BB is the best online manager game I have played. Other games in the genre ultimately couldn’t hold my attention like this one. But it's clear that the glory days of BB are behind us, and we're losing players. But why? I have three potential causes in mind;
1. The rise of ad-blockers makes it harder for games like this one to get noticed on the modern internet.
2. Online manager games as a genre have been struggling to keep up with the mobile market, with an assist going to PC gaming being more accessible than ever.
3. BuzzerBeater has gone stale.
I'm not sure what we can really do about the first two issues, but a possible solution to number 3, resources permitting, would be to create a new, modernised version of BuzzerBeater. The game is over a decade old, it could really benefit from being rebuilt rather than trying to add new features to the existing version. But how do we improve the game? Here's my short assessment of the current game;
BuzzerBeater was based on a game I thought was bad (HatTrick), but with almost all bad aspects removed. The biggest improvent is two league games per week and a 14 week season instead of one game, 16 weeks. This helps the game move at an acceptable pace.
Meanwhile, the game engine rewards owning players with well rounded skill sets rather than one or two monster skills, and greatly rewards building a better team than everyone else in general. There’s room for upsets, but not too much.
However, one major problem carried over from HT is the training. The extra game each week helps, but the system subtly discourages training by making you run players who may be sub-par or playing at sub-optimal positions, for all 48 minutes of the game. And that’s if you’re lucky; sometimes the game takes minutes away from your trainee due to a bug that BB continues to deny.
Tactics are also imbalanced, masked only by the bandaid solution known as GDP. I’m not saying GDP is bad, but in practice it often boils down to ‘my opponent will either play LI or they won’t’.
I'm posting this in global rather than suggestions because this is a basic draft of what my ideal Buzzerbeater would be; a more detailed breakdown in suggestions can wait until I've seen if there's support. Here are a couple of my personal ideas regarding what can be done in an upgrade;
This generation is more connected to the internet than ever and demands fast-paced entertainment. I personally think we should expand on the idea that likely allowed BB to beat out Charazay and it’s 17 week seasons long term, by moving to 3 league games a week. To make it work, let’s take game shape out and replace it with a rolling fatigue system (this could also solve the problem of starters playing too many minutes with little penalty).
A rebuild would also be a great opportunity to make some drastic changes to player skills and the salary formula. My goals would be to replicate the modern shift towards the three point shot and make elite perimeter defence a bit harder to come by. As for training, I'll once again point out the Battrick model, where you had 10 slots per week to assign players to and didn't have to worry about playing time.
Key note, this would not be a hard reset. All existing teams and players should carry over into the new Buzzerbeater. Also, a new version might tempt former managers to return. If you still have their emails, you can send them a message to make them aware of the improvements and possibly trigger their nostalgia..
Do you think this is the route that needs to be taken? Does BB have the resources to pull it off?
Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 01/14/2018 17:51:05