In general, I would have to say that I agree with Maj's remarks regarding a well-balanced game: it's enough to have 4 or 5 "good," tournament-worthy characters in a game, and realistically, the task of ensuring that a significantly larger number of characters are evenly balanced is essentially impossible. At best, game developers might try to manage a large number of characters by making sure that each character has good chance of winning against a subset of the other characters, but this model runs the risk of degenerating the entire game into a rock-paper-scissors battle of choosing the "right" character for a given match. Keeping a small number of characters universally balanced against each seems to be the most viable approach by far.
On the other hand, I wouldn't go so far as to call non top-tier characters "irrelevant." While it might be true that they won't have much of an effect in tournament-level play, weaker or poorly balanced characters play an important role in casual play; and it's the casual play that serves as the gateway for most new players to get into the game. Without the lower-tier characters, it becomes harder for seasoned veterans of the game to give themselves a fair handicap when introducing the game to their friends, colleagues, or spectators.
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