Current Events > I'm surprised with how little doubles are promoted in Pokemon campaigns

(+) Yeah! (+)

compared to singles.

Obviously, singles is the easier-to-understand part of Pokemon, but the official tournaments all run doubles as the format. There's the occasional double-battle, but as a whole, I never realized how important they were in competitive since they aren't that frequent in the main game. I wonder if GameFreak just doesn't know how to program decent-ish a.i. for doubles and is afraid of making some of the more major fights doubles. Like a gym leader, or an Elite Four member, or heck, even a Champion as a doubles fight would be crazy.

Singles format in the main game is a huge reason why Smogon rules were popularized, because it's what everyone knew and used. 6v6 singles with Smogon rules is what I learned in gen 4, and when I entered VGC 2010 I swear the sheet of paper I filled out for my team was a singles format team build. I hated doubles, I still don't like doubles, but official tournaments adopted doubles for every gen after that so I never bothered learning it.

Battle Tower has a doubles format and I'm pretty sure that's what tournament organizers want you to use to practice (as opposed to Showdown). Did you know that in 2008, South Korea held official tournaments where you had to prove your Battle Tower Doubles Format record in the timeframe they alloted? I learned that last month when researching something.

Puglia77 posted...

Singles format in the main game is a huge reason why Smogon rules were popularized, because it's what everyone knew and used. 6v6 singles with Smogon rules is what I learned in gen 4, and when I entered VGC 2010 I swear the sheet of paper I filled out for my team was a singles format team build. I hated doubles, I still don't like doubles, but official tournaments adopted doubles for every gen after that so I never bothered learning it.

Battle Tower has a doubles format and I'm pretty sure that's what tournament organizers want you to use to practice (as opposed to Showdown). Did you know that in 2008, South Korea held official tournaments where you had to prove your Battle Tower Doubles Format record in the timeframe they alloted? I learned that last month when researching something.

Yeah, I've been listening to vids on how good Pokemon were throughout the generations, and I always hear "this pokemon dominated x gen" but then they didn't really make a splash in vgc. Seems like a shame to have a Pokemon not really get to shine on the main stage because they just don't fit in the doubles-environment. I'm sure there's some singles tournaments out there, but I'm also sure they are a lot smaller and less prestigious than the vgc tourneys.

And that's interesting about the Korean tournament, lol. Why did they choose to do that?

the main difference is speed, singles becomes a lot more about switching pokemon. doubles matches go a lot faster, which is good for a tournament. Also any individually good pokemon, ones that can single-handedly sway a singles game, can be dealt with easier in doubles via just targeting them with both pokes, so it allows more variety in play.

don't get me wrong, I prefer singles and cba with the doubles in-game (though that could just be because you were never much forced to consider it), but as far as setting up something competitively, the time difference between a 6vs6 singles game and a 4vs4 doubles is massive

SV having like five doubles battles total (and having them all part of the same gym) was disappointing. They even introduced a new pair of pokeymans whose whole gimmick was doubles, but they aren't in the doubles gym and their story fights were single battles as well.

I keep wishing you could swap between either singles or doubles as the default mode for the main game. If you keep it singles, every fight stays singles (except for certain gyms and pairs of trainers). If you elect for doubles, wild encounters will have an extra pokeyman show up and all trainers will throw out two of their pokemon at a time (again, except for gyms and trainers with only one pokemon). Let us experiment with doubles gimmicks in single player, dammit.

Hambo posted...

SV having like five doubles battles total (and having them all part of the same gym) was disappointing. They even introduced a new pair of pokeymans whose whole gimmick was doubles, but they aren't in the doubles gym and their story fights were single battles as well.

I keep wishing you could swap between either singles or doubles as the default mode for the main game. If you keep it singles, every fight stays singles (except for certain gyms and pairs of trainers). If you elect for doubles, wild encounters will have an extra pokeyman show up and all trainers will throw out two of their pokemon at a time (again, except for gyms and trainers with only one pokemon). Let us experiment with doubles gimmicks in single player, dammit.

Yeah, and even worse, since there's no Battle Tower, you have almost no way of experimenting with Doubles teams except battling online.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Yeah, and even worse, since there's no Battle Tower, you have almost no way of experimenting with Doubles teams except battling online.

YES! At least when we had battle towers and frontiers and shit, we had infinite doubles battles to engage in at our leisure. Now literally the only recurring trainer battles are singles matches in the tournament and I guess Team Star leader singles rematches.

If they wanna phase out doubles battles, then why introduce a new pair of pokemon with a doubles only gimmick?!

I always thought a dual-trainer journey would make a fun side game. You get to use two trainers and twelve Pokmon instead of six. All gyms would be dual elemental, too, to make things more interesting.