BuzzerBeater Forums

Hear hear! Good ones. (and the "newest team" overview).

The nice thing with these suggestions is that they don't impose changes in the GE, just presentation, and can be implemented without further ado

we're asking all of you

Hi !

I'm part of an external forum (Buzzerbeater France) and we launched a topic about "what can be improve in BB". So i'm only here to talk about the result of this topic with my approximate translation xD

I think we can divide BB's problems in three : not enough communication, too much clic and "why the hell I lost ? random ?"

A lot of these suggestions aren't easy to add ! we know this very well :)
You asking what we would have in xx seasons, we answer ;)

Part 1 :

Improve your communication toward us ! So everybody will be able to see you interact with the community and not only those who have the time to check the xxx posts on forum :p

- I though about a link like the rules link which lead on the project you have in mind
No need to put a date ! Just do it like this :
+ Short term (1 season ?) : well, we will improve this, this and that !
+ Medium term (2-3 saisons) : we will implement this and that
+ Long term (4-5 seasons or more) : we think BB will evolve this way (a good think to launch a debate by the way ;))
Programming take times, players need to understand this !

- keep the history of your modifications in the same page or in another with a link
It will help people to see how you work and make evolve BB

- Survey ! Well it was a marvelous idea ! But now, we have the impression some part haven't been take into account (we go back to the communication ^^). Launch a debate, take into account some ideas and doing little surveys would be really great in the future :)


Tutoring ! An essential part than most of other games understood !
It's absolutly needed because the forum isn't fit for that :/

- Create a space for each tutor (Google says guardian for translation :/)
each one would have a private managable forum. Only his pupils would have access to this (I tried it in Charazay and I must say it's marvelous :))
- Give access to the pupils'player stat to the tutor ... no more screenshot and explanation how to do them, yay ! ^^ Well a button giving the choice to share stats with his tutor would be even greater in fact :) Players need to have the choice instead of being forced !

Improve the forum :/
The forum ! a strategic tool to develop a community ! He must be user friendly (well don't know how to translate that so, in french, "convivial, lisible et accessible")

- A good way to do that is to talk about national teams. But how to do that without reveal your strengh and weakness to other countries ? simple, you can't freely talk about how to train an international to fit the needs of the national team.
So a managable forum (by GM of the country ? LA ? volonteer ?) with an exclusive access (French player = french private national forum) would allow to do here what we need to do in external forum :/ talking freely about the strategy of the upcoming France - Italy in an official (yet restricted) BB forum with a community of 1000 managers is way better than with 50-100 players :p

- Don't forget than a lot of peoples would be volonteer to help if you ask !

- Generally speaking, really to much click to go where you want :/ I'll talk about it later but it's really a big problem ! (on forum, to get stat, etc)

- A listing giving all existing forum (well maybe add a filter at least ^^) with a brief description would be interesting :)

- A link to get all the topic with new message in 1 page would be awesome too (take exemple of external forum :p)

- Searching a topic on the forum is really hard too :/ I searched a topic with numbers xxx.y ... well i never found it :p Afterward I though about put it directly on the url bar of my navigator ... but well not that good, right ? ^^

- Possibility to make a complete favorite page of link on forum ! and groups too
+ group 1
xxxx.y - possibility to write something
zzzzz.a
+ group 2
dddd.e
...

part 2 coming in some days to let you the time to read it

charles,

just wanna share something, my friend that i invited to play bb is somewhat getting it more and more enjoyable due to

1) my tutoring . . . ( endless hours )
2) after seeing skills pop - he got more excited and when he told me one of his guard pop 2 skill in a week training, his looking forward to train more players.

as a new player, there are times since his new, he find the game complicated and dont know where to start and even at times if i dont give him an im before about his team, he wouldnt log in and check in out.

truth is, at the beggining you have to make him see how great this game is. the moment he sign up is already a big step but to keep him playing is more harder.

i have to teach him how to set his team, how to scout games and players and etc.

but what made it more such an experience to him is buying players and the skill pop he personally experience.

i know not all things should be said and all, but when he invited his office mates and some had sign in, but he cant share his enthusiasm for the game due to the same bump in the road he experience which is complicated of being new and how thigs would go.

right now his still playing but somehow we got to keep the fire burning for this new ones till they catch the big flame

Most likely you did as well, but I've noticed that a lot of questions posted in the fora boil down to a couple of unclarities/difficulties new players encounter.

Well so the 2nd part

Statistic must be improved !
- Especially Team rating, Matchup rating and the rating of each player (you already thinking about this last at least). They lead a lot of people to think they lost because of "random" probability ! And what do a player who think the game is mess up ? most of time, he simply give up ! In my opinion, Team rating is useless since a homogeneous team will have high rating without being really better. Matchup rating help only to know if your shooting guard was up against a great defender and player rating help only to know if the player defended well or not ... maybe, at least, explain this to newbies ? don't know but something must really be done about those :/
- add more and more stat, always more : why not rookie of the year ? MVP of the game ? ... a survey of managers ?
more options on team stat page ?
- More choice about draft ! what the aim to scout a second time a F player ? be sure he is really that bad ? ^^
- More rating
compare it to players in the division, national and world ... Supporters can already see the leaderboard but it's not a rating
if you consider the best world player at his peak get a 20 in a match, what my player get in his best match ? 10 ? :p
and same go for division and national
- In all rating, change the way you take into account the number of minutes played ! My players don't play that often 40 minutes per game ! So the have almost no luck to appear in the league leader ... too bad for them :p
enthousiasm and opponment level must be taken into account too !


Private League and federation
- Well, first, how I use them ? clic, clic, clic, ... well seems it's here, clic, clic, clic, hmm still not that, clic, clic, clic xD
seriously, why not making a category like the team category ? 1 for PL and another for federation !
- Same goes for the PL schedule and PL forum !
- searching a federation is quite a hard job for now ! can't we have a list of all federation in 1 page ?
with filter option like language, title begin with, more/less than xx users, open to all or invitation only, ...


Supporter options are all about giving an organisational advantage ... But we are very far from it :/

- Add group to bookmark ! automatic one or not, it's not important but when you search a center and a PG on market, you bookmark, your happy :p Afterward, you go back to check your bookmark and it's all melt ... well maybe excel is better at it after all, but supporters options lose a big part of his meaning :p
- Write the right number of caracters left on a BB-mail xD the end is almost all the time cut ... quite annonying when you have a 2nd mail to send for 2 words
- Why supporters can't write longer mail ? we have more thing to say after all xD
- Add the possibility to save some mail and please, don't limit to 50 messages
after draft, we send quite a lot of mail to ask managers to participate on the french national rookies training program :)
but when you have all those mails mixed, a limit of 50 mails and mails which disappear because the receiver delete it ... well, I think I will use some paper to be sure, I keep track of everything :/
- We are still waiting to personalyse jersey for exemple
- Add news of the division ! better than to have to clic again and again to check 15 teams
Team announces would appear in the news of the division too


Well I like BB, charazay and HT because I like training frenchies rookies ! And I must say, this tranfert market is a living hell for me xD
Why can't you add some more filter ?
- end of bid in xx hours or days
- nationality
- little county are in higher division, so they get more income, right ? why not giving to stranger player 10% more salaries ?
- Add the best 10, 20, 30 sell stat

(I don't talk about potential or heigh ... I guess if you didn't add it until now, you must have a good reason :p but still it would be great ^^)

see you for the last pa

Last edited by _Az_ at 1/26/2009 12:52:50 PM

- Write the right number of caracters left on a BB-mail xD the end is almost all the time cut ... quite annonying when you have a 2nd mail to send for 2 words

[...]

see you for the last pa

I wasn't trying to do it but it's a good example ^^

+45 when I'm editing ... after adding the end, I'm still at +25 word left and still it's cut :/

so see you for the last part in some days as I tried to say xD

sorry i did notread the thread just got some questions.
is there a referral-banner which i could put on some websites?

Reading the thread most people seems to agree that the game is complicated to get started with, while at the same time they do not want to decrease the complexity of the, as this on the long run is what makes the game fun. This is also my opinion, so here are my thoughts on how to make it easier to get started (whereof some might already have been mentioned).

Use short menu as default
Currently, I think, all new teams start with the full menu as default (I know I did). As this menu contains arround 40 links, whereof some are cruicial for beginners while others are more or less pointless, beginners will easily get lost and get the feeling that the game is too complicated.

Among all those links there is a link to select "Show Short Menu", but as tere are so many links it is easily missed. Thus the short menu should be the default menu, to avoid scaring people.

Essential rules
For the same reason as aboe there should be a short version of the rules, where only the essentials are included. The current rules should also be available (perhaps called "Comprehensive rules")

Basketball fundamentals
Not every country has the basketball tradition of e.g. the US and the Balkan, thus this can build a barrier in many cases. By including simple figures that illustrate the different tactics I think many newcombers will have an easier time understanding the ideas of the game.

Automatic tutoring
A few people have mentioned tutoring system, which I find to be a great idea. However, I think there is a limitation in the number of people that are prpared to tutor (and are good at it). An idea could be to give beginners tips after each game, e.g. tips like

* Did you notice that your oponent played run and gun, but you defended inside? If you had chosen an outside defense (1-3-1, 3-2) you might have been able to stop more shots.
* Your oponents SF dominated the game with 56 points, this could be due to your small forward had very low defensive skills.
* Both teams shot poorly, resulting in many rebounding oportunities. If you had focused more on rebounding you would have gained more ball posetions and chances to score.

This could be available for e.g. the first season or until you decide to sitch it of (I would switch it of quit early I think).

Improved interactivity
There are urently a few things that make BB less interactie then HT. For instance the PMs are not rally visible for other players, instead you have chosen to focus on a (currently) pretty meaningless all star game. Making PMs more accesible for other users and introducing a guestbook (perhaps the press blog is meant to work as that, but it does not) newcombers (and all others too) would see more life in the game, making it more interesting.

In HT they have a "news ticker" (telling you when you recieve a forum post, mail, PM, bids, etc) for supporters. Introducing this for everyone in BB would increase its interactivity and accessibility a lot among both beginners.

The ticker should include messages about forums replys, mails, and your NT PMs by default. For supporters it would also include e.g. bids and friends PMs.

Yes, some good idea above ;)

The last part ! And probably the one than you will dislike the most because you already said you didn't want to change it ! but I think it must be said and well, I only translate what the french forum members said

Btw Thanks to SnealyB for his help on this one !

Game Engine
Decrease the complexity isn't the solution ! give us more different strategic option and explain them more ! The complexity isn't most of the time the problem ! But, when you don't understand why you win/lose, then it's a problem ! Honnestly a HT-like game Engine isn't fun at all ! More strategy and less complexity to understand it is the real challenge :)

- Individual orders to players :
+ shoot+/normal/ shoot-
+ shoot inside / shoot outside / balanced
+ defense : aggressive – normal – relaxed
+ offensive priority : often / normal / not often
With this you can play with a very bad shooter without worrying too much

- Strategy and live :
on defense, why not doing a box on the opponment'best player ?
At late game, why not trying more 2 pts rather than 3 pts if your best player is your center ?
add the notion of airballs to the game
add more strategy to avoid to be too easily predictable ! If you train center, your opponment will play you zone 2-3 and attack on exterior. The contrary happen if you train PG :/
add something to know is the strategy made us lose this game or if it's just our players that are too bad :p
add more "game text" to the live, and special actions for players who have reached very high skills

- Enthusiam
+ Get rid of the enthusiasm system ? well if you MOTS, the player shape will go down and if you PICS, it will go up : more realistic in my opinion :p
+ Or reduce it for team which always trade ? I think training and stability aren't rewarded enough :/ a team chemistry ? well don't really know what's the best ...

- Speciality
Add a specialty for players : dunk, soft shooting hand, human wall, great rebouding ... This would not affect training but would be based on the same principle that the “hidden” physicality stat.

How to kill farm team ?
add a parameter player morale which will be based on a division coefficient and the salary of the player
Then Matthiot and his 100k salary would need to always play in the highest division to have a high morale ! a guy with 50k salary in Div 4-5, would be atrocious !

League biggest problem : the 5th place :/
- The economics of the PO and PD system will often result in the 6th ranked team winning more cash than the 3rd or 4th ranked, and the 5th gets nothing at all. This should be changed to reflect more the result of the regular season

6th can get 2/3 income on the 1st match, 1/3 on the 2nd and 2/3 on the 3rd if he "play" well !

In the same time, if 3rd and 4th are eliminated on 1st match (most of the time !), they only get 1/3 !

Even if they go on the 2nd match, they will get 2/3 :D
If you add the draft, the 6th place is far more interesting than the 3rd, 4th and 5th ! Is that normal ?

- You could get rid of PD income ... after all 5th have nothing :/
- Add a reward to be sure the 3rd will always win more than the 4th, 4th more than 5th, ...

Cup
Well, useless for now :/
Hard to justify to a newbie why it's like that :/ and very hard to be motivated by this event :/

Training
Is it necessary to have so much complexity on Training ?
a friend asked me how to train SF
me : no problem, you play PG when you train outside def and center when you train inside def
him : so he never play SF ?
me : *feel very stupid* well in 5 seasons, I guess
He is 100% right ! Why you can't train a SF in his favorite position ? Why so much limitation ?

I will not talk about how stupid it is to train only 2 or 5 players when other are getting drunk at the pub ! Strangely other games train all your player ! so, if it's possible to do a balanced game with it, why not doing it here ?

The e

true
i liked bb but now i dont really care about a game focused on training few players, with no improvement in tactics

Ofcourse you fail to realize that the options in training are for people who do not have young talent on every position. There are options to train 1 pos, 2 pos, 3 pos and team. Pleanty of options to create a balanced roster.
As for the not enough options for games. Yes there should be some more but double teams and centers and forward helping on the driving opponent etc is hard to implement to the current game engine. You should be able to give orders what the coach should do incase of a blowout.
I think giving quarter tactics and player options is a bit absurd in this game. Giving green light to shoot to one player and denie it to all others. Yep those player scores 115 points etc appearances + it would take away the exiting minute managing as you can give better stamina players the order to play more aggressively on defence cutting down his minutes in game to be balanced with others etc.