BuzzerBeater Forums

This thread is really touching on two big philosophical topics.

1. Should the game share code with the community? If so, how much?

2. Is the game trying to grow its' user base? If so, at what cost?

Both are ONLY through the lense of Buzzerbeater, which as many of you have figured out, is a long-term game. And when I say long-term, I am not sure I know a game that's more long-term than this one. If you can think of an example, pls reply lol.

So, with the critically important context that Buzzerbeater is not Call of Duty, or Animal Crossing, or Football Manager, we now understand that we cannot approach it the same way we approach nearly all modern games.

You don't marinade chicken in asparagus, because asparagus is not a marinade, it is a vegetable.

So...

1. If the game shares its' code and explains exactly how X affects Y, all builds, and build paths, will become too similar. The game will feel like a zombie movie at some point. Everyone going through the same motions in the same order. Not only that, because the game takes a very long time, it'll get boring knowing everything. Maybe not right away, but in a few months? Oh, indeed. You will be bored. The mystery will be gone. And your appetite still won't be satiated.

Because if we have learned anything about human nature, we always want more. Enough is never enough. I present... the entire world, as evidence to my claim.

So, if you want to know everything or most everything because "That's what I want"... then you might as well just dump numbers into excel and play that way. Ya know, build your whole team in excel for a day then go play other games for the next 10 years.

Mystery is a good thing. You want mystery in your life. The thrill, if you will.

Go listen to BB King is u need more convincing.

That's where I come out on #1.

So then...

2. I love young people, and it's totally not their fault they are growing up in a messed up world. The tech spike is real. Their poor, little attentions spans will never grow to the levels of ours.

There will be some outliers for sure. Lots of bright, young minds out there might really enjoy this type of challenge. I think we could court them by marketing BB as a vintage game. Old school. Retro. Whatever. I think if we lean into the fact the game is long-term, that may be better than pretending that it's not.

So demographics aside, if we want the user base back north of 20k, I do agree that some game manual adjustments or maybe some quick vids (like under 3 min) would help user retention.

But at the same time, only the strong survive. The users who stay are usually rewarded. Through knowledge, accolades, self-gratification, etc. This game challenges your mental resolve and forces you to ferret out intel.

I think #2 is partly on us, the community, how we engage with potential users, and how much we talk about the game outside of this site, discord, etc.

The staff, small and resourceful as it may be, is still nothing like the staffs at Activision, or Blizzard, or Larian, etc.

Again, asparagus is a vegetable not a marinade. And Justin's app has given BB a second lease on life. He likely won't enjoy all the praise, but the dude saved the game with the app. Not sure anyone could argue otherwise.

I don't want to get into the weeds of past issues. No point really. Waste of energy. I am always more concerned about the now and future.

I do think any GE updates or tweaks should be done in very small ways and at least with 1 season of notice. I am guessing the team gathers data in a way that would take us, collectively, weeks or even months.

So, I do trust them when they roll stuff out, or make some changes. Maybe you aren't the trusting type. Maybe the last decade of societal garbage you've ingested has made it hard for you to trust anyone or any one institution. I wouldn't blame you, but cynicism is easy. It's low hanging asparagus.

Last edited by CoachP at 9/30/2023 11:27:55 AM

Let me put in a way you might understand.

Buzzerbeater is a nice 15-year-old bottle of wine. But you want to open it and immediately begin injecting it into your veins.

I know another one : Maxithlon, a track&field game, with money, rule changes (but not enough), bankrupt, ...

You should try this one ;)

About users vs BB, I think a lot of things could be done. The first bad decision is to externalize the forum on discord, this decision force people to move the focus from the game to a social. Everytime I read that questions regarding the game have discussed not here but on discord I think there is something wrong.
The game is ok in this way, probably more efforts should be addressed on the social aspects, creating interests and passion. I like what a manager USA is doing (EHB or similar, don't remember now the name), @jokeru too and also the Turkish guy that created BB "old style"; all of them are pushing BB, these efforts should be in some way integrated in BB but more, it should be good to have a kind of newspaper where there are written something about BB3, the main tournaments, the number 1 player in 3 points shots and so on. No idea if this is possible BB should uses his own users to generate hype

After analysing data until this point, there are some weird statistics to this point, but i think they will even out. It seems illogical

It seems like the lowest PA teams got highest boost, top ones didnt as much. But is expected, atleast all of my BB models are S curve, seems like they panned it down alittle

This, if theory correct makes those intermediate skills way way more valuable, and top-loading less desirable in builds. "Trees" becoming less desirable in highest levels, as treshold of "we can live with that" increased, and every pop is gold value above that treshold.

But it is not even a half season yet, and things might be missleading. Anyways game is more fun for me now. Not static atleast.

I think we will see GE changes increasing in frequency. I am pretty sure we need OD, JR, maybe RB or SB changes now.

Last edited by Vilkai [LTU NT] at 10/1/2023 6:07:34 AM

I think we will see GE changes increasing in frequency. I am pretty sure we need OD, JR, maybe RB or SB changes now.

In what ways would you suggest those skills change?

Yes, it could be both, salaries or skills. But we need for sure now. Some tactics boosted toomuch by this changes and especially zones seems way weaker.

But for the highest lvl, like NT, nobody cares about the salaries. So they either need to tweak potential along with salaries or just change impact of some skills.

So far it is too early to determine, but my innitial opinion is we need now not 22 but 24 OD now for guards. Since trying to make more efficient offense is harder than to work on defense, especially when offense now is ridiculously efficient. It is exponentially harder to boost after some percentage. And this percentage now boosted too. But not yet clear what percentage you can theoretically get. Or it might be the oposite, even high OD wouldnt help much, then the option would be just keep like 18, since anyways you will get owned. Same might be true to offensive skill, maybe 23+ JS not so impactfull overall.

Logically thinking since offense boosted it should be both defensive skills not so impactfull and offensive skills not so impactfull overall.

But we will see, middle next season picture will be much clearer.



Last edited by Vilkai [LTU NT] at 10/2/2023 11:05:55 PM

especially zones seems way weaker.

It must be a joke, right ?
Zones have probably never been so used at the highest level and now you can even see a 1-3-1 zone beat a LI... (71790)

Last edited by slamdunk9 at 10/3/2023 4:32:10 AM