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No worries at all and thank you to accept my idea! It’s such a nice tool that can have great upside to help preparing key matches for a lot of managers.

PickUp Games are meant to be secret, so anyone can try tactics without being seen.
I wrote to BB-Marin about all the ways I knew to get to the game and he fixed it.

Last edited by GM-Enzo at 1/6/2024 5:23:05 AM

I am probably stating the obvious, but pickup games do not seem to be secret currently. All one needs is the correct match_id to access them, and these ids are not properly randomized.

Good day !
where I could ask for friendly games ?
I can not find the correct place to ask for friendly games ...

You need to go to the team overview page of the team you want to challenge: (https://www.buzzerbeater.com/team/45104/overview.aspx) for instance.

Scroll down to the 'Invitations' section and select arena and game starting time:

Then hit 'Challenge'.

It's a good idea to give the manager heads up via dm, so that he can accept and have time to set his lineup & tactics.

Hope this is what you were asking for...

Last edited by mink0ff at 1/14/2024 7:36:41 AM

hello fellow researchers and scientists.

want to start by saying that this is a great addition to the game. all upside, no downside, at worst some bugs need fixing.
will write a longer recap post for newbies in case they come searching for the same info.

match visibility:
no - games played do not appear in your schedule if someone else is looking but you do have the benefit of sharing with interested parties the link to the game.
i find this in incredible good taste. no need to be paranoic and have extra approval buttons or layers weather a game is truly secret or not. if you play pick up ball in a gym it s not like you will have the police outside guarding it. heck, even the most secret pick up game ever (played in monaco) by the dream team in 92 still leaked a little a little footage and players talked about it.

i have played against the impossible bot. very pleased to find out that others get the same opponent. ultimately this is meant for you to gather info about how your team fairs against top competition. if you truly want to experiment, find an equal opponent and play among yourselves, but this is very nice and useful. it would be interesting to keep the same bot team the entire seasons and then change the bot team every season.

i have delayed using my tokens as i am keeping it for PO final and late stage b3 if i have the chance. my understanding is that the 457k PG on the team is a later addition, but a nice one.

i am happy to see the oponent is in proficient game shape. i hope that it s is also at full stamina across the board. it s hard for me to descifre how the 2nd and 3rd tier bots are, but at top level it should be maxed out game shape and stamina...and at least 15 level of experience, to mimic a mini NT

was pleased to see that the bot changes tactics. against a friend it played inside iso, against me BO. i do think it changing tactics to outside or inside would skew the utility of the exercise (because you need comparable data to extract conclusions) so i want to applaud the GMs for the sensible calibration of this feature.

someone said that the IDs are not random enough. i want to politely state that if someone is desperate enough to check let s say 1000 games to see how you played, be it even as top tier b3 challanger, then you shoudl be more worried about their ambition rather than decisions. i've stopped playing PL to avoid being overexposed. just want to mention that tinkering with this would be unnnessary.
however it would be very nice to consider inter-team scrimmage at NT level. it would be useful to try combinations with different players even amongs themselves -i.e. starters vs reserves type match. to see who is better for the nt.

follow up
i want yto say also congrats for giving the option to choose venue. for b3 it s more useful to simulate with neutral. for league finals and PO obviously it s useful to see how you fare, as the difference between HC and away is extermly big.

[!] pay attention when using tokens. tokens are per user, not per team. so if you have utopia you don t have extra tokens. you get to choose where to use them but they are limited.



so. if you want to check in advance the opponent, here is what info i have gathered.

impossible level (50081) Alley-Oop Allstars as mentioned. max GS
tough (50110) rim rockers all strong GS
medium (50067) Triple Threat Tornados
easy level (50074) Dribble Dazzle new info. GS is 7 and 8. very realistic :-)


also rest assured players cannot be scouted by NT, i tried

someone said that the IDs are not random enough. i want to politely state that if someone is desperate enough to check let s say 1000 games to see how you played, be it even as top tier b3 challanger, then you shoudl be more worried about their ambition rather than decisions. i've stopped playing PL to avoid being overexposed. just want to mention that tinkering with this would be unnnessary.

I completely agree that the ideal format of these pickup games would be invisible but optionally shareable.

I don't agree that the current implementation achieves that and I don't think that it makes sense to dismiss the issue on the grounds that somebody would have to be desperate to take advantage of that.

With the use of the official BBApi it would be fairly easy for a good B3 team to get some advantage against the competition by aggregating such matches. I have not tried that, but if the boxscore endpoint allows pickup game match_ids, it doesn't take much imagination to see how this could be abused. Why not safeguard the game against such practices?

B3 and I.1 teams are probably getting a few challenges from lower level teams. Should these teams treat these games as free practice, or should they be cautious? I think it would be better if they could treat it as free practice.

not to belittle your argument, but....at NT level you have no ideea how many nations just gave up on replicating the tool due to the effort. out of 200 NT +u21 total i would say that maybe noit even 30 used a substitute tool, similar to what you are describing with BBApi.

lastly, this is not a secret game. you have so many datapoints regarding good players and good teams. if some one is truly desperate they would gather better information trying to mine the transferlist (which i know, does not mean alot if the best teams grow their player themselves) or just hack the specific teams account. i am not debating what is best in absolute terms but in limited practical terms as we are playing a free game on a platform that does not allow paytoplay. as a result of limited cashflow i would encourgage the good results...with limited effort.

if i am mistaken and your request is easy to impliment, then i support your ideea, otherwise it s just sharing of opinions.

personally i think the resources of the BB can be used better. apperently the community wanted apps, i still believe doing a merch store with physical memorabilia would allow for better ROI. etc etc.


lastly, i don t engage at all with challanges from users. unless we are friends to decide what we experiment, i just showcase my defence while the other just plays random offense. that is why i stopped playing PL.