BuzzerBeater Forums

I think by 2nd suggestion you were talking about my suggestion of starting the new countries out with 4 divisions, and placing all teams in D.IV during season 1, and then at the end of the season filling up D.1, D.2, D.3 based on their performance in their first season. If you'd like, you could think this as a bunch of amateur clubs trying out for placement in a professional pyramid.

So there are several things that can happen:

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We can get enough teams to fill at least 3 divisions (336+). So we fill all 3 divisions. The 16 very best teams in D.IV will go to D.I (best here could mean the 16 playoff champions with the best regular season record). The next 64 would go to D.II, based on some ranking scheme, and the next 256 would go into D.III. Assignment would take into account the rankings so the leagues have about the same overall quality, with some teams that just missed D.II and others that barely made it into the top 336.

This will probably leave D.IV decimated. If we had 400 teams still active, that is only 64 left in D.IV, widely scattered among leagues. I'd consolidate them all into a few leagues.

From then on, promotion and relegation would work like normal. If you deliberately relegate all bots, there will be a fairly easy opportunity to promote into D.III at least until D.IV is more completely filled.

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We can only fill D.I and D.II and some of D.III (80-336). In filling D.III we can either fill some leagues completely, or all leagues somwhat completely. My preference would be to fill as many leagues as possible, as consistently full as possible. So you will have some leagues with 16 bots. At the end of season 2, those 16xN bots will be treated just the same as the teams that drop out in Season 2. There will be additional promotions from D.IV to fill these leagues and open spots if possible.

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We can only fill D.I and some of D.III (0-80). There are a couple of choices. One would be to simply move the teams to D.i and D.II and removing (or temporarily deactivating) D.IV, and treating D.III as the top division. This way you don't have to guess which countries will take off, and which will languish.

Or we can continue to use D.IV and repeat the procedure at the end of season 2 and following season. First there should be promotion from D.II to replace any bots in D.I, and then start filling up the holes in D.II, and go on to D.III as necessary.

I believe this 'problem' might solve itself over time. Once more players will start playing the game (and they will ;) )
there will be many divisions, and when new players are added to the lowest divisions, it won't be so bad if they are entering above or below other teams, since the way to the top is still far ahead.

Now, when a new team hits the top of second division, he gets a shot directly at the top, while a players who's in for a longer time, has to wait for at least an other season...

In the end, the better teams will show on top... so even if it seems unfair, and maybe it IS, it shouldn't be a problem, since if the new manager is not as good as you, you will catch up on him... If he is,... well, then he doesn't realy deserve to start out lower than managers who aren't better either does he...

All I'm saying is, where-ever a players starts out, after a while, he'll get where he belongs.

Ofcourse I've seen some good sugestions, and I would support them too, but I'm not sure if the extra work to get these things set up would be worth the few seasons it might take to have players evolve to the ranking they are supposed to have. After all games like these are ment to be very long termed.

In a 1:4 pyramid, 3/4 of the teams are in the lowest division. So if you put a team in the 2nd from the bottom, you are putting them among the top 25%. They may become frustrated by losing almost all the time. If they quit, they will get replaced by someone else that won't be competitive plus may start off with a losing record.

And if you place teams in the 2nd bottom division they may end up relegating into a league that is all bots. If the US were to fill up its D.IV (around 1300 teams) and had 1 team in D.V (they could even be an 8th place team in D.V), around 1/5 of US teams would be relegated into a league where they were the only team.

A team with 16 active owners is likely to have more rivalry and competitions that a league with any number less than 16. Keeping the leagues full of active owners can be done, with dropouts removed at the end of each season, and promotion being awarded to those that earned it by being competitive.

well, I must agree that it would be nice if real (human) players would not drop a division if this means that a bot comes in it's place.
Bots should go down all the time, or in the worst case stay, never get up.

I'm not sure this is easely done though.

If it's not to much trouble, a check-up can be run right after regulary season, to put all bots in a league at the bottom of that leage. This way, the 'real' teams get to play the play offs, and this will be, as you said, more interesting competition for all.
By simply putting this move in it should have all the effects we all want.
Real players stay, will have the best opportunities they can get in their league, and bots are pushed down.

However I'm still not sure how to solve the problem of people who might slip in during the season, getting a higher ranked team in the leage, unless the staff won't fill these higher placed spots up. But this goes in agains the theory of most interesting possible competition, since keeping a bot in a league will always be less competitive to replacing him with a real player I think...

An other thing is that a bot team isn't a bot team right away, a player who quits mostly won't tell everyone, so his team will be ownerless for a while before it becomes a real bot, but in the meantime it is acting like a bot, or even worse...

a lot of long posts on this topic. I will readily admit I did not wade through all of jimrtex's posts, but I think at some point, it would be nice if all the bots were moved to the lower divisions and then the new teams get added to the lowest division with bots, replacing them steadily.....
then, when users leave, and their teams become bots, reset their lineups with scrubs, let them play their way down, making sure they don't have illegal lineups, causing forfeits----;) and all is right with the world!!!

If new teams are placed in the lowest division, and steadily added across the division you will have new teams that were added within days if not minutes of each other. They could all be started out with a 0-0 record. Even though their initial season is short, it is better than placing 16 new teams in a division, and giving one team 16 wins and another 3 based on the performance of some bot before they arrived.

In each league, there will be some who who really get into the game, some who play a few weeks and stop logginng in, some who look at one game, and some who won't even log in after they sign up. Those who aren't active will tend to slide to the bottom of the standings, and once they go long enough, they can be made a bot and slid to the bottom of the standings.

If BB gets to the final league in the bottom division, they can start over at the first league in the division. By that time there should be a large number of teams that will have become inactive. And then BB can then replace them all within a few days of each other, with 0-0 records. They wild simply form a 2nd group of teams behind the veterans. All teams wouild then start the next season 0-0.

If a team goes bot during the playoffs, there is not too much you can do about it. If they happen to win the league, you can not promote them. And there can be rare cases where a replacement team might win the the championship team and promote, but that will be relatively rare.