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Post by Bob on Jun 20, 2013 22:07:43 GMT -8
This thread is all about idea for the next version of blitzball. We have a couple weeks remaining for the tournament, then we'll give a bit of time to level your characters and play with your teams, then we'll start League #2. Before we get to the leveling up stage, we need to talk changes. There are a few changes I plan to make in the program itself and I'll try my best to be as transparent about them as possible. I'm not sure if the Goalie Bonus will factor into things again, but if I do use it, I'll let you know. The problem with the Goalie Bonus is that it creates too much dependence on randomly selecting the correct player on the field instead of goal keeping skills. Here are a few ideas of mine. Feel free to add your own and just make this thread be a good brainstorming session where there are no bad suggestions and all that. Just throw out ideas and we'll see what everybody thinks. My Ideas: Position-specific abilities: One thing I'm noticing in our tournament is that there is no distinction between a solid defender and a solid goalie. There's a reason you never see a hockey goalie jumping onto the ice to play defense for a game. Goalie is a very specific position and, as such, should not be built the same way as a normal player. For this reason, I'm thinking we could have abilities that each player will equip at the beginning of a league or tournament and that's IT. No swapping between games, just beginning of a league and end of a league. Or, hell, maybe just the beginning of a league. Some ideas for abilities: Super Goalie: Instead of randomly getting +/- 10% of your CA stat each shot, you will instead have a range from -5% to +15%. Brawler: Your radius to jump into an encounter is increased, allowing you to take part in more defense. Elite Defense: Your radius to spot the ball carrier is increased, meaning your player will swim toward the carrier sooner. Hi Risk: Instead of randomly getting +/- 10% of your stats randomly, you'll get +/- 25%. Potential for one HELL of a terrible stat, but also potential for one hell of an AWESOME stat. Fast Flippers: (I'm out of good FFX names ) Currently, the ball carrier moves at 75% the speed of everybody else (so he can't out-swim everybody). This would nix that and he's always swim at 100%, ball or no ball. OPTIMISTIC ABILITIES: If I can work with some more complicated programming, then these could be options, but they're going to be more complicated to create. Volley Shot: I could do this FFX style where a loose ball leads to a volley shot, but that NEVER activates (which is why some of my characters NEVER learned key techniques...Keepa!). What I'm considering is a serious alley-oop where a pass to a forward will lead to an uncontested shot. Goalie 2: An ability that allows any player on the field to use their own CA to try to stop a ball that passes within a certain distance of themselves. It'd probably mean finding the slope of a ball from shooter to goal and seeing if a player with this equipped is within one unit of the line. If so, they try to block it, too. Invisible Shot: Toss CA out the window and go for a legitimate sneak attack. I'd probably go for something like the ball needs to reach the goalie with 1 SHT or more remaining (so no crap defenders just shooting from the back in the hopes of an invisible shot), plus it'll only activate something like 50% of the time. If it activates, then there'll be like, a 25% chance that you make it, regardless of how awesome the goalie may be. Super Vision: Just off the top of my head, but we COULD make a goalie ability that's purely to stop invisible shots. It'll make all invisible shots become regular shots. Volley Pass (or as I originally typed, Harlem Globetrotter Pass): Another random, off the top of my head kinda deal, but along the lines of volley shot, I'm thinking we could have some sort of "arc lightning" kind of passing system where if a character with this equipped is passed the ball, they'll immediately pass the ball to another player, uncontested. The effect could chain so that, potentially, the ball could go to every player on the field before reaching somebody that can shoot. And, hell, the shot bonus that'll be racked from from doing this? Hell, a defender could score with THAT potential bonus! (hardest part of this would probably be making sure we don't hit infinite pass loops, but it'll probably be like any pass where they only do forward passes). Those are a few ideas for abilities, but my goal with them would be to distinguish between different positions. I'd like to even put certain conditions on some abilities that make them only work in certain positions. For instance, maybe volley shot is a "Forwards Only" ability, meaning even a Center can't use it. I'd like stipulations like this to really distinguish what makes a forward different from a center. I'd like some distinction though because I'm hoping to limit where you'll want to put characters on the field. Not limiting WHERE you put them, but where you'll WANT to put them. My problem with the program right now is that I can swap ANY of my defenders with my goalie and both of them play the other's position just fine. A goalie should be a goalie, a defender should not be a goalie. Whether we do this with abilities, a new level-up package that allows 2 CA, or both, I'd like to really make positions more distinct so that now, yes, you can put a defender in goal. And hell, he'll do okay, but he doesn't have Super Goalie and he's about 25% lower on CA than the goalie, so he won't be totally amazing. I think this would really highlight the stamina system. I probably have other ideas, but to keep from too many tl;dr comments, I'll stop here. Thoughts? Your own suggestions?
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Post by Fleck on Jun 20, 2013 22:23:11 GMT -8
I don't want to do anything too drastic. And by "drastic" I mean any significant changes to the program itself. I think all of our balances/fixes should be in stamina and the level up system. I think if we start adding a lot of stuff to the program, we're either A: going to spend the first half of the second season sorting through bugs and glitches or B: going to find an OP build that's going to break the system we have in place. Or maybe both A and B at the same time.
My suggestion is to simply have a level up package that only doles out CA. I think we brought this up before, but we shot it down because we were worried that it would make the goalies too homogenous, but I think we need to realize that that ship has sailed. Basically everyone's goalies are the same, and furthermore, our defenders are mostly interchangeable as well, like you just said. But a designated "nothing but CA" level up package would not only help goalies keep pace with forwards, but also it would create designated goalies for our teams who are unique from our defenders (unless you choose to have a defender or backup player invest in extra CA).
Anyway, I'm okay with doing 5 level ups for the next season, if and only if we can agree on a solution to the goalie/forward situation. As long as that remains an issue, then piling on level ups will only exacerbate matters. Also, I'm really wary about major changes to the program.
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Post by Bob on Jun 21, 2013 8:50:35 GMT -8
Yeah, I get what you mean. The abilities that I listed like Volley Shot would probably be several leagues from now, but something like Super Goalie would be an easy change with little-to-no chance for glitches. That's just a quick change to my randomization function. Those are some changes that I think can help make goalies distinct easily.
I think the big changes should be a goalie-specific level-up package that has 2 CA so that they can have 1.5x CA to combat the 2.5 CA possible for power forwards and maybe some simple abilities.
OH! And one change to the program that I will DEFINITELY be making is some sort of reset for when we get into the cluster of 5-on-5 that are impossible to break and therefore we end up with a half-game of nothing. Any ideas of how we can fix this? I'm considering something like a re-release of the blitzball. So like, if a vast majority of both teams are within a certain radius of the ball (meaning they're involved in the pile-up), then it'll wait a few back and forths to decide if they can fix the issue alone, but then it'll put everybody back to starting positions.
Anybody have any other ideas for how to fix the bunch-ups? I've considered the "nuke 'em all" approach, too, where we just force all players to the corners of the blitzpool and start over. That could be a simpler solution. Maybe just put all players in specific coordinates, probably along the sphere pool edge, then whoever has the ball has the ball away from other people. Other ideas?
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Post by Bob on Jun 25, 2013 21:59:18 GMT -8
I've been looking at some matches and I think my main concern moving forward is this. With few exceptions, points are not being scored when a shot is blocked. That's partly because we all made good defenders, but really, all shots are made while in the clear. Often, that shot is from half-court. I'm afraid this'll get even worse as SHT gets higher. But I don't think I've seen any points scored in the league where an opponent has "gotten a hand on it" and then still scored a point with it. I can't decide if this is a bad thing or not though. Your thoughts? Now, with the exception of Vivi, I suppose, I'm also thinking that it's really hard to get a goalie with any kind of SHT behind them. Granted, that's partly intentional. We don't really want that because that's all anybody would use, I'd imagine. But seriously, Fleck, Terra had a shot of 45 in the finals! How in the fuggin' world!? She got basically every conceivable bonus all at once. Shot Bonus built up, a good Goalie SHT boost...oy, what luck. Wish I could say that won the tournament, but they kinda had it in spades. ANYWAY, bitter tangents aside, I wouldn't mind allowing the potential for goalies to build CA and SHT decently, but since we all know (I think we all know) that those are the two most awesome stats in the entire damn game, they should come with limitations. The following are my proposed additions to the level-up packages list. Super Goalie: 2 CA, 2 BLK, 1 = 5 pts total Keepa: 1 CA, 2 SHT, 1 = 4 pts total Hi Risk: 3 CA, -1 ALL ELSE = -2 pts total Rationale: Super Goalie exists to give a better increase to goalie CA. We don't want them to be dwarfed by high SHTs going forward, so giving an option for +2 CA could help. The 2 BLK is up for debate, but it's the only stat besides CA that only has 1 x3 and 1 x2 (all else have 1 x3 and 2 x2). Not entirely necessary since almost all packages come with 1 BLK, so it's actually one of the more prominent stats, but it pairs well with the "Super Goalie" concept. Add in one more stat (I'm thinking 1 PAS) and we have a package. It's a bit too similar to Grip Gloves, so I'm up for conversation. Keepa: Named for Keepa in FFX, it exists to be the only package that has both SHT and CA. The downside? It only adds up to 4 points (could even limit to 3 if needed). This'll allow another +2 SHT package on the field, but all forwards would be foolish to take it as it'll have little to no other benefits, unless they somehow double as a goalie. It opens up the possibility though. But in the long run, only 4 points versus the standard 6 is a statistical loss, so this is a specialty package, built only to satisfy a certain niche goalie build. Hi Risk: Of course, this is the "Oooh" and the "Oh...wait...eff that" package. 3 CA is a DAMN nice thing to find. However, it means a -1 to all other stats, meaning your goalie is JUST a goalie. Here's the caveat to this package. You CANNOT have a stat with 0 or lower. So you can't just take all Hi Risks and Super Goalies because you'll have an ATK of -6 or something, which is illegal by league rules. You MUST have a stat to sacrifice. If we approve this package, I'll build something into my program that detects illegal builds, just in case something was missed by accident so that we can fix it. The idea here is that to take Hi Risk, you also need to take a level in All-Rounder. So, essentially, each level-up you'll be getting +2 CA, but no other stats at all, which will leave your team S.O.L., and as my above rant shows, those goalie boosts can REALLY be game changers. With Hi Risk and All-Rounder though, you could potentially double the CA on the field and stop a hell of a lot of shots, while the best anybody ELSE could do (if Super Goalie is approved) is 1.5. Current CA Max: 11 Super Goalie Potential Max: 16 Hi Risk Potential Max: 20 My own counter-argument: I'm now thinking that Super Goalie needs a bigger caveat, too, so maybe both Super Goalie and Keepa, if you guys like them, should be 4 points total. So maybe ONLY 2 CA and 2 BLK for Super Goalie, then 1 CA, 2 SHT, 1 PAS for Keepa. I'd really like to generally work with the packages we have now because I think they work, but I'd like a few more options for custom goalie building, we just can't let them get too powerful. The fact that shots fired from far away lose their cheese so quickly with ball drag means we really don't need to combat SHT too much, else nobody will ever score. As is, I think shots are coming from too far away (seems to be averaging about 6 spaces away on successful shots, meaning they're at least IN enemy territory, but not even halfway in), so bringing them a TAD closer couldn't hurt (make our defenders more useful), but require them to be too close and we're doomed to 0-0 games. I'd like to see more help from defenders, honestly. They generally are bumps on logs right now. They WILL take the ball, but only if shooters are so unsure of themselves that they need to get that close. Otherwise, they shoot before defenders get to them (like FFX blitzball!). Thoughts? tl; dr me and I'll eat your soul. TRY IT! *prepares to eat souls*
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Post by Fleck on Jun 25, 2013 23:15:23 GMT -8
tl;dr BWAHAHA! I don't HAVE a soul! You'll eat nothing and like it! This is partially why I was wary about having 5 level ups for the next season, since whatever balancing issues we have in the system will be even worse if we pile on a lot of levels all at once. On the other hand, if we have balancing issues, those issues will EVENTUALLY come to light, regardless of how many level ups we have per season, so we might as well address the issue now. I don't know if you've been playing around with your Excel character creator, Bob, but I have and here's what I've found out. If we go up to level 15 the new ultimate forward build is 7-7-1 (building exclusively for SHT from a 5-5 starting build). That gives the forward a CRUSHING 38 SHT. If we keep the current level up packages, the best a goalie can hope for is 16 CA, so basically every game will be insane score fests. If we add an all new package that doles out 2 CA, we can get a goalie with a max of 21 CA (with a 5-5-5 build), which is better. Currently, the difference between the max SHT of a forward and the max CA of a goalie is 26/11, which means that goalies have about 42% CA in regards to their opponent's max SHT. If we have a package with 2 CA, and a new max of 21 CA, then that changes the ratio to 38/21, where now goalies have 55%, so it actually favors goalies quite a bit. This alone MIGHT be enough to fix our problems, at least for another season or two. I HIGHLY advocate some testing to be sure, but that should be the solution to the problem. If it's not, however, my plan B is to have both a +2 CA level up package and an increase in ball drag. A very slight change, so that passing isn't crippled. Again, more testing would be needed, and I only want to adjust ball drag in the event that a CA package isn't enough on its own to fix the problem. In regards to your 3 proposed CA packages, I have two things to say. For one, I think a package that does NOTHING but increase CA by 2 would be valuable enough on its own for people to go after it. No need to throw in BLK or PA or anything. Yes, mathematically, you get fewer points per level, so it's inefficient, but like you said, CA and SHT are the big daddy stats, and everything else is merely secondary to those two. For two, I think we need to stay away from the temptation to have a +3 CA package, no matter how much we water it down. The balance between SHT and CA is VERY delicate and if we have some goalies who have 1.5x as much CA as others, we're going to have a nightmare of a time trying to balance this. A change that would be good for the Hi-Risk Goalies would hurt the standard goalies and vice-versa. I'm worried that having Hi Risk as an option would force all goalies to be Hi-Risk, since we would have to balance to compensate for the highest possible CA. That's my thoughts. In short, I am advocating the simplest possible changes. I want to try just having a +2 CA package and nothing else, and seeing if that keeps everything good. Only if that fails would it be wise to tamper with other things. Anyway, while I'm thinking of it, I think next season should have the same structure as this one. Nine games, round robin. Top eight go to the playoffs. I know I was all ra-ra-ra for the 10 game structure, but this system has grown on me. Also it's one fewer game where I have to calculate stamina for all 10 teams, so that's nice for me
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Post by Bob on Jun 26, 2013 6:19:52 GMT -8
Currently, with 10% ball drag (which I think is what we have), the SHT of 38 will, on average, reach the goalie with only 23 (since we're averaging a shot distance of about six). So with a current goalie max of 16, we will see a lot more points from a power forward. My hope is to bring shooters closer though and utilize defenders a bit more. I do know what you're saying about Hi Risk. I just did the math to try to prove something, but yeah, the CA is too high. With just a +2 CA package, we could have a 7/7/1 build with 2/1/1 CA, which is 22. Not bad to combat a possible SHT that'll essentially be 23. Including Hi Risk would allow up to 30. I still kiiiinda like the idea of Hi Risk, but it could get up to 30, which will be tough to crack. Anyway, I gotta go to work. Will resume talks later. YOUR SOUL IS MINE! (Count and Wyvern if he's not gone, weigh in! Whatcha think about new packages? What have you been wishing existed, if anything?)
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jun 26, 2013 18:06:20 GMT -8
I'm only for Hi Risk if offenses get closer to the goal before shooting, otherwise, I think the +2 package would be just about perfect. That being said, if we only get to completely revamp one player and we've only added a goalie boosting package, where's the incentive to change any other player than the goalie? Maybe it should be we can revamp our goalies if we want +any one other player? Other than that, somewhere along the way, the implication was that only one could be completely changed, which implies that others can be changed to some degree... If that's so, what's the degree? Up to three package shifts? That's what my vote would be - re-choosing three packages and then adding however many levels we decide on would give us the opportunity to make dynamic adjustments to our teams while not completely redoing them... and now that I think about it, if that were the case, I rescind my previous statement about needing to be able to completely revamp a goalie plus one other, because the available package additions even for a partially adjusted goalie should be enough to make the difference.
So in short, my vote is that any player can change two or three (whatever the majority consensus is) level up packages before choosing their additional packages, and that each team can completely rework one player, as previously stated.
That, and no more than a +2 CA unless the offense is basically right in the goal.
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Post by Bob on Jun 26, 2013 20:31:14 GMT -8
Feel free to disagree, but my vote is that we still only allow one full change, but we do five package shifts. That way, if your goalie wants to take 5 Super Goalie packages, that's ALMOST what the goalie could potentially be anyway. Explanation: 1 (Base) + 10 CAx1 packages + 5 CAx2 packages (the newly added one) = 21 or 1 (Base) + 8 CAx1 packages + 7 CAx2 packages (new 'uns) = 23 The top example is if we just have five level-ups and you choose to use all five on Super Goalie for your goalie. The bottom is what we could potentially have in a re-made goalie, assuming your goalie was already at 11 CA. So the only reason to remake your goalie, assuming we say "eff the Hi Risk--stop making things so complicated, Bob" is that you really really want that +2 CA. Or, because I love the Keepa package, maybe you'd like to remake a goalie with a decent SHT bonus. But otherwise, if we do 5 packages, remaking the goalie won't really matter. By the time that we're up to 20 packages (two leagues), all goalies will potentially be at max CA without even needing a remake. That way, you CAN remake your goalie, but if your whole goal is CA, then it really won't matter, assuming we did 5 packages. Even if we only did 3 packages for an upgrade, the difference in CA would only be 3. So honestly, it doesn't really change much... My vote is: New Packages: Super Goalie: 2 CA (and maybe a BLK just because you'd think a goalie could block...) Keepa: 2 SHT, 1 CA Level-ups for next round: 3 or 5 packages (honestly, I don't even care which one, but one of those) Characters to remake completely: 1 Trades: infinite Renames: infinite but must be formally declared But...hell, I dunno. I personally don't think we need to remake our goalies, but I suppose since we're kinda redoing the way a goalie could function, I could be talked into a "change one character AND a goalie character, but only if said goalie character is changing because of new packages (in other words, they MUST use one or both of the new packages)," but I really think that only one character is enough and if you want it to be a goalie, then that's up to you. Depending on the goalie type though, the newly-added packages kinda suck butt. Only 2 or 3 stat points, so they're really a novelty thing. Super Goalie WILL be vastly important in the long run, but for now, 2 or 3 less CA won't be critical. I've been using goalies with 8 or 9 CA rather effectively, despite being below the league max. Maybe the "equal boning" that all teams are getting right now will be good potential for making trades. "Imma make my new goalie, but I need a new ______ because my current one sucks--who has a good _______ to trade?" *shrug* I don't mind trade encouragement
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Post by Fleck on Jun 27, 2013 0:16:56 GMT -8
I don't wanna get too deep into my personal strategy, but I have no intention of rebuilding my goalie for Loveless (another player on my team desperately needs a rebuild, more than 5 levels can fix), so we won't ALL be rebuilding our goalies. So if the concern is that we'll all just rebuild our goalies, I am here to provide at least one exception, whatever that's worth.
Also, since a lot of our teams seem to have very flexible notions as to what our "goalies" are (I seem to remember putting a lot of non-goalie players into goalie spots when I was writing up stamina), I don't think we need to do "one goalie and one non-goalie."
So basically my vote is Bob's vote (copy pasted from his post because of laziness).
New Packages: Super Goalie: 2 CA (and maybe a BLK just because you'd think a goalie could block...) Keepa: 2 SHT, 1 CA Level-ups for next round: 3 or 5 packages (honestly, I don't even care which one, but one of those) Characters to remake completely: 1 Trades: infinite Renames: infinite but must be formally declared
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jun 27, 2013 7:42:33 GMT -8
Sounds good - if you look closely, I had already talked myself out of a second rebuild. I would vote 5 packages, and other than that, I have nothing to add at the moment.
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Post by Bob on Jun 27, 2013 12:04:19 GMT -8
Awesome. Agreement! How about that! We AGREE about BLITZBALL! Booyah!
Okay, I think Super Goalie should come with 1 PAS, too. If this really is "Super Goalie," then a goalie needs to pass (my program an actual pass stat DOES work with a goalie, so we do need it). So Super Goalie is 2 CA, 1 PAS.
Super Goalie: 2 CA, 1 PAS Keepa: 2 SHT, 1 CA Level-ups for next round: 5 packages Characters to remake completely: 1 Trades: infinite Renames: infinite but must be formally declared
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Post by Fleck on Jun 27, 2013 12:51:29 GMT -8
NO I CHANGED MY MIND! Let's all play Triple Triad instead!
No?
Okay, fine... I agree then.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jun 27, 2013 20:58:09 GMT -8
TRIADBALL!
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Jun 28, 2013 6:07:41 GMT -8
When's the ETA for the next league then Bobicus?
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Post by Bob on Jun 28, 2013 6:13:11 GMT -8
Dunno. What do you all think? I'll need about a week to update my teams and all that. Do the rest of you need that time? Otherwise, I'm thinking maybe a week to build teams, then we'll formalize it next weekend and have until the following Wednesday for game 1, so that people can assign their positions and such.
So I'm thinking teams finalized by the 5th or 6th, then first game on the 10th (all of July). Any other opinions on a start date?
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