BuzzerBeater Forums

has absolutely no clue about necessary development (app) and fails when it comes to understanding problems and finding (easy) solutions.

You think that BBs are not in place to know what the game needs? You think that they don't know that an app for Android and iOS it's something the game needs? The problem once again is the finances of the game and this is something they know better than me and you.

Blablabla finances, the same old story... Really? Are businessmen that dumb? In order to make money, you have to spend money - and even if you don't want to spend like 500-1000 bucks, you could still hire a student to code an app as a part of his bachelor/diploma thesis. I even think they could crowdfund the app (suggested years ago!), if in return they gave away something special to the people funding the app.

Problem is BB-guys are sicentists or whatever, but when it comes to business decisions, marketing and strategic planning they fail miserably.

What about site redesigning? Or at least adding some little things like logos and uniforms. Give users to pick between several basic uniform designs and choose colors. Make fancy things available to supporters.

Also, change the default skin to red. Others are just eye-hurting.

As i said before,the game has indeed problems and in many cases not small ones but they are trying to fix them even if sometimes it takes more time.

Whilst it would be nice to have quicker fixes to problems like the LI dominance, I think that fixes cant be quick knee Jerk solutions, but instead be flagged in advance and then eased in as is planned.

Imagine how much time and effort people have spent developing or buying players to suit the current game engine, to drastically change the game engine with out warning over night would be a real kick in the guts to the people who have adapted to the way the current game engine plays.

Surveying those who drop out and also random demographic sections of the Managers as I proposed a few posts back in this very thread wouldnt cost anything and could identify the real problems so that what resources could be spent, could be better prioritised.

You think that this game created and running with air?

Im very appreciative of all the great work they have done to make this game as good as it is

You think that they didn't do that already?

Who is "they"? BB-Marin is pretty active and we have to appreciate his effort, BB-Patrick shows up once every two seasons, the other BBs show up once every four years, if the did not went bot in the meanwhile.

And no, I don't think they care a lot. If they did, they'd be active to a certain degree - I once again remind you that one of the BBs went bot! That alone is a pretty strong indicator of how things are going.

We will hit less than 30k users by the end of the year, to me it appears that the roof is on fire...

I suppose you mean Forrest. It's not a secret that Forrest is no longer part of the BB-team since 12-13 season. His name is on BB list due to the fact that he was one of the creators so this is not at all a strong indicator of how things are going.

No, I meant Charles. If you see developers quit and the userbase shrink to almost 50% from its peak, the conclusion is pretty obvious. We only can judge by what we see. If they are super busy in the background they should at least tell us about it.

Take the GDP for example: nobody knew it was coming, nobody knows how it works, we can barely test it (what will a handful of scrimmages, with non-competitive lineups show anyway) and I guess nobody will be told how it will work either. So its the usual guessing that drives away more and more users.

And thats just the same old story for all the changes we experienced. Blocking is improved, 2-3 works, LI is weaker - you can believe it or not. The guys that were into researching those details are long gone or gave up...

Last edited by Knecht at 11/29/2013 4:00:26 AM

We are all for it. Doesn't mean it can be created from thin air. BBs are highly protective (too much possibly) of their code and they also can't easily pay people to do a nice app If an easy solution to have an app could be reached, it would exist. Offering total access to the code to a student has implications people seem to overlook, albeit the possible advantages of free work.

that is the reason you let the person sign a contract...thousands of companies around the globe do it, they call it outsourcing. in combination with a student they even call it "bachelor- or master thesis".
honestly, I do not want to sound like I have a better idea about how to run a browser game, i certainly do not!
but there are many ways to reach a goal and in this case, I do not see an unsolvable problem imho.

nevertheless I appreciate everything the BBs do to develop the game, that is the reason I bought the supporter. in the end it is a fun game, I just hope it stays that way and in a year or two I will not be the only one playing. :)

My 2c on how to increase the userbase with active users. I'm recycling a lot of others great ideas, plus some of my own.

Part I - New users signing up
A. Attract new users to sign up.
-Create an app, put it on app stores. Tons of exposure. Tons of new sign-ups. Yes, creating an app is not something you want to execute poorly. But thousands of companies are able to pull this off every month. I don't have the know-how, so if it was my business, I'd get some proposals from app developers or app consultants. Find out the cost. Have the developer or grad student that's hired sign a non disclosure agreement. Mobile is not the future, it's the now.
-Targeted advertising (Google Adwords, basketball websites, gamer websites, etc)
-Search Engine Optimization so BB comes up higher on searches. A previous user wrote a great post about this earlier about how BuzzerBeater comes up very low on related searches, sometimes not even the first page of results, even though it's the best basketball manager game out there.
-Targeted outreach. I'd venture that people who like this game the most are interested in basketball, economics, analytics, and/or manager games. Send some emails out to university economics clubs, game clubs, statistics clubs, etc. Some university students will love this game, and tell their friends.

B. Make the game enjoyable for new users, so they stick around and don't think it's futile.
- Activate new teams as soon as possible. Within an hour or two. I'm not sure how this works currently, but any lag in activation clearly risks losing new users. The best websites give you immediate access. I know we're worried about cheaters, so maybe allow new signups to have their team without any ability to sell/buy players for the first 24-48 hours of activation (until original human user is verified).
- At least one 19yo or younger all-star potential or higher on everyone's first roster. Others have commented on this. Great idea. You'll feel pride of ownership over one of your original players.
- More draft points for your first team. 10 points (or however many you get when you sign up), is not enough to intelligently scout enough players. You probably need 20+.
- All new sign-ups go into the lowest division possible in their country into a division that max gets filled half with human teams and the other half bot. That means that once a newbee division has 8 human players, there will also be 8 bots in that division. The next new team signing up goes into a different division. That'll allow new users the experience to learn a little playing against other newbies, and some fluff games playing bots for training, mistakes, etc. It'll also make promotion (a rewarding experience) that much more achievable for a new team.

Tons of great points here by everyone keep them going we all want to support this great game.

1) Better start for new teams = more new teams stay. This can be done by:
a) always starting new teams in the lowest possible league in a nation
b) give every new team one good (not amazing) trainee and two decent ones. They don't need a $6k HoFer but an 18-19 year old $3k perennial allstar is good enough to train without being worth a fortune.
c) give new teams a lot of scouting points, 10 is nice 30 is better. That gives group demonstration, scouting combine and 5 interviews. Still a lot of hit and miss.
d) Instant activation is also a good idea

2) Improve the draft.
I have been saying this for ages. Drafting and training your own player is one of the key things so many managers want to do but the horrible median of the draft makes it worthless. People say that if you raise the average everyone will want more but that is not true. You cannot turn a 19 year old $2k benchwarmer into anything useful ever. But while an 18 year old $3k all star may have a market value of $1 you can actually turn him into a useful player.

3) Improve the tactical diversity.
I hope the GDP proves to be massive, really massive like a 20% boost if you get both right. Direwolf is correct right now the majority of managers just play LI/M2M every single game and there is no reason to even consider anything else.