I just still can't wrap my head around this. We've seen with the likes of Slaking, Regigigas and Archeops that Abilities can make Pokemon who would otherwise be broken pure trash. And on the other hand, Pokemon like Tapu Koko, Greninja and Blaziken would be useless without their current Abilities. Likewise with items, take a look at Chansey and Dusclops; they both outclass Blissey and Dusknoir respectively because their evolutions just flat out don't offer enough to be worth sacrificing the Eviolite Boost for. And Pikachu (at least not the starter one) is completely trash without the Light Ball. We could keep listing examples of Pokemon who succeed with certain Abilities and Items and would otherwise fail without them (as well as the opposite), but the point is that these are both simple mechanics that are game changing: why get rid of them if you're marketing LGPE as entry-level games? It's complete lunacy in my opinion.
And, by the way, LGPE being a remake of Gen 1 isn't an excuse for this shit. FRLG and HGSS also had both held items and abilities (along with the Physical/Special split). And ORAS also included XY Megas and new ones, Fairy-types and the Prevos (as well as, once again, the Physical/Special Split). And you know what? You can completely ignore Abilities and Held Items and still cheese the game. You're just going to break them even further if you know how to truly utilise them, so how complex are they really? In other words, this game really is a Gen Wun pander marathon as we all thought if it was going to return to the base mechanics instead of go forward. But, oh wait, IVs, Natures and EVs are still game, as is the Physical/Special split. The first mechanic (IVs) I'm pretty sure every respectable Trainer and the mother wants to GTFO out of the franchise, so it's not even about the pandering anymore, it's about them cherrypicking what should be in LGPE and what shouldn't be, and it's honestly amazing to me how FRLG were released almost 15 years ago and they are looking to still be the best versions of RGBY (and amongst the best games in the series anyways).
Also: it's still a stupid requirement to force you to have a certain Pokemon in your team even if you don't need to battle with it, and if you wanted to play a Nuzlocke, a Monotype, or any other team related challenge with these games, you'll have to bend the rules to beat the Gyms (or, at least this one). And not to mention, Rock-types also have three other weaknesses (Fighting, Ground and Steel), what makes Water and Grass so special other than them having 4x power against the entire Gym? And I still don't see why we need to change the games because of the fact that today's generation is much less patient than those who were old enough to play the Gameboy games. If I could beat Yellow Version at a single digit age then so can anyone else at the same age. And not to mention, forcing players to play the game a specific way is shit game design, so yeah, it's still hand holding.
Honestly, for me it's not about Gen 8's gameplay being changed if LGPE is popular enough anymore (I personally think Gen 8 is at least half developed to have any real meaningful changes), it's now about the real games (Gen 8 and beyond) having to deal with being developed by game designers who clearly don't know what the hell they are doing.