BuzzerBeater Forums

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

ill chime in here for a bit - i haven't read all the posts, so sorry if im repeating something.

It also seems the thread has gone into 'solution' mode already so my comments might be detracting from that.

So. Numbers of BB users do seem to have decreased quite spectacularly in the past 12-24 months. I think 2 years ago it was nearly twice the current number of users.....r ( I used wayback-machine to check this. 31st July 2012 there were 45656 active teams - today - 26904 active teams)

There is some more data which i think is important from the community page. Particularly in the last 7 days section. Ive listed below this data, and the difference between now and 2 years ago.

BB-mails Sent ( -17% )
Messages post on forums ( -3% )
Number of new users sign up ( -71% )
Number of simultaneous online users ( -29% )
Number of users banned ( -23%)
Also interesting is that number of active countries has increased by 1.

I think these numbers are interesting - So whilst the number of active users is down 41%, that difference is not reflected in other stats.
- Forum posts have remained the same/similar
- Number of simultaneous users hasn't changed as much.
- Number of BB-mails sent has not changed as much as the number of active users.
However
- Number of new users sign up is down significantly.

So what does this tell us?
- That people who, 2 years ago, were using forums and BB-mail, are still using BB.
- That the majority of users have left, not from small nations (the number of active countries has gone up!) but from established countries.

There is also the fact that, the number of BB users probably did peak at about 50k. This was probably its height of popularity. Lots of sites/things in life do a peak and then a drop to a more sustainable level.

Without knowing much more info about the types of users that are leaving, or why they are leaving, its hard to say that there is something wrong with the game. Perhaps all it was, when there was 50k users, was that there wa sa constant churn of new users lasting less than 6 months. This churn may have stopped/slowed.

the fact that it was around 50k users for 2010, 2011, 2012 and then suddenly died off - not sure what this suggests. The above data suggests that the number of new users is simply not happening anywhere near as much as before, (in 2009, it was over 4k users in that 7 day period).

That does suggest that the ratio of incoming new user to user retention is more imbalanced, so yer.

essentially, im summary, i dont tihnk there is anything particularly wrong with the game which is causing long time users to leave. Just not as many new users coming through.

That is all and i just lost a massive bidding war and now im annoyed! haha.

I hate to reduce such a long, and good post down to one thing, but I believe there's a tiny error in your post, which doesn't really effect the whole. When you say there's an extra active country, that can only be utopia. So really, that's irrelevant.

Other than that, excellent post which I think hits the nail on the head. Fewer sign ups equals decreasing numbers.

I think there are a variety of reasons for leaving. I think for many, its simply that they feel they've reached a point where they simply can't move on, and don't have the time or heart to fix whatever problems their own team has. I've seen a few teams in leagues I've been in where a failure has been followed by a lack of interest, and then the seemingly inevitable slide into botland.

I'm sure there's a plethora of other reasons people leave. Real life getting in the way would be a major thing I'm sure. I doubt for very many its the actual state of the game itself.