BuzzerBeater Forums

It's not the same as consolation though. In there you can face the worst 8 countries in the ranking as well as top 8 countries (which are not in the world cup). In EC, groups are still balanced. Successful countries will still be successful and less successful countries will still not be advancing. However, this change makes it so successful countries have to strategize more than before. First 4 games have always been easy TIE which in my opinion is very stupid. Now there is no "warm-up" phase and I don't know how anyone can think it's a bad idea.

And don't worry about losing your privilege's. You are doing great job in Slovenia with your youngsters so I have no doubt you will succeed now as well. Maybe just more strategizing needed with when to use enthusiasm.

On one side I agree with you, these changes will definitely make things more unpredictable and fun, and it will be more challenging for teams to tie all their games, and you'll have to be strategic etc all those things you said i agree

But on the other side, this makes the HCA even more dominant, and I'm not saying this because you happen to have it, but in general, i believe that the HCA in national tournaments is such a big advantage it's basically pointless to play for the gold.
This was the case with Italy's NT a couple of seasons ago, Spain's u21, Spain's NT and Israel u21... (it's not like that ALL the time, but there's a reason if you won 2 WC but didn't make the finals in the EU tournament)
And with this "added difficulty" you're only opening this gap even more, cause not only the consolation winner (or best placed European team) will be handed the best group and have the HCA, but they will most likely also have a ent advantage since they're going to be the only team that can easily tie all games

Also, with this added difficulty it is more likely for big nation to mess up and go straight to the consolation, which then means that most likely they'll have the HCA, which basically makes that EU championship a very boring tournament
and so on..

A relatively quick solution to the WC problem, could be to take away the 4 African teams that qualify for the Repechage and give those places to 2 European teams, 1 Asian team and 1 American team (although you'd probably need to choose which team is allowed the extra place, maybe the one with the better ranking?)
No offence but the 4 African teams in the Repechage are pretty pointless, has one ever made it out?

I like the 3 solutions, although the third one doesn't really help as much as the other two
If reducing the HCA or neutral games are too big of a reduction you could always modify their group, make it easier, or a fixed schedule or something like that