BuzzerBeater Forums

Fan survey should be more like enthusiasm as far as moving around.
Balls start at 3 (average to start the year).

Big win ~ t.i.e. Balls go up maybe +1.
So-so win ~ normal. Balls go up +.5 or stay the same.
So-so loss ~ normal. Balls go down -.5 or stay the same.
Bad loss/upset by weaker team ~ crunch. Balls go down -1.

Stop these huge swings of a narrow win = 5 balls but a narrow loss = 1 ball. It is unrealistic even for an at times unrealistic game.

Last edited by Kumiko (CAN U21) at 12/03/2012 20:09:12

Simply and fast:
Have u considered revaluating of JR and SB? Just simple new salary formula could solve LI dominating=more new game options=more new discovering=more fun etc.?
thanks

you read my thoughts:) I would formulate the question a little differently: have you considered reevaluating the salary or even cap formula for JR and SB, because, like you can see, they are just few managers that train SB and it's a pity...

Thanks!

Hey BB's, first of all, I really liked the Achievements Idea. I am a collector in nature, and sometimes I find collecting flags to be even for fun and challenging than competing. I think you should add some major achievements to be shown on the profile of the teams that get them, something that will show, something to brag about. Maybe it can be a little something special everytime someone makes it through all the achievements in a catagory.

About the price changes, I think it has been overdiscussed before the change, and I dont think any change would be accepted unanimously, as expeted of such a big community.

What I would like to offer, and I'm sure you guys have brought this up more than once, is an Iphone/Android app.
It's not a huge issue in Android really, but in iphone, it's extremely hard to make it so that you can watch a game live.
Flash, as you know, is a no-no in apple, but some companies are able to make it work in certain apps. I've seen it in many apps of big companies, such as the NBA app for example. I would really like to have an app that would make my experiance of BB more mobile. Some people are rarely home and manage a lot of their computer affairs through their smartphones, I think BB should step up to that level.

Draft should be much more benefitial in my eyes, the fact that most teams that invest in their draft get complete and utter scrubs that can hardly be a potential to compete in high levels, make those teams rethink in putting their money there. Some teams even give up the draft for good, I've seen it more times than not. It came to a situation where teams that train young players usually do so as an agenda, giving up being competitive in the process. I dont suggest a complete reform in draft and scouting, just boosting up the probability of a good player with nice potential being picked. Good potential players sometimes go to waste with bot teams or teams that have no use in the player and doesn't know it's value.

I have also brought up a suggestion regarding the cup, and I'll be more than happy if you guys read it, I think it can work out as a great feature, and not too difficult to implement.

(226616.1)

This topic is a great idea, as it is every time you BBs do it. Keeping in touch with the community is really important :)

I have several questions, but I will start with three, hopefully at least one will be answered :P


People working on BB
Everyone remembers (I guess) when you hired 3 people to improve BB. One of them got fired after a while, one has been caught cheating and has been fired as well. I know nothing about the third, probably he's not working with you guys anymore. I'm not blaming, on the contrary I'm saying that that was a great push from the BBs but it was an unlucky situation.
I still think that BB needs more people involved to actually work on improvements, are you planning on "replacing" the 3 people above hiring more people sooner or later?


...that leads to my second question: game engine
I know that the BB engine is really complicated and made of huge amount of coded lines. Because of that it's really hard for anyone to put hands on it, even for BBs. In spite of the situation, though, the game engine needs some tweaks and changes and hasn't been touched for a long time* because of the difficulty involved. Are you planning to do finally something about it? (even hiring people to understand the code and work on it, see question above).
I mean: do you think this is a minor issue? In the italian forums this is seen as the major BB issue at the moment...

(* Yes, it has been touched "lately", adding the isolation tactics that don't work and nobody uses them... but that is another question I will not put in this post :P)


3rd and final question: economy
Right now draft (=luck) is more important than training a player in a proper way. 18yo with potential >MVP are sold at crazy prices. The same 18yo player sold for example at 3M, after some years of good training not only his price is not going over 3M but he's valued maybe 2M or less :-\
Do you think this is a problem? Are you discussing this in your area? Are you planning a change?

Thanks man, I didn't know all that. Good to learn something knew. I supports your conclusion of course.

I like the draft. It is a novelty and it is kind of fun. It just isn't practical. The cost to participate in the draft is an economic drain on a franchise, when typically there are only a couple of marginal talents in the draft. As far as I can tell, a very small percentage of teams even participate in the draft on a yearly basis. To thoroughly evaluate a class it can require upwards of 60 scouting points. If planned well, a team could acquire these points over 2 seasons for around 300k. That's quite a bit of cash for a middle of the pack team to fork over for leftovers. The top talent just goes to the tankers anyway.

Why not allot every team 20 points at the beginning of the season. These 20 scouting points would not carry over as the purchased ones do. You could continue to purchase at a slower pace and save for a season or two if it is in your franchises best interest, but by allotting 20 scouting points to each franchise to start, I think it would encourage more users to participate in the draft. I am totally fine with the number and randomness of the great players coming out of the draft, but the search and Monday morning scouting is always pretty fun.

I understand some will say "just change the cost structure of the scouting points", but the point would be, use em or lose em. I think it would encourage more owners to spend some cash on the draft and explore an aspect of this game that has generally been ignored by a majority of the owners. I don't think the draft needs a total revamp, just some stimulus to encourage participation.

* - By encouraging owners to participate in the draft, it also makes it a little more unlikely tankers get the second or third best prospect in the draft with the top pick in the second round. I believe generally, people do not engage in the draft so there is a moderate chance a tanker gets the top choice, and then gets a prospect that he can sell to recoup some of the cash he spent on obtaining the top talent.

Last edited by Yuck at 12/04/2012 11:28:52

I like the new rules for 5th place, but can you explain the rational behind the 50-50 split in gate revenue for all playoff games. The way I see it, all teams will lose money in the playoffs because you have to spend close to your maximum revenue to make the playoffs in competitive leagues.

The playoffs should be financially rewarding for all. Why not add a bonus to all play off teams to ensure this?

Thanks!

Teams only pay salary when the team plays a competitive match during that week. The first playoff round starts on Tuesday, the second round (conference finals) are played on Saturday. This means that independent of winning the 1st round, playoff teams will have to pay full salary during the first playoff week. As #3 or #4 seeds often lose the first round, many perceived finishing in these positions as being less financially rewarding than not playing playoffs at all (5th), despite long term effects on the fan survey.

In the new system seed #1 will expect to earn about 25% less gate receipts. If #2 or #3 play 1 home and 1 away match they will expect the earn the same amount as in the old system, while #2 earns 25% less if they lose the first match. The #3 and #4 will both expect a 50% increase in gate receipts for both 1 and 2 away matches - assuming about equal arenas income in all scenarios. So, in the new system mainly the #1 is worse off (and in 1 scenario #2), all other teams will either profit or earn the same due to the change.

During the regular season teams usually receive gate receipts once per week, i.e. 100% of the expected revenue. During this first playoff week, again the #1 ranked team will still receive 100% arena revenue if the team wins the 1st match (as compared to 133% in the old system).
We believe the rewards for finishing #1 (and in lesser effect also #2), such as having a higher chance of winning playoff matches due to home court advantage and thus higher title chances, higher promotion chances and a higher chance of playing the second playoff week which gives another week of gate receipts are substantial already.

So in short, we agree with your statement that playoffs should be rewarding for all and since the new system takes a little of the profit of #1 and distributes it to the #3 and #4 so that their risked loss of playing playoffs decreases, we believe that the new system is actually much more in line with your statement than the old one.

I believe this also answers to some other people in this topic that raised about the same question,

Regards,

For me the biggest concerns right now are the depleting number of users and the feeling that there really is no one behind this game and marin is overworked.

I entered the game after some publicity seen on a NBA website, are you going to repeat those publicity campaigns?

BB-Marin gave on suggestions a hint on why the boxscores are late and that some new things could be tried. Is this one of your priorities? It would be nice to keep us updated just to let us know that there is someone behind the game.

We try to manage our advertising budget as effectively as possible. If expensive ads such as the ones on the NBA site are expected to give the required returns we won’t hesitate to advertise on NBA again. Unfortunately the NBA ads ended up being very expensive, and brought in few users per dollar spent compared to other sources. We continually look for new advertising opportunities and are currently advertising on many sites, typically through Google Adwords.

We have tried some chances to the boxscore processing before, some with more success than others and Marin will certainly continue to try optimizing this process. We prioritize the actual simulation of games above the creation of boxscores to limit the game delays, and as a tradeoff we often have to push back the processing of boxscores at our peak hours to not delay upcoming games. We know this is one of the most mentioned problems by the community, and therefore we can assure you we continuously look for solutions, by due to the complex nature of this process it’s hard to keep updating everyone about the made progress.

Finally, most of the concerns you raised about the BB staff have been explained in season 19’s newsitem. Not much has changed ever since, Marin is still doing a tremendous job as our head developer, the founders Charles, Mark and Forrest have careers and jobs outside of BuzzerBeater that effectively prevent them from putting long or regular hours into the game and Edju and I are no programmers ;).