Yep. You heard correctly. You can read more on that here along with reasons as to why. And I’ll be honest, I really disagree with those reasons.
I understand wanting to give each Region its own identity, but I feel regions already do in many other ways such as actual different towns, different gym leaders, different trainer appearances, different versions of similar features (IE: Battle Frontier, Battle Subway, Battle Maison).
Taking away features doesn’t make it so someone looks at a region and considers it more special–it causes people to feel like they’ve lost something.
And it’s not like we’ve never had trainer customization before–it was first in Pokemon Battle Revolution. While yes, this was the first time in the main games, it’s still not an entirely new feature in the Pokemon games.
Secret Bases were also brought up as something “unique”/special to Hoenn, but we received them in a similar way with the Underground in Generation 4 which already defeats that. Gen 4 also had contests like Gen 3. Gen 2’s remakes had Pokemon following you again like in Yellow. It’s not like features have not come back in different generations. And I would love to see Secret Bases in every game just like I was hoping Trainer Customization would’ve been a stable.
May is one of my least favorite trainer appearances personally–same goes for Crystal. I love Dawn’s outfits, I love White’s/Hilda’s outfit, I also find Mei’s/Rosa’s pretty cute and even Serena’s default was nice, but I just didn’t care for the first two female looks we received. I probably liked May’s first outfit the best, but I never cared for Emerald or how it looks in these remakes. And I’m really disappointed with the contest outfit. So I was SO excited for the idea of customization returning with contests as that could mean so many pretty outfits that we could possibly switch with for the contests and even to wear out and about only now, this pretty much confirms that won’t happen.
And to remove this feature in a game where contests are returning and the nice outfits shown in Gen 4 and just looking at the Anime and even bringing outfits into this game? That seems like such a huge huge huge oversight.
And considering the big ways we’ll be able to share a customized room, to remove the other half of it with customized trainers? I mean, battles will go right back to some default trainer versus another and it’s just disappointing.
I don’t really want to go more into it, but I can’t even put into words just how disappointing this is. Trainer customization felt like such a big thing in the main games because it really made you feel like a trainer–getting to put yourself truly in as you play with your Pokemon in PokemonAmie (Which IS returning in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire–same for Super Training and the Passerby System) and that has just been taken away.
A small part of me wants to still hope maybe they’ll change their minds or patch it or something, but I know at this point I’d just be kidding myself. I just can’t say enough how disappointed I am. This is probably the worst removal of a feature since Secret Bases in the first place.