>>58999670The same reason why breeding in those games is absolutely terrible, there are no guaranteed perfect IV encounters and you can't control the values you can pass down in breeding- you're genuinely not supposed to be able to interact with that side of the game and the battles that are offered were supposed to also be under that context. Even multiplayer battles.
The most that was ever disclosed about EVs officially was via a guide that said that if you go against certain types of Pokemon, you can raise a specific stat but they never told you about the cap involved in that for the overall stat totals and the per-stat cap.
They didn't start giving a fuck about that stuff until Emerald where the Battle Frontier was such a process to beat that they allowed you to check individual values with the judge, pass on natures half of the time with the Everstone, and of course allow you to reset the EVs for your Pokemon with the berries.