>>48611307>>48611335It's really simple. The Golden Age of pokemon ended with Crystal, The Silver Age with BW2, The Bronze Age with USUM. Now we are in the Iron Age.
In the Golden age inspiration ran supreme. They literally did whatever they wanted. Time machine between the first gen and the second gen, shinies, breeding, shinies breeding shinies, etc...
In the Silver age they were very inspired but also more grounded. Still, they introduced a lot of interesting features such as Seasons, following pokemon, pokemon forms and other things that are not completely gameplay oriented.
In the Bronze age their inspiration is starting to run low. Almost all new features are deeply connected to gameplay and not done purely for fun. This is also when they start think about how attainable things like shinies are and how accessible the game is, deciding to make the game easier and shinies easier to get. They also started coping things from other franchises.( Mega Evolution and Super Training from Digimon and Z-Move dances from Yokai Watch) There are still some interesting ideas, but not as much as before.
Now we have the Iron Age, everything is focused on accessibility, appealing to an specific audience and gameplay. Things like Pokemon Nature that used to be about the personality of your pokemon are simply seen as an useless features preventing more damage during gameplay, things like transfering old pokemon, done just for fun, are now useless and "a waste of resources":
>Who even uses Stantler>Balancing competitive would be much easier without megas 
