BuzzerBeater Forums

I applaud your restrain and vision - I just cant help but feel that giving managers 'shiny new toys' and then not letting them keep and play with them

Its evident this is much more than a Basketball sim and economics plays a crucial role in somebodies success/failure. I work with numbers for a living and I'll run with whatever is thrown but do you not feel that for the last 4-5 seasons the large majority of news items have revolved solely around 'finances' with no real enhancement (bar some match engine tweaks) on the basketball content?

Its now gone beyond a simple pick up and play online game which is ok for those that have played for some time now. For new users there are pitfalls that they would be unlikely to forsee at such an early stage and with money even harder to come by in any division these days, it would be a shame to see people view this game as more an economics sports sim with a basketball flavour as opposed to a basketball sim with a need for some basic economic skills.

In other words to be at the very top of your league/division you are now having to calcalute to the $ what skill ups equate to what - what additional output you get from each skill up - even the replacement of coaches has formulas worked out for the optimum time to replace..... this is all well and good for anyone willing to put in the time.. those that dont and dont watch the pennies (and there is a difference between ensuring you never spend more than required vs spending frivoulously) are never going to get ahead. Before it was if you spent more time on the transfer market you could forge a competitive advantage - now its if you use the JosefKa spreadsheet and various other BB help tools you automatically give yourself a leg up over Joe Casual.

I agree economics plays a big part in having a sucessful BB team, and particularly important for the new players. I can't see any problem with having tools and spreadsheets for the game though. A simpler game like hattrick has all sorts of tools to play around - it's a sign that the game is popular and it's bound to happen. It helps those who are more willing to dedicate to play this game and naturally they are more successful than those casual players. What's wrong with that?

I think the fact that we have had to spend so much time on economics in the news posts is because Charles and I understand how basketball works, and what basketball should look like, and how to design a system in which a game looks like basketball.. but we aren't economists.... i mean... we clearly don't think about money that much.. we are both graduate students. And so we've had to spend more time tweaking the economics than basektball.

But I think you are being a bit too unkind to say that we haven't been working on the basketball as well.

We have tweaked the end of game coaching logic, we have changed the rebounding model, we added matchup ratings, we added alternative defensive matchups, we tweaked outside shooting, we added help defense, we tweaked the importance of passing and outside defense, and i'm probably forgetting some things... this season we've announced we are working on more tactical options.

Keep in mind whenever we make any change, people get up and yell because they made a strategy and designed their long term plans around one set of things, and when we change something they feel betrayed. So its difficult to do a ton.

It was by no means my intention to be unkind in my 'yell'! I accept there have been numerous improvements to the basketball side and i guess the majority you mention are less visible to me (which doesnt of course detract from the fact they are still changes that have been worked on and implemented.)

Sure, I/we have adapted to the way that player skills are represented in the game engine but Im sure you'd agree that from a new players perspective the match-up ratings carry less assistance than previously and again for newer teams this is a grey area as they won't have what many considered a decent barometer to check how their training is effecting their improvement.

I know that the fundmentals of the game are solid and don't require changing - but I always comment using my own situation and that of someone who could be starting out (in Japan I hope!) and I guess the overall point I was trying to make is that certain aspects of the game are now being solved (not neccessarily 100%, but close) so the variable factors that led to the disparity in performance/growth of franchises before is far less likely now and future success is based more on an economic formula that you have to follow using the players as pawns. Sorry again if this sounds crude - its ironic cos at the beginning of the game I myself viewed each player as a financial asset and now I'm at the stage where I don't wish to. Of course the counter argument is that everyones training methods will vary and this will result in different teams failing and succeeding but as we've seen before when transfer fees are rangebound with a topside of $7-8mil vs a topside of $12mil, each training skill up carries less monetary reward and you are likely to be able to throw a net over teams that start in a certain era and again the luck of your global position is then based entirely about which country you sign up in.

teams spend only 70% of their income on salaries.

My only question about this is if that stat is based on total income/revenue for the season or is it a snapshot of the weekly average during the season?

There are only 11 guaranteed home games but 14 weeks of paying players. Most teams don't make a lot of money in the PO's, usually only the teams that make the finals. So you have to take into account the 3 weeks you wont be making the normal attendance, if any at all.

this was based on a single week late in the regular season before the playoffs last season.

The weekly totals are a bit misleading for another reason. There are other sources of income/costs that do not occur on a weekly basis: profits from training and staff bonuses.