BuzzerBeater Forums

I am sorry, but as the narrative goes, this was a students project and although it did not turn out to become facebook, it was very succesful for a very long time - I hope it will become great again, but the effort put into keeping the game a top product, was simply not there.

You guys - and I have been preaching this for years - better stop seeing this game as something we need to be thankful for. It's a product that the owners want to sell and make money with - there is no such thing as respect necessary, as respect does not pay bills or salaries.

If some kind of dying company - lets say some newspaper goes bankrupt - I don't see the urge to feel or express some respect. It's just a manifesto of bad business decisions, same applies for this game. If this game ceases to exist people will find other ways to spend their time and money.

Maybe my point of view will be seen as cynic or whatever, but it's the plain truth.

Here I think the smart business thing-
#1 not mess with macros that are not having issue with their size or structure
#2 Eliminate the micros that are a problem and don't work
#3 Try to retain customers impacted by this-micros as much as possible but
#4 Focus on the parts of the model that work and are cost effective.

If you think of it as a business, then eliminating a small, yet basically free-to-run micro is simply not good business practice. I can't imagine micros cost more to run than the small amount of money they bring in.

If a decision is made to do a large scale merge than everyone will be included in that poll. You have to keep in mind that doing something like that would be extremely ambitious and the results could vary from significant improvement to absolute catastrophe. There are people who depend on this game to pay the bills and if they're not comfortable taking a risk of that nature, it's completely understandable. It's a lot easier to push for massive changes when you've got nothing on the line.

I can't argue with any of that at all. It is a viewpoint that the people who depend on this game for their living may share.

Allowing a slow, inexorable slide may buy time for them to find another cash cow. Or it may cause them to be "ambitious" and save this game. Time will tell, eh?

They definitely need to and probably do take responsibility for the results of their decisions but you are belying the point I think.

Here I think the smart business thing-
#1 not mess with macros that are not having issue with their size or structure
#2 Eliminate the micros that are a problem and don't work
#3 Try to retain customers impacted by this-micros as much as possible but
#4 Focus on the parts of the model that work and are cost effective.

Making huge expensive risky moves to solve a few angry voices is madness. I want big changes, I think its a great idea etc. but its probably not practical.

Unless then have some capital to invest in advertising to this brave new real world- drastic changes don't make sense.

It's like shaking a fragile piece of art as if it were a snow globe. Wrong solution to wrong problem. At least that is how I see it. Steady, subtle and smart. Radical doesn't work if you don't have any money or resources to even begin to be radical with.

#1 not yet. but if some kind of change only happens in 1 or 2 calendar years, some of them might be in trouble
#2, 3, 4 absolutely

I think the owners need to take a huge risk and leapfrog other availiable games out there. As far as I know one of the main guys is part of a private equity company and there are many other ways to get the money to invest in necessary changes. Utopia was/is a HUGE chunk of money - where did it end up? Server and maintenance bills? I don't know...

They lose money because of micros because the majority just quit because it sucks.
I think in Nippon you are happy, I'm not. YC is not. Sups wasn't, Kuzu wasn't, Stunners wasn't, izaman wasn't.

Now I can't say for certain that all of them left because of micro but I know that they did not and do not like it. They want bigger competition.

This is why they opened these threads in micros. I think they are trying to gauge how much of us hate it as passionately as I do, how many are meh and how many love it etc.

One thing to note here is that the people who really hate micros have mostly already quit. To me the small size of micros is an indication of how and why they suck and do not work as a money maker.

The definition is that there are few users- that is a no-income scenario. It's like a restaurant where you serve meals for $20 that only cost $4 to prepare. It's still not worth it if you have to pay $3000 a month in rent and you only have 10 customers a day. You need volume.
BB needs full-time staff, they need volume. Micros don't help with that.

At the very veyr very least they need to change policy and let people who want out out. Retain customers like me who will/would eventually just quit. I am paying for Utopia, but very grudgingly. Without Utopia, I am not a supporter or member of this game. Nippon leagues are not worth my time, never really were.

Not sure how you figure micros "lose money", it's a few extra lines of code. The money from BB is made from the overall population, not how it's broken up. Would it benefit from more users in micros? For sure. But by that I don't mean rejigging the current population base, but *new users*.

And on the guys who quit... well, guys quit. Some may have been about whatever, some about other stuff. Like all things, BB has a shelf-life. Thee & me simply haven't hit there yet (and regardless of what you say - you couldn't walk away from here if you tried! And you DID try!!! It's in your blood now...).

Anyway... tired as all hell at the mo': big ”ミニ バスケ" tournament this week. Time for a nap!

Last edited by malice at 5/4/2016 4:08:06 AM

I could be wrong on this point, totally. Maybe this game just isn't appealing to people in the world living in lots of countries like Japan etc. etc. and they never have a chance whatsoever micro or otherwise. So there is no point to do anything at all. Maybe. All we know is that micros are unable to contribute to this game, too few users, too few clicks, too few support, too few everything to make it worth their while to populate their server with hundreds of empty countries. Pointless. It doesn't work.

I think that's at the heart of the matter. Now... if it were on a mobile phone (and in Japanese)?

Thing is - I still don't understand why there's a belief that the existence of micros is "bad business". Reiterating: my understanding is that $$$ is calculated on total numbers, not on the basis of micro/macro or otherwise.