BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

You can use a crowdfunding platform like kickstarter to fund a mobile app. Just have to make it worth for t he community to contribute.

I don't agree with the draft changes. Draft is good enough as it is, all it takes is the people to realize it.

Players with low potential and 5 ball starting skills can be trained in a few seasons, while it takes ages to create a NT player. Especially in larger nations, as a new team, you don't need potential, you need salary efficient low salary players.

In the USA, if you know what you are doing you can move up from D5 to D3 in a couple seasons. I wouldnt even touch a guy under allstar potential because that trainee becomes worthless if he can't help you when you promote. There are also a ton of salary efficient guys on the TL that make it pointless to train a guy just for the lower divisions.

Thanks so much! I'd seen prior posts where you talked about this, so I'm very glad it's been implemented. Thanks for pushing!

I agree 100% with everything yodabig stated. Especially 1b (don't want to give every new team a windfall of an 18yo HOF worth $1 million), 2, and 3.

Regarding improving the draft, many have said it, but I agree that increasing the median would make the draft much better. Keep the current number of 5-ball potential draftees in each draft. But, maybe add another 1-2 perennial all-star potential draftees, and maybe an additional 4-5 all-star potential draftees. I did a very-low-sample-size study of looking at every player in 5 prior drafts. The results: Each draft had between 6-13 serviceable draftees. I defined a serviceable draftee as one that was 18 or 19yo, all-star or above potential, and >$2200 in starting salary. Teams finishing in 1-4th place should have a better shot at getting a productive trainee. Not a franchise player, but at least someone who can contribute to the team. I know BB is not the NBA, but I believe every single NBA team has some rookies on its roster that get playing time (or at least will get playing time in future years).