BuzzerBeater Forums

Dear BB-staff,

events in last weeks are really annoying.
And there are 2 main things that annoys me very much:
1) the same problems occur again and again and you looked not to be able to solve the real source of the problems, probably you usualy just clean up the impacts and that's why sooner or later the same problem occurs again,
2) there is very often total luck of communication when some serious bug occurs.
I'm not sure for how long time loyal managers are able to keep on supporting the game if the things are not getting better soon.

Best regards
rwystyrk
one of the most loyal and most successfull managers of Buzzerbeater

Dear rwystyrk,

You know how much I value your opinion. The issues we are having are not caused by our laziness or lack of will. We are simply a small team of developers (of which most are very new to the game). During this period of familiarisation, mistakes have been and will be made. We are only human after all. However, we are doing our best to minimize the problems and fix every bug that is possible. We have been doing a pretty good job so far, but now, a lot of unexpected problems emerged at once, so please try to remember the good times and not only these, troubled ones. Thanks.

BR,
Marin

As I came from the same business I have one (I hope) very usefull advise. Great job without good PR can be consider as very bad job just because of luck of information and communication.
I don't know which way your team is organized and I can't find real issues how to help you without an audit, but for me it looks like no "project manager" is involved. Somebody who doesn't need to work on fixing, but has overview of all tasks in team and can talk to community if it's necessary without any delays.
Do you have any test servers? Or all fixing and new features are released directly to production?

I don't know your position in the team. Maybe my words are addressed more for the owner of the Buzzerbeater, someone who should control whole that business.

I don't know at the moment if our NT qualifies for this Friday European Championship semifinal, but I'm really worry about all the events this Friday. Will be training on time? Will NT coach have enough time to set the lineup according to game shape update on Friday training session? Will be it even possible to set the lineup?

Last edited by rwystyrk at 10/24/2011 11:44:07 AM

I thought that the programmers that bb hired, were supposed to make things better not worse..

In the last 2 weeks we had:
Delays in training updates and economical updates, twice matches didn't start on time, constant training update issues and in general issues that at least I had never encountered before the new programmers take charge of everything. Things are even worse than before at least for me. You should consider rehiring at least...

Familiarization.

Please check my topic in the NT forum, and do something. Thats unaccaptable!

regards

The issues we are having are not caused by our laziness or lack of will.

The lack of communication IS

We hired a project manager, a db expert and a ASP guy. The ASP guy is gone so it's just me there for now. Since they are still new, they don't know all the ropes but are catching up quickly. They are not versed in communicating with our users since they are new to the game, they didn't play it before they got the job. I think they deserve more time.

The lack of communication IS

That is true. Lately, things happened to break while no developer was online. This resulted in things getting worse and the lack of information didn't help either. We are a small team and can't cover the site 24 hours, round the clock, we just don't have the manpower.
When things do break, we always post a MOTD about it and then try to fix it. It's standard procedure. But I can't spend time on responding to bug reports in the bugs forum while I need to be fixing the problem. So, sometimes the bug forum gets flooded and I understand that. I hope, one day we'll be able to react and respond to any emergency promptly, while informing users at the same time. We are working towards that day.

i have one question.

i understand you are only 4 people and this is fair enough. i really understand this.

but when something goes wrong, sometimes it takes many hours before you put up a message. this is not a complaint because i really do understand you cant be around with only 4 people all the time. but it is a fact.

what i wonder is, is it not possible to grant some GMs or other people that are addicted to the game and that are around during times most problems seem to pop up, the ability to post a message that they are aware off the problem and that people are working on it.

i think this would make it for a lot off people alot more acceptable.

i have one question.

i understand you are only 4 people and this is fair enough. i really understand this.

but when something goes wrong, sometimes it takes many hours before you put up a message. this is not a complaint because i really do understand you cant be around with only 4 people all the time. but it is a fact.

what i wonder is, is it not possible to grant some GMs or other people that are addicted to the game and that are around during times most problems seem to pop up, the ability to post a message that they are aware off the problem and that people are working on it.

i think this would make it for a lot off people alot more acceptable.

this seems like a good idea. the forums may be less spammed this way, which i for one, hate a lot. You probably only need like 4-5 people in different time zones, mb even less