Rocket league was starting to become stale to most players so the leaders at Psyonix decided to take after Fortnite and add in a seasonal pass system with new items that you can unlock. This was a great way to add content to the game and keep it fresh. Not to mention it costs 10 keys or around 10 dollars to purchase the pass, so they gave the players something new to enjoy and they got to make some extra money. It sounds like a win-win to me. Personally, I didn’t buy the first Rocket-Pass, and I now regret it. Having the pass gives you more incentive to play more games and earn experience to level up as much as possible. It brought back an aspect of the game I had been missing. I had felt no motivation to really grind the game and get better. However, with the pass, it gave me the want to grind for hours on end and play as much as possible.

To be totally honest, this Rocket-Pass that they added is the reason that I got back into the game. Before, the only motivation I had was to get better and try and get to higher and higher ranks. However, after I reached Champion One I seemed to hit a wall. I could not seem to advance any higher and it frustrated me. That is the reason that I quit playing for a while. Then I heard about the Rocket-Pass and I became interested to see how that would work in a game like this. So I convinced some of my friends to get it with me. I can say without a doubt in my mind that this is what revitalized the game for me and my group of friends. We had so much fun playing together and we all felt like we actually had a purpose for playing.

Overall, I think that people who have played Rocket League and feel like they have no reason to play anymore or that the game got stale should try out the Rocket-Pass. It give the game a purpose and to me and my friends, it honestly made the game feel like new again. Also, if you are skeptical to spend the money to get the keys so that you can buy the Rocket-Pass, then you don’t have to be because if you reach rank 120, then you will have gained all of your keys back. So you simply need to just play the game and rank up in the pass to get rewarded with gaining all of your keys back which you can then use to get the next Rocket-Pass and so on. Anyway, I highly suggest that players purchase this pass so that they can get some really cool in-game items and can enjoy the grind that this game has been lacking up until now.

Rocket League’s developer Psyonix was recently bought out by Epic, the creators of the crazed game Fortnite. This came as a major shock to me and I was wondering what was to be expected now that this has been finalized, as I am sure others are wondering the same thing.

In recent news, it has been hinted that Rocket League will eventually be removed from Steam and be only sold in Epic’s own game store. This has not happened yet and the game is still able to be bought through Steam, but who knows for how much longer. Many people are wondering if Epic is going to make any major changes to the overall game. Many people including myself are very nervous to see what will happen next. With Epic being a big name company and Rocket League having a large competitive scene. It can be expected that Psyonix will use the new money and resources in order to expand on the competitive side of the game. This seems to be one of the biggest positives that came along in this deal. Another positive is that since Epic has more money and more resources that Psyonix did not have access to originally, this means that Psyonix can hopefully make more content and DLC for players to enjoy. They should also be able to come out with more updates and be able to patch problems at a much faster rate than before. These are all things that would be very beneficial to the players.

Another positive of Epic being so much bigger is that with it having so much money that causes the prize pools of the competitive events to increase significantly. This could in-turn add more of an incentive for people to play the game and want to get good enough to join the competitive scene. However, for people who just want to casually play the game, this doesn’t change anything for them. Another somewhat positive thing that could come from this is that the game could take after Fortnite and become free to play. This could be frustrating to the players who have been playing forever and paid for the game. If these players got some sort of compensation for this then that could help smooth things over, but if not, I know that I would not be very happy that I had to pay for the game and others get to come along and just play for free. This change could also double as a major positive though. If the game becomes free to play and it has Epic’s name attached to it, then it has a very good chance of expanding its player count significantly. More people playing the game means more money and this could help the game as a whole grow and become better.

After reaching Champion One players are most likely excited and feel as though they are amazing at the game. They have become the players that they always had envied at the lower ranks. However; after playing a few games against other Champion Ones or maybe even some Champion Twos, they will realize they aren’t anything special and they still have a long way to go before they will be anywhere near an elite player. When I reached Champion One I thought I had peaked. I thought I was a really amazing player because I had finally become a Champion One. Then I realized after a couple of games that the players at this rank were so much better than I had ever imagined them to be. I was playing games as a low tier Champ against players who made me look like the worlds biggest noob, and like had no thumbs and had the reaction time of a turtle. After seeing this it made me realize that I was really not that good and still had a long way to go before I could say that I was a really decent player.

Right now I have around 1300 hours in the game and I feel like I can say with confidence that if someone wants to become an elite player in Rocket League, then they need to put in around 2-4 thousand hours of gameplay. I also think that a very healthy portion of these hours needs to be training or focused on playing to get better and not just playing to play. Players can play a lot of games and have fun and get better at the game slowly. However; the more efficient way is to do lots of training packs and learn to play by focusing on everything that a player is doing and how to do it better and more efficiently.

Players need to analyze their own decisions and figure out how to play faster and more efficiently. I say this because for my first 600-700 hours I would say that I only played this game just to play it. I was playing games but I wasn’t seeing any real evidence of getting better. It wasn’t until I started focusing on my gameplay and thinking about what I was doing in regards to rotations, boost control, reading my teammates, etc that I started seeing results and started really improving quickly.

Remember that there is always room to improve. Keep training and learning to play faster and anticipate the balls movements. The players who can go faster will typically win more challenges and will have more opportunities to score and be in the right place to help their teammates. In order to play faster they will need to have better mechanics. So the best thing that a player can do at this rank is work on making their mechanics better and better. That is my overall advice. Better mechanics equals better gameplay overall. Goodluck gamers!

Rocket League has other things to do besides just play. Some people take pride in their appearance and will pour lots of money into the game to make their car look exactly how they want it. The game creators have added an abundance of crates over the games lifetime that all include items that seem to just keep getting more and more awesome over time. Players can receive crates through leveling up and end game loot. However, you cannot open these crates without a key. You have to pay $1.23 in order to acquire a key. Then you can open a crate and get a reward. Some rewards are better than others. They have a tier system where the most common items are blue or “Rare”, then there’s light purple “Very-Rare” items, then red “Import” items, and golden/yellow “Exotics”. There is also one more item type that are called “Mystery Decals.” These are the most rare items in the game and are of the most expensive items when trying to trade up for items.

So now that you know how to get these items through lucky and crates, let’s talk about how to get these items without having to get lucky. Some players don’t want to spend money on the game and want to get the items they want through trading. So they will play the game for a while and get around 10-15 crates. Then they will trade those crates for either items to keys to then try and trade up until they get what they want. So if they trade for keys, they could maybe get 1-2 keys for 15 crates, they will try to buy an item that is worth 3-4 keys for 2 keys and then try and flip it for that key or two profit. They will do this for as long as they can until they have the items or keys necessary to buy what they really want.

A great example of this is one of my online friends. He decided to skip playing for the creates and he bought 20 keys. He then would do his best to trade items for profit and before he got offline he would attempt to cash out and sell everything he had for keys. He did this for about two months and now has around 160 keys. So this shows that it is possible to trade up for anything that you want if you are patient and make smart trades. I will link the website that I use that includes the pricing of all of the items in the game here. It will also update as more items come out. I suggest using this website a lot because if you click on an item it will show you its price range and a line graph that shows the price of the item over the past couple months to see if the price is going up or down or staying consistent. I will also the link a website that I use to look for people to trade with or post my items that i have to trade. It is a great way to find stuff you are looking for and show others what you have to offer. That website can be found here.

The amount of time and effort you have to put into this game in order to become a champion can be intimidating. The skill gap between a Diamond One and a Champion One is absolutely huge. Players in early Diamond ranks are lacking in mechanical skills and the ability to do any type of midfield passing. They also lack the ability to rotate effectively. However, Champions play at a much faster rate because they have better mechanical skills to allow them to recover faster and rotate more effectively.

Here is a list of things that Diamond players need to master to progress and become a Champion.

Things to Master:

• Rotations
• Recovery Mechanics
• Aerial Ability
• Passing Ability

Rotations are something that you learn by playing a lot of games and in order to improve you need to always be thinking critically about your positioning and how to improve it. It doesn’t matter if a player has amazing mechanical skills and can do everything else on the list. If they cannot rotate effectively, then they will not be able to win games consistently and will have a very hard time trying to rank up to Champion.

Next up is recovery mechanics. These are important to allow players to play faster and thus be able to make faster decisions that will, in turn, take the opponent off guard and lead to easier goals easier wins. Here is a link to recovery mechanics.

Aerial ability is something that just requires players to put the time in and train to get better at. Practice turning your cars in mid-air in different ways and get used to taking off in strange ways too. Find ways to make yourself uncomfortable and then practice doing the same thing until it becomes natural. There are so many different situations that you can be in when it comes to aerials. The ball is in the air for a vast majority of games at higher levels, so being able to hit the ball in the air in many different ways quickly is something that is very beneficial and can help players win a lot of games at high ranks.

Passing ability is something that is very hard to master. You have to play a lot of games and just try hard to focus on trying to pass through the midfield and be able to pass the ball back to your teammate so that your team keeps possession.

Overall, I would say it takes a lot of time for someone to gain the abilities needed to become a Champion. Players have to dedicate a lot of time and effort so that they can practice and perfect their skills. They need all the things listed above to come naturally so they don’t have to waste time thinking about it and can react faster in the game.

This week I wanted to talk about casual game modes that are different from the game modes we are used to. These game modes are known as party game modes and players don’t typically play these game modes competitively. Although that is an option for some of the game modes. Anyway, these game modes are made more for players who watch to mix it up and add a little bit of variation to the game. The overall objectives of these game modes are relatively similar to the usual game modes where the objective is to score more goals than the other team.

Rumble:

This is a gamemode in which players play on a variation of strange and obscure maps, with a few normal maps mixed in, and try to score using power ups that you get every 10 seconds.

This adds some variation to the game that allows players to not only focus on having good mechanical abilities but also being able to think on their feet and use their power ups to counter the other team’s power ups and be able to score.

Drop shot:

In this game mode, your goal is to get the ball into the air and get multiple touches with it in the air. The more touches it gets, the more charged it will become. Each team has their own side on the field, and if the other team is the last to hit the charged ball and it hits the opposing team’s side, then it will cause the floor to take damage and create a hole in the floor that if the ball goes into, it will count as a goal. Then after one team scores it will reset the side of the field who got scored on, but the opposing team’s side of the field will remain how it was with whatever damage or holes were there before. This game mode rewards players on their ability to keep the ball in the air and their aerial ability in order to keep possession and not allow the other team to get touches on the ball.

Hoops:

This game mode is pretty self-explanatory. The goals are large hoops that are raised off the ground. Players have to use all of their skills and aerial ability to score in this game mode. It is such a simple idea but is actually very challenging and fun to play.

Snow Day:

This game mode is my least favorite because it is not very different from the main game. It is the same game on the same maps and the only difference is that it replaces the ball with a large hockey puck.

This week we are going to change it up a bit. I am going to talk about the different competitive games modes and what you need to know about them. You should use his to find the best match for you, but you should also take some of my advice on the 1v1 game mode. This is usually people’s least favorite game mode, but it can be the most useful.

Gamemode: 1v1

In my opinion, this is the most underrated game mode in the game. You can improve your game so much by just playing this game mode. You will be forced to learn to play shadow defense and mirror your opponent. This is a useful skill that will also make you a very good defender in other game modes and will help you and your team win in future games in any game mode. You will also learn to make smart decisions in the game. This is because in the 1v1 game mode if you make an error it will more than likely end up being a goal conceded. Although this is frustrating, it will eventually become natural and translate into your future gameplay in other game modes. Overall this game mode is a great place to play games and really improve on not only your mechanical/dribbling skills but also on your general decision making and defensive skills.

Gamemode: 2v2

This game mode is my personal favorite because it rewards players for being able to do a mix of dribbling and team play. By this, I mean that with only four total players on the field, you have a lot more space to settle the ball and try and stop by dribbling. This is something that you cannot typically do in the 3v3 game mode because someone is almost always applying pressure on you. This is also something that the 1v1 game mode can help with because in the game mode you have plenty of opportunities to try and dribble against your opponent. As far as team play goes, with the extra time and space, you are given in this game mode, it is easier for your teammate to get into a position for a pass. This allows you to work on being in good positions for passes and for being able to recover fast if the play turns bad. This is something else I like about 2v2’s, Counter-attacks are extremely powerful. In 3v3 game modes, you cannot always counter-attack easily, because typically the other team will have someone in position on the defensive end. But, in 2v2 game mode, it is much more common to catch people out of position and score easy goals off the counter.

Gamemode: 3v3

This game mode is the most popular and also the most hectic. It makes players have to play a lot faster than they typically would. There is no such thing as slowing down to possess the ball in this game mode. Players have to make very fast decisions and be able to recover and rotate extremely fast. This game mode will definitely be beneficial to players because being able to go for balls faster and make quicker decisions than your opponent will cause you to be a better player and will help you win a lot more games.

These game modes are all great and can help you in different ways, I would say that the overall best game mode to play is 1v1 though. I think that if players want to improve quickly and not only be stuck doing training packs, then they should invest a lot of time and effort into playing this gamemode. By playing this you will also be improving at the game overall and thus improving in all of the other game modes simultaneously. Even if 1v1’s aren’t what you are best at, you can still use it as a means of improving and becoming a better player so that you can do better in the ranked game modes that you do care about and play more regularly.

Here are a few videos about 1v1 strategies to help you improve:

• Beginners Guide
• Tips To Help Rank Up

Here is also a great training video for how to improve fast.

Platinum players are significantly better than Gold players. I’ve noticed that the skill gap appears to be very large between these two ranks. I went from being able to single handedly destroy the opposing team, to having to start relying on my teammate to help me out. I feel like I seem to win a lot more games whenever I play the more defensive role. I think this is because most players at this rank train more for offense and how to put balls on frame rather than how to defend. So I’ll usually let my teammate go and ball chase if I notice that they don’t rotate very well, and I’ll just hang back around midfield and just keep sending the ball toward frame and that will usually catch people off guard and result in a goal.

So my strategy for this rank would be to play more defensively for sure. Many teams still double commit and leave themselves wide open for counter attacks. Something that I would focus on is being able to shoot off the backboard. Players at this rank tend to panic if anyone sends a ball off of the backboard. So if you can practice hitting the ball high off the backboard and reading its bounce down so that you can consistently shoot it on frame, then you will be very successful at this rank. I can also say that this is an effective shot in the later ranks as well.

Continue Training:

• Power Cleans
• Shadow Defense
• Aerials
• Shot Accuracy

At this rank you need to focus on just playing fast and consistently putting shots on frame. Speed of play is important and can be a major key in winning games. Being able to rotate faster and make quicker decisions can be the difference in ranking up to Platinum.

Road to Champion Update:

Xbox Gamertag: Potato Plays RL

MMR: 788

Rank: Platinum Two Division Two

Ranking my new account up though Gold has been a very interesting experience. Like I mentioned in my last post, this is one of the ranks where you see a lot of what appear to be good players mechanically stuck at. While playing, I got into many matches where players appeared to be very solid mechanically, but their basic knowledge of the game was so severely flawed. These players could dribble and aerial quiet well, but their ability to play with a teammate and recognize when they should and should not pressure a ball was down right terrible. Not to mention that a lot of these players would recognize they were the better player compared to their teammate and would go for everyball possible. This makes it incredibly easy for me to score because the other team would both commit to a ball and if I or my teammate managed to win the ball then they had no one left back to stop an easy goal.

Main points:

• Teamwork.
• Power Clears.

Teamwork is the most important thing in my opinion. Being able to read your teammates and rotate correctly is something that is so simple, but also so important in becoming a better player. Something that I was struggling to do was trust my teammate. I never trust my teammate to him the ball and make a good play, so I would sometimes find myself ball chasing and this causes rotation problems and makes me and my teammate to double commit. I needed to realize that even though I thought I was better than my teammate, I had to trust that they could make a play and take the time to get boost and get into a better position. Once I made this adjustment I noticed it became a lot easier to win the games I played and majority of my shots required very low level mechanical skills to put in.

When I say power clears I just mean clearing the ball away from your goal area in a fast and hard way. Usually done when the ball is bouncing, and you hit the ball as it bounces so it will clear with a lot more power. It is best if you can direct these clearances to the opposing teams corners, or better yet put it on frame.

Update on my account:

Xbox Gamertag: Potato Plays RL

MMR: 733

Rank: Platinum One Division Three

Games Played: 20

Games Won: 15

In order to progress past the silver ranks you have to start to not just work on mechanics, but also your overall knowledge of the game. You have to start being able to adapt to your teammates and at least start attempting team plays.

Players should continue to practice and do the training packs mentioned in my previous post. They can also now start to progress past these trainings and start to try and do the “All-Star” difficulty versions.

Moving on, Silver and Gold are both what I consider to be the ranks where the vast majority of the games population is at. These are the ranks where you can get stuck and not be able to get out. I have seem many players who seem to have really good car control and some really nice mechanics, but they have no idea how to actually play the game with a teammate. That is why they are still stuck at their rank.

Here are a few things to remember.

• Rotations
• Play smart and safe.
• Learn how to defend.
  • Shadow Defense.
  • Read the play and cut off passes/easy shots on goal.

We will start by talking about rotations. This is probably the single most important thing you can learn in the game. You can be a completely mediocre player and not be very skilled mechanically, but if you can rotate well then you will always be in the right places a the right times and will be able to help your team a lot.

I will start by talking about rotations for Doubles. If you divide the field into nine squares, then all you have to remember is to never be in the same box as your teammate and position yourself at diagonals. This helps because it gives your teammate a passing option. If they cannot beat the defender one on one, or if they are low boost then they can easily just pass the ball over to you and allow you to attack and give them time to grab boost or rotate behind you incase you lose possession. A video explaining this more in depth can be found here.

The rotation for a 3v3 game is a a little different than 2v2. I still think it helps to see the field in the six squares we talked about before. On offense in 3v3 there are 3 positions that must be filled at all times. You need to have a shooter, passer, and defender. I think the best way to learn this is to be able to visually see it. So I’m going to link a video here about 3v3 rotations in depth.

Next I want to talk about playing smart. An important part of this is knowing yourself as a player and assessing your skill level. Be honest with yourself about your skill level and what you are capable of. After assessing yourself and your skill level, be able to decide when it is smart to move up the field with speed and when it is better to stay back. Same goes for deciding when to challenge a ball and try and take away the other team’s possession. If you see a ball go up the side wall at mid field and you don’t have confidence that you can go and win that ball, then retreat and play defense. Sometimes the best offense is a great defense.

This will all help players advance by not only becoming mechanically better, but also by giving them new things to think about and look for to make them a better overall player.

See you next time!