>>49956546>Why won't someone rise up into having a better competitor than showdownBecause Showdown has been in development for ten years by a Pokemon boomer, at a time before the series was recognized as becoming shittier by the year with no end in sight.
There is no longer any incentive to invest time into making a battle simulator for a series that is now unrecognizable and repugnant to many people who have the know-how and would have had the will to make it.
But the issue isn't "Showdown" at all, it's always been Smogon University, which is the biggest server on Showdown, the official server, the only one with a real population, and the only one most people know about and will play in. What you want is a server / arbiter of a Metagame that provides an alternative to Smogon, which is much easier and more likely to produce, but for similar reasons may never gain traction and become a thing. There already is at least one alternative metagame that I know of, but it's small and you've never even heard of it.
People who don't give a shit about Smogon will just play whatever Smogon allows them to play. The number of people who despise Smogon enough to create a serious alternative to it is extremely small.
