Subject: [Idea] Merge of small countries/leagues

Just some stats if it were a single league.

If all teams with less than 40 users (62 countries) were merged in to a single league - 800 teams (4 divisions)
If all teams with less than 30 users (57 countries) were merged in to a single league - 589 teams (4 divisions)
If all teams with less than 20 users (51 countries) were merged in to a single league - 464 teams (4 divisions).

These are approximately the size of Italy, Romania and Brasil respectively.

Now for reasons I have stated prior, my personal opinion is all teams with less than 2 full divisions need to be in a merged league.

Maybe for the sake of expected growth, some way to separate in to multiple merged divisions would "grow better" (ie continent or language etc.), but it's something that could be looked at in the future if necessary, or could be done up front, because there won't be too much more difficulty in repeating the code once the first one is written.


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I actually think you would need to go further than this.
Apparently, as I write England has 83 users.
However, L3 is mostly filled with crappy bots.
If you merge all the "small" countries, countries like England would have less levels than these newly derived regions. It pains me to say this but England should probably be merged with other countries as well :-(

I guess in the end a line needs to be drawn somewhere, and that would be up to the DEVs.
England are currently the 21st biggest country in sokker, but would be what I'd consider a grey zone if our current system stayed how it was.

I consider the grey zone between a full 2nd division and half full 3rd division (40-104 users).

So for England this would be the case. If they were already merged, they would need to get to over 104 users before forming their own nation, so that there is plenty of wiggle room where the loss of some teams would have a huge effect.
But if they were not already merged, they would be given some more time to see whether they can build numbers before they would finally have to be in a merged league (less than 40 users).

These values I selected based on the diminishing negative impact of having more leagues filled.

But I think the first focus needs to be made on the most in trouble nations, and then decide how far this extends out. So obviously the most at risk, and having the most negatives are those with less than 10 users, and then the next most, those with less than 20 and so forth.

It also depends on the future league structure proposed. If they want 12 teams with the current division structure (1,4,16,64), than according to my recommendation, any country with less than 60 teams should be in a merged league, but if they decide to have a 1,3,9,27 system, this would drop it to 48 teams, and if they wanted a 1,2,4,8 division structure system down to 36 teams.

Either way, I think England is fairly safe, as they should be given they are in the top 1/4 of biggest nations in sokker (and most small nations have the problems you are concerned about but in their 1st or 2nd division, not their 3rd), but that they are in that borderline territory.

Together with this line to merge ... the 1X, 2X, 3X or 4X factor must be decided

for instance, we could have in the first three divisions

36 teams with the 1x factor
84 teams with the 2x factor
156 teams with the 3x factor
252 teams with the 4x factor

then in the UK example, the 3x factor makes sense and you will have room for new teams.

It's certainly food for thought, that's for sure

Apparently, as I write England has 83 users.
However, L3 is mostly filled with crappy bots.

Sokker needs a new division structure

Division 1: 1 league
Division 2: 2 leagues
Division 3: 4 leagues
Division 4: 8 leagues
Division 5: 16 leagues
Division 6: 16 leagues or 32 leagues
Bottom Division: all new managers start here in a season, and as many should promote, also to replace bots in lowest league.

Please... Yes! It would be alot more fun, this way!

Yeah definitely.

Combining merging the small nations with this new division structure, and you have a more competitive game for all members of sokker.

It is especially important now that it is being moved to 12 teams per league, because most nations of sokker struggled to fill even one or two leagues with ACTIVE managers, who logged on even a couple of times per week, let alone divisions. With an extra 50% users in each league, this will extend to even more nations with the struggle.

So they need to occur at the same time really.

Merge Small Countries + Change division structure.

I can see the devs reason for not merging small countries yet. And would actually call it vision. They believe in a revival. And it can be done. One solo word, one word.... if that is done, all can happen..

Marketing

So i get, they dont want to merge small nations together, to then seperate... but if they dont intend to splash money on marketing, they should just do it

Maybe in some situations you can grow userbases. I'd be very surprised if you can do that for some of the smaller countries like Australia/NZ for instance. The boat has well and truly sailed for that. You can throw whatever money you want in marketing, I think you'd be find it very difficult to compete against those other forms of entertainment that have much bigger budgets and more recognisable brand names.

I'm not saying it's not worth trying mind you, I'm just not sure it would have any effect and I wouldn't be pinning everything on a revival due to marketing alone.

It's difficult but I think you need to balance what you hope for in the future (which may never happen) with what you have currently. The revival may or may not happen, but it's pretty likely that if nothing happens in the present, that you'll continue to lose current users from smaller countries, making targeted marketing to those countries much harder.

I think you really need to bite the bullet and deal with both sides simultaneously.


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I couldn't have said it any better myself.

It's better to merge and then let break out countries leave the merged country, than to spend a number of seasons attempting to grow userbases, have 1 or 2 succeed, and the rest fail even worse than they are now.

There have been many people from smaller countries come to this board, both in this thread and others, wanting this to happen, so give them what they want. It goes a long way to fixing a lot of issues in the game that smaller nations deal with, and helps stop the BS jealousy that seems to come from larger countries that apparently it's all so easy for us to win the Div 1 title (but at the same time, get less sponsorship, have less fun in competition, have less gate receipts etc. etc.).

So merge the small countries, make one or two big merged ones for all countries who cannot fill 2 divisions themselves.
This instantly fixes the sponsorship issues.
This over time fixes the gate receipt issues
This instantly brings about competition for people
Over time this helps make NT's more competitive (yet still allows large countries to have a deserved advantage or being able to pull more youths from their country, therefore more chance of good ones).

This fixes so many issues, it should be a no-brainer

what if... we just have an entry level for small countries (mixed together) and a top division for each small country (the forum and everything else would stay per country); promotion-relegation would be tricky, though.

+1

Yeah promotion and relegation would be tricky with that style, and due to the way the game works with sponsorship etc. you will find that the highest "mixed" division would likely have a higher sponsorship and gate takings than most of the top individual country divisions.

I do like the thought though, because I actually developed the opposite, where you always start off playing teams from your country, and then the higher you go, you then take on the best in the region, then the best of the continent, then the best of the world etc. It had all the countries in one massive draw (if you are good enough), and looked quite good. But trying to display it in these simple forums, as well as devs deciding to go in a different direction, I just decided it was going to be too hard to draw out and put that time in to it

Just boosting this as it is the easiest way to fix:

1. The sponsorship inequalities between small and large countries
2. The lack of competition for people in small countries (and therefore the interest)
3. The loss of experienced managers who get bored with the game from small countries
4. The loss of new managers who would have stuck around if there were some others from their country to help them, and an active forum community
5. The massive difference in strength between leagues within small countries

Resulting in:
1. Larger numbers for small countries
2. A more equal Champions Cup competition
3. A closer National Team competition
4. Expanding total game numbers by having more "markets/countries" being viable in the game
5. More money invested in the game by managers (via plus subscriptions) with the retention of new and old players, as well as retention within a number of high economic real world countries such as Australia and New Zealand

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2. The lack of competition for people in small countries (and therefore the interest)
3. The loss of experienced managers who get bored with the game from small countries

The 3rd point is a subset of the 2nd but these are big points.

Unfortunately, some people here consider it as a privilege that we are able to 'farm' money in the top league. If you think it's easy for us to 'farm' money, why don't you create a club in a small country and experience the 'enjoyment' in the game? There is absolutely zero competition in the league games 90% of the times where the result is predetermined even before the start of the match. You can enjoy playing against useless bots and win matches, you can enjoy losing against strong teams as well.

So where is the competition, which should keep people interested in this?

So I did some quick calculation, it's already been 1.5 seasons for me, there was just 1 game where I felt that the result can go either way (Federation Cup). I joined at the end of March 2020, and in these ~5 months, just 1 competitive game. I see myself facing zero competitive league matches this season and just 2 competitive matches in the league even after promotion next season in the biggest league here. And that will go for quite a long time since our top user is miles ahead of any 2nd placed team. I'll be spending almost a whole year in this game with a resounding 2 competitive league matches overall and where the competitive aspect should be the most important aspect for any game. No one loves winning every time and nor does anyone loves losing every time. The balance should be important which this game lacks although it's great on other aspects like NT, junior school, etc which has kept me going till now. Now some other people who are not interested in NT games, junior school, etc might leave the game without giving a week to it. And that's why DEVs should look at the competition aspect as well.

I know we've discussed this already but I'm reiterating so that others can understand some of these points as well.
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