BuzzerBeater Forums

We're not asking for a weekly public audit, just information on how things are. A "we're working on the code" or "we're developing a new interface" or "we've analyzed it and for now, we're not touching anything". Is a little bit of information about how things are once a season too much to ask?
The Italians are masters in the art of selling anything, but honestly, they don't seem like it. Are they sure they're not North Koreans disguised as pizza makers?

As mentioned in previous communications, we prefer to share updates when we have something concrete to show — especially regarding the UI. The work we’re doing is massive: we are converting a 20-year-old codebase with thousands of files, many of which are highly complex. This is not just about rewriting code, but ensuring that, particularly in the engine, the new version behaves identically to the original given the same inputs.

Regarding the UI, we are actively working on it. However, progress has been delayed due to an urgent technical issue with another app we manage, which required our immediate attention. This temporarily slowed down our efforts on BuzzerBeater.

That said, we are fully committed to the project and will share progress as soon as we have something meaningful to show. It’s disappointing, though, to see that while the vast majority of users are patiently waiting and supporting us, a small group of 4–5 individuals continue to post out-of-context comments and unnecessary tags.

If you’ve tolerated the current state of BuzzerBeater for nearly two decades but suddenly feel the need to express impatience now, we kindly suggest reconsidering your approach — or your involvement — as that’s not the kind of community spirit we’re trying to foster.

Again, we’ll share an update when it’s ready. I don’t want to commit to specific dates because this is a highly complex project and unforeseen issues can arise. But when we do publish an update, we’ll make sure to highlight the immense amount of work involved so everyone can appreciate the scale of the progress.

As for the UI, we already have a few mockups of the main screens. However, we prefer to share them only once we’ve verified their feasibility in code. We don’t want to present a design that later proves to be unworkable or ends up not being used.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I truly hope this helps avoid further speculation moving forward.

Perfect! This is exactly what we all needed to hear, some minimum feedback so we know our position.
It wasn't that hard, was it?

Thanks, and all the best with your work.

Hey man not all 30+ people are fond of this outdated interface! Some (most?) of us actually want an efficient and clear interface that doesn't take up too much of our precious little time ;)

Plus we also want new managers to stick around to draft HoF players (instead of the bots drafting them) so we can buy them from them.

The reason they take so long is that they want to make sure everything works as we used to. And if the codebase is old and badly coded/understandable, that's a lot of (unpredictable) work.

Yes! Thank you, BB-Marco.

This small gesture was important.

+1

It’s disappointing, though, to see that while the vast majority of users are patiently waiting and supporting us, a small group of 4–5 individuals continue to post out-of-context comments and unnecessary tags.

If you’ve tolerated the current state of BuzzerBeater for nearly two decades

that for me sounds so insulting and like a slap on the face for the users for having the "audacity" to ask for some feedback from you guys.
I don't know who taught you guys how to deal with your main stakeholders (because that's what the users here are) but you guys are failing miserably.

Yes, we all played this game for 2 decades in its state for the love of the game. We were aware of the problems that the previous team had and their limitations because of the way they worked on this as a side project, but still, they were active in the community, talking with users, discussing ideas, sharing what they plan to do. You guys are a company that invested in this in order to make some money out of it. so .. invest in it.

Again, nobody is talking about any commitments from you at this point, we understand that is hard to do and that you have other projects. but what would cost you to debate ideas ? like for example : "hey guys, we looked over the forums and saw that most of you complain about training, this is the general directions we are looking into, what you guys think?" .. that's not commitment, that's engaging your users and getting feedback.

Just rewriting the code in a new programming language doesn't solve your problems. for sure for some decent new features you need to update the architecture of the game. and how can you do that if you don't map out the new features that you want to come with? or if you maybe already have them in mind, why not discuss them with the users?

C'mon .. you can't tell me that in one year you couldn't come up with anything to show for the users.. that just shows a lack of interest. if you take a junior web designer it will come up with some mockups in 6 months, then you can start the discussion on them. what is technically feasible ? are you serious in this day and age? we are not talking about new features, just UI revamp. So what wouldn't be technically feasible?

i'll tell how all this looks to me, you guys saw a business opportunity to make some money with minimum effort , just redesigning the UI and updating the engine for less maintenance work and call it a day.

Today I received a message that my supporter subscription is expiring, thanking me if I renew for the help growing the game. Well, I won't be doing that as it doesn't look to me like I help growing the game, just giving some money to you guys for nothing. I would rather send that money to BB Justin for his work on the buzzerbeater mobile app.

Well to be fair, BB-Marco sent the exact same message on Discord first and then copy-pasted it here. So the "small group of 4-5 individuals" part is relevant for Discord where things sometimes get wilder than here, but is not aimed at people asking for updates here in my opinion. The fact that the Discord message was copy-pasted here without any modification or context clarfication is problematic though.

I'd say it's more you're the well behaved children. A few specific people on Discord covered themselves in un-glory in the week leading up to the "statement", and honestly I'm part impressed part horrified that they didn't just get banned for their degree of rudeness.

+1 to Spicy Sparks for also repeating the information on the official forums, given that they elected to indulge the tantrum on Discord at all.

that for me sounds so insulting and like a slap on the face for the users for having the "audacity" to ask for some feedback from you guys.
I don't know who taught you guys how to deal with your main stakeholders (because that's what the users here are) but you guys are failing miserably.

Yes, we all played this game for 2 decades in its state for the love of the game. We were aware of the problems that the previous team had and their limitations because of the way they worked on this as a side project, but still, they were active in the community, talking with users, discussing ideas, sharing what they plan to do. You guys are a company that invested in this in order to make some money out of it. so .. invest in it.

Again, nobody is talking about any commitments from you at this point, we understand that is hard to do and that you have other projects. but what would cost you to debate ideas ? like for example : "hey guys, we looked over the forums and saw that most of you complain about training, this is the general directions we are looking into, what you guys think?" .. that's not commitment, that's engaging your users and getting feedback.

Just rewriting the code in a new programming language doesn't solve your problems. for sure for some decent new features you need to update the architecture of the game. and how can you do that if you don't map out the new features that you want to come with? or if you maybe already have them in mind, why not discuss them with the users?

C'mon .. you can't tell me that in one year you couldn't come up with anything to show for the users.. that just shows a lack of interest. if you take a junior web designer it will come up with some mockups in 6 months, then you can start the discussion on them. what is technically feasible ? are you serious in this day and age? we are not talking about new features, just UI revamp. So what wouldn't be technically feasible?

i'll tell how all this looks to me, you guys saw a business opportunity to make some money with minimum effort , just redesigning the UI and updating the engine for less maintenance work and call it a day.

Today I received a message that my supporter subscription is expiring, thanking me if I renew for the help growing the game. Well, I won't be doing that as it doesn't look to me like I help growing the game, just giving some money to you guys for nothing. I would rather send that money to BB Justin for his work on the buzzerbeater mobile app.

Moderizing code is no easy task. Updating your own code that you wrote is one thing. Updating someone else's code is a nightmare. Especially 20 y/o code. There are multiple ways to get a program to complete a task. And rewritting code means having to understand the exact path that the original writter took if you aim to get the GE right. And that means reading tons of code. And reading code isn't like a book where everything is written in a logical order from front to back. Oh no. You're going to have to cross reference like crazy for each function. I fully expected this update to take at least a year and would have bet closer to two.

Once you get the base game complete, modern updates become far easier. Revamping entire sections of code is pretty cake. So no, you don't need to consider proposed improvements at this time. I completely agree with them prioritizing the functionality of the current model before trying to improve anything else. Trying to work in improvements at this stage will just make functionality testing even more complicated.

Now it would be nice for a little update here and there. But then again, they just gave one and you STILL complained. If I were them, why bother?

And no, it's a bad idea to tease anything that isn't 100% going to be in the final version. Lest you get "You promised..."

Last edited by Phosrik1 at 7/20/2025 7:56:52 PM

Moderizing code is no easy task. Updating your own code that you wrote is one thing. Updating someone else's code is a nightmare. ... So no, you don't need to consider proposed improvements at this time. I completely agree with them prioritizing the functionality of the current model before trying to improve anything else. Trying to work in improvements at this stage will just make functionality testing even more complicated.

No friend, I don't agree with you here. I'm not sure how the codebase looks like, but from what I can gather and the fact that Justin did the mobile app, it is clear that there is a separation between the frontend, backend and engine parts of the game. Which is how it should be. So you can take this big part and split it in smaller problems that you can tackle.

Engine should be the most complex to rewrite, but I would argue that just re-writing it with no architecture changes would not help. Making architectural changes afterwards would be as complicated as making them now. It just adds delay.
You can easily have automated tests that check the results from one engine with the other and figure out if your changes break / change things or not.

However, UI and backend API changes should not be as complicated and can be worked separately.
Of course, it all boils down to the amount of resources available to do this in paralel.

Now it would be nice for a little update here and there. But then again, they just gave one and you STILL complained. If I were them, why bother?

And no, it's a bad idea to tease anything that isn't 100% going to be in the final version. Lest you get "You promised..."

I'm not sure at what update you refer. The only update that we got is that they have no update.
They are talking about some mockups for UI, but nothing.

As a general rule of thumb, working like crazy in the basement of your house with the expectation that everybody will love what you built is a very bad way of developing products.

If I was in their shoes, I would do the following:
- get someone to be community manager here, gather feedback, provide updates once per month
- put together a developer blog where you guys can share with us what you are doing, interesting findings , interesting bug fixes and such
- split the project into multiple phases, tackle them one by one. identify the biggest need and focus on that ( as it's clear that you have a small team)
- think about how you could make part of the APIs open to developers and open the environment for outside help (buzzer-manager site is very helpful and it was not built by BB team).

The way they are going about it at this point raises a lot of questions and risks (even for their company not just the game). If you plan on working 2 years to update a 20 year old engine without any communication or updates in the meantime, you might find that after 2 years there are 100 players left. or maybe in the meantime some new competition appears and your game is obsolete even with the newly coded engine.

So yeah, sorry if maybe my messages seem aggressive, I just want what's best for the game as I still enjoy it. and success of the game is tied to company, so in the end I do what's best for the new owners as well. But to me this lack of communication and not tapping into this valuable resource (the users) it's baffling.





Last edited by therin at 7/21/2025 5:58:37 AM