Rocket League

Sorry I missed it. On summer weekends 9-10:30PM = struggling to get my kids to go to sleep time. :)

Any of you guys available tomorrow night?

Tomorrow night has a chance for me.

I play a bit in the Rocket League, I have a Veteran rank. I get different skins, hats, but I have never won any crate or key to crate (Of course I only play in multiplayer mode). What am I doing wrong? Can you help me? I buy Rocket League Crates Xbox, if you need Crates you can buy crates here: https://odealo.com/games/rocket-league/xbox

I got this a week ago and it’s a lot of fun, but wow does the matchmaking suck. I keep getting put into games with players who are so far out of my league that there’s no use even trying. Am I supposed to just keep quitting out of games until I find one that’s balanced? That’s what everyone else seems to be doing.

Part of the trouble with casual matchmaking is that so many people have played the game for so long by this point that there aren’t consistently enough people A) in low skill brackets B) with low enough ping to be playable C) searching for games at the exact same time you are. Since that’s the case, it doesn’t have much choice but to dump you into the best game it can find, and that’s all too often going to be a game chock full of people in the middle skill brackets. Fortunately, casual doesn’t penalize you for leaving a game early, but it does still have an annoying propensity to throw you straight back into the server you just left which kinda defeats the whole point.

Also, rank is by no means a reliable indicator of skill, as many smurfs will run rookie or semi-pro accounts despite having hundreds of hours in the game on another account or platform (or someone will just be kinda bad at the game with hundreds of hours, getting promoted into the higher ranks by sheer dogged persistence). Ranked tends to have a better matchmaker from what I’ve heard but I just play Rumble most of the time and so I don’t mess with anything formally competitive.

So, I know I just wrote a whole lot that doesn’t really fix anything, but it’s just a quirk of the matchmaking functionality when the game isn’t on sale (with an associated influx of newbies all at the same time) or a free weekend (bigger influx, only temporary).

Honestly, playing on a server with people better than you is the best path to getting better - even if you’re on the less capable team. If I get a good team, I can top the scoreboard. On a lesser team, I’m one of the worst players - I certainly can’t carry a team. This doesn’t say much for my ability, granted, but I’m a much better player than I was simply because of being on a few ‘good’ teams.

That said, I’m not talking about crazy teams that can do all sorts of dribbling/aerial shots. That’s just silliness, and I’m too horrible to ever get matched up with them.

Okay, that makes sense. Hopefully I can get good enough to at least compete in most matches.

The best piece of advice I can give when starting out is to spend a few hours (not in one sitting) going through all the various practice courses that come with the game. The aerial ones in particular give you plenty of opportunity to practice some relatively tame aerial shots, and those will give you a better understanding of car maneuverability than damn near anything else you might try. The payoff for getting even slightly decent at those scenarios is massive.

There’s user-created stuff out there too, but those tend to be obscenely difficult and should only be used much, much later unless you really want to try something different.

I’ve been doing the aerial drills like you suggested. It’s been highly damaging to my self-esteem, but I am getting better. At the very least, I’ve learned that I have to slow down if I’m going to have any chance of timing my jumps right.

Hi, are you still playing in the Rocket League? I lie at home with my broken leg, a little bored and I would like to find my friends to play in RL and make some Rocket League trade with you. I’ve got crates for sell and I want to buy Rocket League items https://odealo.com/games/rocket-league

Whatever happened to playing Quake and Eve?

SALTY!

I love it.

@Chappers forced me into playing this wrist torturer. I am horrible at it. Beyond horrible. I have no spatial awareness at all: if I watch the ball, I fail to see where it’s going to fall, so I have been playing with the free camera instead, but I still have tons of issues try to apply any control whatsoever. Something that is really bothering me is that I feel like I am never aware of where the enemy or my team mates are and that I am missing something obvious. Is there a way to tell? do you have to do a routine scan around you at all time?

@Otagan is the man. Let him show you the way.

I play with the ball cam on about 95% of the time, occasionally switching it off so I can look directly in front of me (and not accidentally bump someone), but otherwise I’ll flick the control stick every so often (while in ball cam) so I can have a rough idea of where the other players are.

I have this in the switch but the ping times are always twice what I get in the Xbox (40 vs 80-100). Is this normal?

Both are via WiFi btw.