X-Men never left. The reality is that there are just a lot of them, and this game is Marvel Puzzle Quest, not X-Men Puzzle Quest, and that means if you try to give different spots to different corners of the universe, you end up with more X-Men than you have spots for X-Men.
I mean, we have 2 Jeans, 2 Cyke, 2 Magneto, Prof X, Beast, 3 Storm, 4 Wolverine, 2 Deadpool, 2 Daken, Juggernaut (not a mutant, but fair to include him with this group), Iceman, Colossus, Psylocke, X-23, and Mystique. (and technically Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, but they’re borderline, with primary appearances in Avengers and a backstory that keeps changing, apparently)
That’s 25 (or 27) out of 134, which is a lot, you know?
And the “still missing” group contains Gambit, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Kitty, Emma Frost, Sabertooth, Cable, Angel, Havok, Magik, Fantomex, Dazzler, Polaris, Sunspot, Avalanche, Pyro, Toad, Blob, Jubilee, Morph, Forge, Bishop, Banshee, Hope Summers
And that’s not counting some major villains. Hellfire Club, Mr Sinister, Apocalypse, Sentinels, the Shadow King, Arcade (OH MAN, I would KILL for an Arcade boss event with crazy puzzle requirements to navigate “murderworld” to get to the boss fight) etc.
And not counting possible variants, either! (Angel could use regular or Teen or Archangel versions, you could do Teen versions of Beast/Cyke, non-Teen Jean and Iceman, Rogue before/after getting powers from Ms Marvel, a Colossus/Juggernaut, a non-1-star Juggs, maybe an X-Force 4-star Psylocke, so on, so forth).
AND EVEN THEN, I’m leaving out Armor, Marrow, Darwin, Forgetmenot, Magma, Goldballs, Danger, Firestar, Thunderbird, Blink, Legion, X-Man, etc.
Granted, some are more obvious than others (people always seem to mention Gambit, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Emma in these threads, I figure they’re most likely; and even going through that list, you could release new X-Men only for years before you get to adding Goldballs, and Forgetmenot probably wouldn’t really work in the game)
Personally, I picked Mysterio/Doom for the poll. And I’d love to see some X-Men peppered in between the MCU/comic tie-ins. I just disagree that we’ve been in some drought without them or something. We’re not like… (was it Future Flight, or Contest of Champions?) that just got their first X-Men in the game. And there are some places that have less representation (Thor’s notable, between the Warriors Three, Sif, Valkyrie, Angela, Beta Ray Bill, and numerous villains, we have three Thors and one Loki, you know?).