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Just a small suggestion, that might have bigger implications...

If you want modify the engine and revamp shotblocking, you might as well add the fastbreak to the game. Imo a great shotblocker could initiate a fastbreak (blocked shot in direction of teammate), while a mediocre shotblocker swats the ball out of bounds. So, high shotblocking equals block + posession, bad shotblocking equals block + opponent regains posession.

FCP would finally make some sense in a fastbreak offense too.

Fastbreaks are totally random in my opinion. You might as well find games where almost every shot was taken in the last few seconds of the shot clock running down.

Steals need some tuning as well, too often you see those steal - resteal events, with the clock being stuck.

some cents from the marketing view:

first of all, nice to see that bb is alive..thanks marin

second, dont think bb will generate more users with changing the engine from b to d and back to a to please maybe 100 bb nerds max!!

bb is living in a trailerpark and we discuss if we need a 56 or 59 flatscreen in our garbage...the whole layout is so oldfashion and childish!!, its embarrising :p smartphones r the future, if bb didnt jump into that train, the bb time is limited anyway ( no matter how many times marin is changing the engine for u guys )

just sayin..no offense

second, dont think bb will generate more users with changing the engine

I don't know why you are telling me all this, however you should realize that BBs biggest problem right now is keeping all its users, since they are walking away from the game for whatever reasons.

One of those might be the LI dominance, so a change to fix this issue might as well help stabilizing or even growing the userbase.

I don't know why you are telling me all this, however you should realize that BBs biggest problem right now is keeping all its users, since they are walking away from the game for whatever reasons.

No game keeps its users. When you look at the statistics of any game, you always find a huge churn rate, so the main objective for game designers has to be to attract new players instead of retaining old ones.
Of course, BB is a bit different because it requires years of playing until somebody can be really successful, but that's probably one of its problems. Many players just don't want to play this kind of game.

Last edited by DerMef at 3/6/2013 6:30:21 AM

I remember one of the BB saying the game engine treated the court and each end of the floor as separate half-court sets, where skills and matchups determine probability of score and/or possession of the ball.

One improvement would be to have two separate parameters for transition basketball that would go like this:

Defensive Rebouding / Neutral / Transition Offense (leak out)
Transition Defense / Neutral / Offensive Rebounding (crash the boards)

From what I gather, this should be fairly straight forward to implement without messing things up with game balance.

Are there any plans to incorporate the role open-court situations in the game engine?

Many players just don't want to play this kind of game.

So BB's "niche" is a long and complex game, right? There will always be those who want to turn BB into just another mainstream internet game. There are games with hugh churn rate, as you said, and there are games for smaller number of loyal users. The latter are in minority, so each one deserves to be preserved.

I had the same experience with another game, Magic: The Gathering, which I had been playing for 12-13 years. Learning curve is very high, but the complexity of strategies is stunning and so is the game. However, when Magic's owners (Wizards of the Coast) was bought by Hasbro 7-8 years ago, they wanted to bring as many new people to the game as possible by dumbing down the rules and adding more luck factor to the game. What happened? They got more people into the game, but they drove away a lot of vets too, myself included.

I understand their reasons, I really do. I just don't like it. Ditto for BB: I understand if the game dumbs down and becomes flashy. I just wouldn't like it. And for that reason, I kinda like the fact that main developers (Charles & co) don't dedicate much of their time to BB. If they did, maybe they would dumb it down for the sake of new users...

Last edited by Koperboy at 3/6/2013 8:12:50 AM

Many players just don't want to play this kind of game.

Why not? Besides, many other online managerial games, like Hatrick, require also many years of patience to be really successful. In this context, I really see nothing wrong with BB.

I definitely think that the changes in GE will change BB for good. We won't have a tactical domination which in turn will bring more curiosity to try out new tactics, new players, new strategy to build a team, and in my opinion, all this movement will also bring new users to the game, and also make old users like me to stick for some other time with the game.

Last edited by MetallicA at 3/6/2013 8:08:43 AM

Why not?

Don't ask me, I've been playing this game for 4 and a half years.
There are people like me who can stay with a game for a long time, but the fact is that many people just aren't interested in a game that starts very slowly and needs time and effort to make you feel like you're actually doing something.
It's not a bad thing of course, there's a market for everything, but don't expect BB to be the most popular game on the internet...

We won't have a tactical domination

There will always be one tactic/type of team composition that is superior to others. You can't avoid that.
What you can do is either to bring all tactics/team compositions as close to each other as possible in terms of actual success or to make tactics more into a rock-paper-scissors game, which has merits of its own but isn't 100% suitable for a game where you have a limited roster of players to work with.