Trading block filters
The trading block is one of the most commonly used features in BBGM, and one of the most common feature requests for the trading block is to add some way to filter trades. Currently teams give you a mix of different types of assets, but in some situations maybe you want to trade for draft picks, or maybe you want to trade for a point guard, or maybe you want to trade for some interior defense. Previously there was no good way to do this, but now there is! Behold, trading block filters:
2024 usage stats
Every year I post some usage stats here. This year, there is some (very minor) bad news. For the first time since they were released in 2013, my games declined in popularity since last year! But it was a small decline, and 2024 was still the 2nd best year ever, so that's not really a bad year.
Is ZenGM plateauing around its current usage? Or entering a period of decline? Or just experiencing a minor road bump on the way to world domination? Check back next year to see!
On the plus side, I did change the data displayed in these blog posts a bit. Previously one of the metrics I showed was Pageviews, which is something that matters to advertisers, but is kind of meaningless otherwise. I replaced Pageviews with Seasons Simulated, which is a more interesting number.
2024 usage stats:
Some small improvements
I've been working on some stuff, but it's not done yet. In the meantime, I've continued to do little fixes as I normally do, but nothing was big enough to make it to the changelog until today's update about the contract negotiation UI.
That's often how it is - small bug fixes or improvements don't get entries in the changelog because I don't want to bother you about every little thing. But since there haven't been other updates lately they'd been building up a bit more than normal, so I figure I'd share what these kinds of little improvements typically look like.
These are the small changes in the latest update:
Review of Dean Oliver's "Basketball Beyond Paper"
Dean Oliver is possibly the most famous basketball analytics guy. For any Basketball GM users who haven't heard of him - way back in the early days of basketball analytics, he invented some of the advanced stats you see in the game, such as ORtg and DRtg, and the Four Factors in box scores.
His new book Basketball Beyond Paper was just released, and because I'm a super important basketball person, I got a copy a week early, so I already read it and wrote this review! (Okay, that's not quite true, I am not a super important basketball person and I just ordered it on Amazon and they sent it to me early for some reason.)
Improved UI for the four factors in box scores
The four factors are stats created by Dean Oliver to give some insight into a box score. By quickly looking at 4 numbers per team, you get an idea about the story of the game and why one team won. The four factors are:
- Effective field goal percentage (how well did you shoot)
- Turnover percentage (how well did you take care of the ball)
- Offensive rebound percentage (how well did you rebound)
- Free throws per field goal attempt (how often did you get to the line and convert your FTs)
Those have long been shown in BBGM box scores, with the better value highlighted:
Holds and blown saves in ZenGM Baseball
Until this update, ZenGM Baseball did not track blown saves (BS) or holds (HLD). Now it does.
You might be surprised to know that blown saves and holds are not "official" stats, and there are not agreed upon definitions for those stats, and different sources handle them differently. For that reason, I am writing this blog post to explain exactly how it works in ZenGM Baseball.
Neutral site for playoff/finals games
This is yet another blog post to explain a minor new feature!
In the NFL, the Super Bowl is played at a neutral site, so neither team gets a home field advantage.
A few years ago, I added a similar feature to FBGM, so that in FBGM the championship game has no home field advantage.
The problem was, this wasn't exposed in the UI anywhere, so it wasn't clear what was happening except for people who very carefully pay attention to the changelog. Some people were even manually turning off the home field advantage before playing the championship game, even though that was not necessary because it was already silently happening behind the scenes.
Team Notes
Team Notes is a small new feature. You can see it on the roster page for each team:
When you click "Add team note", you get a small text box where you can enter any text you want about that team/season.
Advanced Player Search
I've been working on this new feature for the past few weeks and I'm really excited to announce it because it feels like more than just one new feature. The new "Advanced Player Search" page (available in the "Stats" menu) solves multiple feature requests that I've gotten many times over the years:
Combine columns from various stats/ratings/bio pages all in one table (like if you're looking for a particular type of player to target in a trade, you can search based on ratings, stats, and contract at the same time)
View total stats for a range of seasons (like "most points scored in the 2010s"), rather than just single season on career totals
Efficiently search for player seasons in large leagues (like if you've played 500 seasons in the same league and you want to see all the players who have scored more than 20 ppg in a season)
Cap on fickleness of superstars
This is a small change that you probably won't notice, and in a lot of seasons it won't even do anything. But in some situations, it makes the game less annoying.
This suggestion came from sebastmarsh on Reddit where (in addition to making some good feature suggestions) he has been posting about the strategy/tactics he has used to basically beat BBGM. Like he won 100 championships in a row in insane mode, that's basically beating the game.
One of the things he found annoying was related to re-signing really good players. With the player mood system in BBGM, really good players are less likely to be willing to sign with you. The thinking is that they are so good that they can afford to be picky. That makes sense and isn't changing.
The annoying part was for really really good players, like MVP caliber players and beyond. For those players, even if you do everything right, they still can have a decent chance of leaving your team. Because of this, you sometimes find yourself hoping your player doesn't get too good. Like if you already have an MVP, you might hope he doesn't have another year of good progs, because at that point he might be so good that he refuses to re-sign and you're basically forced to trade him.