Not to jinx next year, but...

[Ryan_Todd]

@GeeTwo:
Yes, yes, so much yes. All of the yes, in fact.

Every single nail has been hit on the head right here.

We are definitely due for ball-shaped game pieces again, and lots of them, without any limit on the number of game pieces that can be carried at a time. This combination of rules keeps coming back through the years, and for good reason; handling game pieces in bulk is a very different game challenge from handling them individually, and a good challenge at that (as long as you mix it up with a solid endgame and/or side objective). The last time we had a game like this was back in 2009, so there have already been two graduating classes of students who never got a chance to do this; we are definitely overdue, no doubt about it.

(And yes, I would definitely call out tennis balls / wiffle balls / similar-sized game pieces as a good idea, what with the 25th anniversary and all.)

As for the difficulty of accurate and/or realtime scoring with large numbers of small game pieces, I would propose that we take a cue from FTC 2015 "Cascade Effect" and measure your score based on the cumulative depth of game pieces scored in the goal(s) instead of attempting to count the game pieces individually.