Subject: [Idea] Merge of small countries/leagues

At least it is something they should take into consideration.
Above all, having fun is still the main reason to play a game.

for me the most important thing from the poll is that 1k users cared to vote!

Hi to all,

First of all, sorry for my bad english...Well, as algerian manager, i decided to express myself.
I've read somewhere that some managers are against the merge of small countries, claiming that the best solution is to invite our family, friends and neighbours to play the game.
Ok, but how can you do when registration from Algeria is quite impossible ?
By default, your registration is made in Poland and , if you don't write a message to the good admin, the French, your registration is lost...
Well, if you are algerian and if you don't know this game for years as I and my bro' (since 2009) and all the process, you can't register**!
And i think that we are not the only country with that problem.
Merge the countries! Or we are going to leave soon.
Playing sokker became a nightmare for us.
Tell us the true, that you don't are about us and stop promoting that there is 98 playable countries.

Good night to all.

** And you'll won't register !
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I don t think merging is the best way. Devs need to find a way for smaller countries to extract more youth players. Cymru have just 3 active users and I don t know for how long. They removed training bonus for friendlies which is another blow for smaller countries. Furthermore, there is no motivation for NT coaches. Smaller countries are aware there is no chance to ever win a trophy but at least the should be given a chance to compete.

More youth players does not solve the issue. Might make an NT a tiny bit stronger but the issue is entirely down to not playing other human users and also a massive negative handicap on earning potential. We can debate about transfers etc being the the most valuable source of income (and that’s possibly true in most scenarios - unlikely in Australia due to time zones) but it still doesn’t change the fact that smaller nations get penalised by smaller gate receipts and smaller sponsorship and also smaller max fan sizes. That’s largely driven by bot sides never getting stronger and never gaining fans themselves. So it’s a double whammy (less enjoyment from no competition and less enjoyment from being able to compete against others due to not being on an equal playing field to begin with). Clearly there are worse scenarios out there then even us in Australia but it’s absolutely clear to me there’s only one real choice here, possibly multiple implementation options though (may be complex but that’s something that needs to be thought through).
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What's the point in having more youth players, when you don't have enough ACTUAL players to play with? Never mind the massive gaps between divisions in small countries. I'm in B4, and if I choose to promote, I'll go to A2.
The 9th place team in A2 has an average player value of nearly $400,000 US. FOUR times what mine is. The eighth place team is less, but still 2.5x mine.

There's literally no enjoyment in me promoting.

League merging would help fix this by giving me largely competitive opponents. Not easy wins in B, nor constant losses in A.

You are right, I was looking at the issue more from the NT point of view. Anyway, thats not gona happen any time soon, its not a priority :) Although, it should be if you don t want to lose users.

You need to adapt to your new situation after promoting. You have way too many young players, you can change that to 10 young players + ~10 old players. Then in friendly match you play with young players and in league matches you play with a mix of ~8 old players + ~5 young players (using subs to give each of them at least 23 minutes). This way you give all your young players nice 96% advanced training and you compete in league on a solid level.

I spend less than 200k euro total on my old players who, on average, play with rating over 50. You could do something similar. Of course our situations aren't the same, you don't have much money or a nice weekly income from stadium. But you don't need to buy old players that are as good. You can spend few thousands for each old player which would let you be somewhere in the middle of the table. Enough to not be demoted, this would be a good result for your first season in division A.

The fact remains we could do everything perfect as you’ve suggested and we still would earn less, have less fans in the long run simply because we reach a point where we can’t improve and bots accelerate to that process. These are all good suggestions but the fact remains when you factor in everything the system is flawed and could be resolved with merging at no cost to other nations that are big enough to support themselves.

Also it does nothing for those without human competition
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Current system takes average amount of fanclub members from all 12 teams in league.

Simple and fast solution - it should take for example only top 6 teams in league.

That would solve a problem with leagues in small countries with up to 6 bots in league.

Countries with less than 30 users would be nice to merge. Nobody wants to play online games in a ghost country.
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If I'm not mistaken, there are 48 countries with less than 30 users.

I wouldn't mind getting less income, as long as I'm having fun playing against other managers.
I recon giving managers in small countries more money, will not solve anything.
They need more managers.

And maybe merging countries isn't the best solution in general, but surely it's the only solution NOW.
You can gamble to sit the promoting part out for some years and hope the very few still remain in the game, but why taking chances if there's a solution at hand, which is a small work in programming, compared to all things that need to be done, before they're ready to promote the game, with unknown outcome...
They did a poll to know what we want for NT players injuries.
Surely they can do a poll for this too...
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Merging only small countries comes with a problem of "how small" - then the next smallest countries will probably feel left out, countries who lose users would need to be merged in future as well etc.
Best option in my opinion would be a new "no country" league and an option to managers from any country to move to that at any offseason and start from the bottom. That would also solve an issue of additional merging for countries in the future that become too small to sustain their own as there would be solution available to everyone instead of hoping that devs do merging over and over again.

It's a fair point, but that could all be coded in as well.
Really if a country can't fill 2 divisions, they should be merged, because we all know that less than half the "users in a country" are actually active users. When I have done my big sk-mailing of small countries, it is pretty obvious that a lot meet the criteria for being turned bot, but by doing so, would actually hurt the country (as bots don't gain supporters, the supporters from the user are reset to 200, and the whole leagues sponsorship takes a hit).

Ideally you wouldn't have just one line though. So in the above, I say 2 leagues, which is 48 users. Initial merge you would say, anyone above this keeps their league, anyone below is merged.
But then moving forward you would have a "grey zone". So any country that can half fill their third division can be "unmerged" so if a country gets up to 66 users. For an unmerged team to be implemented in to the merged country, they need to drop below half filling 2nd division, ie 30 users. This would stop the constant up and down and extra work required.

But that is all more advanced things, there are many users and many countries literally within sokker, dying out because the DEVs are not making a move and doing this.
They have expected the small users to play only bots (or mostly bots) for real life years. They have completely killed any financial support these players have. I have been messaged by many people from nations much smaller than my own, saying with the league reform, they have actually got LESS money in the season than before, because 4 bots were promoted, killing their sponsorship, and the money they get from playing home games against bots does not make up for this

Here is a small collage of it I made so people can actually see. Noone should be forced to SELL coaches and players because the of the league reform (which currently they are looking at reducing income further because all users in large countries ended up with MORE money with the extra league matches, whilst those in very small countries actually got less)

No offense, but you have no idea what a trash budget I have as a new player.

Even if I had a spare 200k lying around - and I don't, I used it on adv trainees and coaches - I couldn't afford the weekly pay these '50 match score' players would demand.

Here's one example I just scraped up: https://sokker.org/player/PID/35786059

This guy, other than stamina, is literally no better than who's on my team now...and his wage is triple what I'm paying a similar 20 year old.
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