Official Doubles Rulesets

TheMaskedNitpicker

Triple Threat
is a Researcher Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
I've noticed over the recent months that there has been a growing interest in D/P Doubles. At first I attributed this entirely to the Pokémon Showdown tournament currently going on, and that's certainly a factor. However, I'm seeing a greater and greater number of general Doubles RMTs that aren't for the tournament. I think it may be time for Smogon to adopt official Doubles rulesets for Wi-Fi play.

A major consideration, of course, is a tiering system. We've been discussing over the last several months what we want our standard Singles metagame to look like. Some want a small, managable metagame that bans as few things as possible. Others want a metagame with a large variety of viable Pokémon and strategies and are willing to ban a larger number of Pokémon to achieve this goal. If my estimation is correct, the 'small, managable metagame' crowd is in the majority.

When I hear people talk about Doubles, many seem to appreciate the variety of Pokemon and strategies that are viable there. If I had to guess, I'd say the Doubles crowd leans more toward the 'give me variety' end of the spectrum. There are those, however, that enjoy the free-for-all Doubles environment of JAA, where no (or very few) Pokémon are banned and there are nearly no rules. Perhaps I'm being optimistic here, but I believe we can accomodate both of these major camps with two Doubles 'tiers', one that bans practically nothing and has next to no rules (a JAA-style Ubers tier, more or less), and one that bans a good number of Pokémon and has rules that promote variety, competitive strategy, and game balance (like Item Clause, Species Clause, Sleep Clause, etc.).

Before I start trying to hammer out specifics, I want to ask you the following:

1. Is it too early or not important to think about formal Doubles rulesets?
2. What kind of Doubles play do you prefer and could one of the two proposed tiers suit your needs?

For question 2: It's possible (likely) that not many of our Policy Review members are Doubles players. I only want to hear from those of you who actually play or have played a significant amount of Doubles in D/P. If you don't see yourself ever playing this metagame, please don't let your opinions skew the discussion.
 
Before we start talking about doubles tiers, we need to start talking about proper tier design and if we're going to follow it this time. If not, there really isn't much to do. If we actually want to start getting into analysis instead of just letting Shoddy usage do the (poor-quality) work for us, then I vote to start work on a proper tier set. Otherwise I vote for as few restrictions as possible.
 
One of the problems I see, is that there are so many variations of Doubles Metagames. You can choose to play Stadium mode Ubers(Like Jaa), Stadium Mode OU, 6v6 Ubers, and 6v6 OU. One of the reasons I forsee Ubers being popular is because of JAA, which for most people, is where their only/limited Double's experience came from. Personally, I find the Stadium modes(OU and Uber) the most enjoyable. I was never really into 6v6, I just think that more strategy is involved and more options are available in Stadium Mode.

With regard to your questions, I don't think it is too early to come up with Doubles rulesets/tier lists/etc. For question 2, as I previously stated, I prefer the Stadium Mode Doubles(Each player shows 6, chooses 4), but it's harder to do with Wi-Fi, although still possible, you just have to watch out for people who may lie about their 6. Sleep Clause/Species clause/etc should allowed, my experience from the Showdown proves that not having Sleep Clause is a terrible idea. Item Clause is cool for adding diversity, but the fact that you may have to start resorting to luck items like Quick Claw or Bright Powder probably isn't worth having item clause.

I love Doubles, but the fact that one of or maybe the best way to get a lot of doubles matches is PBR Random Wi-Fi is what I think is the major turnoff for Doubles. Lastly, one problem I see about having a Doubles Tier List or a Doubles Moveset analysis is that each pokemon functions completely differently in one team than another. This isn't really the best example but I hope it proves my point: If Lv.1 Smeargle is Standard on the ever common TR teams, does that make him OU if he doesn't do much else for any other team? Also, in Singles, pokemon don't have as many moveset options like in Doubles, making it a lot harder to make an analysis for them.
 
If you're going to make a tier list, it needs to be based off the standard 6v6 rule. Stadium Mode doesn't do doubles justice.

I'd also like to throw something else out there. From my experience with doubles, you can't just build teams like you would in singles. You need to build them off of a general strategy, wether it be Rain Dance, Self-Swagger or Over-haze. "Roles" tend to be less effective. This will most likely effect any Smogon Doubles Strategy Dex we may see in the future.
 
1. Is it too early or not important to think about formal Doubles rulesets?
Well, if a set of rules is introduced into what is and isn't allowed in Double Battles, then i'm sure it'll attract a whole lot of players to try it out. For instance, the question of, "What would happen with Sleep Clause, when Darkrai uses Dark Void?" was one that has prevented from using Darkrai on my Uber Doubles teams.


2. What kind of Doubles play do you prefer and could one of the two proposed tiers suit your needs?
I've only really played 6 vs 6 Doubles (Level 100) over WiFi, but find it quite enjoyable. Usually I play matches with either Ubers or OU-and-below pokemon. I think 2 Tiers would be enough as several UU-defined pokemon are much more capable in the environment of Doubles.


And lastly, if Smogon was to take an official stance on Double Battles, should the Smogon Analysis pages reflect this? I was writing an Peer Edit for the 'standard' Anti-Lead Togekiss. I think if our Analysis's did contain typical Doubles Sets (and perhaps generalised EV Spreads, though most aren't exactly 'concrete'), there would be an even further interest into Doubles and what sort of sets you would be seeing.

However, taking all this into perspective, the timing just isn't that great. We have just begun into organising and stabilizing the Singles OU metagame, ordering the issues, clauses and pokemon that need to tested. And without reliable statistical data, we would just be playing an extreme game of Theorymon and heresay.

I do commed the initiative though and would like to further encourage more established Double Battlers to post as well as even those interested in the Tier.
 
Train Man said:
And lastly, if Smogon was to take an official stance on Double Battles, should the Smogon Analysis pages reflect this? I was writing an Peer Edit for the 'standard' Anti-Lead Togekiss. I think if our Analysis's did contain typical Doubles Sets (and perhaps generalised EV Spreads, though most aren't exactly 'concrete'), there would be an even further interest into Doubles and what sort of sets you would be seeing.
Click to expand...

Doubles is just as diverse as singles. I would disagree with any idea of "combining" doubles and singles strategies in one Strategy Dex. So, in order for this to work, we would need a seperate Dex for doubles.
 
The main problem I see with doubles is the lack of Shoddy support, so the people who don't have the time or patience for breeding/trading are out of luck.
 
It's also more difficult to get matches and enforce standard clauses on wifi, plus matches on wifi tend to take longer.


I wonder how much work it would be to add doubles to shoddy? If the main team doesn't want to do it, I could see a small team doing it as a side project. It sounds like it would be a lot of programming fun, too bad my java skills are rather lackluster or else I would do it myself.
 
Phuquoph said:
Moved to Stark. I think you'll get more of a discussion here.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the move. The main reason I posted it in Policy Review was so that if the mods wanted to say, 'This is a bad idea for reasons X, Y, and Z', they'd be able to tell me before I presumed and posted in Stark.

Kittymew said:
Before we start talking about doubles tiers, we need to start talking about proper tier design and if we're going to follow it this time. If not, there really isn't much to do. If we actually want to start getting into analysis instead of just letting Shoddy usage do the (poor-quality) work for us, then I vote to start work on a proper tier set. Otherwise I vote for as few restrictions as possible.
Click to expand...

If I understand you correctly, I agree with what you're saying. I think that basing Doubles tiers on usage would be completely impractical. My idea is to provide two tiers, the JAA tier which is a free-for-all, and the 'standard' tier, the banlist for which will be based primarily on power (and to a lesser extent, versatility). If we define this banlist well, there will be very few Pokemon which cannot be used to good effect in one tier or the other, making an 'underused' tier unnecessary.

XxBlueCookiesXx said:
One of the problems I see, is that there are so many variations of Doubles Metagames. You can choose to play Stadium mode Ubers(Like Jaa), Stadium Mode OU, 6v6 Ubers, and 6v6 OU. One of the reasons I forsee Ubers being popular is because of JAA, which for most people, is where their only/limited Double's experience came from. Personally, I find the Stadium modes(OU and Uber) the most enjoyable. I was never really into 6v6, I just think that more strategy is involved and more options are available in Stadium Mode.

With regard to your questions, I don't think it is too early to come up with Doubles rulesets/tier lists/etc. For question 2, as I previously stated, I prefer the Stadium Mode Doubles(Each player shows 6, chooses 4), but it's harder to do with Wi-Fi, although still possible, you just have to watch out for people who may lie about their 6. Sleep Clause/Species clause/etc should allowed, my experience from the Showdown proves that not having Sleep Clause is a terrible idea. Item Clause is cool for adding diversity, but the fact that you may have to start resorting to luck items like Quick Claw or Bright Powder probably isn't worth having item clause.

I love Doubles, but the fact that one of or maybe the best way to get a lot of doubles matches is PBR Random Wi-Fi is what I think is the major turnoff for Doubles. Lastly, one problem I see about having a Doubles Tier List or a Doubles Moveset analysis is that each pokemon functions completely differently in one team than another. This isn't really the best example but I hope it proves my point: If Lv.1 Smeargle is Standard on the ever common TR teams, does that make him OU if he doesn't do much else for any other team? Also, in Singles, pokemon don't have as many moveset options like in Doubles, making it a lot harder to make an analysis for them.
Click to expand...

I feel strongly that players should always be able to know the species of each other's Pokemon before choosing leads. This allows you to extrapolate your opponents' possible strategies and more effectively predict from the beginning of the match. This is especially important in Doubles where matches can be won or lost depending on each player's leads.

As for 4v4 and 6v6, I'm not sure I care to standardize that. I can see the merits of both and a 4v4 team is often constructed much differently than a 6v6 team.

At least in the 'standard' tier, I feel that Sleep Clause is a given. Freeze Clause should also be a given, but only in situations where the game can enforce it (PBR Friend matches, etc.). Item Clause tends to be very unpopular, but here are my reasons for suggesting it.

1. There won't be a backlash by Leftovers gluttons like there would be in Singles. Leftovers is almost never the best item to give a Pokemon in Doubles anyway. BlueCookies, I understand your concern about people resorting to 'hax items', but I seriously doubt these items will be very popular. Players who favor offense will use primarily Choice Items, Life Orb, and other damage-boosting items. Defensive-oriented players will make use of Lum Berry, Sitrus Berry, White Herb, type-resist berries (very useful in Doubles), and probably Leftovers and Black Sludge. Wide Lens and Zoom Lens are great for inaccurate status moves. Focus Sash will always be popular. Combine all that with the occasional Flame Orb, Iron Orb, or Power Herb user and you've got plenty of options. I've been creating Doubles teams for a long time and I've never come close to getting desperate for items to put on Pokemon.

That's why there's no reason not to have Item Clause. But why should we have Item Clause?

2. It prevents people from abusing Focus Sash and Choice Scarf. This is one of the big ones. These items are powerful in Doubles. Yeah, you can prevent Focus Sash abuse by using Sandstorm or entry hazards, but I for one don't want to see Doubles end up like Singles where these things are practically a given. Combine that with the fact that in 4v4, half your opponent's Pokemon don't take entry hazard damage (by virtue of being leads), and you have everyone resorting to Hail and Sandstorm. Choice Scarf takes more skill to use, but it's still a very powerful item in an environment where your opponent can't usually effectively wall you.

3. It adds a layer of strategy to battles. Once you've determined that one of your opponent's Pokemon has a Choice Scarf, you know for certain that none of the others do. Likewise with Focus Sash, Lum Berry, etc. This is valuable knowledge that a skilled player can use to their advantage. This is, in my opinion, the best reason to implement Item Clause.
 
Item Clause seems like it would hurt the doubles metagame. Some teams depend on using certain items. For example, Bomb-Versal almost always requires you use Salac Berry to boost your speed after you've Endure'd the Explosion. Self-Swagger includes the use of Persim/Lum berry to cure confusion. Yes, Safegaurd and Own Tempo are viable, but the Lum/Persim strategy allows the use of a wider variety of Pokémon.
 
I agree with most of the above comments.

Doubles has started to really take off recently - I looked at the RMT section last night and there were 5 doubles teams in a row! To me, this is an exciting opportunity for Smogon to lay down some rules (especially with the tiers).

I usually play on PBR wifi as well and the one thing that keeps me from enjoying it completely are the abundance of shiny hacked ubers that dominate the "metagame." Given, Smogon can't do anything about this, but I think that it is essential to lay out tiers for doubles if we are going to get serious about this - possibly this could be a precursor to a new Shoddy/simulator engine for doubles. Eventually, I think that Smogon could create articles/pokedex entries that provide better movesets for double battles.

The item clause is not that great of an issue to me, personally. I don't mind either way for a battle - however, it could cause players to be a little more creative than they are with doubles.

I also like the 6v6 aspect and then use 4 for the battle itself (much like PBR wifi). This creates a more fast-paced, direct gameplay for competitive players who are sick of the norm i.e. Stealth Rock and glass cannon sweepers.

Overall, I think that now is the time to begin laying down rules - slowly and subject to change. The idea of separate tiers - Uber & Standard sounds ideal to me.
 
Linkrocks1972 said:
I think before we focus much on doubles we should focus more on UU.
Click to expand...
Why? singles UU has no effect whatsoever on the doubles metagame.

Nothing stops us from doing them both at the same time, not everyone cares about UU and not everyone cares about doubles, the groups care about them probably don't even overlap all that much.
 
SK8R9 said:
Item Clause seems like it would hurt the doubles metagame. Some teams depend on using certain items. For example, Bomb-Versal almost always requires you use Salac Berry to boost your speed after you've Endure'd the Explosion. Self-Swagger includes the use of Persim/Lum berry to cure confusion. Yes, Safegaurd and Own Tempo are viable, but the Lum/Persim strategy allows the use of a wider variety of Pokémon.
Click to expand...
None of the strategies you outlined require duplicate items to be held by team members. You actually just proved that Item Clause wouldn't hurt doubles.
 
Shine said:
None of the strategies you outlined require duplicate items to be held by team members. You actually just proved that Item Clause wouldn't hurt doubles.
Click to expand...
No they don't require you use them, but it makes using the team a whole lot easier.
 
The only real two Tiers we will see at the Beginning of Doubles will be Ubers ( or JAA Style in this case) an a Non-Uber Tier, the go from there. It's pretty obvious that they most popular style of Doubles is 4vs4 due to it being the most enforced style of play by Nintendo. Now that the Obvious has been said, I belive that enforcing some slight rules for a Doubles Metagame would be great as it would give everyone an idea of what type of teams to build and which strategies to use accordingly. The Main Problem we will have here building a doubles metagame is choosing how matches will be set up as we will only have the following three options to play with:
- PBR Stadium Battle with Full Teams but we only play 4vs4, the biggest drawback being that you will need PBR and a Wii, something(s) not every one has.
- Full Teams of 6 Pokemon but the First One to lose 4 Pokemon Loses. This of course runs the problems of the Fifth Pokemon causing troubles. The Solution would be to Run 5vs5 but then the Sixth Pokemon comes into play and it all comes back to 6vs6. D/P/Pl Wifi
-Run Strictly 4vs4 Matches with only 4 Pokemon. D/P/PL Wifi, which would mean that we have no idea of each others team before hand unless we decide to post it all over Smogon's RMT Sub-board.

I see that most of the standards clauses that apply to Singles can and should be applied to Doubles, especially Sleep and Self-KO Clauses, although the latter means that Dark Void would be Banned on D/P/Pl wifi.

On the regards of lacking a Doubles Simmulator, the first thing is that it's pretty easy just to get a pokemon with random IVs, EVs and Natures and still run a pretty successful team on PBR Wifi since you will get a better idea of how the team works outside of Paper as well as what to aim when you breed the "Competitive Team". In the other hand, another thing that could be done is create Doubles Team for Pokemon Threads or Offers to get more doubles pokemon out to get a better sense of the Metagame that is being "created". In such a way I will start setting up my thread once this Months SBP gets one of my Pokemon from my Doubles Team out to the Masses.

The main Difficulty in writing Analysis for individual pokemon is that you must discuss the team as whole or at least the partner(s) for this pokemon. Starting Guides on how to build specific doubels teams would be the first thing that should be written before specific pokemon analysis could be built.
 
Personally, I play Uber Doubles, and I'd prefer to keep tiers and shit out of it. It really ruins the game and doesn't let people think of good strategies. Just allow people to play whatever, species clause, explosion clause, and item clause possible.

I have a lot of experience in Doubles, but I'd rather stay out of any tier discussion. I feel it hurts the game.

-James
 
the_artic_one said:
I wonder how much work it would be to add doubles to shoddy? If the main team doesn't want to do it, I could see a small team doing it as a side project. It sounds like it would be a lot of programming fun, too bad my java skills are rather lackluster or else I would do it myself.
Click to expand...
I remember hearing (although I can't remember who from - most likely Doug but don't hold me too that) that Shoddys coding is not at all built to support Doubles, and that it would probably be quicker to make a completly new simulator to support Doubles then to modify the existing Shoddy code. =/
 
I have yet to play doubles because I don't own DP and Shoddy doesn't support it. However, we definitely should not bring over tiers from 1v1. I would definitely oppose starting with "ubers" and "non-ubers", because at the start, nothing should be seen as uber (Arceus doesn't count because it's not a Pokemon).
 
That'd be true. The game mechanics for Singles and Doubles are so different that you can't just hack it onto Shoddy in a week. you practically have to rewrite every battle mechanic out there, add targeting for moves...
 
I remember hearing (although I can't remember who from - most likely Doug but don't hold me too that) that Shoddys coding is not at all built to support Doubles, and that it would probably be quicker to make a completly new simulator to support Doubles then to modify the existing Shoddy code. =/
Click to expand...
This is a bit of an exaggeration considering a lot of code applies to networking or more general concepts and even some of the battle flow logic code could easily be preserved (it already handles an arbitrary number of participants), as well as a lot of the move logic (especially for single target moves). That being said, adding doubles is a lot of work because some general framework things would have to be changed (to allow arbitrary number of targets for moves in general, and to modify some moves to work for doubles) and also some things will need to be completely reworked (numerous abilities). There will also need to be numerous changes in the GUI.

It's wrong that it would be easier to write a new program, but the idea expressed -- that it would take a lot of effort to add doubles -- is essentially true.

***

With regard to what TheMasterNitpicker says about item clause, he is looking at this the wrong way. Sure we can add rules to add "depth" to battles, but any number of rules could do that. For example, we could add a Move Clause that no two pokemon can learn the same move. Then once one pokemon uses Ice Beam, you know no other pokemon has it... this adds depth, but it's stupid. Rules shouldn't be added just to "add depth", they should only be added to address actual gamebreaking problems (not "I don't like this!" flavour of problems). His first point comes close to touching on this, but the approach is too indirect. Why this solution to Focus Sash being overpowered? If it actually is (doubtful) then the more direct approach would be to ban Focus Sash, or if the number of pokemon that become broken with it is small, to ban those pokemon. However, it has yet to be demonstrated that Focus Sash is actually dominant. Having to deal with this in every team you make is not an inherently bad thing.

(And please spare me the "it's just the wrong way to you! it's just an opinion!" standard response. That is obviously implicit insofar as the only way "wrong way" could be defined in this context is with reference to some set of axioms which I have not outlined, and hence are obviously "opinionated" without the need for a condescending "this is my opinion" disclaimer.)
 
Nightmare said:
Personally, I play Uber Doubles, and I'd prefer to keep tiers and shit out of it. It really ruins the game and doesn't let people think of good strategies. Just allow people to play whatever, species clause, explosion clause, and item clause possible.

I have a lot of experience in Doubles, but I'd rather stay out of any tier discussion. I feel it hurts the game.

-James
Click to expand...

WTF Dude. Surely if we add an Uber Tier and a "OU" or other Tier, that won't hurt your precious Uber Metagame. Just because a pokemon is OU that doesn't mean you can use it in Ubers. Good example are Metagross, Jirachi and Scizor (notably all steel types cough*Rayquaza) anyway... Adding tiers will in no way hurt the game, any sensible player in doubles will think up his own strategies, I can imagine doubles can be a lot more flexible. Even if we don't go into tier discussion. Undefined Tiers will begin to be formed as people see what works and what doesn't.
 
ColinJF said:
With regard to what TheMasterNitpicker says about item clause, he is looking at this the wrong way. Sure we can add rules to add "depth" to battles, but any number of rules could do that. For example, we could add a Move Clause that no two pokemon can learn the same move. Then once one pokemon uses Ice Beam, you know no other pokemon has it... this adds depth, but it's stupid. Rules shouldn't be added just to "add depth", they should only be added to address actual gamebreaking problems (not "I don't like this!" flavour of problems). His first point comes close to touching on this, but the approach is too indirect. Why this solution to Focus Sash being overpowered? If it actually is (doubtful) then the more direct approach would be to ban Focus Sash, or if the number of pokemon that become broken with it is small, to ban those pokemon. However, it has yet to be demonstrated that Focus Sash is actually dominant. Having to deal with this in every team you make is not an inherently bad thing.
Click to expand...

Your statement about my third point, that the rule makes the game more strategic, is an entirely valid one. The only things that set Item Clause apart from your Move Clause are that there is official Nintendo precedent for Item Clause (which matters to some and not to others) and that it's arguably much easier to build a team while taking into account Item Clause than Move Clause. It's all about scale.

(And please spare me the "it's just the wrong way to you! it's just an opinion!" standard response. That is obviously implicit insofar as the only way "wrong way" could be defined in this context is with reference to some set of axioms which I have not outlined, and hence are obviously "opinionated" without the need for a condescending "this is my opinion" disclaimer.)
Click to expand...

Well, someone's a little testy. ;) Once again, I apologize for being a condescending jackass in that other thread. Maybe you wouldn't provoke that kind of response if you didn't say things like "he is looking at it the wrong way". I'll spare you my usual retort and reply with this instead:

TheMaskedNitpicker said:
I only want to hear from those of you who actually play or have played a significant amount of Doubles in D/P. If you don't see yourself ever playing this metagame, please don't let your opinions skew the discussion.
Click to expand...

Nothing personal, Colin, but you don't even play Pokémon, let alone Doubles. You have no idea what the environment is like. You say you doubt Focus Sash's power and suggest alternatives, like banning the item or banning Pokémon that can abuse it. Banning the Pokémon that can abuse it means banning all fast, frail Pokémon. Banning the item entirely means crippling all fast, frail Pokémon. That's why the compromise of Item Clause may be a desirable one. It allows the use of these Pokémon and the item without allowing the abuse of it. The most 'direct' approach as you perceive it may not be the best.
 
Nothing I've said is predicated on my experience. Even my comment about Focus Sash is just commenting on a lack of actual evidence of its domination (mostly because there is no simulator for DP doubles so we have no evidence on this) rather than something about my own experience. Whether I play the game is totally irrelevant. Also, I'm not sure how opinions are capable of "skewing" a discussion. This isn't a vote, so anything I say is judged on its merits rather than causing a "skewing" effect.

Additionally, I didn't say I doubted Focus Sash's "power" (as in, it is obviously good). I said it was doubtful it was overpowered (as in, too good). Also, if it is really the problem, even a Focus Sash Clause (that you can only use one) is better than Item Clause, though I don't think this is a particularly good idea either.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top