to snap you back to reality, because I can almost guarantee you that it's going to be four characters if it occurs at all. I won't re-belabour all of the reasons I've already detailed above in this and the other speculation threads recently, but I will point out that the marketing and development situations (and initial DLC approaches) between Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI are apples and oranges. Namco have telegraphed an approach to DLC content for this game that I think is pretty clear for anyone --at least, where the observer also pays attention to how companies, development and marketing work in this industry--who really wants to look closely enough at everything they've said so far and (more importantly) everything they have done with the game and bonus content to date. The second season pass, if it happens, will almost certainly roughly parallel the content released in the first, in terms of the amount and type of content offered: it will be four characters (probably including a guest, who will also get their own stage), along with about 100 CaS items. I believe it's also almost a certainty that all of those characters will be male, to achieve parity with the first season. Based upon the narrative era, gameplay considerations, marketing factors and a number of additional considerations that otherwise constrain the choices, I'd say this is roughly what we are looking at (and I bet my order is close even on what order they are announced in):
1) Liz-aeon-man: a lizardman who leans heavily towards classic lizardman with a shield and axe, but with some later Aeon aesthetics worked in. I don't think your suspicion that they would not include both a CaS race and a character is likely to in fact be a barrier here. Afterall, human is (for obvious reasons) a selectable race for CaS characters, despite the regular cast being made up almost entirely of humans. In a similar vein, each game in the series since SCI has been establishing the lore that there is a lizardman species and one particular dude, named Aeon, who was transformed into one. I don't think this is likely to cause too much confusion among even newcomers. The devs will simply retcon their labelling approach from earlier games a little and start calling this character Aeon, as they did in SCV--though again, I suspect his moveset will be more legacy oriented. Afterall, its clear from supplmental materials in earlier games that he was called Aeon all along and that his name on the selection screen was a conceit for the convenience of players who, at the time, cared very little about the lore. (ah, the good old days, when SC's fanbase had their priorities straight!).
2) A male guest character: Presuming the announcement comes six months into the new year, I still give a reworked Kratos the lead here; I think he could be our first returning guest ever. But admittedly, the marketting timing is not perfect and, in any event, this could be any one of about four dozen obvious choices.
3) Yun-Hwang: Either Yun-seong or Hwang will return, but I suspect the one left out in the cold will have at least a handful of his moves rolled into the dao wielder that does get in--similar to what has happened with Rock and Astaroth now (and has happened occasionally throughout the series), probably in this instance by locking some moves behind soul charge.
4) Li Long or Rock: Normally I'd say Rock is the more likely candidate, being as he has an at least somewhat more unique moveset, but I think the fact that some of his moveset was rolled into Astaroth is a strong indication that the devs made a decision some time ago not to include him in this entry. Algol is another outside contender for this last spot, but I think his place in the over-all narrative, his lack of anything but passing mention in the story modes, and the superficial similarity of his weapons (and for that matter, story role) to Azwel's all tend to argue rather strongly against him. I think it's going to be Li Long, entering into the fray as a dark horse.
Believe me, in certain respects I am hoping I am wrong about this. As someone who wants to see as robust a roster as possible (particularly for returning characters) I'd like to think that future season passes could be upgraded to six characters, but I can't fathom Namco opting to do that in this situation (for a variety of reasons that I've detailed previously relating to net profits, cost-efficiencies and pragmatic development and marketing decisions with regard to how they constitute and price something like this); it would basically involve them doing a u-turn that would reduce their overall revenue and make it less predictable while at the same time opening themselves up to (perhaps irrational but certainly inevitable) complaints about the consistency of their pricing model. I just can't see why a major publisher with a developed marketing division would ever do something like that. In a similar vein, I'd much rather see Setsuka or Hilde coming in than Li Long, Rock, or Algol, but I think the reality is that the writing is on the wall for that pair, unless the multiple season pass model is such a runaway success that we see a third sequential season. (I love that idea, but I'm skeptical the profits will extend that far for VI, though I hope each game from here-out anticipates a larger and larger extension of the core cast through DLC; I think it's just a matter of time before this model becomes increasingly profitable, if game consumers can just get over being quite so impulsively defensive about how much they pay for their content on the whole, when it is solid content like this).
All things considered, if it were practical, I'd even bet good money on the list above being more or less what we will see if there's a season 2. I tell you what, let's do it this way as a gentleperson's bet: whoever's guess ends up closest once all of season 2 is revealed (assuming there is a clear winner at that point) gets to pick the other player's main for a two month period. That's almost bigger stakes. ;) You game? :D
