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Fixing 6v6 Singles

No.57205420 View ViewReplyOriginalReport
What changes could be implemented to make 6v6 Singles a better competitive format?

Regardless of how you feel about VGC it's been a reality for like over a decade now, and it's both successful and popular. It's not perfect, but no competitive format in any game is, and at least it functions. Yet it's weird that the official competitive format of Pokemon gameplay isn't the one that the most people directly associate with Pokemon due to the games and the anime, i.e. 6v6 singles.

Showdown proves that there is a significant demand for 6v6 singles, but Showdown is inextricably linked to Smogon which has a checkered relationship with the Pokemon fanbase, to put it mildly. Smogon's tiers, rules, and clauses clashes with the streamlined nature of VGC, but at the same time those are all self-selected by 6v6 Singles Playerbase, which sort of implies that unrestricted 6v6 Singles is its own kind of mess. Say what you want about Smogon but having no other choice but to whiff against a max evasion foe as they power up to super saiyan levels to sweep your team isn't a particularly fun gameplay experience. Their solution is a litany of bans and clauses aimed at making the format more stable at the cost of accessibility. Meanwhile TPC just says "singles isn't competitively viable, let's stick with doubles" which relegates Singles to a secondary position of lesser stature, clashing with how 6v6 Singles is presented in single player mode as the path of champions.

So, the point of this thread: how can 6v6 Singles be fixed? I'm not talking about rules and clauses, but actual mechanics that could be implemented in a game to make the format more enjoyable and approachable.