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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.

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

What game are you talking about?

It clearly isn't BB.

I didn't ask him but I guess he wanted to say the same as me

why some player don't train ? well in HT too but why ? ^^ The example of training 3 positions sound strange to me because the training is really too slow to train "medium" potential. I would have understood than 1 position is 100% training and other 75% for example because your coach focus on a small group ! But why some gets no training ? As I already said, they are in a pub ?

improvment in tactics is a problem because of training too ... if you train only 1 position, it's easy to guess where you will attack ! except if you are a good trader, I agree ;) In my case, I can only play motion and basic offense ! run&gun and push the ball, I avoid even if my players have stamina :/ princeton always make a mess so I guess I have the wrong characteristics on my players. All other will only result in a loss because I have weak C/PF

so my opponment play all 3-2 zone or man to man ... do you think it's a diversity in tactic ? I don't think :/

what can I do ? buy a good center ? I though about it but I don't like to sell my players (I like to train, not to trade). By the way, I brought one ... but I still can't play look inside without losing (I need a good PF for that :))

so it's not improvment in tactics like adding some but try to avoid at all cost to be predictable ... and, today, I can't do it ! am I alone ? :/

Am I wrong ? is there a way to not be a trader and play all tactics ? I haven't found it ...

some example ?
- HT : well no strategy and training not better than here ... I still play it about 10-20 min per week but i'm not really enjoying it
- Charazay : strong point in strategy and all players train ! they haven't problem of players limitations, but it's impossible to get to the max ! I'm enjoying this part of the game but not other parts ^^
- Pmanager (soccer) : very good in strategy and training at 100% for a small group and 75% for others, but players could go a bit too high in characteristics in my opinion :/ I left this game by the way but not because of strategy nor training ;)

What I want to say is they are always strong and weak points in every game ! But I took the time to translate 3 posts of ideas (about 2 hours per posts since I'm far to be a god in english :/) to try to get BB to another level (better I hope).

If you don't like these ideas, I don't care ! ... but it seems a lot of frenchies like these ideas. So why not take a look ? modify some to fit your need ?

Last edited by _Az_ at 2/4/2009 1:53:39 PM

why some player don't train ? well in HT too but why ? ^^ The example of training 3 positions sound strange to me because the training is really too slow to train "medium" potential. I would have understood than 1 position is 100% training and other 75% for example because your coach focus on a small group ! But why some gets no training ? As I already said, they are in a pub ?

Game balance means sometimes not adhering to precisely what happens in real life at every moment.

improvment in tactics is a problem because of training too ... if you train only 1 position, it's easy to guess where you will attack ! except if you are a good trader, I agree ;)

Not true at all.

In my case, I can only play motion and basic offense ! run&gun and push the ball

As of a month ago, this was the breakdown of offensive tactics I had played in competitive games this season:

Look Inside 9, Run and Gun 8, Motion 1, Base Offense 1

Care to guess what I train?

Game balance means sometimes not adhering to precisely what happens in real life at every moment.

strange answer you give me here ! I already talked about games which allow all team training. Game balance is always possible of you care to open your eyes to other possibilities ... but not if you think like HT :p

improvment in tactics is a problem because of training too ... if you train only 1 position, it's easy to guess where you will attack ! except if you are a good trader, I agree ;)

Not true at all.

a bit too short for me to understand, sorry :/
ok you disagree but you don't say why ...

In my case, I can only play motion and basic offense ! run&gun and push the ball

As of a month ago, this was the breakdown of offensive tactics I had played in competitive games this season:

Look Inside 9, Run and Gun 8, Motion 1, Base Offense 1

you play since the beginning, right ? That mean I don't think you can represent most of the team in BB :/ By the way, you say "As of a month ago" ... do that mean you couldn't before ? after playing for so long ?

I don't know for you but we talked quite a lot about BB in a french external forum (easier for us in our mothertongue ;)). It allow us to share our impression, think what we could do to develop our team, ...

As for training :

- I see those who train 1 position, they say it's great, some have international players and they are happy ! But they are heavily predictable in game and, except the line they train, they are badly weak :/ To get stronger, they must sell, and if they sell, they lose their advantage ... definitly a vicious circle ^^ (I hope this expression exist in english xD). But it's a necessity, if you want a competitive national team ! There is a lot more D4 which mean we have to deal mostly with manager of D4 about great potential rookie. So how to motivate a young manager who draft a great rookie in this condition ? we try hard ^^ but it's really a choice : training an international wannabe or playing the game to get result. How many would do this bet in their place ?

- About those who train 2 positions, they can count on 2 strong positions, which is better, and it's easier to sell without lose a lot of "firepower" because you train 5 players instead of 2,5 (3 is impossible). Still easy to guess where you will attack. I do it since I play (begining of season 3). I think I didn't play too bad to raise where I am today :p Still, after almost 4 seasons, I have only 1 good Center and about 3-4 good PG/SG. Do you need to trade a lot to get a good team after 6-7 seasons ? Is that the goal of the game ? If you don't have the time to trade, you just have to abandon the game because you have no future ?

- Someone train 3 positions or all team ? well it seem so slow and need a lot of young players (usually not cheaper !)

Care to guess what I train?

guessing, I couldn't ! I lack of knowledge about team of high level ... but if you care to say more, I will be happy to hear your point ! :)
I don't talk without think and my only limitation is my english vocabulary
Still, I may have missed something ;)

edit : I forgot to tell, thanks Charles ! I hope there will be some interesting news later :) (no matter if it's a matter of days, months, seasons ;))

Last edited by _Az_ at 2/5/2009 3:26:43 PM

so first gm who thinks im telling about zone 51 or whatever

we play a team sport on virtual sense but the training ( clearly the only way to improve his team and the engine of tactics definition)) is overated on individual focus

like azariel said the dynamic of opponents or ours is easy to read

as a competion game, you have a part of a team who still stay at a level or almost same and the other s growing up(quickly if u don t train more than 2 players and easier to read)

surprises comes with a transfert more than a switch on training by the time
this associated to ,despite some adjustments begining season 6, a partition on only(yes speed but it is not mainly sgnificant) three fields(outside neutral inside) which are freezing the game on a too simple vison of basketball and coach jobs,
vision of players about game s involving, sweating but freezed in a way to play

bb makes some simulation about nba games and seems proud to be closed to the final score
so stop arguing game balance makes it far from reality
(wasnt the goal about a such demonstration? lakers celtics a 25 december on a international media)

does kobe shoot one week?and bynum gets the other week to train inside shot?

are bb serious? the idea that u train a small part of a team to sell some and get others make it poor,not helped by a game tactics a bit poor.
morever,that put trading on a too important part to balance

fix all this plz and think about individual orders at a few degree,
a diversity of tactics or clearly a game book with 2 3 4 tactics and % to set on,keeping on it urs adjustements about on if u can,
its just an idea,more sport at his true level(o rclose) ,less economics enjoying