>>56300214Gimmicks exist since Gen II.
It's just that they were incremental when they were first implemented, meaning that if they worked they would stick around afterwards. After a certain point you can only expand this simple-ass battle system so much before it gets bloated and ruins the simplicity of the games.
Gimmicks then became less about expanding the game or betterments and more like party tricks, selling points for each new game that won't be present in the games before or after so their presence can boost sales. Just look how breeding and abilities completely changed the meta landscape in Gen II and Gen III, then compare to how Megas and Z-Moves were treated after VII. How would it feel if genders and abilities were one day removed?
Gen I meta is deemed shit just because of that. Gimmicks should be vehicles for balancing. There are pokémon that were given new life with a Mega Evolution. Gigantamax helped Galar pokémon stand out in their own region, compared to some pokémon that get their region of origin confused by players.
>tl;dr: gimmicks aren't the problem, it's the fact that they became just fads 
