Gyms not being apart of gen 7 is why it felt so refreshing, it was new!
I agree. The lack of gyms in Alola made the game great, in my opinion. The problem with Pokémon, at least in my opinion, is that it is mostly the same game over and over. [...] I enjoy the Island Challenge more than collecting badges at gyms.
I feel as though part of your definition of "Gym Leader" is that they have to be boring.
To me the only defining characteristic of a Gym Leader is that they're a boss who you fight for the sake of getting a Badge in order to enter the League. Their team can be whatever you want so long as they have some sort of clear theme, and their Gym challenge can be whatever you want, and it's still a Gym. By this definition, the Kahunas have a lot more in common with Gym Leaders than they do with other types of bosses in the other games. The only thing separating them from Gym Leaders is that they're not
called that and they don't give you a Badge. They could have been Gym Leaders with zero change to the functional gameplay. You like the gameplay of the Trials? We could just have Gyms that are like that. Look at the Gym challenges in the Orange Islands arc of the anime, they're a lot like the Trials. What you two appear to be asking for is not at all mutually exclusive with Gyms.
while I really welcome gameplay that doesn't involve gyms
90% of any Pokemon game consists of gameplay that doesn't involve Gyms. Thus, as I said, I think that the presence or lack of Gyms, or what those Gyms are like, is a lot less important than what you do with the rest of the game. You could take Pokemon Legends Arceus and add Gyms to it, and still keep most of the game the same.
If you take a Pokemon game and subtract Gym Leaders, the only thing you've automatically changed is to have there be 8 fewer boss battles. You can make the Gym Leader's team be whatever you want (again just so long as they have some sort of theme), you can make the Gym challenge be whatever you want, and you can make the parts of the game that are not Gyms be whatever you want. The rest of the game can be an epic story of whatever form you want, and you can still have a game with 8 Gyms in it. Pokemon Insurgence even manages to combine the Gyms with the epic story on a couple of occasions. The existence of Gyms isn't the problem; the problem is that the Gyms aren't interesting, and the lack of interesting things to do outside of the Gyms.
The only asterisk I'd put on that is that if the story is interesting enough in its own right, you run the risk of the Gyms feeling like a distraction or an interruption of it. Which is where the point comes in that you can by all means remove Gyms, just so long as you still have a sufficient quantity of interesting and challenging boss battles. Gym Leaders are a crutch that allow the devs to churn out boss characters without having to think too hard; and attempting to make a Pokemon game without that crutch is absolutely possible, but IMO not something to be taken lightly.
