BuzzerBeater Forums

hey Marin,

first off, thanks for staring another "ask BB day" :)

I just want to say that i would also like "training camps" before a new season like someone suggested,

maybe just free throw and stamina camps? ... that would come in very handy for training young players,

because some are very bad at those two and no one wants to "waste" a week for ST or FT training... :)

Hi is there anything being done to prevent the issues with the site during off season processing? We continue to be told, that it is site instability and that we are responsible for making sure our lineup gets set, but after the craziness that happened last night (generic error page for most of us for several hours) the copy and paste answer of, "I told you before, there is site instability " or "its better than it used to be" just seems unacceptable. I can understand issues while updating leagues and resetting rosters, but that takes place while nothing else is happening other than attempting to buy players for the next season. To have these issues while important league games are being played is extremely frustrating. This time of the season is the most important for buying and selling players and to have the site down is not fair to the seller as there have been players going for way below market value.

Is it possible to just delay the start of meaningful games and until the site instability has been worked out?

Hi Marin, thanks for this oportunity

I want to ask for lost transfer players. If you bid for a player and you lost you can't find this player in the transfer list to see the winner bid, only disapears from the list. It's possible in a near future to implement a notification where you can see your overbid transfer players as it exists in Hattrick? And it could be possible to do the same but with the staff?

Thank you very much.

Just from my own experience, I have noticed a few things that consistently lead to fouls:

1) If your player is outmatched on defense, both outside and inside, but I find it moreso inside.

2) If your player has middle of the road shot blocking, so he attempts a lot of blocks, but isn't that good at them, so fouls a lot.

3) On offense, if your player is a poor passer combined with mediocre to poor driving and handling. This results in a bunch of offense foul calls.

Obviously I'm not a BB (and have less experience than you in the game) but just thought I would share what I have noticed. I have heard talk of a mythical, hidden "aggressive" trait in some players, but I don't think I have come across one yet in my time. If anyone has noticed any different, please add, and if a BB wants to reveal more, please do.

Hello BB-Marin,

I have a question about players salaries... It says that I am spending 76 000 weekly on them, but my player wages are only about 26 000! Why is that so? I simply can not get enough funds to get out of negative income!

Thank you

I have a question related to the new parameters for FA. That's a very good point imo but could you be more specific about these parameters? Can we know the range you use? For example, does a 18 y.old dratee Hall Of Famer with 3k+ salary will arrive automatically on the market or will NT coach have to save him using a slot in the roster as before?

First of all, we don't use salary as a FA parameter at all now, we replaced it with a total skill count. The limit for 18 yo players varies a bit based on player potential, where high potential lowers it (hall of famers and all-time greats needing the lowest skill count). I cannot/don't want to disclose the exact numbers, you'll have to figure that out yourselves. I know this doesn't help NT managers, but with some research and over time, you'll figure it out, I'm sure. Until then, you'll have to continue "saving" the important ones. Also, the fact that there's now even a possibility of having a nice 18yo FA is a big plus for all NTs.

What affects how much personal fouls player will made?

I cannot answer as I'd reveal too much. Other (more experienced) managers might wanna give you a hint

1) Could you please extend the buddy list so it can contain more than 10 users? At least for supporters.

2) How about adding training camps at the beginning of a new season? Idea: Manager can choose between several training camps of different quality (and pay for it, of course) to improve specific skill areas for the whole team. The higher the pay the higher the outcome +/- random factor. In real life, almost all professional basketball teams do stamina training at the beginning of a new season, why not in Buzzerbeater? Same goes to shooting camps to improve jump shot and FT. Of course, only one training camp per season should be allowed. Just an idea...

3) How about adding a Beer smiley?

1) Yes. Now you can have 20. You're welcome
2) Not a bad idea. Most managers train stamina or free throws during the first week anyway, since there aren't enough minutes for normal training, but we'll consider it.
3) Get me a nice, free icon for it, one that suits our current emoticon style, and I'll try to add it when I have some spare time.

I would like to ask you something. In the manual of the game, if i remember well, it says that in low leagues like IV, the playoff winner plus the finalist will get promoted to the next league.

Last season ended, i was the finalist and i didn't get promoted. Could you please explain me the reason?

You don't remember too well It's actually just for division 6 leagues, you're division 4.

when we wiil get an app of buzzerbeater?

Don't hold your breath, but we're preparing for it.

Do you plan to reconsider BLU prevention code so teams with wider rosters dont suffer anymore to compare against teams with just strong starting five?

In short, no. Read my last seasons answer to a similar question here (267318.32).

Are you still considering the idea to develop an app? And what are the plans to advertise the game?

Yes. I cannot discuss specifics about our advertisement here but I can say that we have some ideas. Also, the same thing I said last season still applies. Word of mouth, user reviews and video guides/tutorials (all of which we'll reward with free Supporter!) are still the best way of expanding BB user base.

Will you be building on the BBAPI so that we can develop our own BB Apps? I have done a bit of development for it in the past but the BBAPI is... limited.

Ultimately it would mean more users/supporters of the game; the BB community has already demonstrated that there are people out there who can do the "heavy lifting" for tools/enhancements, but there hasn't been much around that besides some more open data being provided in season's past.

Edit:
What I'm asking for is the ability to set lineups etc (which require more than the access key).

Last edited by lordy at 05/06/2015 08:24:34

1) What is the actual satisfaction about it?

2) What will be the future improvements?

3) Fixing: Will you take care of unrealistics things (subs with 00:00, shoots in same second or 2pts shoot after an oppo shoot with few seconds, actions with more than 24'' used endend with a "lost ball", pattern "lost ball after lost ball [..]..after lost ball" and Others)?

4) Someone speaks about JS improved, but no official speaks in the S31 news. What you can tell about it?

5) GDP: you know it's almost impossible to quantify the "value" of this application (too much parameters has to mantain the same: Roster, instruction, game shape, minutes, tactics...), so, can you tell us if there is a balancement depending on tactics (Ex: External is less efficient than internal, or quick is more than slow pace) or is the same behaviour for every tactic? Another: Focus and Pace have the same value or one is more important than the other?

About APP:
6) what is the state of art?


About Future:
7) What are the areas where the game will improve and what are the areas considered "with no need of development/upgrading"?
8) what suggestion are the devs considering to upgrade in short term?

1) Who's satisfaction, ours? Users'? Yours? We're moderately satisfied with it. It's a great piece of code which is still running after 8 years but it has its problems, of course. We'll try to fix what we can.
2) I cannot disclose anything specifically at this moment.
3) We will try, it's not easy. I cannot promise something I'm uncertain we can do.
4) Nothing. Who's someone? What is he saying?
5) I can't/won't tell you the specifics. You have to figure that out on your own.
6) I guess you're asking where we are with the app? It's still in it's beginnings.
7) and 8) While I answered a similar question last time we did this (267318.42), I will not do it this time around, for the same reasons. Or maybe I will, who knows. I just don't feel like it at the moment.

I would rather ask whether there is a plan to rework the current substitution patterns to give more control to the users and how easy that is to implement. It's also not clear what the difference is between LCD and CPfDC.

I often use Coach Pick from Depth Chart and I'm normally able to contain the minutes by playing my starters as backup, however, sometimes the starter set as backup will start the game nonetheless.

We need varied, reliable and intelligent substitution pattern. Clearly Blanks operated some kind of "optimized" lineup management, we should be given the opportunity to replicate that based on skill rather than the game doing it for us. At the moment the sub options are seriously underwhelming.

We had some ideas but discarded them as being too extreme, unbalancing the whole training minute core of the game. Also, it's never easy to add new things to the GE. LCD should use all of the available players, while CPfDC should only use the ones listed in the depth chart. How this works in practice, I'm uncertain, I have to admit. LCD using players as starters that have not been set as such is a somewhat new thing. We haven't decided yet if it is something we don't like yet. It could be said that it is another difference from CPfDC.

As for "blanks" being a good thing, read my last seasons post here (267318.32).

Hi, creating this thread again is very nice initiative, I hope it will become a standard every season :)
At first, I'd like to second Shadow's idea about preseason camps. That would be very helpful specificially for these people who train young players (BTW I believe that more and more people are going to do this because of present inflation and small number of good players on TL). If you decided to introduce training camps, I'd have some ideas about it, like team spirit, but you must accept this idea in the first place.
#1 Blank lineup prevention code you've introduced allows to set 2 blank lineup positions (even if you select more than 3 players to the match), so people who used that before still have an advantage (40% of advantage) over other managers who are not aware of blank lineup's profits and everything related to this thing. Why couldn't you make it to 0? It would solve a problem for good :)
#2 In last season's news you mentioned about considering changing the home-court advantage for the finals games. Are there any decisions about that?
Thanks in advance :)

Hi is there anything being done to prevent the issues with the site during off season processing? We continue to be told, that it is site instability and that we are responsible for making sure our lineup gets set, but after the craziness that happened last night (generic error page for most of us for several hours) the copy and paste answer of, "I told you before, there is site instability " or "its better than it used to be" just seems unacceptable. I can understand issues while updating leagues and resetting rosters, but that takes place while nothing else is happening other than attempting to buy players for the next season. To have these issues while important league games are being played is extremely frustrating. This time of the season is the most important for buying and selling players and to have the site down is not fair to the seller as there have been players going for way below market value.

Is it possible to just delay the start of meaningful games and until the site instability has been worked out?

What can I say that already hasn't been said? Yes, it's frustrating. No, it can't be fixed or avoided. What happened last night could have been helped, true, by delaying player and staff transfers, but I wasn't awake at the time. It happened at 3:30AM CET, and I cannot help while sleeping. I'll make sure my colleagues reach me next time it happens. As for players going below market values, all I can say, time and time again, is: don't sell for less than you expect as a minimum.
We cannot predict these instabilities, we can only warn about them and we did. We'll do what we can to avoid them in the future but a part of the responsibility for low transfers goes to the sellers which risk their income by trying to get the players in bid wars.

I want to ask for lost transfer players. If you bid for a player and you lost you can't find this player in the transfer list to see the winner bid, only disapears from the list. It's possible in a near future to implement a notification where you can see your overbid transfer players as it exists in Hattrick? And it could be possible to do the same but with the staff?

That's actually a very good suggestion. We'll consider implementing it.

I have a question about players salaries... It says that I am spending 76 000 weekly on them, but my player wages are only about 26 000! Why is that so? I simply can not get enough funds to get out of negative income!

What you are seeing is the player salary floor. It isn't applied for the first 16 weeks so it won't affect you yet, but it's visible so you can prepare for it. Read more about it in the game manual.

Will you be building on the BBAPI so that we can develop our own BB Apps? I have done a bit of development for it in the past but the BBAPI is... limited.

Ultimately it would mean more users/supporters of the game; the BB community has already demonstrated that there are people out there who can do the "heavy lifting" for tools/enhancements, but there hasn't been much around that besides some more open data being provided in season's past.

Edit:
What I'm asking for is the ability to set lineups etc (which require more than the access key).

BBAPI will continue to be developed, but it's just a read only thing, so setting lineups is out of the question. That said, we are considering something similar to BBAPI for the mobile app, which could/would be developed by the community based on a new API which would have "write" capabilities. This is still in preparation phase as there are many questions that need answers before we start any real work but I'm optimistic.