It isn’t a secret that doubles has fallen to the wayside in the Melee community. We often hear from a lot of players that they don’t like it, it’s too difficult, it’s something they never learned, etc. Tournament Organizers say it’s a question mark, or it interferes with other brackets. Streamers say that it kills their numbers.
Where did doubles go wrong?
Well, let’s look at some events. Doubles doesn’t get the same reverence as singles on a tournament level. EVO will probably have it as a community run side event (same way as last year), MLG will run it with some last minute entries at the door (online registration wasn’t possible with their logistics), hell, even APEX had it wrap up at 2 AM this year. That’s just on the major level, but when we break it down to the locals, the outreach for doubles isn’t there. The pot isn’t big enough for some top players. It’s too expensive for newcomers to give a try, especially if they’ll be teaming with someone they’ve never had the pleasure of teaming with before. Especially if they’ll be facing household names. Strangely enough, that issue doesn’t happen nearly as often in singles…but I digress.
We’ve had ideas thrown out, like “mentor” doubles, where a top level player would team with someone who hasn’t proven themselves, just to kind of teach them the ways of teams, as a local side event. Doubles shouldn’t go anywhere, but TOs, how do we get the interest in teams back? How do we, on a local level, get people to want to learn this skillset or want to enjoy teams? The emphasis will never be on teams, as singles is the big hardware, however, how do we get people back into teams?
Four Leaf Mango. PewFat. Grab and Go. Plupbox. Team UGS. The Newlyweds. The Little Rascals. Big Apple 3 AM. Taj and Forward. Tope and Cyrain. El Chocolate Diablo. Even now, we’re seeing Hax2K. When you talk about actual teams, you talk about pairings that have been consistent. Not just in terms of results, but consistently teaming, building a name and building chemistry. Of course, there is this kind of wonder in doubles, where you question how good you are; can you recreate your magic with a different partner, especially if your teammate is missing? Why can certain teams compete against players that should outclass them? They have a better team dynamic. Some teams will try to outclass their opponents in two “1 on 1” situations, others are constantly in flux, changing strategy back and forth.
I acknowledged on ask.fm this morning that teams is one of the most difficult things to commentate. “Doubles is a different beast in Smash, period. Throw in how quickly everything is in flux, it goes from a pair of 1 on 1s, to a 2 on 1 then they trade off, etc. Strategy in Melee is already constantly shifting. Teams…even more so. Isolation? Pincering? Do they save or go for the KO? That’s why doubles is really hard to appreciate for the untrained eye, as well as hard to commentate, for me personally.”
Everyone knows I’m a fan of storytelling. I felt like doubles has had two stories in the past couple of years, at least on the major level. We’ve had the tale of M2K/Armada and the struggle for second place. Prior to that, we had the time period of no guarantees. What was the big team of that era? There wasn’t one; Armada/Aniolas, Mango/Lucky, M2K/Jman, Hbox/Hax, PP/Lozr, it could be anyone’s game on any given day. Doubles doesn’t have that kind of path that singles has, currently. There was a time where you couldn’t just team with anyone, you had to have previously teamed with them before. A lot of these big events had qualifiers. Is that something we look at again, having to team at a qualifier in order to be able to register as a team? It makes you look toward the future, especially if you know your partner can’t make the major, you’d better start building a rapport with their replacement ASAP.
Teams is a mess. Sure. It is violent, it is constantly shifting, it is constantly in flux. Doubles is something that makes Smash different from a lot of fighters. SFxT has it, but it is never the raucous 4 people all at once, tag in and out. Mortal Kombat 9 is along the same lines. The constant shifting is always interesting, seeing how things change from 1 on 1, to pincering, to the 2 on 1, to the big teams combos, all the way to the nickel and dime teams combos that aren’t flash but rack up percent quickly. The ability to choose whether or not to save your partner or get a KO is as Melee as Melee gets in my eyes.
As much as the US scene sets the standard, in terms of events, we certainly aren’t the kings of teams. BEAST 4 was an eye opener. I remember watching a set with Android, a player who I feel is still looking to prove himself to a lot of doubters in singles. His teams recognition, the situational awareness, the positioning, the prescience, it is all something that was otherworldly. And I thought to myself, how many players have that skillset? Of course, he is in one of the best families in Smash to learn anything from. However, watching more and more of the event, it was just across the board, from the winners to the pot fodder. They had a gameplan, they had the awareness. How do we emulate this stateside? I don’t think they innately are great at doubles. I don’t think there’s something in the water. There has to be something in how it is received, or how it is taught.
How do we save teams? It’s difficult to commentate, to play properly, and to watch. It starts from the ground up. MacD did a teams episode of the Smash Lab, and anyone that knows him knows that he knows teams psychology better than most. We see the basic teams, and then we see teams that shake things up just by construction, like Kage and Axe. Character viability is increased in doubles, the number of “gimmicks” that can be run in doubles far outnumber those in singles. Hell, just this weekend at Fight Pitt, I saw Green Ranger/Abate not steer from their guns and stay Donkey Kong/Luigi with a few different setups for each character’s strength to be taken advantage of. Theorycraft is strong. We see everyone settling in with the singles tier list. Doubles…eh, there’s a lot of exploration to be done. We’ve seen Puff/Samus, Puff/Falcon do well in recent years.
There are a lot of questions about teams, and as a whole, we’ve all failed. Whether its events that don’t treat it as a sideshow (if a show at all), players who don’t want to take the plunge, players who don’t appreciate it besides a second source of income, commentators who are awful at it (raising my hand here), etc. Is it the size of the pot? Then decrease it to get more people wanting to give it a shot. Not having a partner? With social media, you have training partners at your fingertips, why not see if someone local wants to partner up. TO’s, do we start bringing back team names in order to foster that team image?
However, I think we’re on the brink of a new age of teams. A lot of people have been clamoring to see Ken/KDJ represent Team Liquid together. Others are looking at Hungrybox and Chillin to do the same for Curse. Hax/M2K aren’t insurmountable. Mango/Lucky have been fan favorites for ages. Armada came back to Melee originally just to enter teams, and we see the Europeans from top to bottom surpass most regions in teams. What happens when Javi/Tuga team? When Chile makes it up here? And as evidenced by APEX 2014, two high level players on the same squad don’t equal a free win, as evidenced by Leffen and Dr. PP’s performance.
In recent times, there has been a lot of nostalgia for NorCal during the “dark ages.” Everyone talks about the Wombo Combo, but the other work that Tang and SS did in teams…it wasn’t just about the big flashy explosion, it was about knowing how to work with a partner. Being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, it led to a combo that had the audience going crazy. Other times, that pressure just led to fear…which led to a missed edgeguard.
With all of the emphasis on singles, doubles has taken a back seat. It’s the same way in tennis, the singles hardware is your life’s work. Doubles still has a rich history. It has an underdeveloped metagame stateside, and I predict, if things stay stagnant, the European scene will dominate doubles. However, we’ve still got a hell of a future. Is doubles not a part of your local culture? Make it part, whether it’s a side event, mentor teams as a side event.
I spoke with Kirbykaze recently on teams, and he talked about how much he loathed them. That is, until he started teaming with Jethrotex. “It’s so good to finally have a teammate who I can train with and actually level up with, travel with, and who I actually enjoy playing teams with.” He’s not the first to have this realization. I hope he won’t be the last.
Give up? Aw hell naw
Thanks prog. I love doubles and hope it survives the wifepocalypse.
Great read
Doubles is such trash, I’ll take the neutral game and mindreading of singles over team strategy and chaos any day.
Good job contributing nothing. Next time try reading the article.
I posted this on Wife’s post, and I will post it again here.
Doubles needs to become it’s own Smash Spectacle, away from Singles. Doubles should be removed from Singles tournaments, but Doubles tournaments should become something on their own.
Instead of Doubles taking up space and time and resources from Singles Tournaments, just give it some of it’s own space. If it becomes it’s own event, it will start getting attention as more people decide to team up for real. It would start creating its own community from the ground up as opposed to leeching off the established singles community as it has been all this time.
Instead of a side spectacle, make it a main event with it’s own tier list, strategies, community, and players. Let the people who are really into Doubles start taking care of it and growing it into it’s own scene alongside Singles. Right now Singles smothers Doubles at Tournaments. There isn’t any space for Doubles to get bigger either.
Wife is right that its been a long time and Doubles hasn’t really become anything yet, and I agree something needs to be done. I disagree that it means Doubles should be erased entirely though, because there is SO MUCH of it to be explored. It has been a side event, and it will continue to stay a side event until it becomes something of its own. I don’t think Doubles will ever grow further if it continues to remain something tacked on the side of Singles as a tradition.
Throughout the evolution of competitive gaming. . . it’s always been about TRYING NEW THINGS. The best player is the innovative player. The player who gets better even when everyone around him/her is going “yeah, sure, you do that” and sarcastically brushing them off. . . only to have it slap them on the face later on when it ACTUALLY WORKED OUT.
The tier list only looks the way it does now because of the extensive amount of training and research that has been put into each character. Did the tier list look the same in 2004? 2005? 2006? No. It did not. Look at Jigglypuff over the years. From 17th to 3rd and more recently down to 5th. Mario? Once 5th, down to 17th, and now at 14th.
Teams doesn’t have the same innovation yet because not enough people have banded together to make it so. We don’t have the same people playing alongside each other 24/7, and everyone who is playing together is just applying everything they know from Singles as if Doubles is the same game. It isn’t. There should be dedicated doubles tiers. We should be researching pairs from the ground-up the same way we have been for singles. We won’t ever have that growth if Singles and Doubles share the same space. All of the eyes will be on Singles, because singles is the main event. If we create another space where Doubles is the main event, then it will gather its own eyes, fans, and competition, and hopefully grow into the vast amount of possibilities yet to be explored. . . the same way Melee originally started.
Branching off and giving Doubles its own spotlight, however small at first, may be the one true way to see if it should be sticking around or not. People got together over land and sea to make Smash what it is today. Let’s see if there are enough interested Doubles Smashers out there to make it happen all over again.
I love the idea of giving doubles their own room to grow. Furthermore, I think if we are to foster doubles as a marquee event, we need to change the style of doubles majors. Everybody thinks of Melee tournaments as a one-and-done type of deal. But, it’s widely acknowledged throughout the community that doubles is pure chaos. To limit that chaos would be counterintuitive, like trying to keep it in a singles mindset, so majors should be changed to two-loss elimination.
Two-loss elimination sets up the opportunity for winners and losers brackets, and serves as a buffer between the elements of luck and skill that, while required, almost never come in tandem to make Doubles truly wonderful. Two losses would increase motivation (especially for first timers and new pairs) by giving everybody a chance to adjust their styles, try to counter pick, or just clear their heads in between games. The average time for a major to finish rises exponentially, too, so that doubles doesn’t feel like a side event.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is, even though we have all been playing the same game for a decade, there’s still plenty of room to improve the game and make it new. The only bad idea is to just give up on it.
How about making each match at 2 stocks? All the interesting stuff, like the Wombo combo, happens at the 1v2.
who is big apple 3am?
Thanks Prog for trying to save doubles! As someone relatively new and inexperienced in the community, doubles has been my favorite event, with singles there primarily as a way to get better for doubles down the road. I’m not too sure I’ll ever have what it takes to become a top player in singles because of a lack of technical ability. But for people who prefer the more mental aspect, I feel like doubles is more exciting. There’s so much to look at, so much to process. It’s funny how my focus on doubles is more about my partner than the opponents, since I don’t want to get in my partner’s way and I want to capitalize on their successes. Doubles has a lot to offer if people are willing to give it a chance, especially with a consistent partner. The problem is how a lot of teams, especially at locals where typically a handful of players outclass the rest, they can pair up and earn the top two spots, get some money, and move on. They play it as a pair of 1v1’s and fail to really develop a doubles mentality. I appreciate where Wife was coming from in his post, but I really don’t think the right way to go is to give up on doubles because we have failed to make it something in the past. This is the big chance, right now. Melee is on the rise, perhaps as big as the scene has ever been. Amazingly, Brawl players are converting over to Melee, or at least picking it up as a secondary game, and the birth of Project M has created even more renewed interest in Melee (that is where PM’s roots came from, after all). This dawning of a new “Golden Age” for Melee gives us a real chance to take the game as far as possible, and I hope we bring doubles with us.
Epic post by my brother and teammate. I hated doubles, for a long time. That all changed for me, however, when I started to pay semi-regular visits to Stony Brook University on Long Island, ten minutes from my home. The scene there is not only incredibly strong in both talent and numbers, but growing so fast that its hard to keep up.
And let me tell you: They. Love. Doubles. Some think that its the true face of smash, that it should be the main event. Its so much more rewarding and accessible for new players that its shameful to ignore it at locals, where new players go to experience the game. Doubles offers a wide array of interesting decisions and aspects that simply are not present in singles. For instance, the skill of saving another from dying is extremely valuable in teams. Conversely, when would that useful and unique skill pod smash come into play in singles? Doubles with a regular partner (such as my brother above) is an incredibly fun, rewarding experience. I even teamed with my main training partner, Scuba, a Yoshi main, at a recent Stony Brook Biweekly. Having not really previously teamed (aside from a few occasions), we came up with a game plan and followed it, doing pretty well and taling games off good teams from Stony Brook. Here’s the kicker: We were double Yoshi. I am not a Yoshi main nor would I ever use him in singles, but I do have a pretty good Yoshi that I practice often (for some reason). We entered as double Yoshi as a first time team and even got one opposing team to say out loud “Im kinda mad that your team is actually good. I didnt expect it.” By hashing out a gameplan, our combined Yoshis (a team that I maintain is good, very good even, in the doubles meta) were able to accomplish far more than either would on its own in singles.
Doubles is an incredible part of Smash that helps make it unique. It is rewarding for new players, and if we only took the time to teach it (as I was taught to love it at Stony Brook), it would grow and be far more beloved and accessible. Save doubles. We wont regret it.
Thanks to both of you for your thorough words. Really valuable for a tryhard scrub like me to read alongside Prog’s blog–I’m so glad that Wife’s time-to-give-up post has been met by such viable responses. I was losing hope, even agreeing that doubles might be dead. Now I can bring some new ideas into the discussion at a local level.
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