BuzzerBeater Forums

i'm one of those that think that the quality of top prospects in draft pools is too much different from one pool to another.
i understand what random means and i'm not bitching: i just happen to have a different idea than yours.

There were around 100 All-time great talents placed on human teams in the draft this year amongst 14778 leagues. Even if things were spread out as evenly as possible, fewer than half of the leagues could receive a player better than superstar.

I understand the desire to equalize draft pools. There might be some debate as to whether it's a good thing to do, but regardless I don't think I see a way it might be accomplished. What would you suggest be done?

If those are the numbers, then there isn't really anything that can be done. Honestly I thought there might be a bit more out there.

Unrelated question: as far as you are willing to tell me, is the ratio or 19 year old draftees rising? From what I can tell, it would seem it is, but of course I can only see a VERY small pool of draftees. Perhaps reducing the number of 19 year olds could make up for the lack of high-potential guys.

I'm better at finding problems than at solving them :) But still:

Spreading talent out as evenly as possible would be a good start: while it can be disappointing that the best player in your pool is a superstar, is even more disappointing when the best player in your pool is a superstar (maybe with bad skills :P) and your neighbour league pool get 2 mvp and an hall of famer. I know that in real life there are very depth pools and very shitty pools, but it looks to me like one of these thing were trying to stick to realism make the game less enjoyable... trying to get a good pick to start from scratch after a bad season should be a legitimate strategic choice, but it's hard to do it when there is SO much luck involved.
Speaking of that, other thing i noticed is that a 5-balls prospect (talking about skills now, not potential) are too much different from each other in terms of skills and salary. While i understand that skills distribution in a player is randomatic (i suppose), so it can happen that you get a low value in crucial skill thus lowering the value of a good player, i've seen 5-balls player going from 4500 salary to 7500 salary - isn't it too much of a gap? once again, i just have to put the 5-balls first and pray to be lucky, cause the difference inbetween the 2 extremes is very deep. i'm not asking for 7k players everywhere, but it would be nice to have a better perception of a top player overall abilities.
in that regard, i love the addition of age and height - expecially height has always been another blind shot totally related to luck, and of course i hated it :) knowing that the player i'm trying to pick will be good for the kind of training i'm planning, and that i can improve him faster if he miss something, will make the choices more rational and less depending on coin-flips :)

I don't want to discuss about the new system but I want to say that is not acceptable to have a big difference among II.1 - II.2 - II.3 - II.4; I mean that in our division the best player drafted is an 8k salary with potential 8, in another division the best player drafted is an 3k salary with potential lvl 6. To be fair the system must have more or less the same players.

To be honest, how many players with 8k salary and potential 8 do you see??? That's the dumbest comparison I have seen yet. Nomatter which league get's that guy, it's probably better draft than 99% of drafts around the world anyway. Are we talking about potentials here? There are decent players with lower salary aswell. You don't have do draft that 3k pot6 guy, why not take that 5k pot 4-5 guy?
You agreed with this division equality. So should all div2-s be equal. Or just in one country. What about all div4-s? There are 64 of those, or don't you care about nothing else but upper levels. What you fail to understand that draft is a big pool with junks randomly taken from there. Yes there is a chance that one draft get's more from the upper latter of the pool and some drafts get more from the lower latter of the pool. That's what random is about. It would be really boring if every draft had 2 decent players and were clones of eachother.

I apologise for the unnecessary use of the word 'bitching' but I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one. :(

Can I suggest a compromise?? the first pick for bot will be random. the second and third picks will be based on the ratings instead. This gives human players a better chance of getting a good pick.

no problem about the word "bitching" (well, for me atleast :P)
it's ok to disagree, as long as all parts give their rational arguments to defend their idea and respect the other users' opinions.

Thanks for this new system

BB-Edju:The idea is that teams in mostly bot leagues can't finish really high in their league and also draft really well - as in real life, you get one or the other.

SpicyMcH: But this has a high risk of seriously damaging all the national teams of all the small countries in the world, plus it really takes away a lot of the fun for everyone in leagues with even one or two bots.

That's a good point. But I suggest it's more simple than that, you've just made the wrong call here BBs. As you may be vaguely aware, I know a little about game design and am a big, big fan of the way BuzzerBeater is constructed but even the best make mistakes.

If you're stuck in a league with bots, it's not your fault. You didn't ask for that, you want to play against humans and climb the pyramid and have fun. Why then should the bots even stand a chance of taking a top draftee ahead of you? Getting a top trainee prospect is the most likely way to hook new players into the game and build the player database. New teams need a leg up to give them a chance to catch up and you should be facilitating this*, not placing artificial barriers in the way.

I think you should also remember that the whole draft system is alien to Europeans anyway - although most of us get the general principle - and that being forced to watch a computer managed team take a top prospect ahead of you is counter-intuitive to a lot of your prospective long-term franchise owners. Frankly, it sucks.

Really think you should rethink this and have human teams automatically pick ahead of bot teams in the draft.

*But not to the extent they automatically get better talent in the draft pool. If you make the bots pick last, they get an advantage from that.



Last edited by Elmacca at 7/1/2010 3:04:15 PM

Random is ok, you should give the possibilty to everyone to have a good draftee paying money. I've decided to go back in second division in order to train better my young players, sometime people is more interested to train young players instead of win championship and I can tell you that I could even spend 3m to have an average player 18 yo with good potential. A parallel championship u18 should be fantastic, more money you will put in better players you'll have in the draft. This is also a good way to leave money from the system, who doesn't have money or is not interested in young players will chose randomly (same of today), who has money and wants to have a young superstar will put his money on it