BuzzerBeater Forums

I completely agree with leomartins initial posts and complaints about enthusiasm. I always thought this was one of the weakest parts of Hattrick and unfortunatelly it has been even worse implemented in BuzzerBeater.

First of all I think it is a bad system for the reasons explained by leomartins. Secondly making things almost completelt hidden makes it very hard to understand the impacts of it for most users, not to speak about understanding how to usereally it in a proper way.

I would say that something like this would be much more logical and interesting:

TIE and win: Enthusiasm increases
TIE and loss by small margin: Enthusiasm decreases (the players know they should have won with a normal effort)
TIE and large loss: Enthusiasm stays the same

Normal and large win: Small enthusiasm increase
Normal and small win: Increase of enthusiasm (the players know they did perfect in the game)
Normal and loss: Small decrease of enthusiasm

CT and big win: Enthusiasm stays the same (the players felt that they put too much effort)
CT and small win: enthusiasm increases
CT and small loss: enthusiasm decrease
CT and large loss: large enthusiasm decrease

It probably needs some fine tuning, but I think that this is both more realistic and requires more coaching skills to dominate. Coaches that are good at predicting results can use this talent to build up enthusiasm, while coaches that are just gambling will be hurt on the long run.

Then of course the effects need to be visble in order to make it possible to analyse. Now when effects are not seen in the ratings it becomes quite difficult to understand. You will need to take a hugh amount of matches (to get enough data) and then compare things like actual shooting percentages with those expected from the matchup ratings and then correlate this with the chosen attitude. Even though this is doable, I do not think it is a good idea to have something like this for something as cruisal as enthusiasm/attitude as I am quite confident that very few managers will do this analysis, even less draw the right conclusions from it. Does it becomes a little bit of a lottery for most. As a comparison it seems that very few have control over the effects of free throw level, even though this is much easier to analse than enthusiasm/attidude effects.

Last edited by chespirito at 10/10/2008 5:56:45 PM

The purpose of enthusiasm is not to reward you for your wins.

Which is exactly the problem with todays stupid system that just rewards the better teams that can basically TIE through an entire season without thinking at all and which has no logic at all.

Instead you should be penalized/rewarded depending on how well you maximized your efforts. Anyway, it should have said TIE and big loss can could actually imagine to increase enthusiasm a little rather than just keeping it on the same level(even though I can easily see how this could be missused). Of course other loss changes will need to be updated accordingl.

What it al boils down to is that the skilled manager should know how much effort to put into a game. If he plays normal and looses he wil be punnished. On the other hand if he chooses TIE he want get the same punnishment if the loss is big.

As a trivial example, suppose that a slightly better team wins with a small margin after both have played normal, ad that the slightly better team gets the victory with a smal margin, then the slightly better team will increase enthusiasm compared to the other team. On the other hand if he other team played a TIE and the slightly better team gets a big win enthusiasm will stay the same for both. Finally if the slightly worse tam playes CT and gets a small win the slightly worse team will gain enthusiasm on the better.

Consequences of the current system is that a better team can basically build enthusiasm without really thinking, just as the bad team can, because he will loose anyway. Furthermore enthusiasm can easily be missued.

(However, to be frank, I think the whole enthusiasm bs should be removed completely. Just trying to explain different consequencs of different designs illustrates how weired the system is to begin with)

Consequences of the current system is that a better team can basically build enthusiasm without really thinking, just as the bad team can, because he will loose anyway. Furthermore enthusiasm can easily be missued.

this thing can happen, not because of a low enth, but because of his team is not strong enough... if this is the case, then in that particular match... he has no other choice but to play normal if he wants to win.

if he wants to build up team enth in the meantime, he might as well play TIE to another team who, he thinks, he can beat.

if he still wants to play TIE to a better team, well, he might get the enth, but not a lot compared to a lot weaker team... and, you have a lower chance of winning.

this mentality is usual in the sports industry... the better team wins, better teams has better chance controlling the game... that's it. IMO

If I am winning in my league and are much stronger than other teams, then why should I get even more advantage? Bad idea!

Yes, that's right, but it is a really horribl to achieve this as it has no logi, and requires very limited skill. I think that the idea probably came up like ten years ago when HT-Björn was trying to find out a way to make it easier to upset a superior team. As Hattrick was his hopy back then he did not have too much time to implement a good solution, so instead of trying to find a really good solution he just made a quick fix that has since remained in Hattrick and then being inherited by BB.

If we look to how it works in real life the enthusiasm implementation has nothing to do with how it really works. Teams that win after putting a huge effort into a game will be happier if they win and unhappier if they loos then teams that just "put out there shoes". Therefore my suggestion for enthusiasm is a little more realistic (and requires more skill to master), but I be the first to admit that it is still not a good solution. This is because the whole enthusiasm concept as such is twisted.

Still, uppsets do occur in real life. How come? It is actually quite simple.

First of all bad teams are often more motivated to beat a good team than the othr way arround. Thus the better team looses, not because they underestimate their oponents, but because they lack some motivation. It does not help if their oach tells them to "play normal" or "CT", they will still have a had time to motivate them self. A good manager tries to avoid this e.g. by seleting the right players for the game. Perhaps putting in a "fighter" and benching one of the "stars" to get their guys going. Thus, I would think it would be better to implement a motivation factor for players. For instance players that get too few minutes in comparison to how good they are will probably loose motivation. Thus, having a team full of stars want help as a few of these stars will get less playing time then they think thy deserve. They would rather play somewhere else to get some minutes.

Secondly, a bad team can use tactics to upset a superior team. Of course if the superior team is better on everything, then tactics wont probably help (which is logial), instead the chance of an upset is the motivation factor mentioned above. However, as long as you are better at something than the better manager can try to expolit this to upset a better team. This is allreay part of BB.

Finally, having your players in top form for the right game is the way to upset. This is also already available in BB. However, currently it is inceadibly easy to maintain all important players in very good form. This should be made harder to ahieve (e.g. by decreasing the number of minutes you can play and still keep form).

If I am winning in my league and are much stronger than other teams, then why should I get even more advantage? Bad idea!

This is basically how it works today too, the only thing is that bad teams can do the same s they might as well TIE and loose. The teams loosing out by todays system are the "average" teams as they can't afford to TIE against the bad teams, whih gives the better teams a perfect chance to build enthusiasm before they meet the average teams.

The problem as such is built in to the enthusiasm system, so as I said as long as it is kept it will not be an ideal solution.

Yeah, but like one GM said, In BB you have a chance to beat every team. By your recommendation I believe this could be much more harder to succeed.

Yeah, but like one GM said, In BB you have a chance to beat every team. By your recommendation I believe this could be much more harder to succeed.

Due to the "randomness" in the game engine you will always have this chane, it is "only" a question about how big his chance should be and by which means you should be able to increase your chances for an upset.

Thus, the question one should begin by asking is if it to which extent a inferior team should be able to increase the likelihood of surprising the superior squad and by which means should this be possible to acomplish?

If we think that an inferior team should always have a good chanse to beat a superior team, then we might as well eliminate or at least decrease the differences between teams. For instance by introducing a salary cap. This would have the benefit of being more logical, but would have the deficit of making t more booring to build your team on the long run.

Another solution is "enthusiasm" which to me has the clear deficit of being illogical and clumpsy, while it has the benefit that it is deaply rooted in the Hattrick hart of many users.

A functionality that allows for building up motivation, by e.g. minutes played (taking into account if it is competition game, starting minutes, crunch minutes, "right position minutes", "getting training minutes" etc) and making it harder to get into top shape (perhaps you need to train game shape for a week or two, to get in best form) is much more logical, while it requires more coaching skill to master at the same time. Th deficit is that it is a little bit harder to implement, but hey, I'm not implementing.