The flavour is that you have to do some work to get results. Main series Pokemon games aren’t just battle simulators. Setting it up as a series of transactions is weird, sure, but it probably helps them keep the amount of work bearable. 10 Ores for one reset does admittedly seem a bit too expensive.
'Bearable' is... far from the word I'd use. The general idea of putting in work to get results is fine, but it means nothing if that work has no worth.
Consider that to even begin breeding, you practically need a 6IV Ditto. This is practically impossible to get without hacking or injecting of some kind; or at best using some kind of manipulation that you're really not supposed to do and the game's developers likely didn't even think was possible. If you
don't go for Ditto, you have to spend a good few hours soft resetting or chaining or whatever to get the Pokémon you want with a few perfect IVs, and then maybe a second one. Done that? Cool, grab your destiny knot and everstone and breed for another good bit until god decides that you're allowed to upgrade from 3 perfect IVs to
4 perfect IVs, then repeat the process. Oh, by the way, if you had a specific Hidden Ability you were looking for, make sure to add even more time. Oh and make sure you synchronised the nature too. Lot of variables here for this fun children's game about going on an adventure with your wee dog.
But okay, sure, you've finally managed to do that; you somehow eventually got a 5IV version of the Pokémon you wanted with its HA and everything. Done that? Cool, next step is EV grinding; either you spend a bunch of money on vitamins, or you go out and beat... what, like, 100 Pokémon until you get the stat bonuses you want? And then you've gotta level up. And then you need to get the TRs or TMs or Move Tutors you want. If you've got a special evolution method, make sure to do that too.
You've done all that? Awesome! You've got... a single fucking Pokémon. Do that six times over, and god forbid if you want anything else.
This is a stupid process no-one in their right mind would really want to do and enjoy, and the 'value of work' for which disappears after the first hour or so depending on your tolerance levels. It's mindless, it's boring, and it reduces your work to a cold numbers game rather than anything to do with bonding with your Pokémon or any of the actual lessons or flavour Pokémon tries to say it's about. It goes against literally everything the game should be.
You want a metaphor for work, for growth, for training and getting up to par? We've had that since the beginning, it's called goddamn levelling up and evolving. Especially in the postgame, there's no reason for anything else to be this much of a hassle and frankly I'm not sure why I'm still here. Every game I think maybe, finally, they'll realise and streamline the process and make this less of a hassle. And sometimes they do! Sometimes we get stuff like infinite-use TMs, or easily grindable cash, or nature mints, or egg move tutoring. Almost as if, I don't know, Game Freak themselves realises half this rubbish is pointless but their yearly schedule means they can't change any of their systems and can only barely work around them. And then they, like, forgot about that because then they put in
another pointless currency, another pointless grind, another needless complication to a game nominally for 7 year olds.
"You have to do some work to get results" aye,
some work. But at some point you gotta remember this isn't a 9 to 5, this is a video game that I want to play and just use my Pokémon. If you made even half this stuff easier or straight-up cut out elements like IVs or the inane restrictions of HAs, nothing of value would be lost, more people would play the game, and more people would enjoy it.
