Why Double Battles are Harder than Single Battles

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[jevils_]

“How many different possibilities are there?”
“37, 636”
“How many did we win?”
“One”

[LaserfaceJones]

Imagine having such a bad take you get a video made about it

[matthewchen]

To be fair to the commentor, they mentioned game length, and the number of game states varies is exponential with the number of turns. So the total game states are (81)^x and (37636)^y for any given game, where x, y are the number of turns in a game.

That means you have to see how quickly x catches y. log(194) / log(9) is about 2.397, meaning 81^24 will be higher than 37636^10. So, if singles games have more than 2.397 times as many turns as a VGC game, they'd have more total game states.

To illustrate this, the average VGC game is 6 to 10 turns. A 6 turn VGC game has 2.84 * 10^27 game states, and a 10-turn VGC game has a total of (37636)^10 = 5.7 * 10^45 game states. By comparison, a 24-turn single battle has (81)^24 = 6.46 * 10^45 different game states, which is more than a 10 turn VGC game. And when you think about some metas, like the 200+ turn GSC games, they have 4.9 * 10^381 game states.

But let's be real, all these numbers are obviously overexaggerated in practice. In principle, there's probably at most usually only 4 viable choices per singles turn per side (some switches aren't worth considering, some moves are obviously bad) and maybe at most 12 actions per turn you'd choose from in VGC (redirect moves/protect that don't have multiple possible targets, certain combinations of moves and switches you'd never actually do, etc). That makes VGC games have 3.8 * 10^21 "real" game states in a 10-turn game (a high estimate), and in a 20-turn singles game (a low estimate), maybe 1.2 * 10^24 more game states in a singles match. So, realistically speaking, a short singles game still has 300 times as many game states as a long VGC game.

To be clear, I'm not actually saying singles is a more difficult game than VGC. That's a separate debate. But singles has more game states because of the higher amount of turns, even if each VGC turn individually has more game states. So in the pure computational sense (i.e. how large an expected decision tree is), they're right. Exponential growth rates >>> multiplicative.

[Bolzard]

I play both a lot, and I would say that the difficulty in VGC and Singles are in different places. VGC has a lot of “frontloaded” work, determining sets, managing probability, tuning stats for certain thresholds, memorizing matchups and understanding them, and learning sequencing and speed control mechanics, and building an understanding of how you can manipulate the gamestate in your favor. Because games are much, much shorter in VGC, playing to your outs and snowballing an advantage are much more important. In singles, the work is “backloaded”. Because single battles are both much longer and less volatile, your in game micro decision making matters much more. Things like bluffing sets, pivoting, fighting a weather or hazard war, double switching, and other decision based methods of gaining advantages matter more, meaning that technical play becomes paramount over knowledge and planning because you have to be planning multiple turns in advance. A good example of this is that when piloting a bulky offense team against a defensive core in singles, you often have to plan double digit turns in advance and understand how you can make progress and start to break through, while in VGC, the entire game doesn’t last that long. This isn’t to say technical play is irrelevant in VGC, absolutely far from it, but in terms of the sheer number of decisions you will make in a single game, combined with the fact that in shorter games getting unlucky affects the game more, Singles will be more intensive.

[apollyon]

So many possibilities and it always ends the same, with me losing

[ilphrazz]

The guy who said that probably use ember flamethrower fire blast fire spin charizard

[Samevistan]

The complex numbers dumb down a little when you realize 90% of Pokémon have protect as one of their moves in double battles

[invertedghostgames]

Okay, but hear me out: in the Gen 5 Remakes, we do Triple Battles again.

[littlebigguy]

"Not an opinion" I lost my last two brain cells reading that lol

[christophersokol]

I bet you their only experience playing doubles is against npc trainers

[MonomaniacalTV]

I love both formats, but it's so wild to me that smogon singles held such a monopoly on the internet zeitgeist for so long as THE "competitive" way to play the game given the fact that doubles is literally the actual offical competitive format.

[harryriel]

I’d love to see a longer breakdown on the distinctions between the singles and doubles. As someone that watches competitive casually (lol) I think I see some of it, like seemingly more Pokémon having the move protect in doubles than singles.

[darkvenomgaming]

Triple battles : imma about to end this man's whole career

[psilon_]

"You can do the math"
Says someone that didn't do the math

[claw]

Absolutely as a single player i wouldn't even dare tho go into doubles, it feels really overwhelming. Only complaint i have is i'd prefer Vgc to be 6v6 not 4v4 because i think it is a little short

[artimist]

I honestly don't think both playstyle are comparable. Like sure in double every turn is very meaningful since you can do so many things, but single matchs last for way longer with a much bigger emphasis on switching. So basically doubles is more like sprint where your success is determined by a huge effort in a few turns, while singles is more like a marathon, where you need the mental stamina to pick the right option every turn. I think both formats have their merits, but I completely agree that at this point both formats are so different they are almost different games.

[raccoon]

Dude from reddit puts it pretty well-
"I play mostly singles for a few reasons.

I appreciate the level of mindgames and complexity actually being able to switch adds, especially with doubling. Knowing when and how to double effectively, and going one step above and reading the double, is my favorite part of singles because it truly showcases a player's ability to get inside another player's head, and if they have a good enough understanding of how their team and the opponent's team functions to predict switches.

I don't think that set diversity or teambuilding creativity is dead in OU, new sets are constantly being invented and enter and leave the meta, stuff like AV bulu which was previously a staple a few months ago have been refined and replaced by other sets, and even mons previously thought unviable or too niche (diancie, blacephalon, weavile) have their place in the metagame after people were willing to experiment with them and create teams that allowed them to shine.

I don't know how to fully explain it, but when I play singles it feels like I have more of a solid gameplan with a team built around accomplishing it than vgc. All 6 mons serve a role and they come in and out of the field based on what role I need fulfilled at that moment, and being able to recognize for example when one mon isn't necessary anymore and sac it on a switch or sacing it just to get more chip on a wall that otherwise my sweeper couldn't break through is an interaction that I don't think is there in vgc. Knowing what to sac and when to just get a LITTLE bit more chip on something to put it in kill % is interesting and vgc obviously has similar things and has complex in match interactions that singles doesn't, but the sac game doesn't really exist.

I also like the hazard game. Maybe slightly controversial? Managing hazards like rocks and tspikes I think adds more complexity to in-match gameplan (hyper offensive teams don't pack hazard removal at all while balance teams sometimes run multiple defogs) on whether to prioritize hazards or not, and when to go for the momentum play or go for defog to remove rocks when you think they're going to switch. Hazards also keep singles games moving because they lower % to kill for many mons and bring defensive mons within 2hko %'s, preventing balance mirror matches that drag out forever.

I also think teambuilding is pretty diverse in OU as well and you can see archetypes that don't really exist in VGC like stall, and certain teams built around enabling one mon that isn't xerneas to set up and sweep.

I like playing both vgc and singles for their own reasons. I don't think it's really fair to compare them, they have different metas and different objectives in how to properly play the format, but in USUM I've vastly preferred OU singles for some of the above reasons.."

[jtrails]

Singles have their own space I definitely respect and enjoy singles a bit more. But Doubles is definitely more complex and more entertaining from a spectator perspective so I understand why doubles is the official competitive scene

[javedkamall]

Im a player who battles on smogeon singles, and i can without a doubt say that I can't even fathom the complexity of doubles and how complex that rabbit hole goes. Its so much easier controlling a singles battle compared to a doubles and i tip my hat to every major doubles player because i simply cannot wrap my head around so many variables, combinations, hurdles, obstacles, items, and abilities.

[TheRed]

This is Wolfey's way of saying he's trash at singles. Singles is way more complicated.