Don’t tempt me. Designing is just as fun as engineering.
Here’s what I’m thinking for enabling different pass types, while also allowing the player to more finely tune how much to ‘lob’ or ‘bullet’ the pass: use the thumb stick’s position to determine not only pass direction, but also pass ‘bullet-ness’. That is, the farther the player presses the thumb stick (i.e., the farther it is from the neutral center), the more bullet-like the pass will be; the ‘lighter’ the player presses the stick, the more ‘lobbed’ the pass will be.
I offer up this approach on top of the quick-tap idea you mentioned, so the player can fine-tune the pass for as long as the pass button is held down.
If this works well and feels good — which I can’t really be too sure about, since I don’t have a gamepad in front of me right now — the design would sort-of favor bullet-like passes, which I think is actually pretty ideal: they’re the easiest to pull off for beginners, but also the easiest for opponents to intercept, because the ball would fly close to the ground (and can therefore be blocked by anyone in the path, even accidentally).
Following this logic, as players become more skilled, they will attempt the more difficult (due to having to more carefully aim their thumb) ‘lob’ pass, which is harder for opponents to block. These ‘lobs’ would also be harder to pull off perfectly, because the passing player would need to anticipate where their teammate is going, or at least where their teammate ought to be going.
On paper, all of that seems like it would work great to me — but, again, it will depend on how it feels when a controller is in-hand.
But the plus side is, if you do go with an idea like this, programming/scripting the throw logic will be relatively easy to do. (At least, easier than other possibilities I was considering, such as the auto-aiming throw I asked about earlier.)
Finally, of course I do art also. You should expect no less by now.