BuzzerBeater Forums

Players will quit, new players will join, nobody will play BB forever.

I have noticed a huge crash in the number of votes for NT elections. S13 was a record high with a big surge, numbers are awful for the last elections in comparison and the trend is "worldwide". Italy is a very eloquent case.
Any reason for this ? S13 elections were held in summer for the north hemisphere but Argentina or Australia show the same trend.

I didn't remember it. I hope BB has noticed it then and will advertise the elections again in the future. It's a cheap way to try and get players more involved in the community.

There was a suggestion to put more NT-related stuff in the news (game announcements and so on), so every team could see whats happening with the team. That could raise the interest in the NT.

I think if we could build more things, like training facilities or different stadium upgrades that could help to keep the interest high.

I've always maintained that it's really hard for teams to promote since older teams tend to have more cash and/or better players and can maintain better rosters longer. I've finally gotten my team to a competitive level in D.II, but I'm out of cash. Older teams can have "break even" rosters and not turn a profit, but still have a cushion for roster upgrades. I cannot make an immediate roster move and I don't have a cushion, so I have to be creative if I want to try and improve my team.

I think either they economic system needs to help churn teams from the bottom to the top faster, or find some way to make the bottom divisions more exciting somehow if teams are just destined to stay there longer, such as develop more of a "league history" archive. I feel pretty entrenched in my D.II league right now since I've been it for a bunch of seasons already (sort of stagnating), but the other teams are mostly pretty experienced so we make it fun for each other. The lower divisions don't have those sort of teams, and managers are more likely to quit, so something needs to make it fun for teams in those leagues that have a hard time promoting so fast.

i can only speak for australia but things here economically have changed a lot in the last two seasons

when i won div 3 to advance to div 2 i had a bunch of 10-15k players

but now with the massive pile of cheap free agents flooding the market every day every team in d3 can afford to buy guys wih 40k+ salaries, i see some with players of 100k+

it is great that they can afford to buy them but they cant afford to keep them

i was making a lot of money, improving my arena, upgrading staff, (buying the occasional overpriced player as well) and saving a lot for when i made it

now i cant see how they can be making any money at all - it is a different problem - but still one that is making this game even less about match tactics and training players, and more about the great stockmarket game that also has a basketball theme

no-one is forcing anyone in d3 to have 80k players, but when your rival buys one (and for less than 1 million) then you need one to stay competitive

Last edited by abigfishy at 1/24/2011 9:00:50 PM

Totally agree.
I've always resisted that urge and never bought a player for more than 100k on the market, or for a salary higher than 7k. I think that's what lower league teams should do. When I promote to D3 it will be a struggle to stay there for a few seasons, but if I ever want to get to the top that's the only way I see fit.
Right now, players with high salaries are cheap to buy, and that's a result of people investing in training prospects for many season who failed to see that the demand was not going to stay high. Maybe there should be a warning when you're in division 4 and want to bid $ 1000 on a 80k salary player, but at the end of the day, new managers have to be smarter, too.

It is essentially so much easier right now to compete once you are able to promote. If you are promoting from D3 to D2, pretty much if you really wanted to you can compete with the mid tier teams by middle of the season because you make a lot of money and players are so cheap right now.

The biggest turn off for me right now is to reiterate what others have said. This has become a stock market game. Tactics don't count for much when people can just buy superior players off the market in a couple of weeks and whip your team.

The biggest frustation is probably watching 3 seasons ago spending millions on players just to compete (mid tier compete) and starve off relegation in my division and now seeing these players now going for about 1/3rd to 1/2 the value of what it used to, which makes staying up in a division so much more easier for newly promoted teams.

At the same time, total revenue have remained roughly the same. So to put into figures, when I promoted into D2, I made 200k a week so it took me 10 weeks for the 2 mill I needed for a "decent" player. In the meantime, I had to rely heavily on tactics to remain competitive and try outsmart other teams. Now, the same player will go for around 700-1 mill meaning it will only take around 4 weeks or for a team to be able to afford such a player. Now it seems all these newly promoted teams can compete really quickly due to their ability to be get new high salaried players. This in turn has turned off a lot of focus on tactics but turned it into a stock market game.

This problem comes from the fact that there are too many FAs. Whenever a team quits, these players end up on the market and provides too much downward pressure on prices. So basically the more teams that quit, the more of these players flood the market, the lower the prices get. As a result, people get pissed and more will quit, causing a downard spriwal of lower prices and quitting players until we fix the economy problems.

This game needs manage its overall economy better.

I signed up for a basketball game not a stock market game based on some basketball elements.

Last edited by Monkeybiz at 1/25/2011 11:22:28 AM

I don't know if the content of the game has something to do with the fact that BuzzerBeater "only" lists 50k users, but IMHO the marketing around and in BuzzerBeater doesn't help its growth.

What's the point? The point is that BuzzerBeater "pretend" to be the best basketball management simulation in the world. The main aspect of these kind of games is that managing a team means giving a life to team we manage as players. It means appropriate or create an identity in which we recognize ourselves. It's the base of a management game. And it's one of BBs weak point. They tried to bring some improvements through the supporter package but it seems like the tool has met its limit.

Secondly, community is what brings people on the Internet. Whatsoever on social networks, professional networks, on line games, Internet users surf on the Web to share, learn, exchange with others around a subject they appreciate. For BB, it is about basketball. But once again, IMHO, the community aspect is one of BBs weak point. The forum is atrocious and leads to bad communication between users. Internet users wants everything right away, and doesn't have the patience to wait for informations. Virtual behaviors are completely different from the real life.

And finally, the browsing... For a new user, browsing on BuzzerBeater must be incomprehensible. You got infos on your left via the menu, on your top right through the drop down menu. And even on the score bar. You see infos everywhere, anywhere, and when you are not used to it, you may feel reticent to pursue the journey...