BuzzerBeater Forums

I'm just going to put it out there right now, I think the game of Buzzerbeater in general would be more exciting and unpredictable if there was no home court bias in the game engine whatsoever. Many a time I have seen what would otherwise be a very exciting match-up virtually get decided by who has home court before the game is even played. From Bo3 finals series, to season defining inter-conference games, to blockbuster cup draws, rarely does the RNG deviate enough to beat the HCA spread if the two teams are otherwise fairly equal.

The relatively stable RNG in Buzzerbeater's game engine is for the most part a virtue, but when combined with HCA, it takes a lot of the drama out of moments that should be dramatic, and whilst effort and GDP ensures that there's no such thing as a sure thing, it still doesn't make things as unpredictable as a straight fight between two teams could be.

I'm already aware of possible counterarguments, such as a lack of HCA making playoff seeding pointless. The only solution I can offer for that is to revive one of my previous suggestions, that being to have more teams in each league, so that a lower percentage of total teams make the playoffs to begin with, and also to make it easier to avoid relegation again, especially if you've just promoted. Remember the good old days when 5th in the conference was safe?

But I won't elaborate on that in this thread, partially because I've posted about it in the past and partially because this thread is about abolishing HCA specifically. I hereby dub this the 'mllama' suggestion, in honour of an Australian manager from a good while ago who would've won more than one ABBL title they didn't have to fight against HCA in the finals almost every time...

No home advantage would make deviation of results more spread, it would make a mess. Now for example you can expect to win ~50% home games if your team is bad, but if there would no home court advantage you would win like 10% max.
Another example before season now you look at teams and can expect 14+-3 wins regular season, without HCA it would look like 10+-8 lol, it would be luck based game, no skills based game.

And overall better teams would win even more games than they do now on average (just uncertainty would be higher), so it would make you even worse team, and instead of complaining about loosing finals you would complain about relegating.

What i see the real reasoning here is lack of titles without HCA. But you was worse team if you didnt had HCA, you are expected to win less titles, you didnt pushed hard enough during season, you wasnt strong enough to win without HCA, you dint invested as much of money/time to have HCA or have advantage without HCA....

Last edited by Vilkai [LTU NT] at 09/21/2020 10:02:53

Yeah, you've pointed exactly at the root of a problem. BB game engine is very unrandom and this is why the games are so predicatable. And yes, given to one of the very equal teams, HCA will provide about +10 points margin, leading to victory 9 times out of 10. Not 70/30 chances, which might look reasonable for me, not anything else. But it's not because HCA is unfair or "reduces the drama" - it actually adds one in every game when slight underdog plays at home. The reason is total engine unrandomness (which is also the virtue and the feature of BB).

So if you talking about results to be unbiased then I'd agree HCA can be removed from the national cup completely.
But you have the reason to take it from the PO but you can't, because it'd essentially hurt the point of the regular season (both for top half and for the places 5-7). Maybe you're annoyed by the positive feedback loop, when a stronger team gets an additional bonus, but it motivates the close race for the top spots, you don't just chill out for 12-10 record and 4th seed.
I think the intriguing solution might be changing the bo3 series format from Home - Away - Home to Home - Neutral - Neutral, no idea for bo1 games though.

And you can't take out of the regular season because it's destroy the chances of underdogs, making the results even more straightforward.

So now it's the trade-off between the results being dramatic and being reserved and I think it's balanced well. Of course, it would have been exciting to have a little more random single game results and longer season with bo5/bo7 series in PO to compensate it... and faster game pace to adjust the season length. But it's completely another game, and we haven't one.

You're overestimating how random results would become without the presence of HCA, and conversely underestimating GDP and effort. But even putting that aside, the whole point of the suggestion is to make the game more interesting, but at the same time also remove the luck of the draw. By that I mean, if you're the best team in your conference, but have to play away against the best team in the other conference, that really hurts one's chances of having HCA when the two teams meet again in the finals. The B3 is another example, you might get an easy road schedule, or you might have to play all of the top teams away and risk missing the 32 even as one of the best teams in the world.

Not to mention you make the national team competitions fairer by not awarding one country a huge advantage in every tournament. In summary, I believe that taking away HCA would make every game about who has assembled the best roster, with tactics being the tiebreaker if the two are a close match for each other. It might introduce some unwanted random into close games, but at this point I see it as the lesser evil.

PS: I never even said anything about my personal experiences with HCA so I don't know why you're going on about my team suddenly becoming worse if it didn't exist.

I do like that you're talking about this, and I wouldn't mind it if this was discussed. However, I do like HCA - and I've had both the positive and negative effects of this.

From memory, I think I remember reading once that HCA is an advantage of about 7-8 points per game? If you were to ask me whether I would prefer the current 7-8 ppg, or flat out 0, I would still say the 7-8 ppg it is currently.

However, I do think that it could be looked at for being too strong. You do make a valid point that too often it decides games, perhaps it's strength could be halved to say a 3-4 ppg advantage? I think it adds realism and something to overcome for away teams, plus rewarding teams that perform well in the regular season. But reducing it's power might help make it less of a crucial factor, and more of a slight edge, that tactics and other factors could still overcome.

If we could reduce the edge of HCA without abolishing it, reduce OD's power slightly, and increase OD's salary cost slightly, they'd be the improvements I'd like to see (but some of those are for another thread). But BB isn't a bad game, it doesn't need massive changes, just minor tweaking IMO.

You're overestimating how random results would become without the presence of HCA, and conversely underestimating GDP and effort.

It is just an example, but i believe the numbers might be close. Also no need to estimate GDP and effort, because they are used with HCA also, so only the changed variable in this case HCA should be estimated.

By that I mean, if you're the best team in your conference, but have to play away against the best team in the other conference, that really hurts one's chances of having HCA when the two teams meet again in the finals.

It can happen both ways with equal chances, overall there is no advantage if looking from farrer perspective. And from closer it might let weaker team win/promote if draw is lucky, creating more interesting game.

B3 is another example, you might get an easy road schedule, or you might have to play all of the top teams away and risk missing the 32 even as one of the best teams in the world.

Totally agree, B3 is not fair, spread of deviation is toogreat. Exactly what would happen in results, not opponents if getting rid of HCA in normal leagues.

PS: I never even said anything about my personal experiences with HCA so I don't know why you're going on about my team suddenly becoming worse if it didn't exist.

Nothing personal, it was just example. Overall worse team loses. And there is so much stuff to do, because in most cases you know weeks before playoffs you wont have HCA for example, so there is time to preprare for that. HCA is not the only thing which makes lose finals.





Last edited by Vilkai [LTU NT] at 09/22/2020 09:53:02

removing HCA gives an incentive to save money during the season and buy after ASG. i don't like it

Easy fix, we just drop down to a four team play-off format. Could even make both rounds Bo3 on the condition that game 3 of the semi-final (on Sunday) was treated like PL/B3 for weekly player minute purposes.

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 09/23/2020 04:39:21

not sure making the season feel useless for more teams would make the game better

I don't follow the logic. Those that can't realistically win the title will naturally be battling for a top four position so that they can avoid the relegation series. Besides, didn't you just imply that it would be better to reward regular season success and discourage play-off buy-ups? Can't have that if we keep the eight team play-off, even if HCA stays intact.