BuzzerBeater Forums

As chris902 said, the better teams don't enter the cup until the later rounds. That is the same, or at least very similar to seeding.

No it isn't.

So why are many real-life cups seeded? Is it to better determine the winner? Or to maximize the entertainment value for the spectators? Or even to maximize revenue for the entire competition?

I think it's probably a combination of the last two (overlapping) constraints in the real world. Do those matter as much in BB? I tend to agree that the first constraint is being met reasonably well in BB.

Last edited by Mod-oeuftete at 7/20/2010 11:11:09 AM

How is it not similar to seeding? It lets top teams advance to a certain stage so they begin there rather than at the beginning. The purpose would be similar to the purpose behind seeding.

While the best team might win the cup. The second best team often won't be in the final. And the third and fourth best teams won't be in the semi final. I just don't think it is fair that you can get a really easy run through the cup for 3 or 4 rounds by playing bots and inactive human teams and consequently boost your country ranking and receive an easy 50k a week when much better teams might go out in the first round because they draw the best team in the country.

That may be true, but that wouldn't necessarily change with seeding. Look at this year's NCAA tournament - only one number 1 seed made it to the final weekend. Kansas didn't make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Kentucky and Syracuse went down soon after that. The Final Four was 1 vs. 2 and 5 vs. 5, with the title game as 1 vs. 5.

Yes, but it would certainly increase the chance of better teams making it further. It would also encourage teams to do well in their league and not tank games because as you get a higher ranking you will play an easier team in the cup.

I think you can make arguments for both a seeded and a random draw in the tournament. Because you prefer the seeded version, doesn't make the random version less fair. In fact, some might argue that its more fair...everybody has the same chance of facing the top teams (everybody is treated equally).

I'd prefer if the cup was seeded, but I think the weaker team should be granted HCA.

Fair or not fair - cup matches are played by teams with varying enthusiasm - should we therefore set a fixed enthusiasm level for all teams to play their cup matches? if you go down this road, you'll end up convincing yourself we don't need enthusiasm in the game altogether - and this way the outcomes will be academic subject to injury.

The best team hasn't the right to win the Cup (or league for that matter). The game has different managerial options specifically to ensure teams within a certain quality of one another can compete on a given day.

If you want to take luck out of BB then do it via the draft - thats as much if not more of a lottery.

I love the fact that there are two types of competition in BuzzerBeater. One is focused more on long-term planning (league), the other has a strong factor of surprise and the unexpected and has its focus on the short term (Cup). Remove the difference and having two separate competitions doesn't make that much sense anymore in my opinion.

Here’s my opinion. Random seeding in the Cup games are just fine. Speaking as someone whose team just got knocked out of the USA Cup in the 3rd round against a D.III team while so many other D.II teams could still feast on D.IV teams due to the random draw, I don’t mind this at all. The upside is that I can spend the next few weeks planning better for league games and training. I do sort of resent that my Fan Survey will take hit for both this survey and next (remember that the fans’ opinion on “last season” includes performance in the Cup), and because of the randomness of when we get a tough scheduling matchup in the Cup I really think that this element of the Fan Survey has a muted impact on our attendance numbers since I’m sure the Fan Survey isn’t taking the quality of the opponent that knocks us out of the Cup into consideration when assigning the number of balls for Cup performance. Oh, and while I’m expressing my opinion, I’ll add that I really wish all Cup games, not just the later round games, were on neutral courts. While random assignments are fine (after all, we’d be debating a long time the right way to seed a Cup tournament), I think randomly assigning who gets home court is unnecessary. The outcome the games should be based on the lineup and tactics each team uses without a random home court advantage bonus assigned to a lucky team.