May 2023 Update - XP, Level Up, Power Ups, Video Links, and More!

It's May 2023, which means it's time for a short blog post on what's new in the latest SoccerPulse update (4.2.0) on iOS and what will be coming to Android in June. Our goal with this update was to make the app as engaging as possible for players and reward them for effort and attention to detail.

The May update is huge and includes XP (experience points), leveling up, power ups, quality of life improvements, and more. Let's start with XP...

1. XP (Experience Points)

When players download the update and launch it for the first time, they'll be presented with a 2 minute tutorial on how XP and leveling up works.

Every day that players enter a wellness report, they'll receive +5 XP (and plus +1 for every day of the current streak that they are on).

Players can also earn XP for entering their RPE for team events on time, adding a rating and a comment to their reflections, and submitting self evaluations each month. As players earn XP, they will level up their profile and earn higher level badges. These can be viewed from the Manage Squad screen.

For each XP point earned, players receive PulsePoints, which allow them to redeem their hard earned points for various power ups.

Let's discuss those next.

2. Power Ups

When players have acquired enough PulsePoints, they can redeem them for Power Ups (they are given 1 power up each when they download the update).

The three power ups are Save Streak, Double XP, and Freeze Streak.

If a player has a Save Streak available, they will be prompted to restore a lost streak if missing just a single day.

If a player has Freeze Streak active, they'll not lose their streak for 7 days, regardless of submitting a wellness report.

If a player utilizes the Double XP power up, they'll earn 2x XP anytime XP is earned for a full week.

They will still receive the normal number of PulsePoints during this time.

3. Leveling Up

When players have acquired enough XP, they will level up their profile. This is reflected in the badge displayed on their profile.

Badges change at levels 1, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. It's our hope that these improvements will make the app more engaging for players and by entering their individual events, it will reflect in a more accurate training load for the staff.

4. Quality of Life Improvements (Video Links, Individual Periodization, Emojis, Testing)

There are a large number of smaller improvements to SoccerPulse in this update, primarily centered around events.

Prior to an event starting (if the event is MD+1 or MD+2), there will be a selectable tab called Periodization within the event. This will have a list of all the match minutes played by the players in the last 48 hours, as well as suggestions for players within that session, based on the number of minutes played.

Players who have played more than 60+ minutes in the last 48 hours should have a recovery session, players who played 45 - 60 should have a normal session or recovery (coaches discretion) and players who played less than 45 should train as normal.

When the event is over, there are 2 big changes to the post event screen.

Coaches can now add a video link to the session, which players can launch from their own app. We highly recommend using VEO as we believe it is the best video recording platform available, but you can put any type of link that you want.

For games, we've added a Top Performer tab, which reflects the player who had the highest rated performance (combination of coach and player rating).

When the event is a test, coaches can export the attending players as a .csv (along with the tests to be performed) so that it can be printed and brought to the field for easy recording.

More quality of life improvements include saving test scores to player profiles when they are removed from the team so that the player can keep these. This is very helpful if a player is changing levels at the same club (moving from DPL to GA team and vice versa).

One final fun change, when players submit wellness reports, their mood can now be set to an emoji. The different moods include Very Happy, Happy, Content, Okay, Annoyed, Nervous, Angry, Distraught, and Sad.

That's all for May! Over the next 3 months, we'll be adding more to our Match Center to help you prep for the fall, but in the meantime, we highly encourage your players to log their individual events over the summer to improve their rank and so you know exactly what level they'll be coming into preseason at!