BuzzerBeater Forums

It is the same if not harder on HT. Because of their aging system. You have to have a player that comes out with amazing skill and be pulled at the right time with the right age.

For me I've been playing hattrick since 2002. That is why I can glance over a couple of bugs they have when they are changing the game. The game is so different and yet the same from that time. All of which have been improvements.

Pros for HT:
Developing your own youth
Many different strategies
Constantly evolving

Cons for HT:
Huge random Factor
Loss of skill before a certain age

Pros for BB:
Exciting games
Easy to pick up
Chat for matches

Cons for BB:
Training is too fast
Too many pages to do simple things
Constant timing out in the forums

I like BB but the major problem with it for me is that the training is too fast. You can easily train players to bankrupt your team too quickly. Your income does not go up in proportion to how your salaries do. In order to make it to Div. III your team will be almost bankrupt and once you make it to III your team will get the money to support your old team, but it will not be good enough to compete fairly in that division. I imagine it is the same with most series.

The other problem I have is there are too many different places you have to look for things. The layout is much simpler and more effective with HT.

But honestly I know these are two different games both with different play styles which is why I play them both.

Honestly, I think the biggest difference is the players in BB versus HT.

Hattrick started out as a very simply game engine and the players were and for the most part are 1 dimensional. The value of a player is largely dependent on his primary skills and with the addition of secondary skills, that really determines how he is capable of being played. In fairness, they've tried to move towards a match engine that requires more multi-dimensional players...but its still fairly simplistic compared to real soccer. I don't know, maybe that's the way they want it, they've always prided themselves on being a game were casual players can excel.

In Buzzerbeater, the players have more dimensionality. Do you want a guard that can shoot? pass? with inside skills? with rebounding? with high potential to train 'em up? If he has decent inside skills, can you play him at the 3? etc.

In fact, if I had my choice, I'd move for a potential/training/salary system that resulted in more skewed players. Even in Buzzerbeater, there tends to be to many centers with the same IS, ID and Reb. In RL, there are a lot of players that are good defensive players or offensive players, but lacking the other area, yet in the NBA or college they serve an important role on the team.

The minutes management in BB is brutal, as far as I'm concerned.

If they could fix it so that I could put a cap on my coach's ability to play a player, I'd fall in love with this game. Sure there are differences and downsides but other than having no control over how much/if my players play the "right" amount of time, I can live with all of the differences. I didn't want to play the exact same game, after all. I wanted something different.


EDIT: Oh - I would change 1 other thing. The staffing system in BB is ridiculous. How many of the people playing this game have gotten a raise every week -- EVER? I'd venture a guess that no one in the world has ever gotten a raise every week. Not sure where the logic for that idea came out.

Last edited by Xarn at 4/30/2010 12:22:55 AM

Not surprisingly, Buzzerbeater employees get a small raise each week. [I think BB-CodeMonkey is almost at minimum wage :-) ]

Anyway, it seems like all these sports management games lack the long term contact concept what is pretty standard in real world sports. Still, I don't think the staffing system is a huge factor in Buzzerbeater...more of a nuisance.

this post shows that even non-Americans can occasionally say something insightful -- that we have a monopoly on only 99% of the world's wisdom, not the 100% I once foolishly thought. as a red-blooded, true-blue, gun-totin', god-fearin' American who is too damn big to fit into my F-350, it pains me to admit that.

or worse, to agree with you.

And by the way, after two years of playing BB rather hardcore, I still make mistakes in predicting the coach's substitiution behaviour.

And that's a feature? :-) I find it like trying to tie my shoes with gloves on, it can be done but it is not any fun.

Just found this thread.

BB

Pros

Match Viewer - There's really nothing like this in any other management game I've played. It's really quite enjoyable to find yourself yelling at the screen to tell your PG to pass the rock or your SF to drive the lane.

Training - The quick pace of training ensures you're not waiting 12 weeks or some ridiculous amount of time for a pop on your star player, and the fact that everything (save FT and Stamina) trains more than one skill is genius.

Match Frequency - 2-3 competitive games per week (4 if you include PL) is better than having 1-2.

Player Faces for Non-supporters - no alien-like shadows with eyeballs is a definite plus.


Cons

Player Potentials - Stupid, stupid, stupid. There's already something in place to limit how high a player is trained, it's called his salary. Besides, open-ended games are more fun.

Transfer Search - in HT, players have 8 skills, need 4 at most, and you can search for 4 skills. In BB, players have 12 skills, need 4 at the very least, and you can search for 4. And no search option for experience is crap.

SF Training - No single-position SF training options, and some of the Wingmen trainings are so slow that they're useless.

Hidden Traits - if a player is physical, why not tell me? Better yet, why not make it his specialty and tell me everything it does?

Quick Timeouts - I'll probably be timed out while typing this, so I'll need to copy it, hit send, log in again, open up the forum again, reply to Josef Ka again, change the reply to Everybody, paste, and hit send again. (yep, just checked in another tab, and I've been timed out)

Staff System - Steaming turd. Buy a doctor for $1000, replace him for $1000 in 20 weeks when his salary is too high. Buy a PR guy for a much larger sum, replace him in 15-20 weeks for another larger sum. Scour the staff market for a decently-priced trainer for ten weeks, give up, settle for one a level or two lower just because you can't be bothered with it anymore; repeat next season.

Draft - Random crapshoot.
SCOUT: Hey coach, I just watched this kid play, but I have no idea how tall he is or how old he is, but if I had to rate him, I'd give him 1 out of 5 stars. Here's the boxscore from the match I watched.
COACH: Don't scout that kid again, he's a pile of dung.
SCOUT: I scouted that kid you told me not to again, and I still don't know how tall he is, even though I've watched him play twice, but I now know he's 19 and I think he's got 2-star potential, and I've given him an F grade. You were right, he is a pile of dung.


HT

Pros

Large Userbase - Great community (particularly in the USA) keeps the forums interesting, over 1M matches/week means a great deal of data can be collected in a short time and changes to the match engine/training/attendance/etc can be quickly figured out with some certainty. Also, millions of players means you can usually find what you're looking for when you need it.

Mobile Friendly - nearly all features (the one exception being the new match orders interface) are easily to access via mobile devices, no links hidden in crappy drop-down menus, and matches can be watched live on phones.

Youth - YS or YA, your team gets a new player every week, rather than three pieces of crap at the end of the season.

Match Ratings - Far more meaningful than in BB, and don't require you to read all match reports to scout an opponent.

Forums - well done.


Cons

Training Speed - really slow, particularly for defenders

Boring - particularly for newer users, there's nothing to do but train and lose for the first RL year or so.

Useless Specialties - Technical defender? Quick IM? Powerful FW?

I know these are not your quotes Darykjozef...but

Cons

Player Potentials - Stupid, stupid, stupid. There's already something in place to limit how high a player is trained, it's called his salary. Besides, open-ended games are more fun.

Disagree strongly with Player Potential. A starter can be ~25k. Thats good enough to play bench minutes in NBBA. ~50% of players can be trained well enough to play top level in some capacity. This mimics real life more closely than anyone who receives correct training at 18 can be a Hall of Famer.

Also, salary DOES NOT limit how high a player is trained. It simply limits how far he is trained until he is sold. I like the fact that I can train a player I drafted/bought to simply be a starter and not have to sell him at a certain point because of opportunity cost. It also makes those rare all-time great players closely watched by the community and awesome to own.

I would consider Potential as a Pro over Hattrick, which I played for a year on two separate occasions but became bored with...on two separate occasions.

Also, you can't call the BB draft a crapshoot in comparison to the Hattrick YA.