BuzzerBeater Forums

Personally, I think the greatest drawback to user retention is that this game can be very unforgiving to rookie mistakes at the onset. I've seen new managers buy guys with six figure salaries, fire great trainees, and blow all of their money on 40 year olds. And if you pull off one of those mistakes, I can only imagine the wind being taken out of the user enthusiasm sails. Especially when you have to wait seven weeks to start over.

I suggested a while back to have a master reset button that would be active for 30 days from the start of any new account and usable only once. It would fire your entire current roster, give you 18 brand new players, restore the $300,000 starting funds, give you new minimal staff, restore your arena back to the original starting capacity, but keep you in the same league with the same record. I think that would decrease the amount of users that leave after making a critical mistake.

+1 for the idea. Have you asked the BBs? Have they commented? I guess it would be a nice option...although some established times would like that option too no doubt ;-) I like it though.

The problem for new managers is that the learning curve is steep, so you have to spend a lot of time to figure out how the game works. I needed like 5 seasons to understand most of it and not everyone is willing to do it. But this is something we don't want to change.
On the other hand, a lot of people nowdays have a smartphone or a tablet and don't use a PC. Let's say this game is not very friendly in that aspect.

We've all experienced the infamous "OOPS, something has gone wrong ...." message. Over the last season or two it seems to be happening more often and while doing more things on the site. Some time ago we were told this occurs when the server is under heavy load, so effectively a time out problem. Also training is now regularly running late, people complaining about long gaps in next cup games being generated, delays in purchased players joining teams, etc.

While an app may bring in more users, or at least help retain existing ones, surely getting the existing infrastructure upgraded to improve the user experience is of higher importance. Otherwise if you bring on more users, once they experience the above issue you will likely lose them, also the added load of the new users will likely increase the occurrence of these problems further frustrating existing users.

+1

I agree Trikster...there has to be a greater emphasis on sorting out the issues before bringing in new users...

...it would be handy if we could somehow know why users leave the game...specifically, what exactly lessens their experience and causes them to throw in the towel. We can speculate of course but perhaps BB (who would have the email addresses of all users upon signup) can send a standard email to those users who go MIA...

They could ask simple closed questions to try and discover what it is exactly that caused them to leave...

I'm new to the game and hope it doesn't die however I can make one observation that might help. While one of the things I like about BB is that I don't need to spend a lot of time on it due to the fact that there are scheduled events (updates, finance, transfer etc) it does seem like nothing happens for too long a period. The game is about growth, and earning money or training once a week doesn't help me to grow any faster. In fact it makes it frustrating when I can't improve my roster or arena.
Allowing new players a bonus of extra cash flow or an extra training session per week (i.e. for 2/weeks, a month) might get them to come back as they can feel like their team is getting better.
Also adding an extra training session per week would benefit everyone as there are soo many areas to upgrade.

+1 LTJ for your point...

...however, I agree with EGM-Perpete that once you've played BB for a while you'll see how much you can do in terms of creating players you want...and using the 'quiet' time to your advantage.

I do agree with you, LTJ, that at first the game seems to have long boring periods in between. I remember thinking the same when I first started. You will soon discover though that the 'quiet' times between training/games/updates etc are actually the most productive...

...early on in BB once I became a little frustrated with these 'quiet' times I decided to become proactive and used those times to:

* check out my opponents/rosters/team history/tactics favoured/sales/purchases etc
* check out Australian NT and U21 NT sides / history / progress etc
* check out tactics / lineups / player skill sets / training methods / etc etc

In short, I soon found that if you choose it...there is no 'quiet' time in BB. YOu get out of it what you put into it.
So much so that right now, I currently don't enjoy BB as I once did and there is a direct correlation between my enjoyment then and now with levels of engagement then and now.

Search the forums, LTJ, particularly older threads by older users, and you will find great wisdom and resources on almost any topic. I still do this from time-to-time for fun...after all, this is a game. It doesn't hurt to be knowledgeable too.

Good luck mate...

also +1 Perpete

@ LTJ...I should add this:

The game really became exciting for me when I decided to train properly and despite winning a couple of Championships (which was great) my fondest memories in this game to date have been training two players onto their U21 Teams. One an Aussie and one an Argentinian. This is the missing ingredient (and a lot more time) that has lessened my enjoyment of late.

So, if you haven't already...focus on training and watch them represent their country. This is one facet of the game imo that keeps the older, experienced players in BB.

Improvement in the play by play will be a big help in maintaining the new players..

Improvement in the play by play will be a big help in maintaining the new players..

As in more of a visual view of actual players during a game???

yup