Subject: [Idea] Merge of small countries/leagues

there is another simple solution allow people to register in other countries then is their choice :)

They could leave number of countries alone and just fill their users equally, but it could end with every country having not eough users (it would be ca. 90 now)

Or, we can stop leagues by country, and only play INT leagues/cups by ranking. A good start.

But it's not about keeping a small % of users happy, many of these countries were thriving when sokker was at its best, and it was experienced users who kept the country strong, and kept new users playing.

If you lose entire countries, then you are losing a lot of potential income. It's not to do with those playing now, but those future people who sign up.

Of course I talk about Australia and New Zealand because I understand the financial side of it, both countries are 1st world countries with very high expendable incomes. At its peak, most teams invested in plus because of this. In the other manager game I play the membership numbers from these countries is greater than 90% and it costs more than sokker.

It's not just about keeping current users happy (although this needs to happen to create a good community for new users to join in to), its about the potential income from the population of those real world countries.

The other thing is this game relies on a strong National Team set up. You always hear people say, "If it wasn't for the NT I would have left a long time ago". By killing all these small countries off, you don't have a strong NT set up. Suddenly what was 100 teams, is now 20-30 and 70 bots. Then as time goes on, it ends up being a 7 nation world cup as the next lowest are ignored.

So yes it does make sense to change this, it's not changing the entire game, it is expanding your potential income stream and exposing more of your target audience to your product, marketing 101.

what the F happened with the 1-2-4-8 etc leagues. Or even better 1-1-2-4-8 etc + large bottomleague for new managers to start in when a season has already started. So no new managers in leagues in week 3 or 7. All can promote during the new season and replace bots (an extra promotion)

This way for all countries there where less leagues in the top, and more changes to promote.

1-3-9 makes no sense at all!! In which country are there 3 second leagues?? 4 was just as strange!

Some people, the ones who made the chances, ar only looing at poland, the rest of the world is not important.


I disagreed with many thing with greg, but this league 1-2-4 was something I did agree with. No idea who comes up with 1-3-9. Probably the same who thought it is a good idea on players page to make background color the same as shirt color :/
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In easier words, you fucked it up

But it's not about keeping a small % of users happy, many of these countries were thriving when sokker was at its best, and it was experienced users who kept the country strong, and kept new users playing.

If you lose entire countries, then you are losing a lot of potential income. It's not to do with those playing now, but those future people who sign up.

yes, but these countries were already lost.
18 users in Australia, 8 in New Zealand. It's been like that for years, if those users did not stop playing in last 10 years, they will keep on playing for at least another 2-3.

If Australia gets merged with other 5, 10 or 15 small countries...what do You think happens? Suddenly the numer of users from those countries will start growing? I doubt it. Of course it will make those 8-18 etc. users happier, but...as I've said - it's not the time to invest money/time into low % of users.

So yes it does make sense to change this, it's not changing the entire game

yes, it is a massive change. Now You move x countries into 1 league.

Who makes the 1st league, who the 2nd etc.?

What language is used on the main forum, since these can be countries talking in Asian or African languages? Only English?

What if users don't talk in English, they can't use the forum? Etc.

What happens when suddenly after advertisements there's a sudden improvement of users numbers from for example NZ? You move all NZ team out of the leagues to create NZ league system from 0? That's regular chaos...

it is expanding your potential income stream and exposing more of your target audience to your product, marketing 101.

marketing 101 is to start advertising when you have a good product, not a sh*** one. Now it is a sh*** one.
Makes no point to promote the game in this state, I'd assume it will take at least a year from now until it's promo-ready...

Their goal has to be to get the game in proper state as soon as possible and then start promoting, brining in new users, growing smaller leagues

That's the point when it will make sense to discuss whether to merge some countries/areas.

For the game it doesn't really matter to keep 20 users from smallest countries, it matters to bring in x thousands regular users and that's where they need to dedicate their resources

But if you dont do something like merge countries, you close the possibility to grow in those countries. Or expect suddenly 1000 new users in small countries?

First thing devs said is this game is not a pay 2 win..... so?

But if you dont do something like merge countries, you close the possibility to grow in those countries. Or expect suddenly 1000 new users in small countries?

why a 1000? at least 100 would be a big change for start

why do you think that merging many countries with different languages will create a good space for new users?
do You think that a new user wants for play in Colombia league, or a South America B league, or something like that?

First thing devs said is this game is not a pay 2 win..... so?

what does it have to do with anything?

[url]Or expect suddenly 1000 new users in small countries?[/url]

To fill up division one and two, 'only' 48 teams are needed. If it is no problem to have half of the second diivision with bots (6 real managers and 6 bots per league), there are 'only' 30 teams needed.

With this many managers a new country can be started at the beginning of a new season. In case of 30 managers, all can start in the second division (so first season there is not yet a national winner), and the best teams 12 teams promote to first division and all others stay in second division. So second season is as all other countries.

In case of 48 players, it is a bit more difficult what is fair. The best 12 in first division and all others in second division makes sense, but then the best 12 will have an advantage from the start of a new country. Not all 48 can play in second division, so most fair is all start in third division, 6 managers per league, and the best of each league, with a max of 36 can promote to second division and the next season the best 12 to first division. That is most fair.

Just an idea
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Yup it's exactly what they did with junior leagues when they came in, everyone started at the bottom and worked their way up, it's certainly nothing new.

But there would also be no problem just sorting by ranking points. It would only take a few seasons for those who deserve to be at the top to get there, and it would be a hell of an improvement from the current way things are.

Many of these smaller countries had over 100 users at it's peak, and that with all the issues that were around. Quite a number of these countries are 1st world ones with high disposable income = more plus users. And without these countries, the NT system in sokker dies as you are left with about 30 countries. Then those ranked 20-30 start to lose interest in NT because they are used to being one of the best, and now they are the worst, so they die and so on, leaving like 6 countries in the NT system.

It's not a huge change to bring teams together. A long time ago, a couple of teams were moved to new countries when their home country opened up. It shows it is possible. So all devs do is create a new league, move the countries and then "hide" the old country leagues until one day, they hopefully develop enough users to go back. And if they never do, then it proves the merged league was necessary.

As far as language goes, I literally read any country forum I want to in sokker, because chrome has a translate function. Just right click, then click translate. Doesn't get much easier than this. Anyone can write in their home language, and others just do 2 clicks...and translated.
Other games I play have a button next to a message which you click, and it translates to your own language. We aren't in the 90's anymore, communication has never been more accessible, and more accurate than now.

+1 to everything you said :)
If they dont want to completely abandon countries or are afraid that half of them wouldn't want that - make it optional on team level for anyone to move to "merged league" at any off season where you have to start from the bottom but keep producing your own countries juniors, participate in countries cup.

+1

why do you think that merging many countries with different languages will create a good space for new users?


There is always the national forum. And depending of what leagues are merged, managers can or can not understand eachother in the division forums. Bu then topic can be made in which managers of each country do understand eachother. In some cases Arab is an option, as this is spoken in many countries, South America is Spanish (or in case of Brazil Portugese).


do You think that a new user wants for play in Colombia league, or a South America B league, or something like that?

No, there should be new competitions, based on regions or football confederations, like UEFA, CONCAF, etc

This is something I posted in another topic that was about merging countries:


UK
Scandinavian countries
Middle Eastern countries maybe
etc

Or based on language, so managers can understand each other without language issues on the division forum.


But it could also be done with all confederations:
CAF
CONCACAF
CONMEBOL
OFC
AFC
UEFA

Or something like this:




Or like this:



And the moment 1 country is large enough to have 2 or 3 active divisions and enough staff, this country can have it's own national league.

There are many different options :)

the best option is to improve the game and then grow it

the game was slowly dying even in bigger countries, merging dying countries together won't make the game alive again

No it won't, but some countries never became countries with enough players to have even 1 full first division, and not even when Sokker had 70K users. Half of that was Poland, and many from in the larger countries of today.

Even with bonus Plus for recruiters, and Plus bonus for new managers recruited by managers, the small countries never had real competition. And I know because I was very busy with Sokker in those days, also as recruiter. I posted the link on pages that accepted links. Posted the name Sokker, where ever I could. Tried to get the other rectuiters more active (again). Many countries just didn't get new managers.

Maybe one moment it did, when a FB campaigne was suddenly released, but Admins couldn't keep up to sign up all those new managers, new managers had to wait to long for full access. And without a good tutorial, the same happened as what happens most of the time, still today, one loggin, and never come back.

And when the number of managers was going down, as linguist I got Sokker on the first page of Google in Belgium and second page in the Netherlands, with search words like online football manager game. Used the part that is made for that in database. But it didn't help, not in the Netherlands.

So I'm not talking about dying countries, I'm talking about countries that never had enough managers, as in just a few, which is boring, It is already difficult enough to get new managers, to get them in bot leagues is a killer for those countries


EDIT: forgot to write this, with merging countries, all 200 (little less or more) countries can be added to Sokker, all countries around the world, how ever small they are.
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