BuzzerBeater Forums

So, for a long time the u21/NT has been sort of a thing where managers from the US go to a separate offsite forum and database and hide our scouting and information from prying eyes. Meanwhile, onsite members would work on their teams, and within expectation some of those team-oriented training sessions lined up reasonably well with the u21 club.

With the reduction of the onsite users in the US, the offsite has also been hit quite heavily as a lot of those once late teens to 23-year olds are now all around 30, and have moved on to families, and other games that weren’t left in a 2008 website format. I think the active user base during the course of the year on the offsite is about 20 active people, in which we have maybe 3 active scouts and 2 active NT/u21 managers, and maybe another 12-13 people who update weekly what their plans are. There are another 15 managers who play the game regularly, but no longer visit regularly, and there are another 8-10 beyond that which barely play or visit anymore. In essence, what you are seeing now in terms of NT/u21 management and what you might see next year in NT management is likely the end of the offsite control of the NT/u21, and likely the loss of a team effort will reduce the chances of the NT/u21 in the US being viable going forward.

I’m here to ask a very simple question of both old and new managers: what can we do to revitalize some of the interest in the game and the u21/NT teams from a user perspective? Where can we provide additional sources of information for veteran managers about matchups? Where can we provide useful gameshape management techniques for newer users that haven’t explored what Gameshape does for a player yet? The answer really isn’t within the game itself, because messages are so limiting. Is discord a good option for more people to access veteran managers and ask questions? If it’s something that could help, I’m open to moderating a channel for US buzzer beater members.

FurYak

I'm not sure if this would help spark interest, but if we could get someone to code the tools we had previously, it might help a bit. Like you said, people are getting older and real life is taking over.

We could also do what we did seasons ago and start posting in league forums. Maybe offer supporter to users that train U21 players.

Fire FurySK.

I tried getting a little creative with FML Radio, but that seems to be a bit thick for users not already involved with the NT. I honestly think the biggest problem is the dwindling onsite population. If the game is losing traction then it only makes sense that entities like the offsite will decrease with it.

I don't view FML radio as being hand in hand with the u21/NT. I also expected it to be more of a monthly thing rather than an every once in a while sort of thing. Get someone on there who can stir things up instead of being civil. Or basically A-dub.

Haha well we ran into some problems with khenry quitting the game, and now I'm trying to get it up again but my life is super busy right now.

It wasn't hand in hand with the NT, but it wazs definitely one of my goals to use it as a platform to give the NT some more exposure and promote involvement with the offsite.

Where i can find scouts for NT?. I sent pm NT-coach but he didn't respond to my message.

I'm not an official scout, but I believe I can help you out.

If you have any questions about the USNT and/or training, feel free to contact me via BB-Mail.

I am a member of the US offsite and help with USNT prospect development

FML was legend.

There are a couple of problems here. Primary is that the game is formatted for a PC and people are moving away from that format. Not sure how it translates to a tablet or phone, but I play several other manager games and they are all in the same boat.

The problem with the offsite is that it's just one more website to sign up for and I know for me personally, there's a fair amount of fatigue in that. I come here to check up on my team. I don't really want to go to another site just to hope that someone has posted something relevant to me. There's also a fair amount of snark and condescension there. I don't think it's intentional. But there's a huge gap between managers that have played for years and newer players. Managers that might otherwise want to help realize pretty quickly that they are outclassed. I don't know how you bridge that gap.

On top of it, the training in this game is the most bizarre one I've seen. It doesn't suit new teams well at all. The only real option is to sell decent draft pulls (if you get them) and buy someone else's leftovers. I've been playing the game for a year and the only reason I have a good chance to promote is a couple of beast teams went bot. That and I got really lucky in the draft a couple seasons ago.

So you're left with a dying format, an inconvenient meeting place and a brutal grind to make it out of the bush leagues. Kind of hard to make anything of that.

In another game I play, we have a decent NT system. But it's really helped by the fact that we can form a private conference in the forum and discuss NT matters there. That's not available here unless you're a supporter. Even then, not that many people follow it.

What Phyr did with his elastic training guides is a good start. It wouldn't be a bad idea to post some of that here and use that as an intro to the offsite. It wouldn't hurt to reorganize the forums. A lot of the stuff is out of date and it's not really newbie friendly. The problem is you'll have an influx of people asking the same questions and it does get tedious. And the payoff is likely a handful of new players. But that's all I have.