>>20794846Precisely. Caterpie sucks ass, Metapod even worse. But they evolve incredibly early and carry you quite far into the game... until a better option shows up in which its quickly replaced. Starters dont even reach the second stage by the time Caterpie hits its third, but that only means Caterpie ceases to get significantly stronger as its base stats have hit their limits. But Bulbasaur? Still a long way to go.
As you said with the pseudos, they're weak at first and obtained at a very low level compared to the rest (typically around half the level of surrounding wilds) for the purpose of being at their lowest stage, but also because being so weak means knocking them out is almost too easy, making them an even harder catch. Easy to kill, hard to catch, harder to train... and they're not even particularly great until the point where everything thats going to be good, got there, and everything else gets permaboxed and replaced. Except Garchomp, who's needlessly overpowered at a very low level as even Gabite wrecks faces. But Gible is extremely difficult to find.
This is also in a sense the point of megas - many 'mons get them so they can be stronger in the players hands, but 99% of trainers cannot use them and you'll never encounter them in the wild, so they dont need to be scaled for when you encounter them, they just need to be incredibly strong, or serve a particular function like Shellbro and Hooker bunny
