BuzzerBeater Forums

As we promised a few months ago, we're continuing to watch closely the way that people are playing BuzzerBeater and doing our part to make sure that the game continues to be balanced and, in particular, that the economy is behaving appropriately. We have seen nothing yet that convinces us our long-term plan for the economy is wrong, but the economy is not yet in equilibrium, and will not be until there is a generation of players that has been fully trained. In the meantime, there is a significant risk of massive inflation followed by massive deflation as we get back to equilibrium, and that's something we want to avoid. As a result, we are going to make a number of significant changes to training and the economy to try to regain balance. We have also noticed a few places that the game engine should be rebalanced and will correct those as well.

These changes will be implemented at the conclusion of the all-star break. While we feel the game would benefit from their immediate introduction, we also want to allow teams a chance to plan for these changes before they happen. We always try to make such changes only during the off-season, but the large number of new players has brought these economic issues to the forefront very dramatically, and we do not think it would be prudent to wait three more months.

Upcoming Game Engine Changes:

1) The effects of Take it Easy and Crunch time will be reduced within a game, since we are finding that most teams lose when they Take it Easy and most teams win when they Crunch Time at a rate higher than is ideal. These tactics should help/harm significantly, but not to the point that nothing else matters. The effects of enthusiasm on the game engine will be reduced.

2) Take it Easy will result in a larger initial gain in enthusiasm, but at high levels, enthusiasm will decline more rapidly towards 5.0. This change will be implemented immediately for national teams.

Upcoming Economy/Training Changes:

1) When players with salary ] $4500/week are on teams that due to inactivity/ban/etc. become bot teams, those players will be released to the transfer list and will stay in the game. The salary threshhold will increase over time. This is the only change that will take place immediately.

2) The height modifier to training will be reduced, particularly for jump shooting. Additionally, a third type of jump shot training will be introduced that will allow SG and SF to train jump shooting in a way similar to the one PG and SG can currently train. Upon further study, it would appear that there are tall players (see Dirk Nowitzki) that can shoot. I guess this is the sort of mistake that happens when we design jump shot training during the playoffs. :)

3) Driving and handling are very, very similar skills, and training either one will now also result in about 80% of training on the other. Good guards have to learn at this point 1-2 more skills than good inside players, and this corrects some of that imbalance.

4) Training for the youngest players will now happen approximately twice as quickly overall, so that we can build up the population of skilled players more rapidly. As players get older, the speedup will not be as high, and over the next few seasons, the training pace will be gradually reduced until it reaches our long-term equilibrium goal of approximately 1.5 times the current pace.

5) Stamina will now decrease during weeks when a player plays too few minutes and during injuries, so as to encourage teams to regularly train it rather than just doing so once.

6) Because of the potential surprise at the new, higher prices associated with the higher rate of training, wages will update twice per season for the next few seasons, once at the all-star break and the other in the offseason. The first such update will occur after the all-star break this season.

7) Long-term injuries will decrease in frequency, but a player with a long-term injury will now result in a significant stamina decline. This models the problems that players face when coming back from a long inactivity period — the form will come back naturally, but the physical conditioning needs a "bump".

8) We will institute an agent's commission on transfers, with the commission decreasing for players who have been with their current team for a longer time. The rate table will always be published, but will vary regularly, as it is one of the ways we will try to regulate the economy and prevent massive inflation or deflation.

9) We will impose a transfer deadline shortly before the playoffs. Teams will still be allowed to buy and sell players as much as they would like, but these players will be ineligible to play during the playoffs.

Thank you all for playing BuzzerBeater, and we hope you'll like these changes. We are certainly sensitive to the possibility that some teams will have pursued strategies made more difficult by these changes, and this is why we are not going to implement them until the all-star break. If you think there is a particularly bad problem created by these new rules, feel free to let us know and we'll see if we can think of a good solution.

-The BuzzerBeater Team

Merci.
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