BuzzerBeater Forums

it's raining brains in here.

look, this is a deep flaw in the financial part of the game, and anyone who's trying to defend the status quo is delusional.
having said that, there are two ways to deal with it:
• fight to the death, make a huge mess in global, bla bla bla;
• realize you'll never gonna be better than Joe Bigfish Smallpond, and stop giving a damn about it.

I went with #2.

have fun, you may now resume the hunt for the next nobel prize.

the good doctor is right again.

i use to argue that the advantages that small countries have was minimal and would dissipate with time. however, with the prospect of losing to a division iv team in the cup when i am in a medium country a near impossibility, i see the clear small/medium advantages that will continue to be present for a long while (until changes are made).

I think there are some great points made here and some silly ones. To that end I have two suggestions.

It is obvious that the economic situation for teams from small countries, like mine, have a much easier time in the game than teams from gargantuan countries. It is also clearly true that leagues in gargantuan countries are far more competitive than those of tiny countries. For some people, signing up in a tiny country so they can kick ass is "fun" for them. These are the same kind of people who cheat at solitaire. For most people, more competition = more fun. More fun = a better community. There are about 3 posts a year on the Thai national forum. Woohoo! FUN!!!

The B3 is an arcade tournament played for fun. It has no real importance and shouldn't be upsetting anyone. If you don't see any value in it, don't follow it, don't pay attention to it, and intentionally lose your first game in it if you make it. Simple. So what if a small fry wins? Life is too short and this game is too enjoyable to let something as silly as the B3 tournament ruffle anybody's feathers.

I think the TL argument is completely valid ,and here is my solution. Because Spain and Italy are so much bigger and better and more difficult than any other country (as they like to point out as often as possible ) I suggest we put up a BBWall around them and let no players in or out. Spaniards will only have to worry about playing with other Spaniards. Italians will only have to worry about playing with other Italians. Every once in a while they can post a recap of how much fun they are having and how much better they are than the rest of the world. It would be really great. Or at least make it an opt in or opt out for them- Do you want to compete with the whole world for TL players or only with managers from your own self-described more basketball savvy more competitive more disadvantaged globally country?

Although I come from a relatively small country (only 390 active managers), I do appreciate the advantage of being a big fish in a small pond and agree that something needs to be done. I think the problem mainly lies with the attendance. I have a simple solution here to fix it: changing the attendance formula to also partly depend on the player quality of the home team, and not only which division you are playing. So if you have better players, you get higher attendance. You move up a division, you also get higher attendance but there should be some balance between these 2 factors.

if I can login in barbados (for example), I will win B3 in 3 season and in 5 season I'll win with the second unit team, no way

Do you know something that we dont?! Is jbm quitting!!!

Joking aside - having read most of this thread any advantage that I carved out was purely via day trading in the early seasons. It seems that some managers value BB3 others dont. I guess if your local competition isnt that taxing then the BB3 is the only way to pit your skills against similar teams. If you get enough satisfaction and competition domestically then congrats you are likely getting a more rewarding experience anyway from playing this game.

The only way to resolve this is to reset everyones team to zero and merge everyone into a giant league structure starting with 30,000 Division 10's or something and then let the cream rise to the top. But even then when the dust settles there will be complaints about how certain teams got an easy ride to where they are now.. others exploited such and such a loop etc.

If I came to Barbados with you let me assure you that you would not achieve your dream! I'd let you qualify once every few seasons just to keep you logging on :D

any advantage that I carved out was purely via day trading in the early seasons

Kinda. That got you ahead of the pack so it was easy to gobble up all the revenue streams. The added benefit of being able to train just about whoever and wherever helps too.

I'm not saying I didn't also win a lot trophies in my bigger pond, but i didnt win them all and I had a lot of luck on the way.

Whatever, its not like the economic imbalance between countries is as big an issue as between domestic divisions. The spread between division profits has much more impact then the difference between a few B3 opponents.

In the US, starting to see alot of the same teams bouncing up and down between I and II. Be interesting to see how many former NBBA teams promote up this season. Last season it was 3.

Nobody is punishing anybody. Bringing a normal BB economy to small countries will make them play the same game that made us mad. It will be much funnier for them.
On the other hand, most small countries are small because their population is simply not interested in basketball, not interesed in basket simulators, not interested even in Internet...
Just check who are the biggest countries... those who have strong basket leagues.
And also most managers in small countries are not native from these countries, they are american, spanish, greeks...

Try to make an online cricket simulator succesful in Spain...

so you like to push them out instead of giving them fair chanches, because they had the normal economy then you, the formulas are the same. Maybe they getting to a point - 2-3 season earlier but to be top, your income get reduced too like the one of the big countrys and it is the same game with few money and even disadvantage in international competition:

- small cup, less oppurtunity to tie

- fewer merchandise

- fewer tv income

This post is spot on. The issue is valid for both big and small countries. At the moment even a single 0-22 season in the top division can bring huge economic benefits. The way from being an average DII team to becoming an average DI team looks longer and longer with every season. Despite having higher salaries D1 teams still make bigger weekly profits then D2 teams. The way I see it, if a D1 team can save around 3mil per season and a D2 team can save around 2-2.5mil that D2 team is 1m further behind. In this sense it seems to be getting harder not only to get promoted more importantly to stay promoted(aka not get relegated back immediately).
The way the system works right now, with each season in a lower league you fall further behind instead of catching up.
With all this being said I must admit it works pretty much the same way in real life and there are still plenty of ways to improve your team by being smarter/better/more active/etc and if you are some of these things you should do just fine.

P.S. If somebody thinks I am wrong about this just consider the enormous advantage for teams who started earlier. I choose not write about that at all since there is not much we can do about it right now. And when you take into consideration both of these factors it becomes clear that "catching up" in this game is quite hard and it is probably going to get even harder in the future.

I would also add the gigantic pool of local players to choose from which equals even more merchandise money. Finding a good Bulgarian player on the market is nothing like finding a good Italian or American trust me.

thats was the reason for the merchandise +, which is in ym eyes calculate from league level and the own team and not affected by the opposition.

With even smaller nations then bulgaria, the people normally has a flag, so that they become even more expensiv to buy and if you don't train them and won't hurt your country you maybe get problem to buy 'em.

Last edited by CrazyEye at 1/28/2010 3:02:02 AM

Fair points.

The season someone started in trumps all at the end of the day because as the BB's monitored the economics of the game the so called 'loopholes' (either just there or created) when discovered gave simple cash. With 10,000 users you can spot annomalies in the transfer market that simply aren't there with 50,000+ eager eyes.

Beyond that I have questioned and have never really understood why we have new countries open up with under a dozen users - sure you got to start somewhere but I guess certain parts of the game which were set in stone at the outset are just too far down the line to make u-turns on. Falling short of capping off the larger countries and then re-directing new users to locations to even out the numbers.

What hasn't been mentioned in this thread is if you think club domination is boring and unfair what about countries? Sure you have managers willing and wanting to taste international experience if they can at any level but lets be frank the top X countries will change less frequently than the top club teams. For a game with 90+ countries this just seems a backward part of the game where only 1 of a handful of teams can ever win. (unless of course you are part of an inventive nation who will advocate farming and multi-accounts just to try and compete).

It strikes me that the need to preserve the country set up is preventing any radical change to even out the playing field with small/large countries.