BuzzerBeater Forums

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 A lot of the stuff is out of date and it's not really newbie friendly.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.

I've been reading this thread with some amusement and I have a few comments I can't hold back any longer.

#1 - I have no idea if the offsite is useful. I've read things about it and it sounds like it is. However, I tried to sign up for it three times about a year ago. Despite following the instructions given my account was never approved. That's not how you convince people to use it. Ignore me once, I chalk it up to miscommunication. A second and third time though? Now you're just being rude. I have no use for that kind of attitude so I will never try to register again. If that's how things are usually done its no wonder its having issues.

#2 - In the 2 years and 4 months I've been playing here I've been contacted twice about potential U21 players. The first contact was actually very helpful as it was early on and helped point me in a good direction on training. The second, more recent contact was a tad off putting as it suggested that I focus on training the player in question and tank this season to do so. I didn't appreciate that type of approach. I ended up selling the player because I didn't want to be contacted about him again.

A word of advice for the "U21/NT scouts": stop making your contacts with other owners sound so condescending. Stop making it sound like owners who want to play the game to win and have fun are doing things the wrong way. Some (like me) are insulted by that kind of approach.

#3 - Of course this dilemma of facing the choice of trying to compete in the league or focus completely on training, and losing a lot in the process, is exactly why many new owners don't stick around. New teams face:

- An noncompetitive initial roster
- An inability to add useful talent through the transfer list.
- A system of adding young talent that gives them 1 useful player a season, if they are lucky.
- An incomprehensible, illogical training system.

Now on top of all these challenges new owners are supposed to know they should help train U21 and/or NT players too? I can't be the only one who sees the problems with that sort of logic? Nobody really wants to go 0-22 and lose by 50 points every game.

#4 - The training system here is so complex, confusing and useless that it could be 6 months before a new owner figures it out. I've played a number of management games like this and this is the only one I've found that does not allow you to give maximum training points to every player on your roster each week. WHY??? That is simply insane and is costing the game, and subsequently each and every nations U21 team and NT. Fix this and team will be more competitive sooner, players will stick around longer and the U21/NT's will have a broader pool of useful players to choose from.


Last edited by lvess at 11/27/2016 12:14:00 AM

I definitely empathize with your frustration. I don't think the BBs really thought out some of the long term consequences of some of the changes they have made over the last year or two. The inflation in the market makes it really tough for new managers to compete.

However, I totally disagree with the notion that you can't train and be competitive at the same time. I have done it my whole BB career. I would even argue because of inflation on the TL, it is essential to train your own players.

If you are a new owner and your goal is to field the most competitive team possible in the shortest amount of time, the U21 training plans are perfect because those are exactly the goals of the U21 team. At a minimum, the U21 training plans will give you a great DIII starter that depending on potential and secondaries might even be good enough with more training for DII/NBBA.

The supply of trainees are there and plentiful. There are going to be a ton of trainees after the draft, that you can easy buy for less than 10k if you are not looking for an MVP/HOF calibur player.

#2 - In the 2 years and 4 months I've been playing here I've been contacted twice about potential U21 players. The first contact was actually very helpful as it was early on and helped point me in a good direction on training. The second, more recent contact was a tad off putting as it suggested that I focus on training the player in question and tank this season to do so. I didn't appreciate that type of approach. I ended up selling the player because I didn't want to be contacted about him again.

A word of advice for the "U21/NT scouts": stop making your contacts with other owners sound so condescending. Stop making it sound like owners who want to play the game to win and have fun are doing things the wrong way. Some (like me) are insulted by that kind of approach.

Who was the person that contacted you the first time? Who was the person the second time? This could just be more "miscommunication" (and hopefully not rudeness) and be a lack of training on the "scout" part for how to properly handle managers of potential players.

Vote for me and these problems will be solved within a few weeks. I know the ins and outs of this game.


Vote for me if you like winning.

Theres no inexperience because there aren't new scouts. We have 3 people running the u21 scouting and 1 u21 manager. The last change to the group of scouting happened two seasons ago, where 3 scouts retired from the game at the same time.

I'm also not interested in exposing the manager on a forum as being condescending. There are rules against that in fact. So if he wants to suggest that to someone, it should be me in a message and not the entire forum. I know who should have scouted your most recent players, and i don't know him to be condescending, so i think that was most likely a misunderstanding.

If managers want to talk with the u21 manager or with other offsite managers about understanding development, we've got a discord channel setup for that. You can use a phone app, a web browser, or a client to launch the program, and it's both a VOIP and a text channel. We use it mostly for texting back and forth however. I try to be logged into it whenever i'm at my computer or have time at work. Anyone who PM's me can get the invite link in, and i'll be happy to send you an invite into it.

I am very much open to helping new people understand the ins and outs of the game, and additionally i am always looking for help scouting for those who want to contribute to building the team. What we really want to preach with the current group is learning how to make your players great. As phyr mentioned, the u21 path is one of the easiest ways to get to the point where you can make your own talent good for your own team. I respect those folks that want to learn the game there own way, but for the general user I think we provide a lot of help. I'll take as many people in as i can while running the u21 program, i'll make as much time as possible.

3 retired from the game at the same time? That would be equivalent to your current entire scouting team now yes? In the last paragraph there you say "preach with the current group is learning how to make your players great."
Wasn't that one of his concerns? Focusing on making the player great but not necessarily in a way that helps him or his team? Why should Ivess, or he, or I or anyone have to sacrifice what we want for our teams to make a player great in a different way than we envision for the sake of the u21 or nt? I don't know if this is what you mean, but this is a the connotation that can be taken. In a text based game and from reading your text this is an interpretation that one might construe as you having conveyed to them "your team be canned, make him good for the national team, then use the money he brings in to buy a better team, or sell him to someone who will do as we say and use the money". Whether you are saying that or not is not clearly reflected in the wording f your approach. Also, the connotation of "preach" could be interpreted in many different ways. When I think of it I feel like I am being lectured against my will by a teacher, parent, priest, officer, etc. About a subject and that my opinion is not important or being flat out ignored. I feel like people preaching is talking at someone rather than with someone.

No offense was meant by saying they might need better training. Nor was I meaning to suggest the person be flung out on the forums. These were not my intentions but are a consequence of my poorly choices phrased of words.Also I apologize for preaching on about this. 😊

Last edited by RandyMoss at 12/9/2016 1:17:07 PM

3 retiring at the same time took us from 6 scouts to 3 scouts. It effectively tripled the work load of one of the scouts, and the other two have also increased their worload to compensate.

"preach with the current group is learning how to make your players great." means the players that come onto the team. I would say that a common new owner is more likely to invest in someone with high potential thinking that it insinuates that they are going to be good players based on their potential alone. This trap often means that players who join the new teams only gain a few TSP a year. They go from 45 TSP to 60 TSP, and the player never gets the type of talent they thought they bought into. Similarly, they may or may not give their players proper minutes management, and instead of having them at the highest quality for each game they play they might have subpar performance and subpar performance.

If people don't want to be involved with the u21, they can still make it to the NBBA. That's not a requirement of them being good. However, a player who doesn't know how to manage enthusiasm and gameshape cannot make it to the top of the ladder, and if they don't develop their own talent at some point they will also find that financially it is less feasible to run their team the way they would like, eventually requiring a rebuild.

The selling of players at the end of a u21 run is a suggestion that crops up because of the state of the game financially. Once i determine whether or not an owner is interested in developing young talent for themselves/u21 or moving on with other guys they have, i make the financially sound decisions to tell them "you could keep him on your team and use him off the bench, but you could also make 1-1.5m by selling him and replace him for way less than that on the bench by finding a star potential or starter potential that has the same skillset". And again, that suggestion is not to tell people to rebuild their team, but ti plan their team in such a way that they make use of the talent they have.

My experience is mostly the same as lvess...I tried signing up for the offsite numerous times over the years and was never able to login and use it.

I have used several other offsite tools, including buzzer-manager and BBStats in the past, and never have had any problems unless the site went down. I still use buzzer-manager to this day.

It should not be complicated to implement an easy scouting/management tool without a screening or pre-screening process. If nothing else, it would make it VERY easy to share players skills. If you're worried about inside intel, you can use another system for messaging/discussion boards, etc.

I don't fault anyone involved with the NT programs, because for all I know, if the system in place had problems on the side of the person trying to sign up, someone on the other side could have been legitimately trying to approve people and thought they were doing so.

But how about using something like Google hangouts and offering "office hours" or something, where the NT team can be available for questions and advice?

Finally, yes, the "canned" scouting message is a bit annoying. I get that it's easy to have a canned message, but I have gotten the exact same message from different national team managers as well. I get that the success of the NT is important to some, but people play this game for fun, and some enjoy learning the game through their own experience, learning from their mistakes, and "figuring it all out" on their own...to many, being asked to sell NT prospects is a bit off-putting.