Blitzball: Any ideas how you would like this to be implemented

[Liam_Harper]

Make it like FFX or don't bother.

The sports management thing is a waste, they only reasons they seem to have for that is because they're afraid they can't make the real thing popular and just for the sake of having Blitzball in some form. If they have no confidence in themselves as developers, throwing out a tentative safe watered down version isn't worth it. FF14 has far too much "safe" content, it's sad for a company as large and well established as Square.

If they do make a FFX version, they need to make it rewarding and give it long term replay value that isn't a dull "play 500 games" grind. They've already butchered Triple Triad by taking an enjoyable game and forcing you to play it up to 200+ times per card to collect. How can something remain fun when you simply repeat it without change thousands of times? Unlock lots of new skills, npc team members to recruit including rare ones we know, levels and stats to gain, have a sort of tournament mode with different exclusive vanity prizes each month. Don't be afraid to hurt the tiny "I'm forced to Blitz for vanity" crowds feelings.

I'm not sure about PvP either. Could make both PvP and PvE mode for the option.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Here's what I said in that thread:

Regarding Bliztball - if it is more menu content, it will be a waste of resources/dead on arrival. The game does not need ANY more menu content. Here's the conundrum - do you design the content to be played/visited by the masses or do you simply design it to be the best it can/faithful/fun?

In my experience/opinion - these types of undertakings are best served by simply building the best possible iteration of the content form. In that, it will succeed on its own merit rather than artificially forcing it to be relevant to the masses.

What I would want out of Blitzball is a real live breathing match. Active gameplay elements, matchmaking, both solo and as a team, with ability to play against a range of AIs as well as PVP. It doesn't need to be some kind of scaling progression system, or have obscure rewards gated behind it, simply make it fun to play and people will participate.

It needs to be easily accessible, but deep at the same time. Build in functions to let FC's/statics/linkshells compete against each other for prizes. The idea is this should be something people can do during downtime for fun. Build in spectate options for people to watch.

To give an example of what I would have considered good:

If Chocobo Racing was basically Crash Team Racing/Mario Kart but with FF paint on it, I'd probably play it every single day with friends, but we got some awful implementation instead, basically dead on arrival. It needs to learn from this. Don't put awful shallow side content in. Either do it right and invest the time/resources, or forget about it.

[Lilseph]

Here's what I said in that thread

Honestly, I don't know how they can make it work with the current engine and taking into consideration the latency issues. If they can make it work like Rocket League, that'd be great. But then again: Latency.

I forgot to paste my ideas from another thread:

1) Build up your team with different NPCs you find across the world. You can also buy their contracts with MGP.
2) Every NPC will have a "star" rating from 1 to 5.
3) Set strategies ala football manager.
4) Compete against different AI teams (Ul'dah's Burners, BrassBlades, Illumanity team, The Un-Tempered, Costa's Warriors, etc)
5) Have a different competition modes: Tournament (once every two weeks like Triple Triad), League (monthly), Exhibition (Regular match with no impact whatsoever), PvP (Duh)
6) Winning or losing match would give you Blitzball experience enabling you to level up: Access to better tactics, getting better NPCs, better MPG rewards.
7) In addition to your experience, the NPCs would also level up separetely depending on their participation in the match, increasing their base stats up to their cap based on their rating.

Yeah, it's a manager style game, if the "full live action" can't happen. However, it's not a "click and forget", like the current Squadron system, but you can actually see the match making decisions on what to do during it. Or running it full auto where the NPCs take their own decisions.

[Reynhart]

Like a multiplayer football game in 3D, using the swim controls.

[MageBlack]

Dont care how the implement it, hated it in FFX and probably will only play it once in FFXIV just to say "I tried it".

[Zojha]

I thought about it for a while and it's really not easy, especially with the given netcode.

Let's construct a possible Blitzball game bit by bit:
The first part is easy: We already have swimming, so you just fill an instance with water and have people swim in the boundaries.
Then you need goalposts. Put them on opposite ends of the instance, done.

Next is the ball and shooting. It would be fairly boring if you could just click the goal and press "score", so I'd set it up as vector based shot with a line indicator (effectively a slim tether between you and the point where the ball will end up). Then you can shoot the ball wherever, maybe score or if you don't hit, you can swim towards it, pick it up again and try again.

Then it starts to get messy: Allies and enemies. The first bit is easy - If you hit an ally, it's a pass. If you hit an enemy, he intercepts. If you hit nothing, anyone can pick up the ball where it lies. You'd need collision to prevent people from standing inside you to auto-intercept. And then you'd need some way to take the ball off a player that doesn't shoot it, either because he's AFK, trying to hoard or a bugged NPC (or because you just stand next to him and want the ball).
The easiest way is a time limit at which the ball is dropped automatically, but that's also pretty meh. You can make it a close combat skill (hookshot?) that has a random chance of success, but RNG is meh. An active time event of sorts maybe? It'd have to be client based, or else low latency auto-wins. I'd consider this to be the biggest hurdle, truth be told. It shouldn't be too long or obnoxious, but it'd be nice to have some player interaction there. I'm not sure what would be a good implementation for that.

Goalies, I dunno if it even needs them. As long as people need to be within a certain distance of the goal to hit it, I don't see the need, you just need some cheap super range shot prevention. If it does need them, I'd give that role to an NPC no matter what, because I know from PUG soccer that nobody wants to play it. Maybe as simple as a RNG chance to score that increases exponentially the closer the player is to the goal (up to guaranteed success). Not a fan of RNG, tho'.

For fluff, one can add trick shots that cost resources and can be adjusted for each character (or NPC). Just need to keep those balanced, but it can be used to promote passing the ball (give it to someone that still has resources), which would be a particularly good thing in group PvP.

For PvE, one can simply let the player control whoever has the ball in such a mode and have the rest on auto (or have everyone on auto and just control the player character, depending on control scheme). In addition, one could allow the player to give orders to the NPC on auto. 1v1 PvP could have two players each taking control of one team in that way, with the team without the ball being able to tab through characters (or keep them on auto). 6v6 PvP could be a fully fledged match with each player taking control only of themselves.

And at that point, you can tie in with the manager game and allow people to recruit NPC anyway. As you play more games, more NPC might be willing to join and you can build your team for PvE and 1v1 as you like. It's purely cosmetic in this incarnation, but it'd also be possible to give different NPC (and the player character) different stats such as throw strength, speed, endurance for trick shots or whatever.

Issues might arise from players not being displayed where they actually are - For wide open passes/shots, that'd be no big deal, the receiver can just move a little bit and pick up the ball. In tight quarters, that could lead to the wrong person getting the ball or unanticipated intercepts.
Another issue I could see in group (not solo) PvP is that players without the ball get bored (happens in real soccer as well). It's a consequence of the game mode, I have no idea how one could alleviate that except putting more than one ball into the game.
Another issue would be clarity: You'd need a lot of extra UI work to make sure people know what's going on in the globe. Something like round circles around characters and the ball, color coded depending on team.
Play-length, I don't consider much of an issue. I'd just cap the time as in all other PvP modes.

A big, big issue I could see, though, is NPCs being stupid. This implementation is fairly simple in concept, but fairly deep in execution and NPCs are very likely to be easily outplayed, follow orders awkwardly or in general have bad behavior. You can see in squadron missions how much they can struggle with much easier tab target gameplay and only two dimensions to move in. I'd see that as the breaking point of the design, because I'd see PvE and 1v1 PvP to be the most popular (due to being the most engaging for the individual player) and those rely on NPC.

In any case, I personally wouldn't want a menu-game implementation. I think this game already has enough menu-games to last it through the next two expansions.

[Sylvina]

Make it pvp, rip off Huttball from Starwars TOR. It's the one pvp mode that I've never heard many people say anything bad about.

"Cannibalism? YOU CAN BE THE FIRST!"

[Derio]

I would like it to be where you are able to play and not the squadron type where you are the coach on a team.

Balancing such as stamina, swim speed, etc can be created and honestly if enough time and effort was put into it I could see it being a good addition to the Saucer.

[Kowen]

Honestly, I don't think they should put it in at all. I'm afraid it'll just go the way of LoV and Triple Triad once the nostalgia wears off.

It might last longer if they made a fully fleshed out sports game, but they need to focus on improving the regular battle content we already have (like Eureka) before thinking about anything like that.

[Sho86]

They could easily go crazy with it and make it a fun pass time. Full team active PvP sport, monthly server tournaments with maybe quarterly data-center tournaments. As far as time-efficient excuse, that is a null point. If activity X takes 15 mins and gives 50 reward, make blitzball give 100 reward if it takes 30 mins. All in all it could be a great asset to the game, but with half-hearted thoughts like more NPC management, of course it'll be DoA.