Hey, I used to be from pokemmo as well. To answer your question, the competitive scene is increasing but for a period of years we have had various glitches in the battle system to prevent switching. As such, you have some people online who think "switch is noob" but just ignore those people. They are in the minority here.
All of the battle code is hand programmed, and not simply ripped from the ROM like it was in pokemmo, so everything goes under immense testing before release due to potential bugs.
Our mechanics are working towards 5th gen. We are still needing some hidden abilities programmed and things of that nature. The pokemon available in large numbers are up to third generation. However you do have events where some other pokemon are obtainable, so we do have some 4th gen pokemon in game such as gallade, togekiss, magmortar, electivire, spiritomb, rotom, etc.
There is no breeding system, and there never will be a system to spawn pokemon from eggs for free. Our game is highly centered around actual pokemon rarity. By this I mean there is roughly a 1/10,000 chance to find a bagon. This means bagon holds high inherent value relative to other, more common, pokemon. IVs are the source of value for pokemon here, along with shiny status. Shinies now have 20-31 IVs when caught in every stat.
EVs are working properly. We have the ev training items besides macho brace. Power anklet, power weight, etc etc are in game. We also have EV reducing berries which can be acquired from the safari zone.
Overall, unlike pokemmo, there is a huge inherent value placed on pokemon here so values are based upon the usefulness of the pokemon. However, not all good battlers are high rarity. A good chunk of them are actually in the two lowest rarity systems. C:
I would suggest, if you want to play for battling purposes, begin to hunt and search for pokemon as it will take a while (months) to find a competitive team. By the time you do so, the other things that are being worked on will be fixed and we will have a complete battle system.
P.S.
We have random battles coming soon like the ones on showdown. C:
