Subject: [Idea] Merge of small countries/leagues

Thankfully you have a sokker country that is not greatly affected by the many issues small nations face.

That’s not true, or did not understand the point.
It is true that the smaller nations suffer more from the lack of challenge, dying communities and Inequity, vs bigger nations, on this point we are just agree. Clearly.

When small nations vs ‘big nation’ is a problem of inequity , ok, but is it the true problem? Active users in France re only around 80 users, is it big ? should we complain vs bigger nation too ? should I open a topic and ask to merge medium nation for inequity too? It’s absurd.

You point out a problem but not seeing the whole things.

Not only merging small nations will only shift a problem, you will never find a massive consensual solution in community for a strong proposal to the Devs…

As for league structure I based it on top 2 divisions being full to somewhat protect and shield the top division. Should the structure change from 1-4-16 etc then yeah I potentially less users then 60 would be fine. Without 12 team leagues I’d have gone with 40 for example.

As for CC you make a valid point. If national cups were held then I’d be ok with top from the merged league plus cup winner from each nation of their nt had enough ranking points. I think it’s important to still have some national representation to keep the community aspect and national cups seem the easiest solution to still have that local competition over a generic group of teams. I mean, ideally I’d like to not have to worry about merged leagues as I’d rather play locals but I’d prefer competition and the fairness/equality of financial income. So I guess if we had to give up a CC spot to achieve that then that’s a trade off I’d be willing to consider.
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Maybe not the only one solution. Ok.

I also made another proposal in this topic to artificially increase teams (multiple teams management by one user) to fill the leagues and countries with active users, buts that was an artificial solution and certainly not consensual.

But solution was not my main point.

When you realize that the league system / division in sokker create it self unfair and boring challenges, you should change the way league system and challenges are design, not finding to redefine some countries or start the problem in terms of big versus medium vs small nations.

This topic point to a true problem but a false solution at start, that’s why, I’m sorry, but if I want to participate to save small nations (too), I don’t want to open another yet topic for something thats is definitely related to small countries too.

So I guess if we had to give up a CC spot to achieve that then that’s a trade off I’d be willing to consider.

So you are not sure you'd want to give up two CC slots to merge. Interesting. I think that anything more than 2 slots for the entire federation is unfair.

We'll see who they want to merge, I am not sure that the point of it will be to make teams from smaller countries more competitive in CC, but just to have someone to play with. The bigger issue might be that so many users are not engaged, you can have fun with 20 people who actually play.

No that’s not what I was saying. The CC spot I really couldn’t care much about. However, I still want some form of competition against locals to still have that association with these are my fellow players from my country without necessarily splitting off the community we currently have. My main issue is the financial aspects of the current system like potential sponsorship/number of supporters/ gate receipts is heavily biased towards bigger leagues. Thus, merging smaller ones into comparable sized leagues puts us onto a same page. So from the league aspect I’m ok with best team there wins a place like any other nation. I would also be the same if the cup was based on the same merged teams. However, I don’t really want the cup to be based on merged users (because the primary enjoyment is local competition). I just feel that keeping your own national cup system gives you that. The CC place is irrelevant.

So I suspect 1 place guaranteed for the merged top league winner (as any other nation) and then possible cup spots based on NT ranks exactly how it is already for each domestic cup competition. After all the whole point of merging is for balancing out the inequities in the system and making more competition. Again if keeping the cup structure wasn’t feasible then I’d still agree to the merging, it’s just I can potentially be isolated from the active users we do have and may in fact be stuck playing against people who don’t even speak the same language or have the same cultural background if that makes sense.
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I understand that you still want to play with your countrymen, but it's complicated. You are gonna have nations with small number of users. Where are bots gonna come from? You will need bots to fill the national cups.

It is still unfair that tens of CC participants come from a league system with 400-500 users, while Poland, with thousands of users, only gets 2 slots. You could set a break-off threshold at 32 teams, so you can be sure that national cups will end in 5 weeks, and then winners play federation cup (and maybe some second best teams), which would take another 5 weeks. This way you play national cup, but federation doesn't get too many CC slots.

I can't stop giving ideas, I have a problem :)

I assumed the existing bots would just be added to the bottom leagues in a merged league but yeah I can see complexities there when it comes to new users signing up into those merged leagues.

It wouldn’t be any more unfair then what the current system is anyway, so if you think the current system is unfair then I suspect that’s a different discussion to be had. I think it’s safe to assume in a lot of cases nations that would be merged would be lower in the NT ranks and therefore less likely to get a 2nd spot from the cup winner at this time anyway. Australia for example currently only gets 1 CC place a season because our NT isn’t ranked high enough, so under a merged league scenario with our own national cup we’d probably still not get a CC place and we might in fact lose our 1 place because we mightn’t have a team that wins the top merged league. So if CC was important, merging would actually make things worse for CC qualification. CC qualification probably needs a redesign anyway if merging goes ahead as if you merged say 4 countries then you lose at least 3 CC spots from league winners as an example.

But as a winner of a national cup you would participate in another one, federation cup. That is already a bit unfair, to be honest, you get to play more official matches than a user from a standalone nation. I think this is more than a good deal. Also, what are you gonna do in CC if your team is averaging 50-ish mark, get trashed in your first game. Not all teams from merged nations are gonna become strong. Most of them wont.

You can not compare a country with 80 active users against 8 like mine. You have 10 times more teams, do you have any idea how is like playing in such a little country? Come on!

With the system for CC that cometer has proposed, merging would actually benefit medium sized nations the most, and would certainly not be favouring those in the merged competition.

If there are 40 countries in the merged competition. Currently those 40 teams take up 40 CC spots as a minimum. Now lets say 10 of them also have high enough rankings in the current system to gain a second spot for their cup winner (who happens to not be the league winner too). Then the countries making up the merged comp take up 50 CC spots.

Now when those 40 are merged, only the top team from the league structure gets a spot + 10 from those who qualified based on country ranking who won their own country cup. Therefore those merged countries now only take up 11 spots. This actually opens up (50-11 = 39) 39 spots for other countries to use. Now the top top teams already use both their League and Cup spot - so no change here. Who it would really benefit are those teams who a medium sized, standalone countries, who currently don't qualify 2 teams because their NT ranking is too low as 31 spots have now opened up.

So it's actually a disadvantage for all those in the merged countries as far as CC spots go, and an advantage for those smaller standalone countries. It also means that the CC comp would be stronger overall.

You call two CC spots for the entire league system a disadvantage because you are comparing it to something you wish, not to the current situation. Giving up those useless CC spots where you get trashed in the first round to be in a league system where you will play real people is a good deal.

Treating merged system as any other nation is fair, and it's less work for devs, so I guess you need to persuade them that it is bad. I don't see a good reason to implement all those national cups within the merged system. Yes, you give up CC slots but you get a chance to grow more than users in those medium nations. If you get the advantages of being in a league system with 400 users (money), you should get the disadvantages as well (competition).

I agree that medium nations would benefit, but CC needs to be reworked. No more losing a spot because the same team wins both league and cup (Raul agreed to this, iirc), and you can give more slots to top nations, 3 slots to top 8, for example.

Also, you should have done your homework and prepared real numbers :)
How many merged nations would have ranking that is high enough to earn a spot in CC trough cup? 1, 2, 3...? None? If that is the case, why put the effort.

currently there are 98 nations in sokker. If we rework the amount of nations, through merging, back to 64 nations you can have a perfectly balanced solution, kind of based on how it's like within the Champions League!

64 champions and 64 cup winners / finalists (if both league and cup winners are the same)

This gives 128 spots.
Exclude the best 16 teams from the first 2 rounds and give the remaining 112 contestants 2 rounds to reduce themselves to 28 teams.
Then the remaining 16 teams join to make a group stage with 11 groups of 4 teams and 2 rounds per group, making 6 certain matches for the remaining 44 teams.
Then all group winners and the best 5 2nd place teams will conclude in another play-offs system from 16 to 1, making the CC a cup system with 12 weeks of football AND playable for ALL nations winners and cup winners.

You can say... the best 16 teams will lose 2 weeks of money, BUT I say, they are certain of 6 weeks guaranteed income after those 2 weeks! If, in this system, by any bad luck they should lose their first or 2nd match, they lose those 6 weeks of guaranteed income from revenue...

Don't overthink it, who knows how many nations will be merged :)

At this time...none.

It's just a proposal...

Only need to respond to this comment

I don't see a good reason to implement all those national cups within the merged system

This is to keep national pride and congeniality which will in turn get more people to refer the game to their friends from the same nation.
The idea of a merged league is to allow small nations to grow to a stage that they can be an independent nation, and by keeping the national cup and players pulled from youth schools being that from their original country, is all part of growing the small nations.

You focus way too much on CC, especially as merging nations actually helps those nations who aren't merged when it comes to CC.

If the current CC system (which isn't great) is to stay, then the national cup winner for each merged nation still must make the CC as it is exactly that, champions cup. The champions should go through. But as far as a second spot for the merged nation, most will be lost anyway because there can only be one league winner, and I'm sure most if not all, would be fine with this anyway. And I'm really not sure why you are arguing this, because this is actually what you want ("the disadvantages as well - competition"). If only one League CC is given, which is all anyone has ever asked for, then it's exactly what you said you think should happen, as opposed to the current system where any of these nations could have 2 spots.

As I said, national cups are fine, as long as the winner has to compete against other winners in the federation cup, where the prize is CC slot.

Any team can develop into a top team. If I were Iranian, in a merged nation, where I always have easy access to CC because I play national cup against several weak teams, I would wreck this game. It's an advantage.