I don't understand this, I'd rather have 50 well-designed and balanced Pokémon than 150 forgettable ones. Not to mention, we already have 700+ Pokémon, why do we need so many more?
You wanna talk about not understanding things? The thing about the whole "quality vs quantity" thing with the Pokémon roster?
They. Are. Not. Mutually. Exclusive.
The scenario you described has NEVER happened. Ever. No, not even Gen V. It was a strong gen with many popular strong designs and there just does not exist the ability to use objective critical analysis to say otherwise.
Gen VI did not introduce fewer Pokémon because they wanted to do a small batch of "well designed" Pokémon lol. It was because of Megas, which take the same resources to develop as a new Pokémon.
Also, can we PLEASE stop pretending that the number of Pokémon being high is a problem in ANY way, shape, or form? You seriously think they're going to either drastically slow or halt altogether the creation of new Pokémon just because they don't want the number too high? Why is that a good idea?
The success of Pokémon as a series, and frankly the reason I even keep playing, is for new Pokémon (this includes regional forms and Megas). First of all, every new Pokémon brings a new dynamic to the battle system with different combinations of moves, abilities, types, etc. This alone is enough to justify the creation of Pokémon into oblivion. But aside from that, each Pokémon created is made with inspirations and folklore, and these creatures are loved (yes, even the ones you may not like). I am a lover of all Pokémon, so I guess it's easier for me to think this way, but holy fuck how can someone not get excited at the prospect of a shitload of new Pokémon to discover? That's literally the best part of playing a new generation. I love seeing every new design and the inspirations and thought that goes into them, and then I love doing crazy shit with them in battle.
Why in the world would they weaken their greatest marketing tool? New Pokémon are the life of the series. Period. Even if they stopped introducing new Pokémon and just started doing Megas and regional variants, then you would most definitely stop bringing new people into the franchise and its overall health would suffer.
I mean it's frankly outrageous. I understand that there are balance considerations to be taken when the roster gets large, but any problems with balance that Pokémon has right now are related to Megas, NOT the number of Pokémon overall. If anything, numerous lower-tier Pokémon carving unique niches in the meta is what makes Pokémon fun for me.
I would bet that the only thing TPC gives a shit about when it comes to the number of Pokémon is that they can hit 1000 at an opportunistic time for marketing purposes. Other than that, I think any perception of them trying to slow the growth of the Pokémon roster just because of the strange abstraction that "it's bad to have too many Pokémon" is just a misperception (and if they are doing it, then I would hope that they'll stop and realize how bad it is for the series).
Let's please stop pretending that there's really any reason to "take it easy" on new Pokémon. There's no valid reason for it ("I don't like modern designs" isn't one). I'll be incredibly disappointed if there are less than 100 new Pokémon in Gen VII. It was one of the reasons Gen VI felt lifeless and boring to me, but I think Gen VII is shaping up to have a decent number of new mon. That's good, because the designs so far are so fuckin good that I wanna see ~120 for sure (pls around the size of the Hoenn Dex).
One of my favorite things about playing new generations of Pokemon is seeing all the new Pokemon. The "Quantity=/=Quality" logic doesn't really apply to me since Gen 5 has one of my favorite overall rosters of Pokemon. I think every new gen should at least have 100.
Yeah basically a tl;dr of my post :v