BuzzerBeater Forums

Since everyone is reposting here, this is what I replied to Gil in the suggestions forum:

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I somewhat agree with you and I am for anything that allows more teams to participate in international tournaments. In fact, I personally think that almost every team in BB should be entered in some kind of international tournament every season.

I would start by getting rid of the domestic cup or replacing it with a tournament that is less lucrative and played in arcade mode. Why? You know that any change would have to be revenue neutral. So if you add more meaningful international games, you have to take the money out of the game somewhere.

Second, get rid of the B3. It is the grey poupon of BB and is out of touch for everyone except the top end users.

Then, add international tournaments. It is a worldwide game. Why do 99.9% of the club games get played at the domestic level? And unless you play the game for a long time or come from a small country, your chances of playing in a meaningful international competition are zero in the current format (no, scrimmages are not meaningful competition in my books, and you cannot play in a PL unless you have supporter).

As for what format the new tournament(s) will take, I will leave that open (for now, although I do have ideas). But with 14 weeks in a BB season, 16384 teams could play in an elimination tournament. That would be a good place to start. And now that there is a world ranking, that certainly could be one element in determining who gets into the tournament. Or maybe the only element?

Anyhow, just my personal feelings.

Maybe this is too simple an answer. Wouldn't a Salary Cap take care of the issue of teams "Loading Up" to win either Cup or B3? No team carries more than say $650k for arguments sake. Therefore they would have to sell before they could buy.
I know there is a reason why this isn't that easy as this isn't the most amazing idea, that no one else could have thought of.

The actual problem of B3 it's the fact that there are still a lot of uncompetitive teams in the competition,I don't think that adding a lot of teams in the competition will improve it...

I put in database the list of all the countries in BuzzerBeater and the number of users for each country. Total of 50822 users are online. That means if 16834 users will be part of worldwide competition, 33% of the total users would be able to compete as part of it. So you look at a country like Spain with 5462 users, 33% of it is 1809 users. League I has 16, II has 64, III has 256, IV has 1024, and V has 4096. So you have all the I,II,III, IV qualify that's 1360 users right there. If you take take all those that made the finals in div V that's 512 in addition to 1360 users that's 1872. You won't always get a number that's more or less than the % indicates, but maybe if you get more technical about it then you tweak a way to exactly get the best 1809 teams rather than have complaints about some countries have more/less users than the % which I know would happen.

The smallest country which is Barbados has 3 users, 33% of that is 1 users and that makes it so even in the smallest country of all countries, the uneven issue that B3 currently has won't be a problem in this.

Guys before you may have any objections to this, first of all think how much wonders and fun it would do for you and new users to have something like this that really makes anyone who even just joined BB have a shot at being part of the worldwide competition. Disagreements is perfectly fine, but i think some of you who disagree would really like this alot if it was made, so say it if you may in a way that's not discouraging or opposing from this awesomeness of being possible

When I joined in I thought everyone were playing worldwide and I thought it was super cool, then I learned about B3 and how you have to be the best and wait very long time to just have a chance to be part of it and I was disappointed. I'm all supportive for this proposal, it means that say they did do that world competition, I actually have a chance at participating in it next season. I think new users would love it (as myself) that they got a chance at being part of it. Great Idea!

The biggest problem I see is that team 16385 would be at a massive cash advantage to team 16384 if that is indeed how many get into each tournament.

First, a key to what I am saying is that the 1st step is to get 16384 teams involved. As I said, I think all teams (or almost all) should be involved. How do you do this? Well, suggest some ideas.

But if you want one example, I played another online game where there was a top tournament (for the top 16384 teams) and then feeder tournaments for the remaining teams. You make less or no money in the feeder tournaments but you improve your world ranking so you can qualify for the top tournament the next season. The top teams in each tournament get seeded so they have no chance of playing each other until later rounds. But other than that, the draw is random.

You mentioned the disadvantage of the 16385th team, but that is offset by getting a very high seed in the feeder tournament, you can almost certainly go far and probably get seeded the next season in the top tournament.

Anyhow, just one approach. I am sure there are others.

Also, one thing I liked about the approach that I mentioned is that it made the world ranking more accurate. The current world ranking is seriously flawed... And of course one of the flaws to it is that most teams do not play in any international competitions that can have a meaningful impact on their world rankings. Scrimmages may have some very small impact but other than that, unless you play in the B3, all it does is give some indication of how you stack up within your country (and even then, it does a pretty poor job, as promoting teams get the biggest advantage).

My other beef with the current world ranking is the following: in its current format, it is not relevant (by that, I mean not up-to-date). That's because the ranking relies too much on past data. So you can see weird results where an 0-22 team that exited the cup in the first round has the #8 ranking in a country.

The actual problem of B3 it's the fact that there are still a lot of uncompetitive teams in the competition,I don't think that adding a lot of teams in the competition will improve it...

I think that could easily be changed by having teams qualify based on world ranking. And then having a world ranking that is indeed a world ranking. What I mean by that is, one that is more influenced by international competition rather than domestic.

Last edited by HeadPaperPusher at 1/5/2011 1:29:10 PM

The actual problem of B3 it's the fact that there are still a lot of uncompetitive teams in the competition,I don't think that adding a lot of teams in the competition will improve it...

I think that could easily be changed by having teams qualify based on world ranking. And then having a world ranking that is indeed a world ranking. What I mean by that is, one that is more influenced by international competition rather than domestic.

I think that could be easily do a first round among the worst teams qualified in BB to eliminate the less competitive teams in the teams and then start the final phase with the best 64 teams in the competition