BuzzerBeater Forums

I'm guessing eventually new teams will only be added to the lowest divisions as HT does it. Right now, we are just trying to get as many players into the game as we can.

I would love for a new team to be placed in my series (III.10) . There are only 2 human managers here.

What would be worse than having a new team placed here (as I was in late August) is having a stream of bots making it into division II (there likely will be a bot that autopromotes from my series). The nice thing is knowing that there will be 4 new managers coming into the division in a few weeks, hopefully most of them human.

My brother just signed up for a team about a week ago, and was placed in a IV division full of humans. Going right to your argument, he replaced a team in second place, won his first two matches, and will easily make the playoffs (likely with home court throughout).

So, to clarify what you meant by your post: would it have been better for my brother's team to have been placed in my series (where there are 14 bots) in division III, or placed where he is in div IV among active managers (where he will make the playoffs)??

So, to clarify what you meant by your post: would it have been better for my brother's team to have been placed in my series (where there are 14 bots) in division III, or placed where he is in div IV among active managers (where he will make the playoffs)??

I guess, the point was that if D.III is full of divisions with bots, then new owners should go there first, until most of the teams in a division are human managers. I'm just saying the new teams should be assigned, not to random divisions with a bot team or two, but to divisions with ALL bots. So they all start on the same equal footing. The BB's need to identify which countries are growing, add divisions (populated with bots initially) for future growth, and then as the higher division fills up with human managers, they start filling up the lower divisions. Your brother's situation is exactly what the original thread creator is irritated by. Your brother reaps the reward of getting to have home court through the playoffs, if he keeps winning. The other teams who have been there throughout the season, should be pissed off.

I think, if the game is taking off as it should, there shouldn't be a need for teams to "wait" an exended time to get placed in a bot division with 7 other teams. Even so, if you do four one day, and four the next, but fill up the bot divisions first, that makes more sense, and is much more equitable than putting one team in a D.III division one day and a D.IV division an hour later, and so on.

Does that make sense??

Yes my point exactly.. If there was an opening in division III when I joined, I should have been placed there. If not, then division IV but hopefully in the highest place available and certainly not in last place (unless that's the only one available). I don't deserve the high seeding for sure but i'm also definite that a newer user is less deserving.

To make matters worse, our first place team is a bot team.. sigh

1st place - bot team - 13-8
2nd place - new team (1 game so far) - 13-8
3rd place - new team (1 game so far) - 12-9
4th place - old team (10 games or so) - 12-9
5th place - new team (1 game so far) - 12-9
6th place - me (9 games) - 9-12 (6-3 record as owner)

Cest la vie..

BuzzerBeater is a long-term game, and the health of your team in the long-term will not be affected very much by something like this, the relatively small amount of revenue you gain from the playoffs will eventually be a blip in your team's history.

I think one solution to this problem is when starting to put users in a empty division group, the system could insert the first in the 1st spot, the second one in the 1st spot of the other side, the third in the second spot, and so on... This way older users wouldn't feel any unfairness.

But I don't really think that this would be necessary.

Because when you start you get placed in a certain position that you never know what is it going to be, and then you just have to fight your way to the top, doesn't matter if the guy above you joined before or after.

On HT I got a team at 8th in the group on V. And then 6 seasons later I had 4 titles (on V and IV) and was already in the III. Here on BB I got a team in 6th, and I was the second user to join my league, and several users joined later and took higher positions. But I still managed to finish 2nd, and made my way to the Finals of the playoffs.

Edited 10/4/2007 11:53:56 PM by GM-Raonne

I started way way down in my division and managed to come back and win my playoffs in my first season

I think the BBs are moving a lot of players up into the bot-spots in higher divisions this coming season

I guess, the point was that if D.III is full of divisions with bots, then new owners should go there first, until most of the teams in a division are human managers. I'm just saying the new teams should be assigned, not to random divisions with a bot team or two, but to divisions with ALL bots. So they all start on the same equal footing. The BB's need to identify which countries are growing, add divisions (populated with bots initially) for future growth, and then as the higher division fills up with human managers, they start filling up the lower divisions. Your brother's situation is exactly what the original thread creator is irritated by. Your brother reaps the reward of getting to have home court through the playoffs, if he keeps winning. The other teams who have been there throughout the season, should be pissed off.

I think, if the game is taking off as it should, there shouldn't be a need for teams to "wait" an exended time to get placed in a bot division with 7 other teams. Even so, if you do four one day, and four the next, but fill up the bot divisions first, that makes more sense, and is much more equitable than putting one team in a D.III division one day and a D.IV division an hour later, and so on.

Does that make sense??

It does make sense. However, I would rather suggest that new users/teams be placed in a linear fashion across all divisions. First fill every division in III (as there is no need for div IV if div III is full of bots), then begin by replacing every first place bot in every IV series, followed by every 2nd place team in every IV series, etc. Otherwise BB may end up like what currently exists in HT (particularly in the USA) where the first couple hundred VI divisions are extremely competetive and filled with clubs that have been in the game for a year or more, whereas the rest of the divisions (particularly VI.800-VI.1024) are completely filled with againg bot teams.

To your point, I don't believe it is fair that my brother can come into the game 2 weeks ago and make the playoffs, as I have struggled since August and must win on Saturday to ensure my spot. The most clear solution to this would be to immediately reset the players in bot teams the moment they switch from being human-managed to being "Managed by a computer player". This would help reduce the number of highly trained bots who continue to dominate their divisions long after an active tactician let go of the reigns...

And I do agree that this game is a marathon, not a sprint. Come season 5 or 6, this will likely all be forgotten.

Start new owners with 0 wins, and move ownerless teams to the bottom of the standings. Someone who arrives with 5 games left really shouldn't expect to be in the playoffs, unless all the teams in the league arrived about the same time. Then it should be a sprint to win based on those 5 games. It doesn't really matter that the schedule is unbalanced - that is a lot better than an unbalanced starting position.

When assigning new owners simply fill each league in turn, don't go back to the first series unless you get to the last series in a division. At the end of the season, reshuffle the teams in the bottom divisions.

I agree, this is a short term problem. Just keep on planning and analyzing and training for your team, and eventually you will be better off. The GMs and BBs are already quite aware of this, I'm sure, so rest assured that this will not be an ongoing issue.

But you have numerous problems
Drafting - Great you don't make the playoffs, but you have first shot at the next stud
Training - Other teams are able to train their entire team on a primary stat instead of a secondary stat
5th place as no incentive (similar to 4th in HT) and will cause some incredibily ugly issues.

I don't mind where a team gets placed. There is no right answer because in a perfect world we would have 100% retention.

The GM-Ragone success story (with all due respect to his GM ability) is an anomoly. You would not of done that in my division unless you were given a very good team to start - we had a lot of active users until the end and they all had different strengths to cause all types of fits.

Edited 10/8/2007 7:02:21 PM by Digging for Change