BuzzerBeater Forums

I have just joined and happy with the current system. However it was so difficult to get my welsh team as had to go thru an appeal. The process be a welsh player in a welsh league living in wales is extremely difficult as all teams in the UK seem to be pushed into England and their league. I have seen a post on our forum where a former welsh player/team was put in England despite their request to go back into a welsh league. Do organisers actually want the smaller countries to expand naturally. I wonder if this is the issue why number of teams in Wales is low and maybe this is an issue around the world also.

Just one information: the colombian discussion about this topic (only 4 managers) and we think the same: merge will be interesting but we want to keep our flags and NTs.

In Paraguay only two users posted their opinions (pointing in the same direction). Countries like Panamá, Ecuador and Bolivia haven't opinions about this topic.

In this scenario, I support the merge idea. It's pretty boring the lack of participation of the community. Will be interesting to know how the merge will work. That kind of info will focus the discussion.

A possible merger affects like 5% of the current managers.

Sadly, you might be right. They might do it that way, the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Of course, they might be serious about saving BB, serious enough to do a complete reshuffle that affects 100% of the teams.

Time will tell.

I'd really like to know why you'd like to merge these micro-nations. Sometimes people really think differently about solutions if they know why these solutions seem to be the best.

I can easily think of these reasons:
Pro arguments imho:
1) Server capacity: All those small nations cause a lot of server troubles, data storage etc.
2) Competition in these leagues: 2 or 3 managers competing isn't really what a sports (and economy) simulation can't hope for. Best solution imho would be to let those managers decide where they want to play. Newbies already can decide whether they want to start in a competitive or bot league. Why not ask the same with the country?

Con arguments imho:
1) Too many 1st Divisions mean too many people earning too much money easily. This sort of earning is not based on performance but on "right of birth". But then this is not only a micronation problem and I guess it should be solved in a different way: merging all countries into continental leagues e.g.
2) This game was designed as a Basketball sim in which you play in your own country, not in a virtual non-existing country named "BuzzerbeaterLand". It would be hard for lots of people to leave there home country and virtually settle in a foreign country. I guess it would be even easier to get rid of everything as it is now a start all over again. Maybe have one Top league in each continent and let all players decide in which country they want to play.
3) Forums: even in a lot of national forums there is not much discussion going on. But as a lot of the Utopian Leagues show there is almost no discussion in international leagues. There is no discussion in BB Utopia (apart from player ads) and there are no postings in league forums. That might be because a lot of people only write in their 1st team leagues. But even very active users don't post in Utopian leagues. If we merge countries that don't have a language in common these leagues will be dead silent.
4) B3 contest: I don't care about it. Not only because I will never play there. But because other than the UEFA Champions League it's just not interesting. It's because this tournament is just won by money. Not even these players who mostly are very active make enough postings to promote the tournament. In Hattrick the same Cup was very interesting because a lot of the participants gave insight into their tactics and knowledge of the game and engine etc. I wouldn't base any decision on B3 because I guess it only really interests ~200 users each season.
5) Trainermans whining about his league being so uninteresting and uncompetitive. The last few seasons I've had the impression that whatever "improvement" of the game we had came due to his whining. Sometimes I get the feeling you just have to write 100 times that something in this game sucks and it's going to be changed if your name is trainerman. No matter what good arguments a lot of people had against this change.
6) Flag chasing: Right now flag chasing is really fun and I guess it's a wide spread-phenomenon for supporters. If you merge micro-nations this competition would be killed. Even if those teams keep their flag there will be no easy way to find teams with rare flags other than by clicking through all those leagues and checking all teams click by click.

I'm pretty sure you have really good reasons to speak about merging countries because you know it's gonna be really difficult and might result in users leaving. But I'm pretty sure it would help if we knew these reasons. Maybe we'd find a different solution to the problems.

I think the main problem is that the gap between new players and the rest is too big and is highlighted in micro-nations. However a merge does not improve this. I calculated the proposed merge for Scotland, Wales and Ireland and found myself moving down into division 2 where I am the top ranked player. The other players are quite spread out over the rankings and there will be about 4 bots needed to fill the league. This means that if a new player joins the new merged nation, they are still competing against players that are miles ahead of them and there is no chance they can get promoted so the merge is meaningless.

A better solution would be to create a nation specifically for new players and after a season they can move to their own nation's league. This will give them enough time to learn the game, expand their stadium, get staff and buy the correct players without losing each week.