BuzzerBeater Forums

well, I must agree that it would be nice if real (human) players would not drop a division if this means that a bot comes in it's place.
Bots should go down all the time, or in the worst case stay, never get up.

I'm not sure this is easely done though.

If it's not to much trouble, a check-up can be run right after regulary season, to put all bots in a league at the bottom of that leage. This way, the 'real' teams get to play the play offs, and this will be, as you said, more interesting competition for all.
By simply putting this move in it should have all the effects we all want.
Real players stay, will have the best opportunities they can get in their league, and bots are pushed down.

However I'm still not sure how to solve the problem of people who might slip in during the season, getting a higher ranked team in the leage, unless the staff won't fill these higher placed spots up. But this goes in agains the theory of most interesting possible competition, since keeping a bot in a league will always be less competitive to replacing him with a real player I think...

An other thing is that a bot team isn't a bot team right away, a player who quits mostly won't tell everyone, so his team will be ownerless for a while before it becomes a real bot, but in the meantime it is acting like a bot, or even worse...

a lot of long posts on this topic. I will readily admit I did not wade through all of jimrtex's posts, but I think at some point, it would be nice if all the bots were moved to the lower divisions and then the new teams get added to the lowest division with bots, replacing them steadily.....
then, when users leave, and their teams become bots, reset their lineups with scrubs, let them play their way down, making sure they don't have illegal lineups, causing forfeits----;) and all is right with the world!!!

If new teams are placed in the lowest division, and steadily added across the division you will have new teams that were added within days if not minutes of each other. They could all be started out with a 0-0 record. Even though their initial season is short, it is better than placing 16 new teams in a division, and giving one team 16 wins and another 3 based on the performance of some bot before they arrived.

In each league, there will be some who who really get into the game, some who play a few weeks and stop logginng in, some who look at one game, and some who won't even log in after they sign up. Those who aren't active will tend to slide to the bottom of the standings, and once they go long enough, they can be made a bot and slid to the bottom of the standings.

If BB gets to the final league in the bottom division, they can start over at the first league in the division. By that time there should be a large number of teams that will have become inactive. And then BB can then replace them all within a few days of each other, with 0-0 records. They wild simply form a 2nd group of teams behind the veterans. All teams wouild then start the next season 0-0.

If a team goes bot during the playoffs, there is not too much you can do about it. If they happen to win the league, you can not promote them. And there can be rare cases where a replacement team might win the the championship team and promote, but that will be relatively rare.