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A quarter of a century in BB time has gone by; season 25 is here! (part 1)



Let’s start with some announcements for the upcoming seasons. All three announcements are planned for Season 26 and onwards, but some will be tested during Season 25.

Our first announcement is an addition to the tactics page. BuzzerBeater coaches have discovered that, if they can correctly predict which strategy an opposing team will use, they can get in some last-minute practice and be stronger on the court. You’ll be given the option to predict your opponent’s strategy for a game -- if you guess correctly, your team will get a nice boost against that tactic for the game; however, if you’re wrong, your team won’t perform as well. Of course, you will still have the option of not making a specific prediction, in which case nothing will change. The coaches have suggested that this will help teams compete against opponents with one, dominant strategy. We plan to release this feature for testing in scrimmages during the AllStar break.

As you know, the global financial crisis is hitting everyone, and we strongly believe that BuzzerBeater teams should be able to run a sustainable franchise. To encourage managers to build a team that can operate within its means, we’re introducing a “fair play” rule into the financial system that gives teams an incentive to keep their salaries in line with that which they earn in in a given week. We’re still fine-tuning the details, but we’ll be introducing this into the game at the start of the next season.

Finally, the BB labor union has requested more freedom of choice. Some top-ranked players feel insulted when they are purchased by low-ranked teams, and have threatened not to play if that happens. As a result, some teams might not be able to purchase players that really shouldn’t be playing in their division. Again, specifics are still in the making. The BB labor union says the goal is to prevent possible bad mistakes for new teams and as a bonus, it should help reduce farming. Also, they say that the rule shouldn’t affect most normal teams.

Enough announcements for now -- let’s discuss the new features you’ll see this season!
First, if you browse your league’s overview page, you will see some shiny new boxes that show various events taking place in your league.

Next, we are also introducing two brand new Supporter features. Always wanted to mimic your own face into a BuzzerBeater character? Supporters are now able to edit the faces of their newly-drafted players! This feature is integrated into the player overview page, but is unavailable for transfer-listed draftees.

The other new feature is related to Private Leagues. You will now be able to find teams that are looking for a PL or make yourself available for PL’s looking for teams.

A quarter of a century in BB time has gone by; season 25 is here! (part 2)



In addition, we have some immediate changes to announce. The requirements free agents need to satisfy in order to appear on the transfer list have increased, resulting in fewer players flowing into the market. This means that the new salary limit for players to be released in the market when a manager retires is changed to $25,000 for players with their best position determined as point guards and shooting guards, small forwards have the lowest limit at $20,000, power forwards are upped to $30,000 and centers to $35,000. Bear in mind that those values are halved for players fired by active teams.

Also, after evaluating the effect of the shot-blocking changes, we believe some well-built teams are now able to defend better against inside tactics than before. However, we still feel that the overall tactical balance hasn’t yet been achieved. Therefore, we have decreased the contributions Jump Range and Shot Blocking have to a player’s salary. We expect that this change, combined with the new tactical “prediction” options described earlier, should bring us a long way closer to the desired tactical balance.

The last change made is related to the Fan Survey calculation. We have tuned the calculations in the Fan Survey to better reflect the overall performance of your team instead of having as strong an emphasis on your last league game.

Time to party! Congratulations to Poland, coached by manager Astarotte, for winning their third World Title after taking down Ceska Republika in the final quarter of the finals. The junior NT’s are, as we speak, booking their flights to Belgium for next season’s World Cup tournament!

Congrats as well to Venomous Scorpions and their manager Misagh Alizade for breaking the Dionysus dynasty after beating 7ton’s Anaheim Electronics in the finals of a much-discussed and lovely B3 season! Misagh Alizade is the third team ever to win the B3 tournament more than once.

This year’s B3 prediction winners are Hong Kong manager bigshoes, followed by Mod-Lebron from Srbija and two third place finishers Banan-mat66 from Polska and Iron 121 from Ukraina. Free Supporter packages have already been awarded to these lucky winners!

That’s it for the news. Good luck to everyone in Season 25!

Posted by: BB-Marin 08/11/2013 20:17:48


The Game-Day Preparation Feature


Or shortly, the GDP, which can be found on the match tactics page. From now on, we are testing the feature by enabling it for use in scrimmages until the next season, when it will be enabled for all match types. Just like we announced at the start of the season (we are a bit late with the implementation, though, sorry about that), the new feature enables you to prepare your players with a last minute pre-match talk, by telling them what kind of offense their opponents are going to use. It will give them an edge over the opponents if you predict it right using these two categories: focus (which can be inside, outside or balanced) and/or pace (which can be fast, slow or normal). On the other hand, in case you missed the prediction, your players will get a penalty due to a bit of confusion and wrong expectations. The penalty is not as severe if you didn't predict the exact opposite of the actual focus or pace, meaning, it's not as bad if you prepared them for an inside focused offense and they played a balanced one than if they played a outside based offense and you missed completely. Of course, you don't have to make the prediction about either focus or pace, if you don't want to. Penalty can also be avoided by not using the GDP at all.

It's a risky feature, and some people might elect not to use it at all, but the ones that do may get that extra edge they needed to improve their chances of winning those tough (yet predictable!) matches. Also, we feel this feature should help diversify the choice of offense types used at the moment, making those managers which use only one offense rethink that strategy. Enjoy the new feature and we wish you all the luck in predicting your opponents tactics!

Welcome to Season 26:The GDP season! (part 1)



Let’s start with a review of some of the recent changes that will now take full effect. The Game-Day Preparation (“GDP”) feature, which you had the opportunity to test during the last season in your scrimmages, will be enabled for all game types right from the start of the new season. This feature can be found on the tactics page when setting your lineup for an upcoming game. With this feature, you have the opportunity to give some last-minute preparation if you can predict your opponent’s offensive focus (which can be inside, outside or balanced) and/or pace (which can be fast, slow or normal). If you’re able to predict correctly, your players will get a defensive edge over the opponents, but missing the prediction will result on a penalty. Please check out the rules page for full information about the feature.

As we mentioned previously, we’re making several economic adjustments to help discourage short-term-focused behavior. To encourage teams to spend on salaries within their financial means, the BuzzerBeater Fair-Play Commission has implemented an “Overextension Tax.” With this ruling, teams should try to keep their player salaries in line with their weekly income -- if you start overspending, you’ll be hit with a tax on the extra spend. This applies only to the salary your players have when they are acquired -- if you train your players and their salaries increase as a result, you won’t be responsible for this increase. To make the implementation more gradual, all current teams will have an extra training exemption, and most teams will not be affected at all by the overextension. Additionally, this rule will not be applied during the first 4 weeks for new teams and on the first week of each season for all teams.

While it impacts only a tiny fraction of all teams and players, the BuzzerBeater Players’ Union has negotiated the right for players to refuse to join a team that is many levels below the their caliber. Certain top-ranked players have been feeling insulted when bought by a low-ranking team, especially when they’re forced to carry the entire team on their shoulders. Let’s face it -- you wouldn’t want to go back now and play basketball against middle-schoolers, either. This is a function of a player’s salary and a team’s world ranking, and you’ll see this reflected on a player’s Overview page as well as on the Transfer List page.

Welcome to Season 26:The GDP season! (part 2)



Now, on to the cool new stuff that’s happening. First, we’ve added a new cool feature for our Supporters. You can now easily express your mood in the forums by adding emoticons and pictures to your posts. Don’t like smiley-faces? No problem! You’ll have the option to turn them off globally. (How many other forums offer *that*?) But we really believe that you’ll enjoy it

We’ve added some new information to the country Overview page, so you can now easily check the historical winners of your country’s top league and national Tournament, the ranking of the country’s entrants in the BuzzerBeater’s Best competition, and the country and world rankings of the top 10 local teams. Also, the league overview page has a couple of new boxes.

At this point, we normally announce upcoming changes, but, this season, we decided to do something a bit different. In an effort to improve communication with the BB’s, we’re going to start working more closely with the community to prioritize and design changes to the game. This will take many faces: for starters, we’ll be hosting more user polls in BB-Global, where you will have the chance to get involved in the process and to help us to decide what the upcoming changes would be.

Until this point, there has been a lot of the behind-the-scenes work in the community that generally goes unnoticed, and we wanted to start making that a bit more public. In addition to the Game Masters (who have the “GM-” prefix behind their name), we have several Executive Game Masters who help manage the GM’s and LA’s and communicate daily with the BB’s about new features, reports of cheating, and community dynamics. They’ve done a stellar job so far, and BuzzerBeater wouldn’t be the same without them. By making this more public, we also want to anoint them as official community representatives of the BB’s in the forums. So, please welcome me and the other BB’s in officially promoting EGM-Nickleon and EGM-Perpete to their new, official role on the team!

But we haven’t finished yet. We have some kudos to give.

First of all, congratulations to France U21, coached by Paul, for winning the world title in the Junior National Teams after beating Italy, coached by GM-dexter7™, in the final with a score of 83-70. The National Teams are now preparing for their upcoming trip to exotic Brazil for the next World Championship!

Of course we have to also congratulate darkonza and his team Młoty Stargard for winning the big BuzzerBeater’s Best Tournament final against NT- 牛姐 and his team 猛牛 in one of the greatest B3 finals ever. Darkonza is the first Polish manager to win the great trophy.

This year’s B3 prediction winners are Latvian manager Malij, followed by Whakur from Brazil and Serbian manager Trbazzi. Free Supporter packages have already been awarded to these lucky winners, and we hope they will enjoy it!

That’s all the news we have… for now. We wish you all happy holidays, a great new year, and, of course, a successful new BB season!

Posted by: BB-Marin 28/12/2013 00:46:46