lol some of the trials were literally just "beat three wishiwashi/rattatas/ghastly" and people are complaining that Gyms had you fighting 5 trainers.
Give me trainers over weak wild pokemon any time of the day.
5 trainers with the same type of weak pokemon? The same geodude, tentacools, goldeens, *insert regional bird/normal type here*? The lack of variety makes it a problem. I keep trying to stress the point they can improve upon the system. They haven't done that with gym trainers.
Tell me the last gym trainer you thought was hard enough to rival a gym leader. I'll wait.
I'm not going to act like fighting wild pokemon is the best substitute, but at least they tried something new and I would like them to at least expand upon it. It gets boring fighting the same type-specialists with the same type of pokemon. Case in point, I'm tired of seeing every rock gym have a geodude. Like, we have almost 807 pokemon and they keep choosing to use from the same generation as well. And even if they show the gym leader with their signature pokemon from that region, it still doesn't take away the fact I had to defeat 5 geodudes to get there (Roxanne, Roark, Brock)
At least with things with Totem Lurantis, I had to think a bit about how I was going to face it (I chose Popplio and I didn't have a good fire type yet) the same can not be said for those mentioned about in which if you have a grass or water type or even an overleveled fire type you'll win with no questions asked.
The point I'm trying to make is that they've had time to make gyms more interesting than they are. The first true change I like was Norman's gym in which you faced pokemon all built around a different strategy, but my problem is that the rest of the game doesn't do anything like that (minus Tate and Liz) again. I say if they aren't going to do anything with it, start from scratch (like trials) and go one from there. Not going to say I've never enjoyed gyms, but they've weared out their welcome for me.
For the next gen (since people are making lists) I'd like, better graphics and better optimization with the gyms if they choose to bring them back.