BuzzerBeater Forums

That's strange, I'm always pretty sure what minutes my players get in scrimmages. You just need to choose your opponents better. Are you saying it's hard to get 48 minutes in a scrimmage??? I completely disagree.
Yes BB's have quoted that, most recent one was the walkover thread. Why do you get 43 minutes when you assign Starter-Sub-Reserve in a walkover? There's your answer.

That's strange, I'm always pretty sure what minutes my players get in scrimmages. You just need to choose your opponents better.

Your opponent in scrimmage shouldn't really have that big of an effect to the minute management I believe.

Are you saying it's hard to get 48 minutes in a scrimmage??? I completely disagree.

Depends what kind of minutes you want to your other players.. Because I think there are too many "quirks" in the system - with 5 players it's easy but with more players you need to assign a role to them and you should try not to blowout and so on. The system really doesn't work the way I would intuitively expect it to, and that's the (little) problem here.


You said earlier that training shouldn't be easy as people want to play challenging games. Well, that's not really an argument to either direction. Others like more challenge, others like different challenge. Now if they for example made enthusiasm hidden or game shape hidden the game would be more challengin to play well, but I guess (almost) no-one would really like that.

Your opponent is a big factor. Does he have many aggressive players on the roster (high fouls per game). Can you win him with blowout. Starter-Sub and different player in Reserve nets you ~36/12. Pretty easy to get 48 mins for trainees.
If you can assign minutes, it's not hard at all to get full minutes for 1 pos training for 3 players. It's a childrens game that way. Easy training with no tradeoff. If the game is too easy anyone can win. If you make the game more challenging the best managers will win. This is how it should be.

Your opponent is a big factor.

And I was arguing that it probably shouldn't be that big.

If you can assign minutes, it's not hard at all to get full minutes for 1 pos training for 3 players.

Yep, I should be able to do that this week if I'm not unlucky. But that is only after having learnt a couple things about the system so, again, I think the system could use a bit more logic.

If the game is too easy anyone can win. If you make the game more challenging the best managers will win. This is how it should be.

Naturally. But imo the challenge shouldn't be about "which opponent to play scrimmage against" or "I can't put that many players on roster if I want my PG surely to get 48 min" but instead I think the challenge should be about "what kind of players I want", "what's my training plan for next season" or "is it more important to play him 80+ minutes this week than the better game shape next week"...

Comon are you serious. You just need to choose either you take an opponent you blowout or you choose an opponent to whome you lose big. Avoid close games.
Training should be hard, choosing players should be hard, deciding if you can start your star player in 3 important games this week -> thus sacrificing his GS should be hard. No guts no glory. If you want to risk pushing 3 player single position training, why complain if you fail. There has to be a tradeoff.

Can someone tell me why it should be hard to get as many minutes to your players as you want?

Because the training system is tied to weekly minutes played in a certain position. IMO it's an obvious game design choice that I find pretty difficult to argue. If one wants to change this, there need to be changes to the training system. These would not necessarily need to be major changes, though. For example a new tuning of the "how much training one gets for fewer than 48 weekly minutes" parameter just might be sufficient. One key point of course is that most people want to control the minutes to get best possible training. Remove (most of) that incentive and they are less likely to want extreme minutes anyway. Then give them that option.

IMO game design fails when people want to choose the extreme option (such as playing each guy 48 minutes a game in training position) and are rewarded for doing that. If that's easy and if that's a winning strategy at some level, is there anything fun and challenging in this aspect of the game anymore? Wouldn't the game be better off by removing that aspect and thus making it more simple and accessible? In this sense, the current system is actually pretty well balanced. Moreover, I think it's too easy to get 48 minutes and teams that field only 5 players are not punished enough. But that's just an opinion.

I think it is not a good picture of how challenging things have to be. Try to imagine this thing from the perspective of manager which is not a fan of buzzerbeater. You can explain him several points of how in fact hard is the player developing, how you have to think about every aspect, but in this case minutes managing, we are not hitting the point how you are capable to do that, but how annoying is that.

The difference is in the things you have to know to success. If you connect them with the point what you are trying to do.. So you are trying to get 48+ playing minutes for your player, therefore you have to play with challenging opponent so he will not be substituted.

I would be happier you could choose just to get to your player 48 minutes as you want (and sacrifice power of your team slightly, because you are doing that), or remove that option once for all and get there some mechanism by which you can controll if your player get approx 30-40 or 15-25 or 5-10 minutes. And thats it.

Last edited by aigidios at 10/19/2010 3:11:27 AM

Try to imagine this thing from the perspective of manager which is not a fan of buzzerbeater. You can explain him several points of how in fact hard is the player developing, how you have to think about every aspect, but in this case minutes managing, we are not hitting the point how you are capable to do that, but how annoying is that.

The easy approach is to tell a new manager to manage minutes on a weekly basis and not on a per-game basis. I think the "forums wisdom" reflects this fairly well in case of 2-position training, where the usual guideline for beginners is to try and give 5 trainees 48+ minutes. That's a realistic goal even without any funny minute management tricks, although you can't guarantee it every week.

I actually already addressed the new manager/not fan of BB issue in terms of game design goals in my previous post. I think the (commonly perceived) incentive to get 48+ minutes is perhaps too high in relation to the (commonly perceived) risk of losing something by targeting extreme minute distribution. One key advice for beginners is to always aim for 48+ no matter what. I'm guilty of repeating that mantra as much as the next guy, but IMO that's not how it should really be. Regardless, I think the current minute management aspects work pretty well given the current training system and our understanding of it.

I think the current minute management aspects work pretty well given the current training system and our understanding of it.

Sure it does.