BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

Can we expect to see the Season 23 news update soon? I, like many I'd think, am awaiting the proposed changes in the engine before making any purchases.

I thought that I read a post from one of the BBs that said it would be tested in scrimmages after the allstar break and then MAYBE implemented in season 24. I was under the assumption that season 23 would be run with the same GE as last season. It's in this thread somewhere.

I have a question. In seasons past there was a price reduction on the high salary players. I remember there was a 5% reduction a couple of season ago. It seemed like it took place the day after the new salaries were out. I had a player making 313K a week and then it dropped to 298K a day later.(2 seasons ago)
My question...It there a reduction this season?

Any purchases I make now should be on my team for 3-4 seasons at least; even if they are on for just 1 season, it will affect their resale value next season. Even if they don't reveal the particulars, unless you are suggesting that none of the information they provide will help guide decisions teams make, it will help form the decision of how I want to construct my team.