BuzzerBeater Forums

Everybody has the right to complain about whatever unfair situation of the game. They are as free as I am to disagree and give my opinion. I think we can agree on this, because I´m just giving my opinion as the rest of the users.

It seems that you and other users think that BuzzerBeater is just a game where the only choice you have is to decide between an inside or an outside focus, and that's all, and the only problem is how to equilibrate both. However, the old engine had a stronger unbalance between a slow and fast pace, but nobody cared about it...
With the old engine, most attacks in slow tactics finished with a bad shot in the last second. But nobody cares... because you cannot see this in the ratings, and ratings are of course the truth about BuzzerBeater.
Nobody cared about the offensive flow as well, and many wondered whether this rating was the most useless and without a real effect on the match outcome. This is also improved with the new engine, so two useless skills, handling and passing, are now necessary. This is an advantage for those team who already trained these skills and a disadvantage for those who don´t. It will take some time for those teams to catch up.

The goal of the game is to build a succesful team and make it work better than the others. You don´t have to make work a tactic or a particular kind of players, because you are playing against other humans, not machines, and they will attack your weakest points. And you have to defeat to the other 15 teams of your league, and not to defeat "run and gun" or "look inside".

Sometime ago, I bought a PF with good passing skill and good jump shot. It was really cheap, less than 1800k, probably because his salary is quite low for a PF (and misteriously people prefer to pay higher salaries). He is playing really well with Run&Gun (by the way not my favourite tactic) and he is now my player with most assistences. If you take a look to the transfer list you will not find absolutely any PF with the same skill distribution.

Of course everybody is free to pay 6000k for a 150k PF. You will easily get an incredible inside attack rating and you will feel the strongest team in the world. If this is not taking you to the top, maybe you are doing something wrong.





Last edited by Emilio at 1/26/2010 1:46:24 PM

I don't know how the game engine works, just guessing and trying. But if you field an inside men with some passing at the SF against a 3-2 zone, you said he's gonna walks into the zone defense of the big men if he gets inside.

This is probably true, but still they have to defend 3 guys then (the SF, your PF and your C). If the opponents outside SF (i don't think it's smart to play a 3-2 zone with an inside SF) defends your driving SF, you can take a quality inside shot due to the lack of inside defense of the SF. If you drive into the zone of the PF and C, your shot won't be of such a good quality due to the help defense. Then if the passing skill of the SF is high enough, he'll find a oppertunity to pass to your PF or C instead of taking the low quality shot.

If he succeeds, your PF and C kan take a high quality shot, since at least one of them is in the last case, or defended by the SF without much ID, or completely open. And this brings back the importance of multiskilled inside men as well, they have to be able to take a jumper when they recieve such a pass.

I'm just thinking and guessing, but it's seems logical this way.

Biggest problem so far is the high elasticity of guards and centers performance due to offensive focus.

Guards with enough development for inside focus will get freakin owned in a motion/rng attack, because, well, sacrifices need to be made, and they will not be able to reach lvl18/17 JS, and 13/14 JR and at the same time, 9/10 IS, and right now, so they will get handled by 15/16 OD guards.

The same will happen to big men and inside oriented offenses (will sacrifice inside skill so they will be handled easily by some 15/16 ID like the ones most teams already have)

In the end, balanced players will NOT result in larger variaty of tactics, but they will be BASE OFFENSE players, in order to avoid especific focus and thus making them more effective.

LOL, I wouldn't say a good option, but a good physcial PG has many uses guarding the 1,2 & 3 spots.

If he succeeds, your PF and C kan take a high quality shot, since at least one of them is in the last case, or defended by the SF without much ID, or completely open. And this brings back the importance of multiskilled inside men as well, they have to be able to take a jumper when they recieve such a pass.

I'm just thinking and guessing, but it's seems logical this way.

I agree it seems logicial, I just don't know if the game engine is designed this way. I have seen guards drive inside and go up against forwards way too much in a 3-2 zone.

You are assuming that look x has some impact on look x+1. However, what if each look is calculated independently of the last? So if the PF guards my SF on look x, then he can still guard my PF on look x+1. Maybe the assignments are just completely random, so that if the ball goes inside the distribution of who defends is something like:

PG .01
SG .01
SF .02
PF .48
C .48

Not only that, but maybe the "help" defense is the same regardless of where the ball comes from.

By the way, in a zone I wish you could always see who is guarding who. Often when there is a good pass the defender is not mentioned. Does that mean there is no defender? If not, I get pretty confused when I am watching a game with a zone.


Last edited by HeadPaperPusher at 1/26/2010 2:45:20 PM

Choosing the right focus is important in certain matches, and it is not a very important part of the game since your coach may change the focus during the timeouts. This is in the game rules and you can see it very easily during the matches and also in the shot distribution at the end of the match.

If this is for you the most important part and without this nothinkg makes sense, OK, let´s discuss about it.

Nobody would play run&gun with two players with good levels in only 3 main skills because it will not work. Your players must have great JS and JR. Then you need good levels of HND, OD and PAS. Without this you cannot build a successful outside attack, and for all of them you have to pay training or a lot of money. This is not currently the situation of most centers and PFs in the game, so we cannot compare the effectiveness of both attacks.

There are already in the game some teams who play pretty well the inside focus. You should ask them how to improve your team, which is really far to be a perfect inside team. In fact, some of your matches are perfect examples of how incredibly effective can still be the "look inside" because you are winning matches with just 3 competitive players.

Last edited by Emilio at 1/26/2010 5:58:48 PM

You just asked me how to improve the inside attack, so I was answering that. But it seems that there is not a good answer for you about this subject.
The model of team that you employed in the B3 on season 9 is not working anymore, so the sooner you find a new model, the sooner you will get competitive again with an inside focus.
But even in season 9 with the old game engine, you would not have gone very far in the spanish or italian cup which are much stronger competitions than the B3, and I have not forgotten yet that at the end of season 9 the HCA had to be reduced at high skill levels because the effect was too strong, and it looks like you played all the B3 games at home.

Anyway I don´t want to go further with this discussion. I have already told what I wanted to say. Good luck.

When you say "tactic", you probably mean "look inside, run&gun, motion...", what is a poor concept of tactic. This "tactic" is not so important in BuzzerBeater. It is just a limited model for the simulation of the "pace" and "focus" in real basket.

Yes, that's what I call tactic and, again, it should be more important imho.

But "Tactic" (with capital letter) is something much wider than just setting "look inside" and set a line-up with 3 centers. This "Tactic" involves the design of players with training according to your long-term strategy.

I call this strategy and, as I have already stated here (125704.252), that's the probably the reason why I am still playing this game.

I may be wrong but I have the feeling that some users who don´t fully understand how the GE works, are trying to promote GE changes on the basis of a very simple view of the game: tactics and ratings. My apologies if I´m wrong, but that's my feeling from reading this long debate thread.

If after 344 posts you still think so this discussion has been a total failure.

The goal of the game is to build a succesful team and make it work better than the others.

We are still talking two different languages. The goal of the game, at least for me, is having fun. Winning helps, no doubts about that, but it is not all.
If I complain about tactics is because after so many season I am bored of playing r&g 80% of the games and LI the other 20%. And I am bored of playing m2m another 80% of the games and 3-2 defense 20 or so %.

All you say about building a team and players with the right skillset to optimize a tactic is correct and everybody has a different view about how to do that. But in the end, no team (or very few) can have two very competitive starting lines, one for inside and one for outside focus. Being able to successfully play the weaker offense (mainly by surprising the opponent) would help to give more variety to this game.
In fact, I assume that what keeps managers from playing most of the times the same tactics and lineup is the game shape management.

It's also true that with the new game engine there are more tactical options (for example Princeton is not as useless as it used to be). But it'is false that nobody cared before. For me, there was more balance between r&g and LI, but the limited usability of most of the other tactics has always been an issue.
That's enough from me.

Btw, yesterday the GE punished me for all I am saying in this thread and made me lose with a 3-2 defense against a LI with awful OF :D (17980002).

I can hardly get bored with run&gun and look inside, because they are not my favourite tactics:

S11 Offense: Run and Gun 7, Princeton 4, Motion 3, Base Offense 2, Patient 1
S10 Offense: Motion 16, Push the Ball 3, Run and Gun 3, Princeton 2, Look Inside 1, Base Offense 1
S9 Offense: Motion 11, Base Offense 4, Run and Gun 3, Push the Ball 2, Look Inside 2, Princeton 2
S8 Offense: Run and Gun 8, Motion 8, Push the Ball 7, Base Offense 2, Princeton 1
S7 Offense: Motion 8, Push the Ball 6, Run and Gun 6, Base Offense 4, Look Inside 1...

(thanks to oeuftete for his prospectus tool).

This is my sixth season in the spanish first division and my worst season I made 5th position. So I don´t think playing Run&Gun and LookInside are strictly necessary to be competitive.