It's gonna take me a long long long long time to understand and know all the match ups but I am looking forward to it.

Very overwhelming...indeed.

It's times like these I'm so glad I'm not a competitive player.

I did the math and it's 2628 counting mirror-matches according to this website. Still though that's a lot of match ups. However, we need to remember that though a Variation will have unique properties, some variations might not be as drastic and distinct to warrant big swings in match up strategy.

My math based on 24 chars i added up all the numbers myself. It almost was 2900

That webstie or (N*(N+1))/2 where N is 72 (24 characters with 3 variations each). It's 2628 (Another way to prove it if you don't trust the formula is to sum 72+71+70+69...until you reach +0 as each character can fight 72 opponents including mirror matches and each new one shouldn't count the ones where they already appeared against previous conted characters). Anyway, even if the result it's just slightly less, I wouldn't say that's the exact way to look at it as each character keeps the same fighting style and core moves before adding the variations moves, so it isn't really like each one should count as three different characters to learn from zero.

Yeah, if it's a 24 character roster, in terms of tier lists and matchups, it's like a 72 character roster.

I wasn't paying too much attention so far, but at least in Raiden's case, the difference in special moves seems pretty drastic and thus will probably result in very different match-up numbers for each variation despite normals being the same (?) across all three variations.

When those tier lists start popping up and the debates lol. There'll probably be two tier lists, one with each variation placed separately on the tier list and one with matchup numbers of each character's variation summed up to give a character tier list.

My thumbs will be sore after mastering all of those match up combos.

Over 2500 matchup possibilities?!

And none of that is going to matter when the Variation Tier list appears.