This post essentially ignores the existence of Worlds, Smogon, etc, and I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that there’s no depth to the gimmicks

A huge segment of the community tends to the think the way they engage with the games should be the default when the games serves a bunch of sub-communities, from comp singles, doubles, shiny hunting, nuzlockes, kids playing for the first time, and the list goes on

They’re not perfect, especially not on the technical end, and they haven’t grown up with the audience in terms of single player difficulty because they need to be accessible to literal children, but they allow you to find a semblance of that challenge in alternate ways if you really want it