Things Blood Bowl 3 can borrow from other esports games
If you are reading this, then you found me for one of two reasons: you either know me as the ESL guy that runs major esports tournaments or you know me as a Blood Bowl 2 player with 3,500 hours under his belt.
The combination of the above may justify the arrogance to write a wish list for Blood Bowl 3 ahead of its release. I probably know what I am talking about.
As esports titles go, Blood Bowl 2 is a fantastic product that I consider very polished and feature-rich. Their out-of-the-box engine to run tournaments is fantastic (some people that actually run leagues might cringe, but I am looking at BB2 relative to other titles), tuning in to matches is easy and watching your own replays isn't hard either. On top of this, you can make custom teams play against yourself which is a massively useful feature if you want to prepare for specific matches.
This does not mean that Blood Bowl cannot learn lessons from other titles that would make it an even better game with the release of BB3.
Before we go on, let's acknowledge that every game developer needs to balance the time and money spent on developing features vs. how many users it would provide value to. In practice, if there's a killer feature idea that delays the shipment of the game by two weeks and the feature "only" helps the top 1% of players, then that feature might not get priority or it might not make it to the game. For that reason I am focusing on features that I am guessing are trivial to add or would positively affect more than just the elite (that, and the fact that I'm not an elite BB2 player).
So, here we go:
1) Resume from replay (a StarCraft II feature) One of the best RTS games of all time has this neat feature where you can resume a game that was interrupted for a technical reason. The game can be restarted from the point it broke which has obvious applications for running tournaments, but it also has tremendous potential for learning to play Blood Bowl.
Imagine that you can load up a replay of your own tournament game and try to resolve certain situations differently. Massively useful for strategy as well as set plays like attacking or defending on one turn touchdowns.
I wish there was a save round button in the game which basically allows you to start a new match (against yourself, against AI or a live opponent) from a specific point. You could practice all kinds of one turn tochdowns without wasting time on recreating the setup of the defensive team every time. You could condense your practice to practically any other element you want.
I have had a good BB player analyse a demo with me on Discord once and it was a very valuable experience. How much better it would have been if he could have told me "play this round out differently" instead of talking about how the round would / should go.
Storing such "start files" could then allow the community to build resources where people could find all sorts of setups and play them out rather than reading about them.
The easier it is to get players to a higher level of competency, the more players are decent players and the more enjoyable the game experience will be. The added bonus of helping tournaments resume matches makes the feature worth adding into the game in and of itself.
2) Different clock mechanic (my own idea yay!) There is a balance to be struck between keeping the game manageable and fun to play and giving people enough time to make crucial decisions. The Championship Ladder turn clock has been set to 2 minutes after being at 3 minutes for a while, presumably as a response to dwindling player numbers (it's a guess, not a fact). Shorter turns are more fun for more casual players and longer turns are better for cerebral elite players.
A good balance might be if each player received an additional cache of time. It could be done many different ways, but perhaps the most elegant one would be if there were three "+1 minute" cards (similar to rerolls) available for each player per half. That would mean that when you really need the extra time, you can use it and the cards also become a resource to manage as well.
Alternatively, players could simply have an overtime clock that every extra second spent comes out of, but the "card system" has the advantage that you need to trigger receiving the extra time. If you have to actively trigger additional time, you know it won't be wasted by people that go AFK.
3) Player behaviour management (League of Legends) It seems to me like the developer would prefer to release the game and then keep it up with minimal resources. This means that ordinary players will have to deal with absolutely toxic people from time to time. I can take the abuse, but it isn't fun.
At the same time, I have met a number of players that gave me tips during the match that helped me become better. I wish such behaviour were more encouraged since meeting helpful players online can be a tremendous tool to help new players improve (a lot of players never ever leave the bubble of the game itself to find resources on YouTube, Twitch or BB2 websites).
I would like to see two buttons available to me after a game where I can label player as a toxic one or a helpful one. If a player on ladder gets reported by five (random number) different people, the game should be able to react. For example by displaying a message letting them know that they are shadowbanned from chat and no one can read their hateful shit for the next 25 (random number) games. Of course "toxic reports" should be automatically discarded if the player hadn't typed anything since it's hard to be toxic if you hadn't typed anything.
The same mechanic could apply to helpful players and it could automatically start displaying a reputation marker next to their nickname (the more positive reports you get, the better your "positivity rank" - and it shoud decay over time). Some other type of in-game reward could be instated as well, but I don't know what the developer's plans are for in-game currency or custom rewards.
I know of some players that would confuse the hell out of the above system, otherwise known as helpful ragers, but maybe it would be a good start. And the best thing: it's automated with no manpower required.
4) Observer features (DOTA 2, Chess)
Give us basic telestration tools in the game. The ability to draw arrows, move players (as shadows) etc. to illustrate what the player should do, where the player should be moved, etc. It is not uncommon for a turn of Blood Bowl to last two minutes before a player is moved or a die is rolled. Commentators being able to mark things in the game they are watching and displaying them for their audience would make broadcasts much more compelling.
I cannot stress enough that there's time for it in most big tournament matches. It would be massively helpful with "newb streams" as well (something I've recommended for the REBBL team to organise for their playoffs) since that can bring players into the community as well.
5) Promotion of esports (League of Legends & others) The first major title to really do this well was League of Legends. Whenever a big event was going on, they would put a link to the stream into the game client. I cannot stress how much this has popularised LoL as a professional esport and given its community the idea that they're casual players of not a game but a SPORT. Even if they did not watch the esports tournaments, they were given a sense that there was so much more depth to that world.
This is another feature which might require post-release management from the developer (which automatically makes it not-so-desirable), but creating some kind of in-game billboard and working with whitelisted popular leagues to fill it in for the publisher under strict guidelines is probably doable. I am aware of the news section on the loading screen, but without an image and headline to attract my attention, I ignore it 90% of the time.
The community does tremendous work for the publisher, creating rich, vibrant places to learn, play and enjoy Blood Bowl. The least they could do is allow the trusted ones to promote themselves inside the game. It's for the mutual benefit of the publisher and the community leagues.
Welp... This is more writing than I've done in 5 years. And all it took was for me to win the first round of the REBBL Challenger Cup. I hope you've enjoyed this read and that you have suggestions of your own that could help Blood Bowl 3 become a fantastic game.
