>>30978000I think the well that is Pokemon Gyms has been legit poisoned by SM.
We ate up even Gen 6's shitheap of a gym selection because, outside of a very few spinoffs, Pokemon games were always based around the same old formula (go to town, go to gym, beat gym leader, get badge, go to next town, go to next gym, get next badge, repeat 6 times with occasional interruptions for the evil team plot, go to Pokemon League, beat E4, win).
But going from a bunch of completely flat gym leaders even by series standards to the breath of fresh air that is the trial captains, and replacing the shitty puzzles + easy gym leaders (yes I know there were execptions, but they were few and far between) with slightly less shitty puzzles + mostly actually difficult totem fights was a drastic improvement in game design, and a good chunk of the fanbase won't want to go back to the older system.
Since the general public opinion seems to be that gyms <<< trials, GF will go for more stuff like trials in the future, and gyms might well go the way of HMs, Ball Capsules, and mail.
