You can just… not play with competatively minded folk then? I can agree that if you've learned how to get good at any sort of competitive sport or game its hard to do it casually because you'll run the ground with your casually minded friends.

But this sounds like you just had a bad experience playing something competitively. This idea that any game thats competative is less fun is just… different tastes? Can you say that Baseball, football, Tennis would be fun things to watch if no one took it seriously? Sure I'd not wanna play against an amazing team if I was just decent, but thats on me for not being as good, I can just not play them and go find a casual league.

And another but… Nintendo has been taking and encouraging competitive play since Generation 4. Can you objectively say that the casual aspect of the game has suffered? No, the competitive aspect and casual aspect of a game are usually seperate. You can still play the entirety of a pokemon game, grind shinnies, and go online with your team of legendries, and talk about your favorite looking pokemon. You're under no requirement to touch that side of a game, so why shit on people who choose to?