Ok if they do stuff like removing moves and fusing types together that will be where I draw the line
I can't even understand some peoples' justifications for combining Types together. "Water and Ice are the same thing in real life so they should be the same Type in Pokémon." Okay but their advantages and disadvantages are way different from each other so if you remove one you mess up the overall balancing a
lot.
Or like, "Rock and Ground are both predominantly brown and share a weakness to Water, so they can become the same Type." Yeah but one doesn't affect Flying-Types at all and the other is one of its main weaknesses, so...they're really not so similar when you actually bother to look at the Type chart.
The balancing of Types is already kind of tough because the ones we have now compliment each other in an almost delicate fashion. Removing Steel's Dark and Ghost resistances in gen 6 was a pretty big deal in general and it had a
huge impact on certain individual Pokémon, for example. There would have to be
major reworkings if entire Types were flat-out removed, and is it really worth it?
And while I can understand some peoples' reasoning for wanting to "combine" some moves, like remove Bubble but keep Bubblebeam, I don't think that really works, either. From a competitive standpoint, sure, no one cares about those moves. But what about when you're just playing through the story? Imagine in an extreme scenario where all special Water moves were consolidated into Scald, arguably the best special Water move for general purposes. Yay, there are less attacks to keep track of now. But when your beloved Water starter hits Lv7 and learns its first Water move, it's gonna have 80 base power. That's whack. Even if it was more tame, like Bubble and Bubblebeam being combined, your first STAB move is gonna have 65 base power--still incredibly strong at that level.
It may seem weird to keep them separate at first because anyone is gonna replace Bubble with Bubblebeam, but that's sort of the
point. As your Pokémon gets stronger, it learns stronger
moves, too. Those weaker moves exist so your Pokémon isn't overpowered at lower levels during your story playthrough. It's, in my train of thought, the reason why Poison still exists despite Bad Poison being better in every way, period. It's for balance. Specifically, "story mode" balance.
At this point, any removal is gonna have to be met with extreme re-balancing across the board. And it may not even feel like the same game after that. I honestly think just slowing down the pace at which new moves and Pokémon are made would be the best option for now, rather than the complete removal of [insert thing here].
However, GSC, RSE, and DPP were just right. BW added just a little too much. XY made things better.
I'm really curious as to what you mean by gen 5 "adding too much." Mechanics-wise, all that was really added was triple and rotation battles. Gen 6 added way more mechanically than gen 5, so it seems odd to me that you think gen 6 "made things better."
Unless you're referring to gen 5's story, which was more complex, but it ultimately comes down to opinion whether you want a complex story or not. Lots of people prefer complex stories because they feature dynamic characters and the plot makes you think and is ultimately more memorable, unlike their simplistic counterparts.
Gen 5's story
was about the bad guys--N specifically--it just had you catch a legendary and subsequently battle the Plasma leaders at the climax. You may say gen 5's plot didn't feel "Pokémon enough," but the truth is, we've gotten to the point that anything deviating from the tradition started by gen 3 will feel a bit foreign to the series. Whether someone likes that "tradition" or not is completely up to opinion, but gen 1 is still almost unarguably the weakest in terms of plot despite not following it...and as much as I love gen 2, its plot really isn't much better--but that's best left for another topic. Because ultimately, the interview which spawned this discussion was about Sugimori thinking the game
mechanics had gotten too complex, and that he would be alright if there was some simplification. So I don't think any story-related choices will be impacted by this opinion.