Better. Not perfect, but better.
I think that there would have been pacing problems anyway, not entirely the writers' fault. It just seemed to me that Gamefreak and/or Nintendo were jerking around the producers and changing timelines as Gen VI was being developed and scheduled. I don't see any other explanation for craziness like a mad rush through the badges followed by an entire filler arc, while in the meantime entire characters were essentially dropped. It's just too incongruous that they couldn't provide a proper resolution to most of the rivals, but spent 20 episodes wandering around the Filler Islands. It seems very likely to me that directions were changed and the writers had to adjust things on the fly. Not being forced to drop the Plasma arc as initially planned might have mitigated these issues, but wouldn't have solved them.
