BuzzerBeater Forums

You know Australia isn't a large nation but the numbers really don't matter, all those teams in division IV are really in a bubble of their own that has close to 0 impact or overlap with what happens in the upper leagues. There are the 16 ABBL teams, the 64 division II teams and then probably an average of 4 teams per division III that are competetive and/or contribute to the forums which is another 64. All the rest are only a bit better than bots. We have 650 teams on paper but it is really more like 100-200 teams that are really competing and active.

I amthe coach of the India U21 team and India has a very competive top division with 0 bots, every player having logged in this month and all but 1 team last time I checked had checked in in the last two days. All this with a player base of 60-80.

It is the teeny tiny nations with less than 20 teams that are an issue where there is no-one to talk to and no sense of competition playing most games against bots and AFKers and no hope that things will improve.

On the other hand I do collect flags and I would love to try and track down the one team from Liechtenstein or Nauru.

This is a fascinating suggestion, and one that seems like it would solve a lot of problems.

I think the idea of merged leagues while keeping cups national makes a lot of sense: MLS (american soccer) actually works a bit like this-- their are Canadian teams in the league, but they play in their own Canadian cup. I don't think having lower divisions be national would work logistically (what if all the d1 demotees are from the same country? they can't all go to the same national d2 conference or there won't be room for the d3 promotees).

For draftees, the easiest solution is just to have nationality assigned once they're actually put on a team. That way the distribution of players among nations will automatically match the distributions of users per country, and teams still get draftees from their own country.

What if there was a big tournament to decide the placement of teams in the combined nations? Better yet, if there was a way to somehow have the leagues function as they normally do in one season, but have the cup consist of all teams from the countries that will be part of the combined nation. It might be possible to use the cup result to determine placement for the season after?

As long as this was done in arcade mode, a la B3, so that teams could play their A lineup without worrying about it affecting their league competition, it sounds like a pretty good way to handle it. Starting with round robin play (again, like B3) would also be important to avoid having two top teams have to play in the first round, causing one to end up in like d5.

Coming from New Zealand and rising to Div1 in a couple of season playing I always thought it would of been more fun/challenging if there had been a bit more competition to get to the top div, we have 85 active users right now but if you look in our 2nd div you will see only about half the teams actually play and if you are unlucky and join at the end of the season and get put in relegation zone you go down to div3 and play bots all season not good for a new player if you want them to stick around.

I would love a bit more of a competition, I think a NZ/Aus comp would be awesome as it happens all the time in real life, NRL, Super 15, Netball we even have a basketball team from NZ in the Australian league. So why not in BB? Draft would be a bit difficult, would you only get NZ players or would I have a chance of getting an Aussie?

Haha not many people in NZ actually speak Maori and if they do they also speak English :)

Yeah it would give us a little boost, I know from when I was a GM we got a small boost of users when they did some advertising on FB but not to many of them stuck around. I think NZ will always be a country between the 70-100 active user mark with about 10-15 actively posting in the forums. We do quite well for how small we are really :)

I always thought this was a good idea. The BBs seem intent on bringing in as many countries as possible but a lot of these smaller nations have a very low competitor base and is not fun

In terms of merging with Australia, I think it would enhance the competition in both nations if we are to compete as one.

Draft would be a bit difficult, would you only get NZ players or would I have a chance of getting an Aussie?

Would it not work better if we change all AUS and NZ players and create a ficticious nation called "Oceania" or something similar? That way we all share the benefits and don't have to worry about trying to split a draft up into individual nations but just have the generic one.