BuzzerBeater Forums

If you know me at all, I've never been in favor of removing injuries from BB and agree that cases of being lucky or unlucky with injuries in the game are good. This case, as you mentioned, was very unlucky.

My point is : if you can get lucky, you can get unlucky. Or very very unlucky in this case. Luck is part of sports and part of games. But in BB, we have the unique ability to increase our luck (doctor, psychologist...) which is very rare in games. So there's really no reason to complain about this

My point is : That can still exist in the game, while limiting the number of days that a player can be injured if the manager made the explicit effort to pay tons of money for a high-level doctor. I think this manager is well within their right to complain about this. If their players had suffered the same injuries and they were only carrying a level 1-2 doctor, I would feel differently, because in that scenario that would have indicated that they put in no/very little effort to avoid/reduce injuries.

BuzzerBeater used to have 7 week injuries in the game as well, but that was reduced dramatically and now you never see anything more than 3(ish) week injuries. This was done because injuries are mostly random and uncontrollable and 7 weeks was excessive and significantly reduced the manager experience. Why was this changed if "there's really no reason to complain about this"?

Two things can be true:

1. Injuries reduce the BB manager experience
2. Injuries and the aspect of luck when dealing with them in BB should stay in the game

It's about finding a balance that makes the most sense for manager experience, realism, % of luck in the game, and user-base retention.

As this has developed into a more general discussion, I was thinking recently we have the worst of both worlds with the current level of injuries.

They are rare enough that short, top-heavy rosters are the optimal way to build teams. But this means when injuries happen mid-game it is often the deciding factor, which is completely unrealistic and also ruins the gameplay.

So in my opinion injuries should either be turned off or turned up. The pros and cons of the former are obvious. The latter also works because it forces teams to carry deep rosters, as you will encounter multiple injuries through a season. But it means if you do get an injury then the replacement will also be pretty good, so a mid-game injury doesn't auto-lose a cup final or play-off game. This is more realistic but much harder to balance the game overall.

If it's Nuggets/Celtics game 7 and a normal starter like Michael Porter Jr goes down early in the 2Q, the points spread only moves by 1-2 pts. If a starter goes down in BB the theoretical line moves a lot more than that, in a lot of cases I'd guess 10+ pts, due to the nature of how rosters are built.

- both numbers (1-2 pts IRL and 10+ pts in BB) are made up with no data to back them up (not your fault, these data don't exist)

The real data does due to betting markets. I'd have to double check but I believe an elite player tends to move the betting line about 6pts, an all-star about 3pts, so an average starter is probably 1pt (this is all pre-game injury).

The BB data is just a guess, but from experience it's almost certainly a much larger impact than those numbers.

- both numbers (1-2 pts IRL and 10+ pts in BB) are made up with no data to back them up (not your fault, these data don't exist)

The real data does due to betting markets. I'd have to double check but I believe an elite player tends to move the betting line about 6pts, an all-star about 3pts, so an average starter is probably 1pt (this is all pre-game injury).

The BB data is just a guess, but from experience it's almost certainly a much larger impact than those numbers.

I think on/off numbers would be quite accurate. For Nikola Jokić those would be 20 in 23/24 and 21.9 in 22/23. You could run several pickup games to get on/off for BB players but I doubt they're anywhere near those!