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I'm going to be clear here. This is my personal vision, with input from people who i trust really care about the game in general, and wouldn't make suggestions to benefit from personal gains. For obvlious reasons, i'm not going to detail there names. This is not a community wide survey, but the view of an addicted manager who in good conscience can no longer stay silent that there are pressing issues with this game that need solving. Because this is a personal view, here goes:

Athruns State of BB

The way i'm going to present this:
I'm going to divide issues into 3 categories: 1) Interesting idea's that should be fairly easy to implement & should be considered for the near futur (And for the love of god, don't pencil them in for your development Calender. I understand why you brought it in, but i find you are forcing yourself to show improvements in certain intervals. I'd much more prefer you'd do it at the end of the season & that you show the community what you are working on in the meanwhile. I prefer idea's that have been thought throught & been subjected to critisim before being put into practise. And while i understand that some measures won't be popular (i've made atleast one that will cause serious outcry in this segment) some are needed to tackle certain problems. But that calender feels as though you are unveiling somehting that isn't ready necessairly (best example: the 1/11 Major update on Supporter Tiers. you can't honestly expect me to believe it took 2 weeks to implement that.)

The 2nd category will be the idea's that i consider to be potential solutions for current problems, but that might be hard to implement. this might be because the idea might be too complex to implement. Should that be the case, alternative suggestiong should be thought off to tackle that specific problem.

The 3rd category is one that i've picked up that would work in an ideal world, but of which i'm unsure would work in BB. However, i'm posting them none the less to provide food for thought, hoping 2 things will come forth of it. A) Someone finds a much better solution to the problem. B) Given time, maybe they could work out in some way.

Problems
When i look at BB, i see a game that used to have a great community. i say used to. There was help for newbies, but now, that is very sporadic. Also, teams over 2 seasons are nearly the same. (some teams are doing elevator movements, going up and down, but very rarely do newer teams make it into the top divisions around the world, unless it's to fill up a spot of a departing manager. The userbase has been losing users steadely for over 3 years now. The international competitions have gone stale (as in are uninteresting for 70% of the teams. 10% know they'll make it to the next round. 60 % knows they have no chance to make it to the next round. Which means you've got 20% of the teams where it actually matters, only to then face teams that have stacked up the enthusiasm to the max in the final rounds... Training has become more of weekly grind. in other words, the total package isn't appealing anymore. We can't keep our loyal managers & we can't attract new managers. I've decided to highlight the issues that i consider to be rather large. Once again, i'm going to stress this part: The solutions that i'm making aren't necessairily the best ones. However, i don't consider them bad ones and even after enquiring multiple people, a better solution hasn't been made (or else they would have been included)

1) Competition.
The Bottleneck paradox
The best example to illustrate that competition is totally unbalanced, is the following example: (34182). In season 39, he ended with a 9-13 record. got the 5th draft spot. How? Well due to the fact that the red division is SOOOO much stronger than the blue one, the red division has been stacking up good teams, and the blue teams have 1 or 2 good teams, meaning they consistently get a better chance of securing home court advantage. That means that you bottleneck of good teams is created in the red conference. That means that the economies off all the teams on the red conference get screwed over. For those who are saying that is an exception: (37476) (season 23) There are more examples to be found, if only you go through enough history of divisions. Other example? Look at the BBBL season 40. top 4 teams have been known from week 1 on the red side.
Solutions
a) Change the format of the current competition. This would also solve the interconference schedule luck that is created. But it is likely to bring new paradoxes with a new format, so this might not necessairly be the best option. it would shake up things drastically tho.
b) Preform a reseeding after each season. The easy version would be to do it per league. You rank the teams from 1-16 (promoting teams take the bottom spots, Demoting teams from higher division take the higher spots) and then you divide all the teams over the red & blue conference (teams 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13 & 16 in red conference, the other teams in the blue conference). That would avoid having the paradox where one conference just blows away the other conference, which is currently happening in some leagues.
c) Do such a reseeding over an entire division (This impact will be minimal for the top divisions, but will be rather large for the II, III & IV divisions). You put all the teams in a division, rank em based upon their country rank, and then seed them into the divisions. (1 & 8 goes into II.1, 2 and 7 goes into II.2, 3 and 6 go into II.3, 4&5 go into II.4 etc etc). That will even out the competition and have a much bigger impact than the current 5th team promoting (i'll leave it up for debat wheither or not we still want a 5th team to promote, because that issue will be tackled later on).

note: a downside of options b & c, is that certain bigtime rivalries will be dissappearing. I know a fair amount of managers who look forward to facing eachother each season, but those games would then dissapear. But i'd consider that an improvement for a more fair competition (and if you really want that rivalry, improve your team and meet eachother in the first division. there you'll be guaranteed to face eachother ;)

Idea rating: category 1. This shouldn't be a difficult fix and could be done in stages. you can start with league reseeding and evolve to division reseeding.

Elevator teams
To clarify this, i rank teams as following: those consistenly playing for the title (the contenders) those trying to make PO's and praying for miracles (the pretenders) & those who are fighting to avoid relegation (the retreaters-. Amongst those who promote, they often come in a batch where teams have such a superior economy, that they are nearly automatically sent down the season afterwards. Adding a 5th promoting team has just increased the difference between the pretenders & the retreaters. The idea behind the 5th promoting team was great. But they don't get the same increase in season ticket holders as their normal teams promote

Which means that you've put a larger strain on the retreating teams. Where as before the difference was that there would be a gap that could be brigded between the pretenders & the retreaters within a season or 2 or 3 (and safe spots to buy you enough time to improve), now all the retreaters have to hope they can brigde that gap right away. There are no more safe spots, which give you time for your economy to catch up to those in the division to which you just promoted too.
Solutions
a) increase the promotion bonus with a substantial amount (i'm talking 150 to 200% of current). that way, promoting teams have a chance to catch up. However, that means that you might encourage teams to tank by becoming an elevator team (demoting one season, promoting right afterwards). So doing so, would mean that you'd need to be more severe on a tax for teams hoarding cash (see later)
b) give a team a standard player of a certain amount of TSP (BB provides lets say 10 standard sets of players. 2 PG's, 2 SG's, 3 SF versions, 1 Pf version and 2 C TSP distributions of which the premoting team can chose from) meaning they have one player less they need to worry about. the TSP would be that of the average TSP of the league (and to make certain we don't create U21 monsters, let's put his starting age at 27). However, by doing so, you might create a flood on the market, meaning that those players need to be locked with the team for 2 seasons or so.
c) Change the TV rights (or merchandise) to no longer be the same over the entire division, but make them higher for promoting teams (they provide new excitement within the championship) where as the TV rights go down each season you stay in the same division (because fans become accustomed to having you in that division & only come out for the big games). it doesn't drop after say 5 seasons, that way, teams who are challenging for top honors don't get punished to much about it and it gives extra incentive to the new teams. The % in which it would regress each season (and i'm talking of regress in compairison to the new teams) would then of this income is to be debated at another time. Or you provide with the promo

Idea rating: Category 2. I know many people are going to dislike option C, but i feel that is the best one. Giving teams more cash will just increase the likely hood of getting evelvator teams to start tanking/hoarding cash, which isn't what i'm trying to promote. However, we need to make certain that the promoting team can compete within a fair amount of time. If that can't be guaranteed, then they'll just consider tanking will be the best option. Promoting teams need to be convinced they have a real shot at staying in a division and having a chance to fight for top honors. I believe option C gives the most guarantee there, but i'm unsure about the exact numbers for it to actually make it work. If you make it too strong for the promoting teams, teams will decide to demote and repromote after a while to cut their rebuilding phase short. If the effect is too weak, then it won't work out as intended. This is a balancing issue, which are the hardest to tackle imo.

2) instant gratification: part A
Most people these day's want to play games with instant gratification. However, because some managers in the top divisions have hoarded so much cash, it makes it impossible to catch up to them. currently the hoarding tax only applies once you have 25M. That ammount let's you buy 3 very unique players (i've rated those at 6.5M per player, putting them at 19.5k) and 2.5M for normal starters. Considering that you often have a trainee or 2, that means 25M allows you to buy an entire new team which allows you to compete with the top teams. That means that lower teams can't catch up fast enough. And if they do, you'll just purchase a new player while still sitting on cash reserves.
solutions
a) Instead of having a Static Max amount of cash, let's make this dynamic. I have mutliple idea's for the dynamic version. so i'm splitting them up in A;I, a.II etc.
a.I) The amount of cash that can be hoarded is % the HIGHEST transaction of the previous season (let's say 130%). So let's say, someone sells a player for 10M this season, then the hoarding tax is 13M for the season after that. That way, those sitting on huge amounts of cash will be incourages to spent it. It will discourage tanking enough cash before you finally are able to buy enough good players to be relevant! Also, they can't forsee what the next hoarding maximum will be meaning that they can't plan if they'll be above the hoarding threshhold or not. This way, you are stimulating people to invest in their team! I'm aware that this could impact the prices of the market, but this would create the most dynamic market we could have.
b) lower the hoarding maximum over the next few seasons. take 3M down untill you hit let's say 13M (that will allow you to buy 2 impact players, lvling the playing field a bitt more).
c) plan another change to salary floor, however this option has proved to be ineffective in the past. Tanking just takes longer now, plenty of times are still doing it.

note: i'm very well aware that this suggestion won't sit well with the top teams who have managed their teams to perfection (meaning remaining competitive and still earning cash). however, to many teams have abused tanking mechanismes and despite numerous attempts, BB still hasn't been able to tackle these problems. For those who have managed their teams to perfection, these changes shouldn't have to much influence, since you know the tricks and can reproduce them. the only adjustment that would be required from you is to invest into your team each season, instead of every 3 seasons where you add 3 new monsters to your team. Currently, tanking seems by far the best way to become relevant at the top leagues, so it's time we try something new, since the old tricks just haven't worked.

Idea rating: Category 1 & 2. the reason i'd consider it category 1, is because it's fairly simple to implement a tax to be dynamic. The reason why it's category 2, is because i'm not convinced the highest sale in a season would be the best Barometer to set as a reference for the dynamic Hoarding tax. It could be a start, but i'm wondering if somebody else might not come up with a better barometer for the dynamic hoarding tax (Option A would have my preference, altho options B and C are much easier to implement.

instant gratification, part B
another problem is that we can't keep new managers around. Why? because they often feel that they can't compete against veterans & that they can't catch up to the older users. I personally don't like teams where i can catch up to the top users and try to outperform them by being more online than others. To be clear, i'm not suggesting a speed up the pace of the game. the advantage is that tactics can be set up to a week in advance (when GS is taken into account) or several weeks should someone go on holiday. However, we need more catch up mechanics to keep the new managers intruiged. That means that the entire game manual needs to be rewritten, providing them with a better explanantion of ALL aspects of the game,so that new managers understand better that there are multiple ways of improving!
Solutions
a) rewrite your entire Game Manual. it's been outdated. or update the FAQ that was once written by Naker Virus & have the LA's translate that FAQ to the own respective language so that that forum can be linked in the welcome message to new users. This would be a HUGE major update (one that could be penciled in the calender, and one that doesn't require the BB's to work on it! You could leave this to a group of community members, all while you are working on coding solutions for other problems! Although, i do feel somewhat bad for the LA's in this case, because they are going to have to translate an entire new manual, which would be a lot of new work!
b) set up a mentoring program that is wide spread acros the entirety of BB. (but overseeing the correct appointment of mentors and new candidates can very well be a full time job or a part time job for multiple people!
c) change the promotion bonusses (as mentioned earlier) but be certain this doesn't lead to tanking (again, not a fan of this solution since it is a balancing issue, and balancing issues rarely hit the mark from the get go. And changing it each season will just make the community go made)

Idea rating: Category 1 for solution A. You just need to find 1 or 2 GM's who are willing to spearhead a group of people who would be willing to rewrite the manual. The challenge in it all lies in getting the people on board to translate it all, aswell as each time you make a change, you need to make certain that it gets integrated into the game manual. Another challenge would be to incorporate the recently revamped tutorial into the gamemanual (or vice versa, but i think that can be done by setting up a segment in which you ask people to fill out a questionairy of which the answers are in the game manual --> that way, they will be movitated to read the game manual. Cause right now, of the new members with whom i've had contact, they just don't read the game manual!

I'd rate it Category 2 for solution B. i think that this would solve most of it's problems, however, it would require to create a new staff job (let's call them TM, Teaching Managers) & implementing a new way to apply for it. ( you could apply based upon language, instead of nation. i'm certain a Spanish manager could help out a Columbian newbie and vice versa). This would be the best way to keep new users around imo, and for it to work, they would need a tab such as your friendly staff & some recognition aswell. Cause let's face it. i doubt more than 33% of the new users stick around for more than 5 seasons (33% is a poor percentage imo, but this is a guess. i don't have any statistics to prove this. The only statistic that i have is that our player base is dwindling and that some actions need to be taken to motivate the new users!

3) International representative competition
currently the interest in international competitions are an estimated 10% of the community of a nation (and my 10% is an optimistic guess!) The competition has gone stale (see earlier why) and it's too predictable. As mentioned earlier:

The international competitions have gone stale (as in are uninteresting for 70% of the teams. 10% know they'll make it to the next round. 60 % knows they have no chance to make it to the next round. Which means you've got 20% of the teams where it actually matters, only to then face teams that have stacked up the enthusiasm to the max in the final rounds...

Solutions
a) tie TV rights in a country to the results of your U21 & NT. that way, managers and teams get more incentive to be interested in the U21/NT teams and that will demand that whoever is managing them, does his best for the job. Increasing the merchandise wouldn't be a bad thing, However, you want to motivate the entire community. Hence, i suggest that the TV rights should also be influenced by the U21/NT (and not a minor influence, but a serious one.) The reason why i'm not suggesting a change in merchandise, is because i want the merchandise to represent something concering the players on that own team. TV rights are division & nation wide, so let the U21/Nt results factor into those instead of directly
b) A suggestion of several posts was made in the U21/NT forum a couple of seasons back. It was well received at the time by the U21/NT managers, but no news has been released since. the suggestion can be found here: (284534.1) [might i suggest that topic gets moved to the suggestion forum? plz edit message when that has been done]

the goal here is to get users involved & motivated for the U21/NT teams! currently 70% of the community couldn't care less about those teams (the % might be higher) there is no motivation for them. I'm not saying you should be messaging the U21/NT coach or scouts daily. But a minimal interest should be considered healthy or else we might aswell scratch the U21/NT section (something i would find a pitty, since a lot can be learned at U21/Nt lvl)

4) Create new staff functions
With the greatest respect to the current developping staff, i feel as thought more could be done and this is a feeling that seems to echo through out the entire community. Currently, you have to analyse problems, think about solutions & then face the backlash from the community, so i really don't envy your role or position in this community. If anything, i have the utmost respect for the BB's & Marin in particular for doing the job for such a long time! However, i feel as though things could be done more efficiently. In these posts, i'm just pointing out a bunch of really obvlious problems. In my honnest oppion, you need those who can code stuff (the BB's) and you need those who can come up with solutions (Let's call those BB's think tank). I think you can split those roles. BB's should still hold the final say, but i think there are a bunch of people who would potentially have great idea's, but currently they just get lost on the suggestion forum. Also, if you want to go with that mentorship suggestion (see instant gratification, part 2) then you'll probably need a new function too for those spearheading that part.

The point i'm trying to get at is that i think the BB's have to much work. they currently have to come up with new idea's, solutions to certain problems and implement everything in code. Split up the work a bitt. Take some of the burden off the BB's. Problem is finding people who generally want to improve the game and not make suggestions for their own benefit. i understand that part.

Also, i'd strongly suggest you do an evaluation of the game every 3 or 4 seasons. That means putting together a committee who evaluate the game (to prepare the next state of BB, as it were). BB's should still have a say in it, but because those have other responsibilities, let an EGM or a GM head the committee, who examen the game and make potential suggestions. Such a Committee should exist of a couple of members from the staff and normal members too. The bigger the group, the harder it is to get everyone to agree on things, so i'm not looking for a group of 100+ people. My suggestion would be: 1 EGM or BB, 3 GM's, 3 LA's & 14 other members, to be selected by the group of GM's who will be taking the lead for the project. if a former BB could sit within this group, then that would be great, since he could provide extra insight. Since this group would be required to work closely, i'd suggest the use of a forum backed up by a vocal channel (let's say a discord ish feature) so that they can do their due dilligence. I currently don't have a suggestion as to what the best way would be for people to be selected (or apply) to this group, since that group would have a larger influence of checking on suggestions made to see if they can come up with idea's to improve the game. That would mean that BB's would be tasked with attempting to implement the suggestions made by such a group, over a certain time frame. Also, by creating such a group, the community would feel that they have more input in making actual suggestions, since at the current moment, many suggestions are made (we shall not debate if they are good or poor ones, nor the urgency of them) but most feel that those suggestions are being ignored. To be very clear, i do recommend that good knowledge of english is a prerequisite since BB's communicate in ENGLISH. I know that there are large subsections of the community who use other languages (Spanish, French, mandarin, German, just to name a few) but let's keep it simple to start up. if it works well, we can consider adding language depending groups.

For those of you who will point out that selection to that committee means you get a larger input into the game, then you are right. that is the downside, but i do believe that this could relief a rather large burden of the BB's. either they can't code anymore or they are swamped with work. I still tend to belief that they are swamped with work and untill proven otherwise, want to believe that they are capable of coding enough solutions in the futur. Maybe this excercise can be done once (have a test run) and see what results it might come up with. It should at the very least get tested once. just to see if this could work within this community. And if it does yield results, then maybe it can work for the futur too. Just some food for thought

Idea rating: I'd put this into category 2 (or 3). the reason why i'd consider this category 2, is because there will have to be a lvl of trust towards whoever gets into that think tank or evaluations committee. You have to trust that they are doing what is best for the game, which is the one thing this community has a hard time with (just think of the backlash the staff got for implementing a tax hoarding rule or the 5th team promoting change.) The intentions of the BB's have always been good and that imo can't be doubted. However, if you enlargen that group to a largar amount (21 as suggested) you need to be certain that they'll act in the best interest of the game. That means sometimes making very impopular decisions, which is going to be a hard sell. So for me, the biggest difficulty will be to find people to populate that think tank or evaluation committee, which is why this might work in an ideal world, but not in the current BB (hence the reason why it might be a cateogry 3 suggestion).

5) Forum overhaul

curerntly, nearly all the fora are dead. At best, there is some activity in the nations top fora and sporadically, you have some forum warriors (who i immensely respect) who are trying to make something in other divisions, but generally are putting forth a monologue or a 2 person conversation.

Other problem: the current forum is flooded with information & at the same time, it's so fragmented that good threads get lost.

I'm suggesting we implement a new forum structure. 1 forum per nation. (the top division can have their own thread, a thread for the II teams, 1 thread for the III, IV, V teams etc). That way, people won't feel isolated on the fora anymore. We've lost plenty of active people on the fora. However, if you unite them, they should spark activity again. Activity leads to information exchange, which means the entire community will benefit from the activity. It also provides the U21/NT managers which a great way to interact with their communitees.

idea rating: Category 1


I'm going to repeat myself. These are my views, who i've shared & edited after input of valued managers who i believe have the best intentions with the game. This is not a community wide survey. Nor is it meant as an letter to say that the staff is doing shit. This is just my view of the problems that currently plague BB & some potential suggestions (which might not even be the best one out there!) It is my sincere hope that these posts can serve as a starting point to tackle some of the problems this game faces. And with that, the hope that we can see our user number go up again, instead of seeing it dwindle as it has for the past 3 years.

respectfully yours,

Athrun


ps: i'm always open for discussion, be in on the forum or by mails should people not want to make their views public. Given a good point, i'd be happy to edit some of the idea's & i sincerely hope that atleast some suggestions will be taken into account by the BB's. I'm also open to helping figuring out a good algorithm for some of the idea's mentioned above, should be off any help to a BB, but i'll only start doing so after hearing from one (or from an EGM)

Very interesting read with a lot of good thoughts and considerations. I have a few comments to make:

First of all let me just point out that I think the game has improved drastically since the hiring of new staff and the introduction of the development calendar. I don't know whether or not this is reflected in the growth or decline of the userbase though.

a) rewrite your entire Game Manual. it's been outdated. or update the FAQ that was once written by Naker Virus & have the LA's translate that FAQ to the own respective language so that that forum can be linked in the welcome message to new users. This would be a HUGE major update (one that could be penciled in the calender, and one that doesn't require the BB's to work on it! You could leave this to a group of community members, all while you are working on coding solutions for other problems! Although, i do feel somewhat bad for the LA's in this case, because they are going to have to translate an entire new manual, which would be a lot of new work!
b) set up a mentoring program that is wide spread acros the entirety of BB. (but overseeing the correct appointment of mentors and new candidates can very well be a full time job or a part time job for multiple people!

I really like these propositions. I agree that the game manual could use a serious revamp since it doesn't really seem that the latest changes have been fully integrated. About the translation part, that should be possible. Personally, I'd be happy to help even though I'm not an LA.
A new and improved mentorship program would be a huge step in the right direction to keep new users, which I think is one of this game's biggest problems. I'd propose that it would be done as an integrated part of the site instead of "just" a forum thing. Just take a look at hattrick for inspiration!

a) tie TV rights in a country to the results of your U21 & NT. that way, managers and teams get more incentive to be interested in the U21/NT teams and that will demand that whoever is managing them, does his best for the job. Increasing the merchandise wouldn't be a bad thing, However, you want to motivate the entire community. Hence, i suggest that the TV rights should also be influenced by the U21/NT (and not a minor influence, but a serious one.) The reason why i'm not suggesting a change in merchandise, is because i want the merchandise to represent something concering the players on that own team. TV rights are division & nation wide, so let the U21/Nt results factor into those instead of directly

I agree that making NT's more important would increase the overall interaction between users. This being said, I have some concerns about your suggestion. If you tie TV money to NT results it would certainly punish small countries no matter how involved their userbase is. Therefore I don't think that this suggestion would solve the problem, but instead, give an unfair advantage to teams from larger nations who have a much bigger pool of players to pick from. To make this suggestion valid you could do two things:
1) Make sure that the decrease or increase in TV money is influenced only by how the nation performs compared to nations of similar size - there's no way a nation like Denmark could compete with Spain, no matter how engaged we are in the NT.
2) Merge ALL micros and mid-size countries and make an NT for the new merged country and scrap all the old NT's.
Even if this is done I'm still not sure how I feel about this; tieing clubs' income to the success of their NT would make users in a nation dependent upon each other, which could hurt teams' chances to succeed at an international level. We shouldn't have have to depend on our fellow countrymen to be active in order to succeed ourselves.

You both posted some interesting stuff to read!

I am however not a big fan of merging the smaller countries NTs, instead I think BB should start with some small improvements.

I think that if you want to increase the interaction on NTs it would help to make the NT more visible on the website. You really have to search for a link to the tournament your NT is competing in.
So let's start with a couple suggestions to create more awareness for NTs:
First I think the menu needs an extra tab that directly leads you to the World Cup or Continental tournament of the current season.
Next, NT games should be more advertised. For example all players should have an extra clock that’s counting down to the next tournament/qualifier round. When that tournament starts, the clock should be counting down till the next NT game. So similar to the clock for your own games.
Last I think that creating a global forum for the World cup could improve the interaction between players.

These suggestions are intended to make the activity or games of NTs more visible. The next suggestions are to intended to get more people involved.
First, I think if BB would organise a World Cup Prediction just like it exists for B3, more people would follow the games.
Second, why not create a poll in the previous proposed global forum, so that we can vote on the MVP of the tournament, or do it for each country separately. Just like you can vote on how the NT-coach is doing, you could vote for the best player of the campaign of the current season.

Finally, as I already said, do I not believe in the merger of several countries into one. However it is true that more stronger (small) countries would make the games more fun to watch instead of making them predictable. Therefore I would like to suggest a reform of Utopia teams. As they do not have a NT, why not add players from small countries to their draft in the future? Perhaps 1/3 (so 16 per Div) are from countries with less than 15 active users. 2/3 are still utopia players or perhaps another way to divide the draft could be 1/3 utopia 1/3 small countries and 1/3 first team nationality. I think it would give supporters a nice extra feature. Maybe also by adding an extra drafting option ‘e.g. show nationality’. As the draft is random, players with a different nationality could still be dreadful, so supporters are not too much favored and the impact on other non-supporter users isn’t too big. It would simply make smaller countries stronger as they have more players to choose from.
Another suggestion would be to add more good players of those countries on the TL as free agent after the draft. This was suggested here (273519.611). I would however apply it only for small countries and not for all nations.