>>51605118This is the same thing people said about Star Wars when it actually was in a good place and look where it took them. How do you think Pokemon would fare when it's at rock bottom?
The only thing Pokemon is improving on nowadays is quality of life features, but they barely matter when the games are not worth playing and the pokemon feel like an afterthought.
What I think could help it would be getting people that actually care and have a vision for the games more complex than "tourist trap with catchable mascots and a gimmick". The Island Trials might have been the last time they will not bastardize an entire region for the sake of the story and game. Paldea so far looks like a wasteland, and that's because the wild area in SwooSh made them realize that they don't even need to have an actual region with real towns. They just use it as a play stage for the story and gameplay, and the rest of the content can just be thrown into the wild area so people forget there was a town that was just a gym with literal pictures of houses around it.
Regions are not a place now, they are just a theme for a ride; the gameplay and pokemon have entirely lost that feeling of exploring the wilds for wild animals, everything feels too friendly and sanitized.
It has given everything up to become an amusement park ride, and it's not even a good ride.
