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there are "fans" in Florida? :-P

Notice that there is no sign of the "game day prep" options for the first league game of the season.

What should we make of this?

there are "fans" in Florida? :-P

Notice that there is no sign of the "game day prep" options for the first league game of the season.

What should we make of this?

It's probably related to the processing going on now that's preventing people from setting lineups.

And there are certainly fans in Florida, though with so many other things to do here, it's no surprise that unless a team is the hot thing, people would rather just go out to the beach or play golf or boat or whatever. I'm just glad it cooled down a little finally for Christmas, since 82 degrees (about 28 C for the metric folks) is just unfair for winter.

I've followed this topic for quite some time now and I think that there are a lot of good suggestions made by some managers. I doubted for some time to drop my ideas -because I don't see a change that any idea spreaded in this topic is going to make it to the developpers- but I've still decided to give it a shot.

Promotion
* Get basketballwebsites all around the world involved
Advertising cost a lot of money to promote BB to the public. A free alternative for this is creating cooperations with differest basketball(news)sites arount the world. Create a slider with newsitems and give these websites the space to get their news in this sliders, in return these websites have to put a e.g. a BB-banner at their website.

Game development
* Mobile app
Almost everyone uses a smartphone or tablet these days. A mobile app can create so much user friendliness, but it can also make money or keep mananger involved with the game. A free app (with advertising on it and not all features enabled) can make money for BB by adversting revenues, while a 'Pro version' of the app (can be bought for a few dollars and gives access to the whole app -advertising free-) makes money of sales. The app could also alert managers when a match begins, a match has ended, remind the manager when he/she hasn't been active for X days etc.

* Add an extra match per week
One of the largest discussions in this topic is adding extra games per week to BB. I personally think it is a good idea to add one extra game per week. (On the day with the least server intensity). This could either be the idea of a Division Cup or a Regional cup. Adding this feauture can give managers who play a season 'for the show' (with no changes of getting far in the national cup or play-offs) an opportunity at playing games with some tension .

* New teams in the lowest division
An idea I read a couple of times in this topic. Can't miss in my post, doesn't need much explanation I think...

Revenues
* Upgrade the Supporter-feature
Make the Supporter-feature more interesting for managers, make them feel like paying is giving them a better game experience, though it may not affect the change to win a game etc. Here's a small list of Supporter-features I think make it more attractive to buy Supporter:
- Choosing teamcolours
- Choosing teamclothes
- Having a 'second' team, that competes in a special youth competition.This would give Supporters the chance to see how good their young players (U21? U23? U25?) are compared to other Supporters. This last idea needs a lot of detailling, but might be an interesting feature...
- ...

Hope my post is a positive addition to this topic,
Stefan

Relatively new user here. Love the game, but I almost dropped out my first season when I was put into a league with mostly bots and/or neglected teams. I signed up for a basketball manager game to play against other real humans, and basically had to wait three months to promote to even really figure out what the game was all about. I decided to stick it out until I promoted to a more competitive league (which I am very glad I did) but a person with less patience than me might not have even started.

Besides the obvious of getting more people to sign up, it would be interesting to see the percentage of users who stick around when they get put in a competitive league vs a user put into a neglected league.

Lastly, most of the forum advice seems to focus on training which really delays the excitement of trying to build the best team possible. The transfer market is definitely the most fun and interactive part of the game, in my opinion, and if more people stressed working the transfer market, rather than training, new users might get more immediate satisfaction and incentive to stick around.

Anyway, just thought I would give my perspective coming from someone who just recently started playing.

Appreciate the response. That is why I tried to refrain from making any blanket statements about what is best, and just kept it to my opinion and experience. The idea of allowing new users some choice about what level league to join sounds like a really good idea, and an easy fix for new users who get turned off by playing vs bots or a new user who gets turned off by jumping right into a league over their head.

Regarding transfer market vs training, I definitely see opinions on all sides. And I might focus more on training down the line just to mix things up, but I have to say that I give the highest marks of the entire game on the transfer market. I am quite pleasantly surprised with how well run, always active and rational bidding and values on players depending on salary, skills, age and how far into the season you decide to buy/sell. And I have yet to see any extreme abnormalities in price which is kind of hard to believe. Again, by far the most impressive part of the game.

That's a good suggestion, ask the new comer where to start. Low league or higher league without bots.

Also, thinking about how to make the draft better and keeping new players on board. How about implementing a rare 17 year old in the draft or giving a 17 year old to new teams. Doesn't have to be Lebron James type of skills but it does give a how extra year to train before age become a factor. Just a thought though.

Possibly sending new members messages about how to train their players with a focus instead of training scrubs for a few weeks before buying a young player that is over priced and not worth the effort to train.

Suggestion A - limit the maximum amount of stamina for older players to a certain rating, with very few of them being able to have more (similar to foul prone players). Or, and this is extreme, implement stamina drops twice per season for older players. Age in both cases is debatable. Maybe game shape pops should also depend on the level of the coach, so that managers who prefer old rosters would have to keep higher level coaches.

Suggestion B - This also addresses the tactics' issue. Make old players, even if they are experienced, less effective when using high paced tactics, but more effective when using slow paced ones. This seems logical to me.
And/or iif high paced tactics are used often, game shape of older players should be limited to a certain amount even when training game shape.

Hopefully the demand for younger players would grow afterwards. While the second suggestion would bring into use more tactics. I feel that tactics are the biggest issue which should be addressed first. Does anyone even use isolation tactics, what are they for anyways?

Very interesting ideas you mentioned there imho. Paul Pierce came to my mind while reading this. Although he was the go to guy in Bosten he definitely lost some steps in the last few years. :)

No doubt. I figured out pretty quickly that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, year after year, to train a guy was not even close to worth it when I could just go out and spend a few hundred thousand on an already made player. The older players don't drop in skill (or stamina) nearly enough for it balance out the high, high price of training or the inflated prices for younger players. I have only played in the lower divisions though, so maybe that calculation changes in upper leagues, but by the looks of the comments, it doesn't seem like it. Saying all that, I'm not trying to disparage the game because I'm still having a blast working the transfer market.