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Do you think that defensive strategies are balanced enough? Many top teams uses MtM all the time, and ever the zone defensiive tactics (3-2 and 2-3) are uncommon in the most important matches. Many strategies (1-3-1, box and one, pressing) are not helpful anywhere. Are there any chances to change that? If yes, how?

Could you be more specific? How did you fail at rewritting? Why it's not possible at the moment? How comes that the ability to watch game on mobile devices is not your top priority?

We failed at converting the flash project to a HTML5 project. There are some conversion tools out there but they are not up to the task of converting such a complicated project. We didn't try to rewrite it all. It is not our top priority because of the existence of android and iOS browsers that support Flash.

1. I made some analysis with my team's three point shooting and find out, that open threes are scored with lower percentage then the defended ones? Why is that? Are you sure there is no bug? Because I have seen some complains about this in the forums too..
I have a wild thought.. Maybe passing and inside shot is very connected in this game, and to hit assisted three your shooter needs high inside shooting skill?
2. Inside vs outside tactics.. The inside tactics advantages: rebounding, high percentage shots, player poll (high od, low bloking), effective passing, foul drawing, exploitation of driving skill by the guards and etc.. Could you name few advantages of outside tactics?
3. Young vs old.. Are there any strengths that young player has against older ones.. Like higher efficiency at fast paced tactics or similar?

1. Are these open threes long threes? Are they contested but just not reported as such? Also, one team statistics is definitely too small a sample for reliable data. That said, the percentage of threes in general is a bit low in BB and we're trying to figure out why and how we can help it. As for the wild thought, IS is not connected to making threes, I can say that for sure.

2. I don't have to. Try building a strictly inside team and see how it goes compared to a versatile team. You cannot survive in BB by playing inside all of the time. Again, the efficiency of outside tactics is something we are looking at and are preparing some changes.

3. No. I guess stamina plays a main role in that case, not age.

How do you plan to increase user rentention?

Are there any plans to put new users in the lowest leagues, so they can play against bots until they Close the gap to older and already established Teams. When will this change happen, if not - why not?

User retention is a difficult problem to tackle. In a fast paced world, a relatively slow, long term strategy game is often too much for the kids today. We are thinking of making and/or rewarding some tutorial videos, though. If someone makes a really good one, we don't mind giving up some Supporter and lending a hand in making it.

Yes, we plan on giving new users a choice: lower bot filled league or higher human occupied one. It is something of a priority and will be done in the coming weeks. The problem is that in some countries, making that choice won't matter: they'll end up in the same league level no whatever they choose (because of the available options).

well can you elaborate what the factors and the weights are exactly?
because i can tell you that for example a team in my league get 145,000 income
compare to 60,000-70,000 i had most of the last seasons and his budget
is not larger than mine(at least compare to the last 4 seasons) and certainly
his achievments are not ,the only thing is that he have local\local national team players
in his roster.
and that observation was made for at least another 3-5 teams i know in the reacent seasons.

I cannot give you the factors, you're supposed to figure them out yourself. I can, though, say that local NT players that actually play in the NT give a big boost. That's something everybody knows. You didn't mention the NT players before...

Do you think that defensive strategies are balanced enough? Many top teams uses MtM all the time, and ever the zone defensiive tactics (3-2 and 2-3) are uncommon in the most important matches. Many strategies (1-3-1, box and one, pressing) are not helpful anywhere. Are there any chances to change that? If yes, how?

We already changed it a bit, but users haven't noticed yet. We are tweaking the game engine little by little, because we don't want to make anything too strong on the other end (remember when everyone was using R&G and Pressing?). I guess this makes us a bit overly careful and seemingly slow but we prefer not to make any game breaking changes. Of course, we cannot reveal the details of these changes for the same reason. It takes time, knowledge and patience to achieve balance.

Why do so many managers use MtM? Because it is a sure shot. A good GDP guess combined with the right zone can be a much more powerful combination, if guessed right, but it carries a risk. In the end, it all depends on how much you can trust your research and how much you are willing to bet.

Hello Marin,

When I was searching a top french player, I was competing against team which had a balance of +10, +20 and +50M in their transfert list. Once they recruit a top player at a decent price, they put him in the trade market again until they find someone ready to pay +20-50% of the price they brought it.

So I'm curious to know what your think about it. Will you take care of this or you consider it's acceptable ?

Edit :
Is there plan to add an official position to NT staff ? And give them some "power" too. At least an assistant or someone of sort.

Last edited by _Az_ at 1/28/2015 12:47:59 PM

Hello Mr Marin, and hats off for what you created.

I have a couple of questions or comments:
- it's quite frustrating, when your team operates in a country with a large user base, to have to be at the very top in order to do any meaningful international games. Have you, or would you consider a lower level type of BBB league ? Say one for D2, one for D3, etc ?
- how did you settle on the game engine of BB come about ? Was it more from enjoying basketball and did you have originally a style of play you wanted to promote, or is it all based on finding programing solutions that would make the end result balanced ?
- last thing, did anything player do surprise you and can you give examples ?
- well, maybe something else: dolphin on my iOS phone has never let me access live games. Could you have a tech page set up to explain how that would work ?

Last edited by phislammajamma at 1/28/2015 12:55:35 PM

Are these open threes long threes? Are they contested but just not reported as such?

No, my team is generating all kinds of assisted threes, and long three pointers are rare.. So, play-by-play isn't always strictly reporting if the shot was open or not? If so, then I guess I can throw my analysis out.. Ok then, nice to know, that at least little steps are made in GE to balance the game..

Would you ever add another NT age group, like U24 or U25?
If so, any plans for when?
If not, what are the main reasons why not?


Last edited by Elmacca at 1/28/2015 1:48:51 PM

How far away from the basket does the GE look up JS rather than IS? Does it ever look up both? When?

Tell us something we don't know about help defence calculations (please). Is SB the only skill checked?

I'm on a phone on a train, with signal in and out, which is why I'm writing multiple posts. Apologies for that.

Last edited by Elmacca at 1/28/2015 1:54:41 PM

When will we have all the substitution patterns working well? Huge effort to destroy blank lineup, but we don't see any to fix the broken ones.

When I was searching a top french player, I was competing against team which had a balance of +10, +20 and +50M in their transfert list. Once they recruit a top player at a decent price, they put him in the trade market again until they find someone ready to pay +20-50% of the price they brought it.

So I'm curious to know what your think about it. Will you take care of this or you consider it's acceptable ?

What is actually wrong here? Any team has the right to buy and sell players. Is it OK if they profit? Yes, if it's not daytrading. Especially if they receive additional training. Maybe I missed your point here, please explain if I did.

Is there plan to add an official position to NT staff ? And give them some "power" too. At least an assistant or someone of sort.

No, sorry.

1. - it's quite frustrating, when your team operates in a country with a large user base, to have to be at the very top in order to do any meaningful international games. Have you, or would you consider a lower level type of BBB league ? Say one for D2, one for D3, etc ?
2. - how did you settle on the game engine of BB come about ? Was it more from enjoying basketball and did you have originally a style of play you wanted to promote, or is it all based on finding programing solutions that would make the end result balanced ?
3. - last thing, did anything player do surprise you and can you give examples ?
4. - well, maybe something else: dolphin on my iOS phone has never let me access live games. Could you have a tech page set up to explain how that would work ?

1. No, we haven't considered it.
2. I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll try and give an answer. I guess the programming solutions are based on some statistical numbers we are trying to achieve (in order to make a better copy of the real life basketball game), but sometimes we just want to do something fun and exciting and do that. There's no rule.
3. Yes, and no. It would take too much time
4. We found that it works nicely on Android so I figured that it must work on iOS too. I remember, though, some users reporting other browsers with flash support working on iOS, but I cannot recall which exactly. Maybe someone will chime in and help us. Once they do, I'll add that to the list of them on the bugs page. I have opened a thread there (267338.1) where we can then discuss the good and bad experiences on these OS-es and devices.