Gief is a solid character design, regardless of how you feel about how his specials are executed. Ryu's AA is also devastating, and just takes a dragon punch move, what a joke. Hugo on the other hand has normals with huge windups and recoveries. It is not a bad design, just way more out there as a character.What? Gief's game centers around tick grab and a devastating AA that is done by simply pressing 3 punches at the same time but Hugo is gimmicky? Did you just start using him in SF4?
Sim and Gief, if included, would get used in the first 2 weeks and never again (by the majority).
Dunno about Sim. Game is all about close ups and some of the V-skills allow people to come in easily, so I am not sure if he'd work well. Maybe he will just have hella priority. It's why I feel Necro would work better.
Gief would be used all through the life of the game cause he is a solid character who is good at close range in a game all about close range. They'd need to improve Hugo's normals to make him decent in V. Notice that Birdie was a little OP in the first days particularly because of his good normals. A grappler without those would have problems in V. Have to wonder if they would change his inputs. Probably 360s are out, but three buttons at the same time? Spinning Clothesline would probably be shorter.
Maybe they'd give Hugo a parry as a V-skill, just like Ryu's, to compensate. They already gave him one in Omega, but do notice that they gave one to Zangief too.