BuzzerBeater Forums

Just one more idea - and I know I would've loved it when I started:

What if new teams could opt to create one new player of their own. Picking the name, generating his looks, height, and being able to distribute a fixed amount of points (e.g. 50) on attributes. Potential, age (18) and total points available of course should be equal for all teams.

People could add themselves into the game, or their favourite player.

"News from around the league"

I like that idea, i would really like to se that implemented:-)

I am for the complexitiy; against the Best Line Up button idea.

It will screw up your training schedule as well and make things just too easy...

IDEA: use the side banner as a specific <hint or advise message> on every page they scroll....Or use a special <block on top of every page> explaining what the page might help you/or what the purpose is and why it is here...

e.g. WEEKLY STATS.....<BANNER ON TOP> (1. info)this page is used for helping you manage your playing minutes of your player (2. advise) Dont let you player play too much since this will tire him in gameshape next week!

Another e.g STAFF page: <BANNER ON TOP> (1. info)this page is used for helping you identify the staff you have and on what quality (2. advise) The higher the level means the more efficient you player will be trained! To look for alternative staff you can press the search staff button

All of these handy messages can of course be found in the rules page...BUT the marketeers in the world know; if you cannot get a guy's attention in 5 minutes you simply wont win his attention at all...RULES page is extensive and perfect..but a little to long to understand in the first five minutes..Take an example why the DUMMIES book series become so succesful...THANKS to explaining things short and clear...THATS why my suggestion of explaining inside each page would help..

If people are thinking they can do it without these newbie messages..simply add a turn off button at the profile page....

This is not THE solution but may add the quicker understanding of the game...



Last edited by GM-Rijswijker at 1/16/2009 4:31:04 PM

Hear hear! Good ones. (and the "newest team" overview).

The nice thing with these suggestions is that they don't impose changes in the GE, just presentation, and can be implemented without further ado

we're asking all of you

Hi !

I'm part of an external forum (Buzzerbeater France) and we launched a topic about "what can be improve in BB". So i'm only here to talk about the result of this topic with my approximate translation xD

I think we can divide BB's problems in three : not enough communication, too much clic and "why the hell I lost ? random ?"

A lot of these suggestions aren't easy to add ! we know this very well :)
You asking what we would have in xx seasons, we answer ;)

Part 1 :

Improve your communication toward us ! So everybody will be able to see you interact with the community and not only those who have the time to check the xxx posts on forum :p

- I though about a link like the rules link which lead on the project you have in mind
No need to put a date ! Just do it like this :
+ Short term (1 season ?) : well, we will improve this, this and that !
+ Medium term (2-3 saisons) : we will implement this and that
+ Long term (4-5 seasons or more) : we think BB will evolve this way (a good think to launch a debate by the way ;))
Programming take times, players need to understand this !

- keep the history of your modifications in the same page or in another with a link
It will help people to see how you work and make evolve BB

- Survey ! Well it was a marvelous idea ! But now, we have the impression some part haven't been take into account (we go back to the communication ^^). Launch a debate, take into account some ideas and doing little surveys would be really great in the future :)


Tutoring ! An essential part than most of other games understood !
It's absolutly needed because the forum isn't fit for that :/

- Create a space for each tutor (Google says guardian for translation :/)
each one would have a private managable forum. Only his pupils would have access to this (I tried it in Charazay and I must say it's marvelous :))
- Give access to the pupils'player stat to the tutor ... no more screenshot and explanation how to do them, yay ! ^^ Well a button giving the choice to share stats with his tutor would be even greater in fact :) Players need to have the choice instead of being forced !

Improve the forum :/
The forum ! a strategic tool to develop a community ! He must be user friendly (well don't know how to translate that so, in french, "convivial, lisible et accessible")

- A good way to do that is to talk about national teams. But how to do that without reveal your strengh and weakness to other countries ? simple, you can't freely talk about how to train an international to fit the needs of the national team.
So a managable forum (by GM of the country ? LA ? volonteer ?) with an exclusive access (French player = french private national forum) would allow to do here what we need to do in external forum :/ talking freely about the strategy of the upcoming France - Italy in an official (yet restricted) BB forum with a community of 1000 managers is way better than with 50-100 players :p

- Don't forget than a lot of peoples would be volonteer to help if you ask !

- Generally speaking, really to much click to go where you want :/ I'll talk about it later but it's really a big problem ! (on forum, to get stat, etc)

- A listing giving all existing forum (well maybe add a filter at least ^^) with a brief description would be interesting :)

- A link to get all the topic with new message in 1 page would be awesome too (take exemple of external forum :p)

- Searching a topic on the forum is really hard too :/ I searched a topic with numbers xxx.y ... well i never found it :p Afterward I though about put it directly on the url bar of my navigator ... but well not that good, right ? ^^

- Possibility to make a complete favorite page of link on forum ! and groups too
+ group 1
xxxx.y - possibility to write something
zzzzz.a
+ group 2
dddd.e
...

part 2 coming in some days to let you the time to read it

charles,

just wanna share something, my friend that i invited to play bb is somewhat getting it more and more enjoyable due to

1) my tutoring . . . ( endless hours )
2) after seeing skills pop - he got more excited and when he told me one of his guard pop 2 skill in a week training, his looking forward to train more players.

as a new player, there are times since his new, he find the game complicated and dont know where to start and even at times if i dont give him an im before about his team, he wouldnt log in and check in out.

truth is, at the beggining you have to make him see how great this game is. the moment he sign up is already a big step but to keep him playing is more harder.

i have to teach him how to set his team, how to scout games and players and etc.

but what made it more such an experience to him is buying players and the skill pop he personally experience.

i know not all things should be said and all, but when he invited his office mates and some had sign in, but he cant share his enthusiasm for the game due to the same bump in the road he experience which is complicated of being new and how thigs would go.

right now his still playing but somehow we got to keep the fire burning for this new ones till they catch the big flame

Most likely you did as well, but I've noticed that a lot of questions posted in the fora boil down to a couple of unclarities/difficulties new players encounter.

Well so the 2nd part

Statistic must be improved !
- Especially Team rating, Matchup rating and the rating of each player (you already thinking about this last at least). They lead a lot of people to think they lost because of "random" probability ! And what do a player who think the game is mess up ? most of time, he simply give up ! In my opinion, Team rating is useless since a homogeneous team will have high rating without being really better. Matchup rating help only to know if your shooting guard was up against a great defender and player rating help only to know if the player defended well or not ... maybe, at least, explain this to newbies ? don't know but something must really be done about those :/
- add more and more stat, always more : why not rookie of the year ? MVP of the game ? ... a survey of managers ?
more options on team stat page ?
- More choice about draft ! what the aim to scout a second time a F player ? be sure he is really that bad ? ^^
- More rating
compare it to players in the division, national and world ... Supporters can already see the leaderboard but it's not a rating
if you consider the best world player at his peak get a 20 in a match, what my player get in his best match ? 10 ? :p
and same go for division and national
- In all rating, change the way you take into account the number of minutes played ! My players don't play that often 40 minutes per game ! So the have almost no luck to appear in the league leader ... too bad for them :p
enthousiasm and opponment level must be taken into account too !


Private League and federation
- Well, first, how I use them ? clic, clic, clic, ... well seems it's here, clic, clic, clic, hmm still not that, clic, clic, clic xD
seriously, why not making a category like the team category ? 1 for PL and another for federation !
- Same goes for the PL schedule and PL forum !
- searching a federation is quite a hard job for now ! can't we have a list of all federation in 1 page ?
with filter option like language, title begin with, more/less than xx users, open to all or invitation only, ...


Supporter options are all about giving an organisational advantage ... But we are very far from it :/

- Add group to bookmark ! automatic one or not, it's not important but when you search a center and a PG on market, you bookmark, your happy :p Afterward, you go back to check your bookmark and it's all melt ... well maybe excel is better at it after all, but supporters options lose a big part of his meaning :p
- Write the right number of caracters left on a BB-mail xD the end is almost all the time cut ... quite annonying when you have a 2nd mail to send for 2 words
- Why supporters can't write longer mail ? we have more thing to say after all xD
- Add the possibility to save some mail and please, don't limit to 50 messages
after draft, we send quite a lot of mail to ask managers to participate on the french national rookies training program :)
but when you have all those mails mixed, a limit of 50 mails and mails which disappear because the receiver delete it ... well, I think I will use some paper to be sure, I keep track of everything :/
- We are still waiting to personalyse jersey for exemple
- Add news of the division ! better than to have to clic again and again to check 15 teams
Team announces would appear in the news of the division too


Well I like BB, charazay and HT because I like training frenchies rookies ! And I must say, this tranfert market is a living hell for me xD
Why can't you add some more filter ?
- end of bid in xx hours or days
- nationality
- little county are in higher division, so they get more income, right ? why not giving to stranger player 10% more salaries ?
- Add the best 10, 20, 30 sell stat

(I don't talk about potential or heigh ... I guess if you didn't add it until now, you must have a good reason :p but still it would be great ^^)

see you for the last pa

Last edited by _Az_ at 1/26/2009 12:52:50 PM

- Write the right number of caracters left on a BB-mail xD the end is almost all the time cut ... quite annonying when you have a 2nd mail to send for 2 words

[...]

see you for the last pa

I wasn't trying to do it but it's a good example ^^

+45 when I'm editing ... after adding the end, I'm still at +25 word left and still it's cut :/

so see you for the last part in some days as I tried to say xD

sorry i did notread the thread just got some questions.
is there a referral-banner which i could put on some websites?

Reading the thread most people seems to agree that the game is complicated to get started with, while at the same time they do not want to decrease the complexity of the, as this on the long run is what makes the game fun. This is also my opinion, so here are my thoughts on how to make it easier to get started (whereof some might already have been mentioned).

Use short menu as default
Currently, I think, all new teams start with the full menu as default (I know I did). As this menu contains arround 40 links, whereof some are cruicial for beginners while others are more or less pointless, beginners will easily get lost and get the feeling that the game is too complicated.

Among all those links there is a link to select "Show Short Menu", but as tere are so many links it is easily missed. Thus the short menu should be the default menu, to avoid scaring people.

Essential rules
For the same reason as aboe there should be a short version of the rules, where only the essentials are included. The current rules should also be available (perhaps called "Comprehensive rules")

Basketball fundamentals
Not every country has the basketball tradition of e.g. the US and the Balkan, thus this can build a barrier in many cases. By including simple figures that illustrate the different tactics I think many newcombers will have an easier time understanding the ideas of the game.

Automatic tutoring
A few people have mentioned tutoring system, which I find to be a great idea. However, I think there is a limitation in the number of people that are prpared to tutor (and are good at it). An idea could be to give beginners tips after each game, e.g. tips like

* Did you notice that your oponent played run and gun, but you defended inside? If you had chosen an outside defense (1-3-1, 3-2) you might have been able to stop more shots.
* Your oponents SF dominated the game with 56 points, this could be due to your small forward had very low defensive skills.
* Both teams shot poorly, resulting in many rebounding oportunities. If you had focused more on rebounding you would have gained more ball posetions and chances to score.

This could be available for e.g. the first season or until you decide to sitch it of (I would switch it of quit early I think).

Improved interactivity
There are urently a few things that make BB less interactie then HT. For instance the PMs are not rally visible for other players, instead you have chosen to focus on a (currently) pretty meaningless all star game. Making PMs more accesible for other users and introducing a guestbook (perhaps the press blog is meant to work as that, but it does not) newcombers (and all others too) would see more life in the game, making it more interesting.

In HT they have a "news ticker" (telling you when you recieve a forum post, mail, PM, bids, etc) for supporters. Introducing this for everyone in BB would increase its interactivity and accessibility a lot among both beginners.

The ticker should include messages about forums replys, mails, and your NT PMs by default. For supporters it would also include e.g. bids and friends PMs.