BuzzerBeater Forums

How does everyone feel about the current deflationary trend in BB?

I am seriously thinking about throwing in the towel on BB. I made some bad decisions last season and they cost my team, there is no doubt about that. Perhaps I should have seen the market tank job coming but nevertheless it has been really annoying.

Still, I have come back from worse situations. I will be making around $400K per week the rest of the season, so in theory I could demote to II and come back to make a run at 2nd place again. Maybe I could even swing a scenario where I splash the cash towards the end of the season and somehow find a way to stay up.

Or I may just become a farm team, log in once a week and leave it at that. To be honest, I really do not have the time to keep figuring out the market.

I am still trying to decide which direction to go.

I really would not like to see you go. You have been too influential in Canada to just quit all of a sudden. It is your decision obviously, but I would strong discourage you from quitting. The game is still quite young and when they try to make changes all the time, mistakes will be made. However, things will get better. I just think it would be a shame for you to quit because the market is so crap right now, when the game is still improving. IMO, we still haven't seen BB at its best yet.

i definately wish the market wouldn't have gone downhill recently. i can't get squat for my players now and made some part way through last season that i definately wouldn't have done if i had seen this drastic downturn coming.

a few transfer decisions last season now combined with the economy collapse has left me with little value on my roster, nothing left in funds, and a definate ticket to division II for this season. it is really disappointing and discouraging i find.

Griffin: thanks for the kind words.

But I will not be leaving the game. I cannot let the one ballers think that they won (even if my discontent has nothing to do with it, I cannot leave it open to interpretation). Plus I really love the BB community, there are too many fun people here to just leave altogether.

I may just change my long-term goals and stop in less frequently. Maybe I will just see how much cash I can stockpile and see where that takes me. Or maybe I will just try to develop outstanding players for the Canadian NT.

Or maybe in a few weeks I will get excited about the game again and start logging in more often. Who knows.

a few transfer decisions last season now combined with the economy collapse has left me with little value on my roster, nothing left in funds, and a definate ticket to division II for this season.

Maybe we will battle it out for last place? I doubt it, though, your team is better than that. My bet is you will find a way to turn it around.

it is really disappointing and discouraging i find

I agree. However, I am waiting for the usual suspects to come in and rationalize why market prices do not matter. I may be able to understand if it was a slight market correction, but it just seems like prices have fallen by 50% or more (I don't really know, I have not had time to really browse the market recently).

On the other hand, I do not really know the answer to the problem. Because if the BBs step in now and force inflation, it only makes the issue worse.

Here's the thing: I suspect that market prices haven't fallen overall, just on the top end. I have still sold some absolute garbage for $300k and when I went looking for a trainee after the draft prices stayed the same or even went up compared to two seasons ago for prospects. I saw 18 y/o guards going for $2m this year which is insane when you look at the price most finished NT level guards were going for at the same time. I think that it is deflation overall, but it's also not across the board or even remotely rational.

Yellowcake or whatever his name is from Japan made a good point: right now training and selling players is a waste of money but there was never a better time to buy 21/22 year old semi-finished products for a discounted price. I just wish I would have predicted the market a bit better and liquidated some mid-level guys before last years playoffs. The real people who benefitted are those who came into this season with massive stockpiles of cash since they can buy up assets at a discount (just like the real world, I guess). Some people are going to come out of this mess very rich.


I think that the important lesson from all of this is that if a tiny free market like BB doesn't act rationally then why do we pretend that a global free market in the real world will? Socialism is the answer here, friends. When the revolution comes you will all get fair compensation for the labour you put into training your prospects.

You have to believe that the BBs will have to put a stop to Free Agents hitting the market soon to try and stabilise prices. Chris hit the nail on the head though as people do seem to be paying decent amounts for average/mid level talent up to $10k in salary. Anything over that and prices do seem to have dropped significantly. It must really suck to be a seller in this market.

but how can BB stablize the markets?

I don't see what they can do besides stopping the flow of Free Agents into the market, and/or having the system compute a minimum TL price based on skill and potential levels

Imagine how well off someone could be doing right now if they sold their best players three seasons ago (replacing them with average guys) and decided to use that stockpile of cash now to go out and purchase players. I don't like the fact that teams can be rewarded so greatly for playing the market

It depends how you view this situation. I very much doubt that people have been doing this because as far as I'm aware there has never been a period of deflation in BB like this before which would be a pretty big deterrent to somebody doing this. And if somebody wants to sacrifice their on court performance to stockpile money then I have no problem with that. Its effectively what the Nets tried to do to get the #1 pick and then LeBron. Predicting the market in BB is such a tricky thing to do because our information is so limited.

I would expect it to pick up relatively quickly though when you consider that if there was every going to be a deflationary period it would be early in the season as most teams lose money for at least 1 week of the playoffs. A lot of teams also benefit from cup revenue in the early weeks, so more money will be out there for teams to spend (assuming that a lack of cash is why teams have seemingly stopped spending).

this has been the largest deflation point i can recall since i started in season 3. i would lose many millions right now if i sold the primary players i spent 4 seasons training to this point when factoring in purchase price and salary for that time. i don't ever recall a point where anything was like that. my team is stuck in a massive recession at this point, with no light at the end of the tunnel at this point.