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Hi Patje, I think nobody can blame BBs to continue to test the GE in the friendly matches cause I'm here since season 2 and till season 24 the only one tactic useful if you want to win something has been LI. There are 10 different ways to play but again, only 1 is the real option if you wanna be competitive. When do you think we could see a balance among all the tactics we've available?

A new feature related to tactics will be introduced for testing next season's ASB, planned to enter competition in season 26. I believe that feature (along with the change made last and this season) will again bring us closer to a balance in tactics. The feature will be explained a bit in the season 25 news item - which to answer the other questions is traditionally posted after all offseason computations are ready. The idea there is, whenever you see the news item you'll know offseason processing is finished.

But again, predicting tactical balance is very hard since you cannot predict manager's behaviour. Personally, I still don't actually believe there was something wrong with the initial game design (and yes, I do know this is an easy argument ;)), even though we made some changes to this design last and this season. Sometimes consumers just use a product in a different way than expected. This doesn't necessarily mean the product was broken, but it could mean the product benefits from a change.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 9/20/2013 9:50:45 AM

Thanks a lot, btw no needs to introduced 2 new tactics some season ago if we can't use its; there are only 2 options, if these tactics have the same chance to win in the GE I would suggest an investment in comunication helping us to find a way to use its, otherwise yes, it will be great to have more options. More fun for us, more people and more money for you :p

And RnG may well become a stong tactic again, at the very least it is in my opinion the most ENTERTAINING tactic. It can also be the most exasperating.

Hi Patje, I think nobody can blame BBs to continue to test the GE in the friendly matches cause I'm here since season 2 and till season 24 the only one tactic useful if you want to win something has been LI. There are 10 different ways to play but again, only 1 is the real option if you wanna be competitive. When do you think we could see a balance among all the tactics we've available?

I disagree. At one point RaG was a strong tactic and there was voices to tone down his efficiency. What's true is that LI dominant for too long now (at least 10 seasons, time flies), but it has not been always the case.

Respecting your personal opinion, I trained outside since 8 seasons ago and r&g and always no way to be competitive against LI. What I remember very well was the bug that affected r&g till season 10 or so that wasted my time and effort to create a "better" team.
Btw now excluding personal opinion every time I see NT, u21 or BBB matches the 99% of the time LI is the choice

Wasnt that about the time they increased OD, which led to further imbalances in the game which they are now working on addressing?

So far in BB, the success of a tactic has depended more on the salary formula than the match engine.
When the formula wasn't well known yet, the players that got built were mostly standard big men and standard guards. In this situation, the guards will typically be stronger per $ of salary than the big men.
Thus, R&G was the most popular tactic of that time.

Then salary calculators became widely used and people started to realize that going for cheap driving and inside focused guards is the most efficient way to build a team.
The discoveries of elastic training and the might of the SF/PF1v1 training further encouraged people to build a type of player who is cheap, yet very good with inside tactics.
Thus, look inside became the most successful tactic.

The ways to change that that I see are:

1) Change the salary formula: That one is limited to smaller changes and is being tried now, but will probably not be enough. For me, one of the biggest problem in the game is a salary formula issue: SFs that make 70k but are as important for their team as 300k bigmen. Unfortunately, since this would cause a huge shock to the economy, it can probably not be fixed (although it might be possible with a corresponding increase in average income).

2) Better adaptation of the match engine to the salary formula: Reduce the effectiveness of player builds that are cheap yet very strong in a match, e.g. guards with high defense and inside shot but low range/passing -> make them easier to defend for an opponent, due to their one-dimensional skillset.

3) Make certain defenses better counters against certain offenses: A 2-3 zone is employed against driving in real life, it shouldn't allow so many easy driving shots in the match engine. The problem with that is that it could lead to too much rock-paper-scissors, which doesn't sound good for BB.

But maybe they found another way, we'll see in the news post. Which I have, btw, hoped to come earlier, since I bought a new team during the off-season and planned training for a draftee. That might all turn out to be less-than-ideal depending on the news to come.

IIRC, which is very possible to be wrong, they upped the affect of OD in season 8 or so, and by season 12 or 13 some teams had started building in tons of OD and were dominating outside teams. The signs were there awhile ago. My buddy who started in season 1 quit not too much later cause his outside team was suddenly neutralized.