Well said, jstinftw!, but I'm sure SBaby will reply by pointing out that, when he raised the topic of elitism in competitive Pokémon, he claimed not to have been speaking specifically or exclusively about Smogon. Nevertheless, remove the narrative focus on Smogonites and you've still posted an excellent commentary on the all too human tendency to develop a superiority complex (with all the standard out-group enmity) when participating in a culture of competition. Also, your statement that "The people who want to have fun aren't playing while the people who just want to win are" is one of the most quotable phrases about competitive Pokémon that I've ever seen on the internet.
While I'm here, though, I'd like to sketch out slightly a disagreement about your reason why having "standard" Pokémon is a blessing. I would argue that, rather than building a team (say, in UU) that has only to prepare for 12 (or so) specific Pokémon, what we actually do is build a team that prepares for certain threats, and by that I mean we have to prepare for certain strategic capacities (i.e. type, ability, stat distribution) that can in principle - and frequently in practice - be performed by multiple Pokémon.
Let me illustrate it this way: why is Entei in a lower tier (used less often) than Arcanine? Because Arcanine fulfills the same general role that Entei would, and does so better by virtue of its somewhat superior stat distribution and movepool. But the point is that anyone who has prepared for an Arcanine has also automatically prepared themselves for an Entei. So when we build, say, an OU team, we are not just preparing for the threat of Salamence, but also of every other Pokémon, OU and down, that could perform the same general role as Salamence. We are actually preparing for a far larger percentage of that total 649+ bestiary than you imply, see, and that's a large part of the reason I think the game would not actually be substantially less manageable if all (or most) Pokémon were competitively viable options on the same level.
(In other words, if my team requires a Normal/Flying physical sweeper in its last slot, I'd like to be able to choose Staraptor, but also Pigeot, Fearow, Dodrio, Farfetch'd, Swellow, or Unfezant if I so desired, and have a comparably good chance of that Pokémon performing its role regardless of which I chose. Nor do I think my opponent will be any harder-pressed to prepare for and defend against this team member despite there being more than a single viable Pokémon to be it.)
While I'm here, though, I'd like to sketch out slightly a disagreement about your reason why having "standard" Pokémon is a blessing. I would argue that, rather than building a team (say, in UU) that has only to prepare for 12 (or so) specific Pokémon, what we actually do is build a team that prepares for certain threats, and by that I mean we have to prepare for certain strategic capacities (i.e. type, ability, stat distribution) that can in principle - and frequently in practice - be performed by multiple Pokémon.
Let me illustrate it this way: why is Entei in a lower tier (used less often) than Arcanine? Because Arcanine fulfills the same general role that Entei would, and does so better by virtue of its somewhat superior stat distribution and movepool. But the point is that anyone who has prepared for an Arcanine has also automatically prepared themselves for an Entei. So when we build, say, an OU team, we are not just preparing for the threat of Salamence, but also of every other Pokémon, OU and down, that could perform the same general role as Salamence. We are actually preparing for a far larger percentage of that total 649+ bestiary than you imply, see, and that's a large part of the reason I think the game would not actually be substantially less manageable if all (or most) Pokémon were competitively viable options on the same level.
(In other words, if my team requires a Normal/Flying physical sweeper in its last slot, I'd like to be able to choose Staraptor, but also Pigeot, Fearow, Dodrio, Farfetch'd, Swellow, or Unfezant if I so desired, and have a comparably good chance of that Pokémon performing its role regardless of which I chose. Nor do I think my opponent will be any harder-pressed to prepare for and defend against this team member despite there being more than a single viable Pokémon to be it.)