There is a lower tier system for doubles, its a lot less popular and only goes down to UU and below UU (basically RU, but without the builder). Doubles UU even has a ladder, so while it isnt active, I'm sure you could find some games there.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
I hate and reject the notion which has become widespread in the community that regional forms/variants count in the generation of the original Pokemon’s appearance. Nowadays, most consider Pokemon like Exeggutor-A or Arcanine-H to be “gen 1” Pokemon. THIS IS WRONG. It goes completely against the point of “generations” as a category of organization. It needs to cease. By force, if necessary….
this comes from the things that annoy you thread, but i feel like there's a pretty """simple""" way to bridge pokemons main game with pvp without needing to move most of it to champions*, its to make pokemon a fully 2v2 game and remove singles as a real battle mode, and honestly? i do think that would improve the games a lot.
Im putting this in the unpopular opinions thread because this is the competitive singles forum, but while i do not believe comp singles is better or worse than comp doubles, ive come around the doubles only format for a mainline game and i find it that it just does anything singles does better. It has way more opportunities for interesting boss design and strategy and fight scaling
i think singles runs the issue that with npcs, even with good ai, its easy to fall into the extremes of a fight being super trivial or insanely hard. And i think the former is happening more because a lot of singles "best showings" werent exactly about super well constructed teams or npcs with great strategies, but the denial of tools to deal with them — modern games give you all the tools, so now they just have nothing to stand on. And in response to that theres a desire to bump up difficulty by just... making really silly game design decisions. Ultra necrozma is a joke of a boss and i do not respect it at all
and this isnt me saying that doubles would solve every problem. look at colosseum and xd: they got plenty of dogshit fights (though a lot of them are more so about the fucked up gen 3 design philosophy of "evasion accuracy cheese forever we hate you and hope you die"). but the entire concept of having two pokemon on the field just has so much more potential for simple but effective boss design. it doesnt even have to be hard! tate and liza arent hard, you can pretty consistently beat the shit outta them with swampert, but theyre interesting because theyre using a pretty synergetic doubles strategy!! you have to use your brain a biiiit more when dealing with them even compared to someone like steven or wallace, whos strategy is "spam fire moves/spam grass moves until something that isnt weak to it shows up, switch to new stab and spam it" despite being the end bosses of the game.
and yeah back to pvp, itd make the devs job much easier if they didnt have to deal with the usefulness of a pokemon in the main game being almost detached to their competitive mode AND the complete lack of knowledge of how doubles work in anything beyond using your single strategies on double battles because the only double battles are stupid random npcs that pose no threat.
hell, i think sv solidified to me that this change would be better because pokemon clearly isnt as interested in shoving a bunch of worthless npc fights in your way anymore. if we kept the density of trainers, doubles would be much harder to justify because it does take longer to deal with double chuds vs single chuds, but how many npc trainers exist in sv and how many times have people even gone out of their way to fight them lmfao.
they could keep singles as a gimmick nostalgia pvp mode with no ranked ladder or anything, thats all showdown really cares for to justify its existence tbh. and keep it around for legends. thatd be fun and make the two series feel even more unique from each other
*which wont change much because, like people were discussing, theyre still gonna need to balance pokemon both for the mainline but also pvp, and this hypothetical removal of pvp isnt going to like... make the stories better lol
Im putting this in the unpopular opinions thread because this is the competitive singles forum, but while i do not believe comp singles is better or worse than comp doubles, ive come around the doubles only format for a mainline game and i find it that it just does anything singles does better. It has way more opportunities for interesting boss design and strategy and fight scaling
i think singles runs the issue that with npcs, even with good ai, its easy to fall into the extremes of a fight being super trivial or insanely hard. And i think the former is happening more because a lot of singles "best showings" werent exactly about super well constructed teams or npcs with great strategies, but the denial of tools to deal with them — modern games give you all the tools, so now they just have nothing to stand on. And in response to that theres a desire to bump up difficulty by just... making really silly game design decisions. Ultra necrozma is a joke of a boss and i do not respect it at all
and this isnt me saying that doubles would solve every problem. look at colosseum and xd: they got plenty of dogshit fights (though a lot of them are more so about the fucked up gen 3 design philosophy of "evasion accuracy cheese forever we hate you and hope you die"). but the entire concept of having two pokemon on the field just has so much more potential for simple but effective boss design. it doesnt even have to be hard! tate and liza arent hard, you can pretty consistently beat the shit outta them with swampert, but theyre interesting because theyre using a pretty synergetic doubles strategy!! you have to use your brain a biiiit more when dealing with them even compared to someone like steven or wallace, whos strategy is "spam fire moves/spam grass moves until something that isnt weak to it shows up, switch to new stab and spam it" despite being the end bosses of the game.
and yeah back to pvp, itd make the devs job much easier if they didnt have to deal with the usefulness of a pokemon in the main game being almost detached to their competitive mode AND the complete lack of knowledge of how doubles work in anything beyond using your single strategies on double battles because the only double battles are stupid random npcs that pose no threat.
hell, i think sv solidified to me that this change would be better because pokemon clearly isnt as interested in shoving a bunch of worthless npc fights in your way anymore. if we kept the density of trainers, doubles would be much harder to justify because it does take longer to deal with double chuds vs single chuds, but how many npc trainers exist in sv and how many times have people even gone out of their way to fight them lmfao.
they could keep singles as a gimmick nostalgia pvp mode with no ranked ladder or anything, thats all showdown really cares for to justify its existence tbh. and keep it around for legends. thatd be fun and make the two series feel even more unique from each other
*which wont change much because, like people were discussing, theyre still gonna need to balance pokemon both for the mainline but also pvp, and this hypothetical removal of pvp isnt going to like... make the stories better lol
I’m always down for more doubles stuff, but think the best way to approach this as a mainline title would be to start with singles for the first leg of the game - maybe until badge 3 or 4? - then transition to doubles only. That way, new players can get a handle of the very basic mechanics of the game before being expected to learn about doubles interactions and navigating gameplay with two decisions to make per turn.
But overall, yeah, I agree this would be the ideal direction for mainline titles to go.
i think thats fair, though i will say that beastieball has shown to me a game can just open up in a doubles state and show you the ropes like that without much problem: the skill floor for doubles is pretty low and you dont have to overload people with doubles synergy. you can just start with a glorified singles experience where the only thing that changes is that you, well, have two pokemon attacking instead of two.
the way pokemon naturally progress does help this: most starting moves are simple and intuitive, they tend to be single targetting, and some are very simple spread moves that a kid can pick up on (i.e growl hitting both targets) without having to think of team synergy. as the game progresses, the complexity gets higher, but youre never expected to idk ally switch beat up strategies early game LMFAO. also kids participate in worlds i think theyre smart little freaks and would be able to pick up things faster if you just let them fiddle with it early game than transition it only mid game
I wouldn't go that long. My method is:
Singles tutorial battle vs Aiden, who picked the most passive of the 2 starters remaining after your pick. You fight his rodent, level to 6, then fight his starter.
Route of single wild mons, you must catch at least one before continuing.
Doubles battle, you and Aiden teaming up against Aggro, who picked the most offensive available starter. Aiden spams Growl and similar spread support moves.
Route of double battles vs wild mons. All wild battles will be doubles from now on. Free heals are common on this route in case something goes down so you aren't double-teamed.
Following that: Gyms are entirely doubles, just you. Evil team fights are you partnered with Aiden or Aggro depending on story and to teach the player to adapt to their styles. Route Boss trainers are a demonstration of a particular gimmick that the player wouldn't know was possible(Beat Up an ally etc). We occasionally bring in other battle styles(horde, triples) for a change of pace. The final rival battle is Aiden and Aggro putting their differences aside to oppose you.
There's no reason to have the player doing Singles once they understand the interface, it will just teach bad habits that need to be unlearned when we swap to doubles.
This is particularly annoying in Pokedoku, where Megas and gigantamax count as the generation the Pokemon is originally from, but regional forms count as the region their form was introduced in.
SV also strained the categorization by having Kitikami and Blueberry academy in different regions from the main game. Not just in Pokedoku, but also Pokemon Masters, where all of the DLC characters have the Paldea theme skill despite not being based there in lore.
It’s especially tortured considering that the Loyal Three, Ogerpon, and Pecharunt aren’t even from Kitakami (each hailing instead from unknown regions), while Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, Iron Boulder, Iron Crown, and Terapagos actually are from Paldea, even though a differentiated Paldea/Kitakami/Blueberry system like the in-game Pokédex would probably file them under Blueberry.
I mean, Ogerpon's trainer was probably from Paldea given he brought the tera crystal in the lake/were used to make Ogerpon's masks with him.
to be fair we did have this since gen 1 right? mew is not from kanto (even if the south america mention is retconned to just be from somewhere else) and has never been assigned a real place its from beyond faraway island.
Most likely, yeah, but just on balance, if they’re already presented as travelers, then we can’t really say for sure that they were from Paldea to begin with, and didn’t just obtain that crystal while passing through Paldea from somewhere else.
(Come to think of it, Paldea’s other Legendary Pokémon are similarly unrooted — the Treasures of Ruin likely originate from China, and Koraidon and Miraidon are from other timelines. It’s interesting to me that aside from Terapagos, none of Gen 9’s Legendary Pokémon are originally from the place they first appear in.)
Indeed, and there’s even other minor cases like Corphish and Yungoos, which from the beginning were characterized as being invasive species in their Pokédex entries. I just think it’s funny that even if they were to specify that the Kitakami legends are from Kitakami and not Paldea, it still wouldn’t actually be correct — it’d just be slightly more accurate to the context in which they were introduced.
Really though, this all just stems from TPC preferring the more immersive framing of “this Pokémon was first discovered in the Hoenn region” over “this Pokémon is from Gen 3.” And from that perspective, I guess it’s like, if they’re already using “Paldea” as an obfuscation for saying “Gen 9,” then there’s not much point in distinguishing further between Paldea, Kitakami, and Blueberry.
Actually it just occurred to me that Pecharunt and the Loyal Three are also not from Kitakami, the lore says Pecharunt traveled there from somewhere else and recruited them along the way after all.
I do agree that Tate and Liza are such an underrated boss that would require more strategy than just spamming super effective moves. Doubles would also deter players from using spread moves like Surf, Earthquake, Boomburst and Discharge carelessely, since it can hit their own teammates as well. There are also more likely useful moves that can be useful in doubles like Helping Hand, Rage Powder, Fake Out and Follow Me.
I guess one thing that can stop pokemon from having mainly double matches is that it could be more complicated, because you would have much more options to choose from. I found a video from Wolfe Glick mentioning in his video "Why Double Battles are Harder than Single Battles" that in double matches there can be 37,636 possible game states whereas singles would have 81. Granted, it's from a vgc perspective, so it wouldn't be the exact same as the double matches in a pokemon game, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Why haven't we been to South America yet*? Just in Peru, you have rainforest, mountains, oceans, ancient ruins from a variety of cultures...actually Peru is kind of legit. The shape is even long enough to let them do Open World while still having an expected path. Gen 10 location confirmed?
*We know why
if we do go to south america, they'll 100% do brazil first. i know im biased as a brazilian myself but its pretty much the face of latam for japan and has the benefit of having a long history with japan itself and the largest number of japanese people outside of japan (including me hiiii)
After what's going on with Nintendo currently in Brazil, I think you can completely forget that pokemon games will ever go there
But in case you live under a rock...
After what's going on with Nintendo currently in Brazil, I think you can completely forget that pokemon games will ever go there
i dont think gamefreak gives a fuck tbh. its not like theyd be making a brazilian game to appeal to brazilians, considering we cant even play the games in our own language
this is really silly and leads to pokemon like murkrow, which in gsc is only found in kanto, being categorized as being from johto
Brazil, China, and India regions are all terrible ideas: It's very obvious all 3 of these countries are far, far too big and ecologically/culturally diverse to get one each
Frankly Galar being all of Britain and Paldea being all of Spain were probably bad calls or at least majorly pushing it, but giving this treatment to the above 3 (especially China & India) would actually be so unbelievably half-assed and insulting that it would be among a small handful of game design choices that would make me go "Ok yup the doomers were right, Game Freak is lazy and incompetent, time to seize this franchise from them and give it to another developer"
Frankly Galar being all of Britain and Paldea being all of Spain were probably bad calls or at least majorly pushing it, but giving this treatment to the above 3 (especially China & India) would actually be so unbelievably half-assed and insulting that it would be among a small handful of game design choices that would make me go "Ok yup the doomers were right, Game Freak is lazy and incompetent, time to seize this franchise from them and give it to another developer"
realistically, brazil would simply be the southeast region: rio de janeiro, são paulo, minas gerais. then some random amazon inclusion. most devs that arent brazilian themselves dont care about anything else, and ive come to expect nothing beyond that
On the other hand, it was silly to have Murkrow, Slugma, et al. not be found in Johto in the first place
To be fair, they laser-focused on New York for Unova rather than trying to condense all of the U.S. into a region, so in theory, they could do something similar for other large countries. I kind of doubt that they would, these days, but it’s an option.
I think that continuing to base regions heavily on real-life locations prevents them from making a more open game worth exploring for its own sake since I've only enjoyed doing that in high fantasy games like Xenoblade. Regardless, if it is necessary, I'd probably pick Iceland. There's something to be said for having clear access to both glaciers and volcanoes.
I doubt a non-PVP doubles match would be any more complex and daunting then a fight in a mario & luigi game.
I suspect part of the reasoning they keep doing that is just that it gives them a starting point to work with. For a large team, it would be very easy for "let's invent a region" to get bogged down in a lot of debates before anything gets off the ground. "Do we have temperate, rain, or evergreen forests, or some combination of those? Is there a desert? What language elements do we want to include? Do rivers run straight through the map or are there significant lakes?" Picking a real country lets them start with a map, a list of features on that map, a culture, etc and then they can build a story around that/make changes as necessary in a much more focused way.