I predict there'll be 4 "factions"; Native Faith, Buddist, Taoist, and Neutral. The Spell Cards of the first three will be largely geared toward making those characters stay within those factions, while "Neutral" will be given a fair bit of flexibility.
Or not.
Though... There aren't many who'd be in the Taoist faction. There's Miko, Tokiko, and Futo. (Though I doubt Tokiko will make it in.) And Seiga (With Miyako likely a Spell Card for her). And perhaps Hong Meiling (She is Chinese).
There's already a Neutral faction, by having a balance among the 3 factions. As for now, only Reimu can do it. Also we seem to be able to lean to 2 factions at once by balancing the point for each faction. Dunno how this affect anything for now.
As everyone is guessing the possible characters in the game, here is my list:
The meddling taoist:
Seiga (with Yoshika), Miko (or Tojiko as Miko is too important/busy to participate) and Futo...
The worried buddhist:
Byakuren, Shou (maybe has Nazrin with her as comical relief) + Ichirin...
Also Mamizou might appear to aid Byakuren as she did in Ten Desires.
Random native faith:
Sanae (still supported by the Suwako and Kanako), Kanako and maybe Aya (making a report again).
Then again Suwako is a good candidate as she could fight for being the main god of Moriya again,
but personally I hope that Momizi would appear.
And the rest:
Keine + Marisa and Reimu.
Maybe Alice spreading the wisdom of Makai... Yuka would be funny to see.
And for the final boss:
The true goddess of Hakurei , who is extremely pissed with Reimus lack of faith.
I remember ZUN mentioning that Hatate will take care of reporting this, so no Aya.
I hope when they finally implement the function of the faith chart it will be more than just a status boost or something . Personally, I think it would be interesting if the faction that the character has will have an effect to the audience, for example: Characters that focuses on the Buddhist faction will have an easier time gathering appeal from the audience in the Palanquin Ship stage or maybe those from the Taoist faction will have a harder time there. Kinda like sports match in their turf. This would be a nice gimmick because the stage will be more than just background and can affect the gameplay.
Also, this is quite unlikely, but by the premise of the game, I hope the faction that the character focuses on will affect their story mode, so we'll get a branching story and multiple endings. Unlikely, but it would be nice if it is.
Regarding the characters, I guess we'll get more skill and spellcards but only one Last Word for each character. For character items, since we had no weather and got an appeal system in exchange, I'm expecting an item that can affect the appeal(this can either broke the game or make it more competitive). And besides, there's many effects that can be used, I just hope that item cards are more useful in this game than in the previous ones. Each characters also have their own special gimmicks, kinda like Blazblue, so I'm expecting lots of customization in the full game.
I'm planning on maining Ichirin, unless Byakuren got in(I'll rage if she doesn't) then Byakuren all the way.
I'm just worried how they're going to implement the 'Superhuman' spellcard. If it does what I think it does(buffing attack, defense and speed) then I hope it's her Last Word. Having it as a spellcard will be overkill, seeing how the game treats spellcard. Or maybe they'll have it as her item card which would still be convenient.
What do you think the moveset(spell cards, items, Last Word, gimmicks) of the future characters will be?