Fully anticipating being clowned for my take here but here goes: I think there is a risk Sample Teams have lost sight of what they were originally intended to be - an intro to the tier for new players - and have shifted into a different purpose, almost eclipsing the need for players to learn teambuilding at all and removing what used to be a fundamental skillcheck.
I'm a BW main and can only really talk for BW Samples here, but thought it might be worth making a PR thread in case there is are any similar feelings across other gens/tiers and whether we can learn/adapt something or not.
This is no longer about giving new players an intro to the game, its giving them every single resource they need to enter a tournament and be immediately competitive with no meta familiarity or further work required.
I don't think its surprising that this year's BW Cup has seen a huge number of R1 upsets. New players unfamiliar to the tier have access to almost all the same resources that long-time top players that self-build do, right down to the perfectly optimised EV spreads and techs that they couldn't have discovered on their own. The unfortunate reality of this game is that it has a relatively low skill ceiling, and anyone coming into a game with baseline pokemon knowledge and a top team has potential to cause an upset with a decent matchup or a bit of luck, and in this way I think the ubiquity of incredible teams on the forums erodes one of the game's steepest skillchecks - teambuilding.
There's a fine line to draw between making the game accessible for new players, and giving out so many highly optimised and tournament ready teams that they truly don't need to set foot in the teambuilder at all.
I know this sounds elitist and horrible but since returning to the game in 2021 this has been an annoyance. People are accustomed to handouts and are entitled. When Samples aren't updated for a year our discord is inundated with petulant fucks complaining about the sample teams being outdated. On the other side of the spectrum, we see people get hardstuck as trying to upskill your teambuilding after a year of having perfect teams is demotivating. Big names get knocked out R1 of tours cos everyone has Meloetta teams and it's a cm away from beating everything.
