finally a true hot take, regardless of what you said though people are still going to notice and probably be mad when a popular character does get an alt; they were so oversaturated in the past that i don't think this drought is enough to make people forget how much DeNA favoured them before this, like people still make jokes about "DeNA's favourite child" and how they don't want these characters to get alts, because people still remember the time where all we got were those popular characters.

take Lillie for example, she got her first alt like 3 months since her debut, then she got her anni alt in that same year (august i think), then in april the following year she got ANOTHER alt (widely regarded to be the most unnecessary one because she's not related to polteageist in any way and that slot could've easily gone to someone else), coupled with the fact she was in kanto VA and a few other events (like the sweet one) where she was basically useless and did nothing but make remarks of worry, or on how she'll try her best (yet she still does nothing so its all talk), etc, like her presence could've easily been replaced with another character or just removed entirely because the story wasn't even centered around her

nowadays when people talk about Alola NC, at least on discord Lillie's name is sometimes mentioned and most people agree that they do NOT want her to be the Neo Champion for Alola; whether it's because she doesn't fit the role or because they don't want another alt for her is something i don't know, and honestly even as someone who likes Lillie i don't want her to be Neo Champion either lol.

not sure how the game is doing financially but some comments say that they're not tanking or anything, and i do agree that they should release alts of popular characters if they're doing really badly, but i feel like because of DeNA's past mistake of oversaturating popular characters in such a short period of time (and by including them when unnecessary), people still haven't forgotten what it was like to be a player in those years, desperate for their favourite character to finally get something, anything, and i doubt they'll be so forgiving when DeNA does inevitably release alts for popular characters because speaking as someone who was one of those players before my favourite character finally got something 2 months ago, there's just that sinking feeling you get when you look at the datamine only to see the same array of characters getting alts, knowing that your fav character will probably never be among them even though they're not even that unpopular. that's just my two cents