BuzzerBeater Forums

I play in many online leagues including Front Office Football and Out of the Park Baseball. These folks all play many online games like Hattrick and the college basketball sim at Simulatedsports. Many of us tried out BB back in season 3 and dropped out by season 5. I came back for season 11 and have to say none of the concerns folks had back in the early days have been fixed or even addressed. When I tell people what BB is like now, no one else is willing to try this again.

Here are the reasons:

1) New players from the US are not treated equally to new players from small countries. We have to start in DV, they get a cakewalk to DI in a season or two. There other games out there where new teams are put in the same division, regardless of nationality. These games are attracting new users while BB is not.

2) The lack of statistics. BB has, at best, rudimentary statistics available. The lack of team defensive stats and player +/- stats is seen as a sign that the developers don't really know how to put a sim together.

3) The economy. Day trading is abhorred by players who want realism. However, the economy of BB almost forces you to trade to support your team. FOF/OOTP type of people want to build their team with draft picks by training and developing the right kind of players. You can't do this in BB because you don't see enough draft info to target the types of players you want to have. And I don't mean simply claiming the 'best' player, rather distinct player types.

4) The player development model that forces you to play out of position in order to get training in, for example, OD, ID or passing, is seen as a bad joke and a horrendous design decision.

5) The 'World of BB' is a reflection of soccer, not basketball.

6) Too much of BB smacks of Hattrick, as if the game had been lifted whole from that sim, had its soccer engine snipped out and a basketball game engine grafted on. I remember from my early days that this is close to literal truth, but no one speaks of this any more in the forum.

I'm certain most of you will take offense at what I've written, but these are very real reasons why hard core gamers from the US are not willing to play Buzzer Beater.

1. While teams starting in a smaller country get an economic advantage, I don't see starting in D2 or D1 as an advantage. These teams will not sniff a winning record early in their existence and it is a major undertaking to win their league. I started in D5 in Season 8 (signed up during the Season 7 playoffs) and I was able to make it to D2 by Season 12. Winning your league 3 times in a row to start out is impossible in South Africa.

2. I agree that the statistics available could be much better. I'd love to see +/- and some defensive oriented stats. I would also love to see a ranking with the players names for each division, country, and world. We know a lot of these stats are kept, we just can't see them.

3. Disagree here. You can be successful without daytrading, or only by utilizing occasional transactions for profits. My group of friends are all having success and using a wide variety of ways to improve their team. Some of the teams are building around players they drafted (Fatcurry with Lundy and Own3d with Trickle are good examples). I have had horrible luck with my draft, but I was able to build a team with youngsters I bought.

4. I agree that the necessity of playing people out of position for training is annoying and can cost you games, I don't see any superior method of training that would eliminate this. Maybe you have a way in mind? Honestly, I like that you need to weigh your cup games, league games, and development of your players.

5/6. I don't really care. Hattrick held no interest for me when I played it. I love BB. This is strange because I'm a much bigger fan of Soccer than I am of Basketball. A entirely different game engine is no small thing as well.

I would blame the low retention rates here on the difficulty and slow reward rate.

This is a hard game. Bad decisions can follow you for 2 seasons, maybe more. If you spend your initial seed money too hastily, you could be in big trouble. I think a lot of new players do this, I know I did. The friends that joined later have developed much faster and I think the help from Peluin and I was very instrumental in the improvement. It's hard to know when to expand your arena and it can take a long time to find the right trainer for the right price. You need to make a lot of important decisions in your first few weeks in the game, and there is no going back once the money is gone. Once some players get past this stage, they quit. Even if you make all the correct decisions, there is still a long time before you see it pay off. It's hard to see how your team is progressing.

I briefly threw around the idea of making an informational/instructional podcast for Buzzerbeater. In reality, I just don't have the time to get it set up at the moment.Something along these lines could help the US Market immensely. The other thing I would love to see is a grassroots marketing campaign. Set up fliers at universities and offices around the country with links to the website and to maybe to the hypothetical podcast that I hope gets made one day. Get them in and teach them what to do with the first login at the same time. I've had 20-40 minute conversations with friends on what they need to do to start with and analysis of their initial roster.

....just some thoughts...

Honestly, I've always thought that games like hattrick/buzzerbeater where always more popular in europe whereas games like rotisserie baseball/fantasy football were more popular in america. Seems to me that most american sports are well described by statistics in real life, so games based on the real world statistics thrived. In europe, where soccer is king, its harder to create an intriguing game based simply on soccer statistics, so these type of alternate sports universes did better.

4. I agree that the necessity of playing people out of position for training is annoying and can cost you games, I don't see any superior method of training that would eliminate this. Maybe you have a way in mind? Honestly, I like that you need to weigh your cup games, league games, and development of your players.

It's really pretty simple, allow for more flexibility and training options at more positions. The obvious one is the SF position which has be debated ad nauseum. The cons to this system are that there are very very few true SF's in the game and the only pro to maintaining the status quo is allowing those that have gone thru the pains of training SF's to reap their rewards.

Even that pro is a poor response as this is something that could be announced to be implemented at some point in the future, giving trainers time to reap the rewards of their past training while letting all user begin to plan for the changes.

Hattrick held no interest for me when I played it.

Many people did come from hattrick first though. The enthusiasm system is the one major component that seems to remain simply to allow an easier transition for users from hattrick to BB.

Overall I have to say the BB's really do a good job addressing issues and avoiding knee-jerk reactions to problems. Otherwise I wouldn't still be playing after almost 13 seasons.



Last edited by brian at 9/14/2010 4:24:16 PM

Overall I have to say the BB's really do a good job addressing issues and avoiding knee-jerk reactions to problems. Otherwise I wouldn't still be playing after almost 13 seasons.

I agree, in fact, I've seen Buzzerbeater make changes/improvements in a couple of seasons, that Hattrick would never attempt.

It's really pretty simple, allow for more flexibility and training options at more positions. The obvious one is the SF position which has be debated ad nauseum. The cons to this system are that there are very very few true SF's in the game and the only pro to maintaining the status quo is allowing those that have gone thru the pains of training SF's to reap their rewards.

Even that pro is a poor response as this is something that could be announced to be implemented at some point in the future, giving trainers time to reap the rewards of their past training while letting all user begin to plan for the changes.

Maybe it could be expanded in an extremely limited capacity, but I think the idea that "you can't have it all" is actually a strong point of the current system, and that there are several pro's beyond the obvious one of having a very good all-around player by the end of training?

1) If every position could be easily trained in every skill, I think the results of training something unique become less satisfying, because there was really not much sacrifice/effort involved and because more people are already doing it, and I would argue that the satisfaction of training an interesting player is something which sustains a lot of managers.

2) The ability to train players 'out of position' and still compete in their league is one of the very few advantages lower division teams have over top division teams: it's easier for me to one position train a center in OD for a season than it probably is for teams in the NBBA. If I want, I can try to use that advantage to build my team in a unique way that I believe will help me compete in the future, create players for resale who will demand a premium on the TL, etc.

Creating new, easier training choices would open up those options for established upper division teams while not really adding a lot for lower division managers, and the more advantages established teams have (or the fewer advantages new teams have), the harder it becomes for someone just starting out to climb to the top of the pyramid.

It's important for the game that people believe that with the right plan, they can reach the top; the fewer opportunities there are to try something unique to make up the ground, the more the game begins to feel like an endless slog of trying to be marginally better at things which established managers already have had time to get good at.

Not that anyone especially cares about my opinion, but I would hope they don't expand the training options, or that if they do it is in a way that still rewards going about it the 'hard' way. Example: you can train OD from the center position, but it requires 65 minutes/week, and it still trains a bit slower than two position training.

Many people did come from hattrick first though. The enthusiasm system is the one major component that seems to remain simply to allow an easier transition for users from hattrick to BB.

Overall I have to say the BB's really do a good job addressing issues and avoiding knee-jerk reactions to problems. Otherwise I wouldn't still be playing after almost 13 seasons.

Personally I like the enthusiasm system :) I think it adds a strategy component and also gives weaker teams a mechanism to increase their odds of winning games they might not normally be favored in. I would totally agree though that the BB's do really do an excellent job of making this game both fun and deep. Big thanks to them!

First of all sorry for the intrusion in the US forums:)
1) I would rather play a hard game than an easy game.
2,3) I partly agree with you. We need more statistics to compare and daytrading is one of the things I dislike aswell. But in a game we can't have everything realistic. Some things need to be tweaked in order to fit the game.
4) I disagree, training setup is one of the best things BB's have created. This game is about choosing paths, you can't have everything.
5,6) I have never played HT and never will. I love basketball and BB is the best basketball sim out there.
College basketball sim has 2304 teams total. I'll take a wild guess that some of the teams in those leagues are fillers (some of the active ones perhaps even not US based players). There is a cap in leagues between 00018 and 00027, which points to a fact that they have removed 8 full bot leagues. Taking that into consideration, I think more than 1/3 of the teams remaining are bots. I could be wrong though...

but I think the idea that "you can't have it all" is actually a strong point of the current system,

Personally I like the enthusiasm system I think it adds a strategy component and also gives weaker teams a mechanism to increase their odds of winning games they might not normally be favored in.

I think it's interesting that a manager is stating that these are issues that led mangers to leave the game. Really that's all the matters. Only the BB's have the means to survey active and inactive users to gather these details. I'm skeptical that either of these end up keeping more managers in the game then they chase off. Will likely never know either way.

When it comes to deciding the quality of a feature I almost always side with the reality test with rare exception (injuries are one of the rare exceptions). Neither of these items are realistic AND their ability to improve the overall game experience is debatable. All I know is that if I was to recruit a new manager or mentor a new team these are among the most confusing items to explain and live with. *cough cough, Mahody*

Last edited by brian at 9/15/2010 1:24:02 PM