BuzzerBeater Forums

Not entirely off-topic:

I really like the active bid counter just under the next match counter. I'm sure things like that will keep people around longer.

And when main BBs decide it's time to relocate money into ads again, we will be over 30k.

The game is hard to understand, extremely slow to achieve anything, and unfriendly. When a game has those characteristics how do they expect to attract and retain users?

I can't recommend this game to a friend saying "check out this BB-manager game is awesome, but it will take you a half-year in real time to achieve anything, and in spite of 5 years of me playing there are things that I don't understand how they work, and the interface is not user-friendly".

Looking through the eyes of a new user:

1. The game manual explains the game in general vague terms and there are a lot of things left out. What's this? TSP: 96 (81 + 15)... I don't know, the manual doesn't say. Instead of a "manual" there should be a game guide like the ones in gamefaqs where it explains how to actually understand the game, including lots of tips of what to do and cautioning what NOT to do, maybe adding images for easier understanding.

1.1. Since the game wants to keep you in the dark and it also occurs in real days, if you want to see what something does or the effect of a skill or a change in your team, you have to wait days, weeks or even months to see what the hell does that do.

1.2. The manual should be easier to read and have a better learning structure. If I want to see what the player skills do, where should I go? Roster? Nope. Training? Nope. Tactics? Nope. Game Engine? Nope... There's no tab for players... go to Nomenclature!! Oh, yeah, very intuitive (that's the game in a nutshell, if you want to find out what something does go look in hidden place).

1.3. The game does a extremely poor job explaining how it works that people are forced to go into the forums looking for help, and seeing the same questions being asked a 100 times and with lots of speculative answers. And of course, speaking of forums those are not user-friendly, very hard to find something. We can't even see how many pages of answers there are in a post. I don't want to spend my time browsing through forums to see something that the game manual should explain.

1.4. One of the most important things in the game are the player skills, but again the game fails to really explain the impact of the skills in-game. Take for example: JS and JR.
Jump Shot: A better shooter will make more shots at all distances.
Jump Range: A player with a higher jump range will find that the effectiveness of his jump shot decreases less with distance.
In-game, it's not uncommon to see a player with JS:20 & JR:5 with 50%FG and 50%3FG, but a player (same league and aprox. same skilled opponents) with JS:15: & JR:12 shoots 40%FG and 33%FG, or another example a $15,000 player "humiliating" a $60,000 player... yeah, that makes sense.

1.5. New players tend to buy overpriced staff. The game shouldn't create those kind of staff in the first place, or there should be a cautionary advice of not to hired those. Kinda like a benchmark of range prices for the staff.

2. The game is incredibly slow to start and to actually achieve something. A new user gets a crappy roster compared to his/her league rivals. His team can't compete against them, mostly untrainable players, and they have few money to spend on improvements of it and their arena. Proposal: Instead of giving them more money, new users should start with 1-3 skilled players that are competitive in their league and 1-3 that are trainable, HOWEVER, to avoid cheating all those players in the new roster can't be sold.

2.1. Training is sloooooow. Currently we only see if a player improved by the up arrow, we should see at least a number, a percentage or some kind of indicator that a player actually received training in a skill but didn't get an up so we can better monitor the progress, instead of guessing and wasting weeks of training in someone who can't go up any further. One time I spend seven weeks training someone who never got an up.

2.2. Another proposal is adding a projection of improvement giving the potential of a player, because again, the game is very vague, we know a "hall of famer" is better than a "role player" but we don't know where's the cap. AGAIN, we have to guess and spend days and weeks in real-time trying to figure it out.

2.2. The game manual SHOULD tell ALL the skills that are being trained with a specific regime. Instead of playing and enjoying the game we spend more time wondering how does it work, trying to figure out the "elasticity" thing.

2.3 Remove the 48mins condition and choose players manually that will receive training in a particular skill, the minutes they get for playing should boost training not limit it, the playing time should give them more experience that combined with potential boost/limits the training. As it always have been the more players selected the less % of effective training.

Alternatively - for logistics reasons and for easier implementation - lower the 48mins condition to 35mins. The 48mins limits the flexibility in line-ups. When training someone is very common to play him for a whole game to ensure he gets his 48mins and for fear the "substitute" won't get his 48mins a week because the starter gets the most mins. Do we either focus on good line-ups or in training?

3. The box score and the game viewer should have FG%, 3FG% and FT%... how hard is that?
3.1 The game viewer should have more lines or at least a scroll so we can see past plays.
3.2. We stare idly at the game viewer for 17-24secs before we see something happens.

TL;DR
- Vastly improve the game manual to serve as an actual guide with tips on how to play and what not to do. The game should focus on the joy of being a manager, not on the pains of figuring out what something does or means for months or endlessly browsing through forums for speculative answers.

- Improving the training system allows for a sense of progress. When a new user doesn't have a sense of progress it will quickly drop out. (Read point 2 for specifics).

- New users should get some competitive players according to their league from the get go and some trainable ones but those players can't be sold.

- Some make up to the game viewer.

When the developers say they don't want to give everything out they took the extreme stance of giving almost nothing away, it looks more like they want to alienate new users keeping them in the dark rather than make them feel welcome in order to protect their precious 'engine'.

Last edited by Koga Shuko at 8/7/2015 1:42:47 PM

Leaving some parts aside, I agree with you. The manual actually worked pretty well for me, I actually liked it when I was starting to play. And well, the game is slow-pace at first, that's a feature of the game and it can't be changed so they would be changing the nature of the game. HOWEVER , although the slow pace the game proposes is good, the slow pace the game provides due economic reasos is awful. I came back to the game recently, and it'll take me many season to have a chance to go to D1 or to go to D2 and stay there, because I will not have money to build a stadium from 5000 to at least 12000 and buy trainers and buy players and invest in draft...

I think figuring out how the game works, the training and such is part of the game, but as I said, I partially agree w/ you. (you said so many things that's hard to point which ones I agree and which ones I dont lol)

having only one team promote each year into a higher division from 16 starters is very slow, do away with the east and west and only have one division of 8, simmilar to hattrick, one goes up, teams 2-4 are safe , bottom 2 are relegated and 6 & 7 play off aginst other teams.

People like to see progression

One thing I believe would help as well would be to give each starting team a "Star Player"... like a 5-7k 19yo with allstar potential.

It would give teams someone they could look at and say "Whoa he looks good" and in the manager tour thing we have to do at the start it could point out the "star player" and how to train him and get him going, then the new managers at LEAST have one player they can get attached to and get started with, and it wouldn't be that big of an advantage, especially if everyone got one.

Agree with this. I would guess every manager who starts to figure out the game realises a little way in that starting rosters are just awful.