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WHY WHY WHY do you do this to me game engine!?

the official line is "Buzzerbeater does not encourage 48 min training/game since the training was not conceived to be handled this way"

i asked BB-Marin the other day what did the developers had in mind back then, since it was somewhat obvious that managers would adopt this strategy. he said he didn't know since he wasn't hired yet when the game was conceived.

i guess the developers thought that nobody would sacrifice their lineups for the sake of training and then train only 1 or 2 players as backups and using scrimmages to add up the missing minutes. they would have probably achieved that goal if they had set training mininums to 49 minutes instead of 48. when they set to exactly 48 minutes their plan went wrong and suddenly they had a basketball simulator where virtually every team plays with a center as PG (or vice-versa)

7 players = fewer chances of course, sentinel or whoever wrote that is correct of course. But my opinion is based on the fact that it appears to be highly skilled players who usually get subbed in this way, never scrubs. Considering the way subbing seem to work, with relative checks for skills/ST, you have to think no average player would fulfill the requirements.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 7/5/2020 4:11:34 PM

I'm skeptical that this would have any difference over trainee/trainee/trainee, but admittedly I have never tried leaving the training position blank. Also I'm not sure what would stop the GE from selecting one of the other backups to start at PG in your example and it's pointless to set C1 as reserve as he will not play garbage time at C with that setup.

In general I'm skeptical because players subbed in for 1 or 2 minutes can be both starters and backups (starters if there is garbage time and backups if there is no garbage time), which points to a more general issue and, in the example you gave I fail to see how EBW's setup would have any impact when you have garbage time (which is when most people experience problems anyway). It is possible that the selection by the GE is stronger when the position is left blank is stronger than the manual selection with strictly and this would improve things in non garbage time games, but it would need proper testing and these things are hard to check, because:
a. in D3 and D4 these issues should be avoidable and workable if the trainee has enough ST
b. this issue goes away anyway as the trainee gets better skills/stamina
c. you'd need a trainee that always gets subbed out and hardly ever fouls out in 48 minutes
d. it's probably beyond Marin's ability to create new sub patterns (the blank selection mechanics may be also bugged which could result in a stronger resilience for the automatically selected starter)

Observe what happens here with 7 players:http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/111773221/reportmatch.a.... Not 1 but 2 players (SG and PF, who were set as starter/backup/reserve) get subbed out in the last minute. The starting C goes back in at PF and the PG goes back in at SG. In both cases the difference in skills is significant, the PF is a bit better, but he also has low ST. You can see the gulf in the ratings as well.

Now here with the same low ST youngster and the player who replaced him in the game above: http://www.buzzerbeater.com/match/110580843/reportmatch.a.... The scrub did not get subbed out, because the only backup was set at PF+C and the starting C was also very weak. You can see that something doesn't add up here too, because the starting C (McMurrich) gets moved to the PF slot and the backup (Rubio) goes in at C for 3 minutes. If I had a better starting PF (Anhui) this would have never happened and it's not supposed to happen: when that happened the starting PF should have gone back in. Of course in that case, the SF would have probably been pulled instead, as it happened in the previous game.

So you see, it's possible to 'bait' the GE into subbing other players and you won't need to use 5 man lineups, but unfortunately those players need to be even weaker than your trainees.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 7/7/2020 9:51:34 AM

I was skeptical too, but after struggling with my 6 trainees to get the minutes four weeks in a row, I tried to leave the starting position blank. After that, 8 games and every time my trainees got 48 minutes. Still a small sample size, but so far so good.

Last edited by Lappa at 7/9/2020 7:04:36 AM

Looks like you had 2 players with 46 and one with 47 minutes last week? Besides, your team where the highest paid player is 11k should never have had issues in the first place, unless your trainees have seriously low ST.

Can you provide examples maybe? I want to see the 10 gap in rating in a garbage time and players failing without this method and succeeding without, before I believe this due to the blank and wouldn't happen otherwise.

I have always trained in this game. Never had serious problems with players dropping minutes in D2 and below: only with bad ST (4 or below). However, I have also trained 18yo and 19yo in D1 (always trying to get 48+ on 3 players), but the difference between a 18yo trainee and a D1 starter may well be 90 TSP, it's much bigger than in D2 or D3.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 7/9/2020 9:16:38 AM

Thanks for checking my minutes, but all my trainees (SF/PF) got 48 minutes. And I know about low salaries, but still I wasn't able to get 48 minutes for all my 6 trainees before I tried to leave the starter empty. As I said, small sample size, but let's see after this season how it went.