BuzzerBeater Forums

I've noticed that a lot of new teams go inactive very quickly, so I think we need to find new ways to keep new players around. I know there is a buddy system, but it's very much in the background. I think we should bring it to the front to improve our community, and I have a way to make the game more interesting to experienced players as well.

Players should be able to choose to be a Mentor, and when mentoring new players, they should get milestones/achievements or maybe even some kind of reward if their student makes progression in the game (reaching the playoffs/finals, promoting, selling a player for X amount, building arena to certain stages etc). Nothing they can get a competitive advantage with, just some acknowledgment for their effort to help others.

A "Request mentor" button should be implemented, clearly visible to new players. Maybe we could even make it a "I don't need help" button so every new player will get a mentor unless they don't want one. The requests will be redirected to mentors from the same country who then can accept it on first come first serve basis. That could really help new players, and give older players something extra to play for (coaching your new player and getting milestones/rewards for it would be worth it for me for example).

Since good in-depth information is hard to find (you really need to dig through the forums since you can't search for topics), and that's a big hurdle for new players. With this improved buddy/mentor system I will bring that hurdle down, and at the same time bring players together. I think a community makes or breaks a game, because most people like playing with/against players instead of just playing for themselves.

Also, this idea uses crowdsourcing, something BB could definately use as I'm feeling the developers don't have much time to improve the game, and this way we can have the player base help out. The initial implementation shouldn't take too much effort, as the achievements are already there.

Thoughts?

Last edited by Jeründerbar at 2/14/2013 8:47:43 AM

I think this is an excellent suggestion. +1

Last edited by ______ (NZ National Team) at 2/14/2013 8:07:35 AM

I have helped with the Aussie U21 team as well as having run India and Bolivia. One thing that would help if there was somewhere where you could look up who are all the new teams each week so we could know who to offer assistance to.

We have a Mentoring system in Germany, where we invite all teams in the initial "Welcome to BB" Mail to take a look at the forums, read important threads and to check out for the "Mentor" Thread, where you can apply for help from a seasoned user. I think it was implemented by former GM Crazyeye. If the newbies don´t even make it to the forums, a mentoring system might not help anyways, but once they made it there we don´t miss out on many.

So how do we go about changing the welcome to BB message? We have a great GM in Australia and if it can be done I am sure he can do it.

But how do you find new managers? Do you scan all the D.IV leagues each week?

I think that's an excellent suggestion. It would really help the community grow without any investment from BBs, such as ads.

@yodabig: I also think that would be great and I already suggested that a few months ago. As a U21 coach, I can reach to newcomers via U21 prospects they drafted...training for youth team will certainly keep some managers around for longer period of time than without that option.

Every user get´s an initial message in his BB-Mail Inbox. You can actually handle that task by getting your GM to work with your LA - if you´re running an own language. German (=german language) offers a Mentoring system to German speaking users, so any new Signup signing up with the language choice German get´s the invitation to that. Not sure if there´s an English (Aussie) Version, so this might be a bit of a stretch to handle it this way.

Your GM can post a local News only for Australia - it would be displayed in the News page and you can try to redirect the newbies (or whoever feels invited) like that.

Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 2/15/2013 5:09:41 AM

Oh I see, thanks for the clarification. That's a clever use of GM and LA "skills"

I think the forums are a pretty big hurdle for newcomers, and I think if you are linked to a mentor right away that we could help take that hurdle. I think the forum navigation leaves a lot to be desired, so it's not exactly inviting to take a look around if you just joined the game. It's very hard to find good information quickly since you can't search the forums. BB-mail, or a new feature to link mentors with newcomers, is much easier and clearer to start the game.

But, your adjusted welcome message is indeed a good step already, and I think we should expand on that by making it more prominent.