Subject: [Idea] Merge of small countries/leagues

But I have already pointed out how long teams will need to wait before any current team sees any benefit of this.

This season has 13 weeks left.
Next season is 16 weeks
The season after is 16 weeks.

Changes implemented - advertising day 1 - 50 people join new country day 2 (unrealistic but I'm showing best case scenario)

It took me 10 seasons to get a point against our number 1 team. That is not that we are competitive, but that I got lucky after that long.

So these new teams lets say take 10 seasons at 13 weeks a season, to be able to even make the top teams think about their match

13+16+16+130 = 175 weeks This is 3y4m (or 40 months) before the top teams even need to consider that the new teams will be able to cause them any trouble.

And this was best case scenario as we won't have a bunch of users joining day 1 of advertising with the new changes. So best case, you want people to stick around 3 yrs playing bots and uncompetitive matches, as a minimum, before you ever decide that something may need changing. That is not only not acceptable, but a terrible business plan.
(edited)

But before changes merging is not an option. There is no mechanism to do that, it would affect on many areas of the game, we dont have good tools for communication with every single small country user to announce it properly, etc. For sure it CAN'T be done before general update.

So from that perspetive - its just a one season difference, +1 after general update, if it will be needed.

I agree, that it's not a pleasure for small countries to play as it is now - but, it look like that from many years, and we hope most of users will find some patience for few seasons longer.

Your counting about being competitive - it's a bit overestimated, but agree, it will take a lot of time to competite with best teams, but in that time newbies will fight each other, and it will be great fun too. And that problem is not because of nation size - just take a look on Poland and huge difference betweeen Div 6 and Div 5, for most of newcomers it will take 4-5 seasons, to be able to fight 5 DIV teams.

It's much more about current user structure - 90% of users have teams more than 5 years, so there is a wall between them and new once - country size have nothing to do with that.

And that problem is not because of nation size - just take a look on Poland and huge difference betweeen Div 6 and Div 5, for most of newcomers it will take 4-5 seasons, to be able to fight 5 DIV teams.

The big difference here is the Div 5 teams have a lot of other div 5s to play, and the div 6 teams have a lot of other div 6 teams to play, so whilst it may take a few seasons to be a regular div 5 team, they still have good competition.

Many small countries do not have this luxury. So you are asking to be patient for more years, after already being patient for years.

And I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear, I mean this needs to happen when the changes all occur (not this season or next). So needs to be done at general update.



we dont have good tools for communication with every single small country user to announce it properly

Let's not beat around the bush here. Most didn't get an announcement in their country to vote for the change in system. Most don't even know a change is coming or that new DEVs are part of the team.


So from that perspetive - its just a one season difference, +1 after general update, if it will be needed.

This is only the case if after just 12 weeks, you decide the promotion has been a failure, and not just "oh we need to give it some time to work".

I can guarantee, if you announce nations of less than say 40 users (the number should equate to whatever is 2 full divisions in the new system, whether that is 36 users, 48users or 60 users), will be merging in to one league system (either one all up, or by language or by region), you will have a lot less people wanting to leave, and a lot more small nation users excited to know that in just a couple of seasons, they will have competition in sokker again, and that they won't be alone any more in the game.

This would stop them from leaving between now and the changes happening, and will keep them for at least the first lot of people to come to the game after the advertising, and having those old players for that will be essential if you want small countries to survive.

lol this is useless to do marketing activities like people are done with sokker in my country because of BOTS make an Africa regional competition we can still have our NT but the only change will be national league to regional league. Now like others said if a country gain like 100 users they will have their own national league. Guess how fun it is to play in poland with a lot of real users in every division. I still prefer playing in division 4 in poland than in division 1 in my country, because when a guy makes tactics buy new expensives players it's clearly not to play against a BOT. When i talked to a friend who already quits about the merging idea he started thinking about a comeback.
Do you think people playing against bots in sokker will stay when they can literraly buy football manager playing with teams like barcelona against others laliga bots teams? i don't think so.
(edited)

In the same time we will invest money into promotion, focused on small contries.

Let say... sokker quadruple the total users in one year, 3 or 4 seasons... (imo a very optimistic goal, since that reach the total users in 2008, when browser games was on trends).

With wide and international communication, this should - a priori - quadruple proportionally in each country. That mean for small countries (around 10 users) a total of 40 users. That's better, but does it really solve a lack of challenges in this countries with such a small total ? No.

Merging regional under x national users (@slavista proposal) is not so easy, because we need a flexible system that could merge / un merge cups, championships, teams, users... I see this system as a nightmare since that's again a principe of simplicity : repeating patterns.

Off course, we can merge regional for all nations, the same (pattern) for all , but for sure MANY users will be against such a reform ! :-)

We can add a new international challenges for all (as previously discussed is "calendars" topics) to ensure competitive ranking matches every weeks whatever we are in a small or big countries...); but its seem that 's a fail for now (i dont follow this INT challenges discussions sorry...)

We can, as i mention before, adding multiple teams management, that will increase the numbers of human teams, and define the 2nd team (and 3rd, 4th...) on the smallest countries. This also solve many other things in small countries (less Young school and juniors in some countries mean a poor NT level, mean a less attractive 'community...)

I certainly see what you are saying, but I don't think it should be too much effort.

Moving teams (from small countries) to a new league, and keeping their country of origin shouldn't be that hard to do.

As far as qualifying for CC - the easiest would be, if you are in a small nation, your national cup champion is the one who qualifies for the CC (and then if your NT happens to be high enough to have a 2nd team qualify, this goes to the National cup runner up). Because again, it shouldn't be too hard to code in to the cup fixtures, all teams with "x country code" are TRUE for "x country cup"

It's a pretty small change we are asking for, but with huge, quality of life changes within the game for small nations, so they can experience the fun people from large countries take for granted.

Also when a country finally qualifies to have their own league again, it would just be a matter of teams with "x country code" sorted by rank order, and placed in division 1 to 3 in that order.

Let say... sokker quadruple the total users in one year, 3 or 4 seasons... (imo a very optimistic goal, since that reach the total users in 2008, when browser games was on trends).

If you believe that is even remotely possible then I really wish I were you and had your life as you are clearly living in a paradise to have such a positive outlook on what might occur.

A very small snippet of results, but will do a full analysis.

Australia:
Fantum - Started in June 2018 - 131 250 $ sponsorship - won all league games

Italia:
Player 1 - Started in Sept 2019 - 150 000 $ sponsorship - lost 3 of 4 league matches
Player 2 - Started in Nov 2019 - 161 250 $ sponsorship - lost 3 of 4 league matches

Poland:
Player 1 - Started in Feb 2020 - 112 500 $ sponsorship - lost 4 of 4 league matches.


This shows just how unfair the sponsorship is, as per cometers post. These teams, who have been playing very little time, and doing very poorly, should not be receiving so much money. It allows them to grow in strength very fast just because they joined a big country in the game.

I mean look at the player 1 from poland. You don't earn yourself anything in 4 months, you just get an autopromotion spot (because you joined in to the top team or beat the bots) and suddenly you are earning 2x as much per week in sponsorship alone as a small nation new player. And earning almost as much as a small nation player who has played for 2 years, just because you joined Poland

Moving teams (from small countries) to a new league, and keeping their country of origin shouldn't be that hard to do.

You think ... But are you a programmer? Ask to the devs then... If they say its possible, and its not much time consuming, ok, but what if not ?

well should not be so diffiucult
merging should be one time action and if country reaches the limit for its own leguage unmurge onece unmerged then should not be merge back that will be more difficult
first merge is easy sort all country teams by rank and do the gorups
unmerging is like cleanning bots its just again sorting the export teams and doing leaguges by this

forums will be deactivated and activated once country is again active

Its all depend on many countries that can be merged un-merged in a regional ... More users : un merge, less users merge, bots removing merging... that"s a league and divs recomposition, and maybe every seasons...

A "free" championship , like its happen in young leagues (random opponent every in a large division) its more manageable... But who want this ?

But i dont care, if its possible its possible. Ok fine.

There's certainly been a lot of talk about merging countries over multiple threads, with very few people against the idea, but a lot for it.

I think this needs to be elevated to very high in priority and released when the bit new update occurs, especially with the league expansions, it is the perfect time to do so.

It also gives a very nice way to introduce new countries in to the game, and it gives a real reason for countries to try and grow so they can "stand on their own two feet" and have their own league.

There may be some disagreement of when countries should be merged/unmerged, but generally if you drop below being able to fill two full divisions, you should probably be merged, but maybe if you can half fill 3rd division (4 teams per league in the current system, 6 per league in the new one), then it's probably time to split.

In RL basketball there are at least 2 examples of successful merged leagues in Europe.

It could be done, but who would decide it?

Adding ALL countries is a must for starters... Half of all countries is denied playing for their country at the moment.
The rest is up to the devs...

But I think, merging countries could have consecuences for NT's...
It will be very hard for small countries to scout their younger players... Most small countries have foreign coaches, which makes that process even harder.

IF merging would be done, ALL features needs to be carefully reviewed.
If you merge countries, will there be a merged NT? Will this be fair? Will this be the case for all small(er) countries? Does all small countries want merging?
I'm just saying, there's a ton of info to gather before it can be considered.
I know many people, especially Australia, is big time in favour of this, but I've seen reactions by small country users, opposing this thought as well...Not that many off course, but I'm just saying, it shouldn't be a general rule for teams, needing x amount of users for them to have an independent country...
IF this is approved, it should be reviewed for all countries separately...

The real issue is when a nation breaks off of the confederation.
Most of the teams would end up in leagues that have weaker competition and then they would have smaller sponsorships, and we can already see from some discussions that nobody would care about having an easier league, everyone would complain about smaller sponsorships.