The subtle incremental improvements we’ve seen Sorare deliver on consistently since February have culminated in a more immersive football management experience for its gamers.
In my opinion, the recent announcement and introduction of ‘Advanced Player and Team Experience (XP) Formulas’ has the potential to help drive the game to an entirely new level.
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Introduction to Player Card Experience (XP)
To date, XP was rewarded to all player cards that were selected to play in the weekly SO5 Tournaments.
The amount of XP given was fixed based on the scarcity of card with Rares receiving 100 points, Super Rares 125 points, and Uniques 200 points.
These original point levels allowed all cards being used in beta testing (even injured/suspended) to grow more powerful with the only exception that if you were listing them on the Transfer Market instead of playing them in a Tournament, they wouldn’t receive any weekly XP points.
Each level of XP added +0.1 to a cards Bonus Multiplier and the maximum level of XP that could be reached was set at level 20.
The Reasoning for XP Review
The original goal was to keep XP scarce. The first SO5 tournaments were designed for users to compose only 1 team where they were expected to carefully pick the 5 cards that they would like to earn XP points.
However, the collectible aspect of the game caught on much faster than anticipated and so it was subsequently agreed that users could enter as many teams as they pleased into the weekly SO5 tournaments. The flip-side to this decision was that the scarcity of XP was heavily diluted and earning XP was no longer strategic.
Re-introduce XP scarcity and XP strategy
The goal of the off-season review was therefore to create a formula that rewarded how the cards were being played rather than a continuation of XP being a linear function of when the cards were first bought.
Two additional criteria would also need to be met with the changes:
Create a more interesting game: Even though a user might not finish top on the weekly SO5 leaderboard, we want to provide the option to substantially increase the XP on one of their favourite cards (potentially more than the leaderboard winner) — plus enjoy the added benefit that their card would be stronger to compete the following week(s).
Allow for greater XP distribution across cards: as XP is no longer only a function of when the card was bought we want the changes to help differentiate cards and card values much further.
NEW Revised XP Formula
From Game Week 1 of Season 2019/20 XP will be calculated as follows:
(from section 4.3 of https://sorare.com/faq)
Total XP = Base XP + Minutes Played XP + SO5 XP
- Base XP = 75 points
- Minutes Played XP = 75 x Average Minutes Played / 90 (0–75 points)
- SO5 XP = Maximum of 250 points, based on your SO5 Team Score.
This results in the XP ranging from a slightly lower 75 XP per week up to 400 XP (double the previous maximum).
Base XP
One of the overall goals is to reward players with more XP if they are on a performing team and award less XP to injured players and non-starters.
During my chat with Nicolas and the team it was made very clear to me that when buying any Sorare player card, a user should feel it is always possible to improve its desirability and/or in-game value.
With it now being possible to earn a maximum of 400 XP points each week, a base amount of 75 XP is awarded to soften the blow on players with long-term injuries plus give you the ability to level up your favourite Youth Prospects that might not see regular game time.
Minutes Played XP
A simple but thoughtful addition to the overall formula will now see players rewarded with up to 75 XP points based on the minutes they play in a Tournament.
So whilst you can you select 5 injured players in a team, (as I have had to do regularly recently!) they will now only receive the base level XP.
A team with 5 players playing the full 90 minutes will now earn at least twice the XP of a team that doesn’t play any minutes.
NEW Managerial Decisions
With the early XP levels requiring a relatively small amount of XP (1500 XP gets your player card to level 5) — combining 1 or 2 injured players or youth prospects with 3–4 players you expect to play 90 minutes now becomes a very interesting sacrificial choice.
Do you accept the 75 XP per week (base only) and wait 20 weeks to build your Youth Prospect to level 5 OR select them along with more active players in the hope to achieve the same end result in half the time?
SO5 XP
At the time of writing this — the exact formula for the possible 250 XP points based on your overall team score is unknown (by the players!)
We have just finished Game Week 1 and it was very encouraging to see that the top-performing team achieved a total of 346 XP per player (out of the possible 400).
The top 10 teams in Game Week 1 all scored over 250 XP per player and this was across all scarcities of teams (Rare/Super Rare/Unique) — thus already proving that if your team is performing on the pitch, they are getting the higher XP recognition for this.
Over the coming weeks and months, I’m sure the community will be seeking to work out the various thresholds to further assist their selection decisions. Assuming we can crack some of the code, I’ll share this in a future article!
Advanced Player & Team XP Summary
With us only just about to start Game Week 2 of the new season, I don’t want to get carried away. It is important to understand that the other gameplay elements that XP works alongside also need to serve the common goal of growing this game to be the most realistic, challenging and rewarding Fantasy Football experience on the market.
With that said, the community has already shared their positivity to this being a huge step in the right direction and having listened to snippets of what is in the pipeline (for the development of XP as well as the teams and leagues Sorare is currently in latter stage talks with) everything seems to be falling into place nicely for the public launch later this fall.
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