BuzzerBeater Forums

Hey Guys,

I'm 1 and bit seasons into BB. I find it interesting and fun.
I tried the mentor thing with 3 different people who all had no time. So I kind of just gave up on it and will keep learning from my mistakes. I've also tried getting into the offline message boards and 3 times joined with no response. In my case its not from a lack of trying.
My main lack of Canada forum participation is due to the fact that I'm busy and really only have time for thing that game oriented. Unfortunately with a young son and 3 fantasy sports teams, BB and Metroho hockey sim there is isn't much time for forum posting.

I am a newer user (this is my third season) so here are some random thoughts:

- I think part of the problem is that the BB forums aren't particularly user friendly (at least for new users) due to the lack of a search function, open sub-forums and some of the other things normally associated with forums. I personally much prefer the offsite forum and I would like to see more use out of that (i.e. more user written guides, more non-national team discussion, etc.).
- I think formalizing the mentor system might be better. I contacted a few players about mentoring early on, but as a new user you don't even really know what to ask people. After a season I just started randomly messaging various more experienced managers to get individual pieces of advice as I thought of it, but I am perhaps more forward than some other new managers. One suggestion I of have would be to perhaps have senior managers offering to scrimmage against new managers and then exchanging bbmail with them afterwards explaining why they made specific tactical choices and explaining why certain things happened the way they did. Learning to read the box scores/ratings in this game is tough at first but makes a huge difference when you figure it out.
- Similarly, I have learned a lot from the breakdowns and discussions of NT games on the offsite forum, perhaps having two D1 managers breaking down a game against each other on the forums would be neat for new managers to see.
- I also think that a general problem is that a lot of the lingo and slang on the boards goes unexplained and it can be intimidating for some new users. Making sure you explain what CT or "crunching it" is in popular threads ads a few seconds of typing but may make things seem less intimidating.

- I think that the main thing that is offputting to new managers is just that this game can be hard at first, particularly if you start mid or late season. As is often said, this is a marathon not a sprint and I think the delayed satisfaction is what keeps people from getting really invested in the game and in turn not involved in the community aspect. A good beginners guide on the offsite forum (not just NT training specific) could help that, as could people providing win now type advice, not just "train D1 caliber player" type advice. The first piece of advice I got was from JBMrock and he just told me not to spend a lot of money on players or staff, get a level 4 trainer and to train defense (or buy defense on the positions I'm not training). That sort of advice is basic, but it got me to division two in two seasons and let me establish a working and viable franchise economy. That sort of advice is far more important to retaining and encouraging active users than elaborate discussions about training world-class small forwards (not that those discussions aren't super interesting and important as well... they're just aimed at a different group of people).
- Finally - can the "you might have a National team player!" add include a link to the off-site forum? Can the form bbmail sent to check on prospects for the first time also include a link? Really throw the link in people's faces and try to sell it to them.

I am sure I can come up with some other ideas, but that's it for now.

I just registered again for the off=line site.
I have registered 3 times previously. No I never contacted you to say that I registered.
I pretty much have used this ID for almost everything I've done on the internet in the last 13 years. The only time I don't is when it is taken. So I did not use multiple names.

In the mentor thread it says to contact the name on the list via BB-mail. I contacted Inara(24910) and jbmcrock (24823) and received mail back they were to busy. I contacted a 3rd name on the list and never got a response. I have the messages in the BB mail if you really need proof. After 3 attempts I simply gave up. I only ever contacted names on the mentor list. Assuming that I contacted teams from my own league makes no sense.

I take serious offence to your claiming I'm a lair(not once but twice) and that I would actually make up stories. Not sure what purpose making up a story might serve. I guess you figured I have the time to take a 1/2 hour out of my retail purchasing job the week of christmas to concoct a story about how I have tried and am still interested in being as active as possible.
Your reply might be a starting point on why people haven't been getting involved with the forums, I know I'm less interested now.

An all Canadian Private League might be something to boost interest but I guess the tough thing is that only people who have upgraded their membership can join and they are usually the active ones.

Either way, maybe an I AM Canadian league would get a bit of banter going.

Some great ideas there. I will just point out that RIP has kind of always made the mentor system formalized. However, it has been dead for so long that maybe no one knows it is there.

Once I have some time, I will look at rewriting my U21 player message. It was originally meant to be a temporary measure, until RIP and I could agree on what we were going to do with the messages. But now that I have taken over the scouting (at least for now), I should really do something more permanent. Maybe I will float it by you once it is complete?

I am a newer user (this is my third season) so here are some random thoughts

I think that you make some great points here. I know that when I first started playing, I didn't really use the forums at all, because it was so difficult to find anything there. I also like the part you wrote about the simple advice you got from Jbmrock, as that's the general sort of advice that I have tried to give out myself (whenever anyone has asked me).

One thing that really helped me, as a new manager, is that I started out with a team full of very good defensive players (my five best overall players pretty much all had respectable defense). This caused my team to win almost every game, which was fun, so even though I didn't really do anything to improve my team (for my first whole season or so), I still had fun watching my team play. This kept me interested in the game near the beginning, and eventually, I starting learning more about how to manage my team, and really have had a great time playing Buzzer Beater.

A couple season ago, when I was still somewhat of a new player, I thought about the things that had made my team good right away. I wrote a guide about this, and shared the main points with several brand new players that I have mentored. However, I never really saw a good place to post a guide like this at the time, and just shared it with individual players that were interested.

Would anyone like me to post up a revised version of this guide, aimed at a player whose account was just activated? And if so, where would be the best place to post it? It might be helpful in building the user base, but I don't know. Any thoughts would be appreciated. :)

~The Mogul

Would anyone like me to post up a revised version of this guide, aimed at a player whose account was just activated? And if so, where would be the best place to post it? It might be helpful in building the user base, but I don't know. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

~The Mogul

I would be interested in seeing your guide - you certainly found a way to advance in BB very quickly. I personally think if you post it, it should be on the Canadian BB forum somewhere. Either that, or on a part of the off-site forum that is public. At the moment, there are very few people signed up for the off-site forum, and I gather that none of them are newbies.

re: Reading box scores
I didn't mean to imply that I really get the game engine or how the GE is reflected in box scores, I am just saying that when you first start playing those rating make absolutely 100% no sense at all (as opposed to now making very little sense). You're not sure if it's a 10.0 scale or a 20.0 scale or no scale or anything and many people have a hard time understanding that box scores are solely dependend on one skill on one player (a player who scores 40 points does it because of his own shooting but also because of his teammates' passing and his opponents' defense).

One thing that astounds me both from my two friends who started playing and from reading the help board is the number of people who are totally confused about the very basics. i.e. failing to recognize that playing a point guard with low handling and passing will result in the point guard taking a disproportionate number of shots since they'll be stuck with the ball at the end of the shotclock and higher passing means it's more likely that your good scorers will shoot the ball. Another example is players who are buzzled about why their shooting guard can score 30 points and get a 4.0 rating (not realizing they had atrocious OD and their opponent's SG was also terrible at OD)
Further, the basics of figuring out that if your opponent plays run and gun but shoots 2-22 from three point territory and have outside scoring a full level below inside scoring it does not mean you automatically need to go 1-3-1 or 3-2 on them (this is a problem for people who get the very basics but don't think it through).

re: "Win Now" advice
I think that winning promotion out of Div. 4 (which means getting into a division with way fewer bots which means more confidence and more fun) can involve some advice which is not detrimental to the long term health of a team (ask my if I feel the same way in two seasons when we'll determine if my team has long term health). Basic things like when choosing between buying a 4k salary player with respectable OD and decent other skills or one with respectable jump shot and less than decent other skills go with the one with the defense, or that you can pick up deals (i.e. under $10k) players by buying older and/or low potential players.
Your guide is really good and I am not trying to be critical. I am just suggesting that in terms of players just starting out, telling them, for example, that playing 48-70 minutes a week for game shape purposes is good advice, but great advice would be to explain to them how exactly to get that many minutes. It's common sense to me now (i.e. I either start a guy two games or play him 48 minutes one game and back up in the second game) but I can't emphasize how confusing this was to me for the first few weeks and how confusing it was for my friends until I explained it to them.
I know one shouldn't sacrifice a good foundation for short term success, but I think a lot of players quit because they struggle so much at the beginning. There's no point in building strong foundations if the team doesn't exist at all long term.

Furthermore, a lot of teams are interested in either producing NT prospects or getting to division 1. A lot of advice on the forums seems to geared towards players interested in doing one, or both, of those things. I think a lot of players just want to win some games, get to division three or maybe two and fool around with the game. For example, my roommate wants to stay in division three and train up some scorers who are capable of, and I quote, "embarrass the serious teams." (I think he means me). I think a lot of these players can be convinced that being a bit more ambitious can be fun, but I think initial contact with them needs to not make it sounds like the only reason to play this game is to benefit the national team or to try to dethrone BC Torooo (which is of course an exaggeration on my parts)