>>45264161>it is engaging to say "you need to adapt your team not just to battles but also to environmental challenges"I get this point, and when I was younger I would give my main mons fly and surf, but everything else was delgated to an HM slave. It just makes more sense because the only cost to having an HM slave is the off chance that a random trainer will sweep 5 of your mons. I think Pokemon Contests were designed in a similar way, in that you can do well in most lower level contests by just using your main team and some poffins, but in that case as well, you would never sacrifice your pokemon's battle prowess for pokemon contests moves when you can just have a dedicated contest pokemon. I suppose the real "issue" with the HM's is that Pokemon is 99% focused on battling, so anything that gets in the way of that will be avoided. I think a good compromise would be a 5th "Field" move where you can only choose one move to use in the overworld. The result would kill HM slaves, but it would have a huge impact on how you design your team, especially if there are lots of bonus HM's like waterfall, dive, etc.
