BuzzerBeater Forums

There must be a reason that 99% of new managers never make it past the first 16 weeks and the huge gap between new and established teams is a HUGE reason.

We should remove finances altogether, have the exact same lineups as each other and give the newest team to the game home court advantage so they can compete from the day they sign up. Why don't we do away with tactics as well? We don't want experienced players scaring away newbies with knowledge of the game...

Seriously, people shouldn't expect to be successful in the first 16 weeks. If that is why people leave, you will never change that.

Raising the floor for full leagues might be a good thing in the long run, but for half-full/empty leagues it fails its purpose.

You're right. I'm in a half full league, and I pay just over 30k more than last season. I make the exact same profit. Had my highest ever gate receipt, first game of the season, against a bot. When it comes to taking money away from me, it fails its purpose.

When BBs have stated time after time, throughout the years, that any anti-tankink solution, first and foremost will have to take into account and not punish even one team that stayed inactive for a couple of weeks for instance, cause the user may have been on holidays without internet access or in hospital...

then punishing even one team, that manages to stay competitive borderline or below the (old) salary floor, is either a case of double standards or hypocricy.

There's no sugarcoating this.

Moving on, i am surprised that you consider 400k per season, for a division III team, regardless if it is a new or old team, inconsequential since it is not crippling!
More so, when there is an elephant in the room...


Futhermore, it...never ceases to amaze me, when people doing team economics and management on the fly, soooo easily, always forget MAINTENANCE COSTS!

It is common sense, that what we see as a weekly/yearly profit in our books, is not "true", since in order to replace your assets(players) because of aging, you will get less money due depreciation and/or wil need more money to replace them(without upgrading) due to inflation...
There is the elephant in the room again...

Yes, im talking about the market's state!
As if the measure wasn't injust on its own, this is happening in today's suffering market and you are knitpicking and profiling who are those that make the (very reasonable and justified)"noise"?????

It is of course the established managers that are vocal about this problem, as they have a better understanding of the game. There must be a reason that 99% of new managers never make it past the first 16 weeks and the huge gap between new and established teams is a HUGE reason.

A 20-30k cut coming hand in hand with much shorter cup runs, due to removed bot leagues makes a huge difference. Assuming that a newbie can build the stadium, add a coach, promote once or even twice, buy trainees and train them to a level where they heavily impact the salary, while at the same time learning the x and o's of the game, is a bit cocky and arrogant at least.

We have seen that user retention is horrible and making the game easier for new users is paramount. As I pointed out earlier, for me it makes no difference. I abuse bots/newbies and lose to more motivated managers, or teams that demoted and are going for instant re-promotion. Raising the floor for full leagues might be a good thing in the long run, but for half-full/empty leagues it fails its purpose.

The half-empty leagues are precisely the ones that are the biggest problem; if you are in a league with, say, four bots in each conference, you can have a "salary efficient" roster of some $40k total, go 12-0 against the bots and 0-10 against everyone else, have generally happy fans and have significant profit still. Making those teams pay $90k in salary floor instead of $60k is not going to have any real effect, when as you said yourself the gap between the new teams and the old teams is so huge. The way to bridge that gap is not by encouraging teams to not improve, subsidizing them for keeping their salaries as low as possible.

I actually am being impacted by this change a little in Utopia. I looked for a time for another player to improve my team (as it is actually needed) but I just don't really feel like I want to mess with that. I would have been over the old cap, but that's life. I set my prices suboptimally because I honestly had no clue what to do with them since I was a bot promotion, and I guessed poorly. Still making plenty of money, though.

And on the point of user retention, absolutely I agree that it is a priority. It is not the only priority, however; the game must be balanced for the good of the game as a whole, and then when there are issues with the new user experience those should be addressed appropriately. I looked back through this thread, and how many people from IV posted? One, and he's an EGM (and French, so pay him no mind). But what I do see is plenty of posts from people who don't like how this affects *them* or how these changes aren't the ones they've pushed for, and who are saying "but what about the new users?"

I've already run through the numbers above in the post you responded to. New users outside of small nations are not significantly worse off than before. Small nations are of course another issue and frankly I agree that if there are only two or one levels for a country, this is a much more significant problem. But that's an issue that you know and I know that has been an issue for years and will probably be an issue until the micronation experience is completely revamped, but of course I hesitate to say that word in the forums much because it tends to also lead to explosions in post volume. ;)

The problem with this statement is that a competitive, salary efficient team from a large nation does not look like a competitive, salary efficient team from a smaller nation.

This why the last thing you want to do while addressing the issue of competiveness and tanking, is a horizontal measure across the board!

I'm not trolling nor being ironic but the answer is again exactly the same!

This why the last thing you want to do while addressing the issue of competiveness and tanking, is a horizontal measure across the board!

WOW talk about stereotyping and making assumptions!

Sorry for that. The numbers I quoted for the increase in salary floor are not assumptions, of course. Nor are the amounts for the salary floor / TV contract in my III (a pretty competitive one in a pretty competitive country) stereotypes, but instead probably a fair estimate of the highest salary floor a new team in a country of 3 or more divisions should face.

Nor, really, are my observations about who are making the complaints about this (at least, in terms of it not being the new users who are supposedly so damaged by this). Currently, let's look at who's posted (as of about 9:25 am server time:

maddoghellas, 14 posts: I think you would agree that you are not new, and you're two levels ahead of where you started the game. To be fair, though, your complaint isn't that it hurts new users, but that it hurts those who are competitive in high levels just at the old floor level.
Lemonshine, 13 posts: Not new, and appears to be functionally in favor of this (with some reasoned discussion on other changes that could / should be made).
Knecht, 12 posts: Can certainly not be called a new user, and who is certainly knowledgeable about the plight of those who start their career in II.
EGM-Perpete, 9 posts: He's actually in IV but obviously not a new user, also has suggested longer exceptions for new teams.
Mike Franks, 6 posts: Not a new user, but has discussed this change as being painful to new users specifically, because... well, no numbers of course.
GM-hrudey, 6 posts: Not new. As far as I can tell, the only person who's actually tried to evaluate these changes in terms of the actual net dollar effects to new teams, rather than the emotional "it's too hard for new teams" or citing the gap between the new and old. Also has more dog avatars per post than just about anyone in this game, so obviously a classy fellow.
SherlockH, 5 posts: In III.7, a long time USA user, talking about the inflation mostly.
LA-Manon, 4 posts: II.4 in Sweden, hardly a new user. Does not seem to think this is a negative change.
A-Dub, 2 posts: In NBBA. Talking about the inflation.
BB-Ryan, 2 posts: not a new user, in the top league, obviously not against the change itself (though apparently I see he's also acknowledging a micronation issue, which is good).
Trojan Empire, 2 posts: In the top league. Mentions that this is effecting him, why should he have to spend more
Periwinkle Blue, 2 posts: Was talking about how he was able to make money pretty comfortably before the changes by skating by at the salary floor and being competitive in his III. Almost promoting, even.
justme: 1 post: In II in Finland, mentioning TL prices.
LA-Kaiser: 1 post : In III in Turkey, seems to be in favor of raise but concerned about TL.
The sentinel, 1 post: In II, hardly a new user, and was discussing an alternative solution for tanking.
Phyr, 1 post: NBBA, talking about attendance formula as a measure for tanking control.
Aleksandar, 1 post: In I, not discussing this specific change and not new user.

and most importantly (IMO), the two new users:
GTPero, three posts: still not to having to pay the floor yet, has a level 4 trainer, will lose a little profit weekly when the floor kicks in for him but already has $800k, trainees and has been looking to spend more on the trainer.
Hööga, one post: has 20 weeks in the game, change doesn't hurt him

So please forgive me when I say that I appreciate the difficulties of new users in this game as much as anyone, to the point of actually trying to go through the actual numbers of how these changes affect them, and I appreciate far less the "champions of the new users" who claim these changes are crippling new teams without backing it up with anything real. Now, you may disagree with me, but if you think stereotyping or baseless assumptions are behind my posts, you are absolutely wrong.

I looked back through this thread, and how many people from IV posted? One, and he's an EGM (and French, so pay him no mind).

Major tankjob to go from Pro A to DIV IV...

Moving on, i am surprised that you consider 400k per season, for a division III team, regardless if it is a new or old team, inconsequential since it is not crippling!
More so, when there is an elephant in the room...

Futhermore, it...never ceases to amaze me, when people doing team economics and management on the fly, soooo easily, always forget MAINTENANCE COSTS!

It is common sense, that what we see as a weekly/yearly profit in our books, is not "true", since in order to replace your assets(players) because of aging, you will get less money due depreciation and/or wil need more money to replace them(without upgrading) due to inflation...
There is the elephant in the room again...

Yes, of course there is maintenance. And thankfully, it's more expensive the higher up you go - replacing top-tier talent costs significantly more than replacing III level talent, for sure. The whole issue about the gap between new and old teams? This is one of the things that helps newer teams start to bridge the gap.

You'll also note that since the new salary floor increases are essentially 30% for all leagues above 3, but that the TV contracts are higher by a good margin higher up, this erodes a little more of the advantage for teams tanking at top levels (or staying up in half-bot leagues with much lower salaries), which is the main purpose of the change.

Frankly, I think the main thing is that the idea that a team should ever consider it wise to tank and collect as much money as possible so they can buy future success is detrimental to the game. Thanks to the maintenance issue, I finally had to go through the painful process of getting rid of most of my roster and starting over with a new set of trainees - which, after having trained up a significant core of players and building around them over time was hard to take. I know another twelve seasons or so I'll be doing that again as well. But just sitting around skimming profit weekly and doing the bare minimum isn't something the game should encourage. If you choose to do so, sure, good luck with it, but when the best way of succeeding in a game is simply not playing it for a year or two, it's not worth playing at all.