Is two better than one?

[Circus]

In Generation III, GameFreak introduced Double Battles. And from then on, it seems GameFreak is certainly favoring the doubles demographic.

The Stadium-likes for Gen III (Colosseum and XD) were primarily double experiences, and while the most part of the Gen IV game (Pokémon Battle Revolution) was single, the final gauntlet and the hardest set of battles in the game were Doubles only.

Every Battle Facility from Gen III onwards had a doubles version, GameFreak's official tournament is a double format, there have been two gym leaders who do Double Battles (granted that one of them is in the generation that introduced them) and perhaps the most "damning" evidence: Dynamax.

If you weren't aware, Dynamax is ... controversial, to say the least. Having double HP, the ability to set weather, boost its own stats while dealing damage, bypassing Protect even if at quarter damage, and causing Encore, Taunt, Disable, Destiny Bond, flinching, forced switches via Roar / Whirlwind / Dragon Tail / etc. and a few other effects to fail, it really doesn't play very well with a Singles meta.

But, it is pretty well regarded in the VGC community. In fact, it seems like Dynamax is explicitly balanced around Doubles. For the offensive side of things, it bypasses things like Encore, Taunt and protect which are a lot more prevalent in Doubles. For the defensive side of things, the extra bulk helps, lets any Pokémon act as a support for their teammate and allows you to preserve offensive momentum.

The reason GameFreak favors Doubles is because it's faster paced than the traditional Smogon 6v6, can't really support Stall tactics and makes for a better showing in tournaments, but despite the fact that in general they seem to think more of the Doubles experience (in the post game at least), they've stuck with a singles campaign for quite a while now.

Do you think they'll ever make a doubles only main game, or make that an option? Would you like for that to happen? Would you like for the return of other battle styles like rotation or triples?

 

[BigBadButterfree]

Not gonna lie, I honestly really like doubles. I wish the main games had more opportunities to play doubles during the story. Colosseum and xd are top-tier in my kind because of that.

I also really liked triples but that's irrelevant now.

 

[Esserise]

I’m more keen on Doubles than Singles, myself. It’d probably take a lot of extra work, but I think it would be ideal if you could toggle which format the main game uses. I definitely think it’s odd how GF push Doubles so much while simultaneously not providing very many opportunities to get organic practice in the format when playing through the games.

 

[DarkMeow]

I prefer single battles, though I do have fun with doubles. I'm just really used to mainly playing single battles so I prefer it. The occasional double battle is really fun, so the amount of doubles in-game suits me perfectly.

 

[WyndonCalling]

I very much enjoy doubles when they regularly punctuate a playthrough and more recent instalments have been disappointingly lacking in this regard, but I quite actively dislike them in competitive environments. For me, the thrill of singles is maneuver and prediction in a glorified game of rock, paper, scissors - using my wall to block an opponent's attacker, before they then switch to a set-up sweeper to take advantage of the passivity of my wall, then having to dig out some means of disrupting that set-up, which may then be vulnerable to a more straightforward attacker etc. ad infinitum.

In doubles, it feels like there's no true in-the-moment counterplay because there's so many millions of permutations of strategies that you can't organically react to them; rather, the order of the day is to pre-build a highly specific strategy with highly specific answers to particular forms of disruption. It feels... less like a duel and more like a game of chicken.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

GameFreak's official tournament is a double format

The VGC is run by the Pokemon company, not Game Freak, so while there's obviously some overlap between the two, I don't think it's necessarily a given that the people designing the game are the same people deciding the tournament rules.

The reason GameFreak favors Doubles is because it's faster paced than the traditional Smogon 6v6, can't really support Stall tactics and makes for a better showing in tournaments, but despite the fact that in general they seem to think more of the Doubles experience (in the post game at least), they've stuck with a singles campaign for quite a while now.

Have they made some kind of official statement like that, or is that from the policy of the VGC?

Every Battle Facility from Gen III onwards had a doubles version,

This strikes me more as just wanting to have options for battle facilities rather than it being any particular favor for double battles. For example, in the PWT, trainers don't have any special Pokemon designed for double battles, they just pull one more Pokemon from their pool.


Anyways, count me in for also being in favor of more double battles. A few more points in favor of it:

• Moves/abilities that do more in double battles will actually get to be shown off a bit. Like, Telepathy right now is absolutely useless in the story, but a double battle would actually give it time to shine.
• It'd make trainer battles feel more different from wild battles, which I think would help break up the monotony of going through grass and trainers in a route.
• While it's not much of a problem now, given the EXP All, it'd help keep players from favoring their starter too heavily and having a hard time levelling up other Pokemon. (This is dedicated to 1) Quilava being my only viable Pokemon leading to my demise with Whitney, and 2) that time in FR when I had a Character and a lvl 8 Rattata and realized "Hey I need more Pokemon")

It’d probably take a lot of extra work, but I think it would be ideal if you could toggle which format the main game uses.

I honestly don't think it'd be that hard. We've seen with past battle facilities that they can generate a trainer's party in single or double battle format, so it should be as simple as just having a switch check for the options. They might have to put a little more thought into designing a trainer's teams if they were especially concerned about difficulty, but that hasn't really been a priority in the past, so I don't see why that'd be an obstacle now.

 

[Circus]

Have they made some kind of official statement like that, or is that from the policy of the VGC?

That's more or less the consensus floating around the Internet, but it's never been officially stated so I suppose I should have hedged more in that statement.
Another plausible explanation is that the canonical competitive Singles format for Pokémon is 3v3 and when the tournaments started (Gen IV) we didn't have Team Preview which made it ... less than optimal. While Gen V would eventually solve that, there was already a community based around 4v4 Doubles so why mess with the winning team?