Rocket League Catch All

I had a ranked game of 3's this weekend where right off the bat one of my teammates starts saying how we suck and we keep passing the ball to the other team and so on. Then about 1 minute in he quits playing, but doesn't leave, he just sits there moving once in a while so he doesn't get kicked and proceeds to talk sh*t to us for the rest of the game. The other player and I, now playing 3 vs. 2, proceed to force the game into OT where we lose. I realized at some point that I could just mute the player and did so.

The "what a save" thing annoys the crap out of me. I had a game yesterday where I was in goal and a fast shot in the top corner of the goal got passed me. Sure enough "what a save" "what a save" comes from my teammate. Yeah I get it, I should have reacted quicker and gotten it but what do they think the "what a save" comments are going to do? Make my reaction time faster? Motivate me to try harder?

Also, I hit the 500 hour mark this weekend. I'm not sure if that is something to be proud of, but it happened.

I had 2 of those yesterday.

One guy quit 15 seconds in after he blew the kickoff and I couldn't make the save. Spent the whole match chatting about how I sucked but wouldn't forfeit.

I played 2v1 and with 30 sec left I caught back up to a 5-4 deficit. But still he refused to help. Infuriating.

At least all 3 reported him.

I can't remember what happened in the other one. I think we were tied 3-3 after being up 2-0 and he started playing for the other team. It was nuts.

I don't understand these people. Just go play casual. Why play ranked if you don't want to try to win?

I can't remember, if they try to forfeit once, can they then quit the game without penalty? Are they staying because they don't want to be banned from online play for 15 minutes or whatever it is?

The intensity/stress of competitive play is not something most people have a lot of experience with. Especially if they haven’t played a lot of competitive sports or had competitive life experience in other things. Probably worse with younger players.

Lack of self awareness seems pretty common with RL players as well. Everything is everyone else’s fault. They are the ones at fault for the goal even though I left them in a bad position by messing up first. They are the ones that don’t understand rotation and positioning because they didn’t do what I expected them to do. It happens at all ranks but I’d like to assume it is more rampant at lower ranks as I’d like to believe these people can’t make it to higher ranks, but every time I play solo standard I realize how wrong I am.

pandasuit wrote:

They are the ones that don’t understand rotation and positioning because they didn’t do what I expected them to do.

We get it Panda!!!

jk

ragin_redneck wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

They are the ones that don’t understand rotation and positioning because they didn’t do what I expected them to do.

We get it Panda!!!

jk :)

I’m succeptible to that one too.

/rant incoming

“Rotation” is really better described as “the person with the best touch goes for the touch” and every player on the field is constantly evaluating whether they are the right one to make the next touch based on what they think is possible. There are rotation styles that make sense at different ranks. What players are capable of doing and expect others to be capable of doing changes massively between ranks. People of different skills/ranks will look at a situation and make very different decisions because they have different knowledge of what is possible and what is probable.

The way I rotate at my rank does not work when I’m playing with lower ranked players so I have to adapt. It’s on me (and everyone else on the field) to figure out what style works for our team and adjust. No one can reasonably just say “they don’t rotate like me therefore they are wrong”.

But yeah, there are people who just do dumb things that can’t possibly be explained by odd rotation. Bad decision making that can’t be explained by differing styles or different expectations of what is possible. I can’t explain those people. Maybe a combination of lack of sleep and alcohol? That’s usually my excuse.

pandasuit wrote:

No one can reasonably just say “they don’t rotate like me therefore they are wrong”.

Welllll, sh*t. There goes my excuse for sucking.

-BEP

*shrug*

The only rotation/position thing that bothers me is double commits into the corner particularly on defense. Other than that I feel that every other situation has at least some sort of way to fix it. Usually means I just play back way too much, which results in far fewer offensive production but I score a lot of XP on saves, clears and a few assists. A lot of the goals I score when we're playing GWJ matches are clean up goals but that's because I have much more confidence that someone has moved behind me so I'm able to creep up a lot more to wait backboards and other bouncing balls in front of the goal.

I will say the most amusing/annoying player I see in pubbies are the ones that think the defensive half is poison once they cross into the offensive zone. You can see someone start to rotate back, but at the last second turn 180 back into the offense once they sniff mid-field. I should make a compilation of that.

When that person comes back to mid field then rotates back in (without coming back to the defensive zone) are you still on offense or has the ball left the offensive zone?

I can agree that what the rotation that you are doing matters to decide who hits next. But I don't agree with the definition. A rotation is about making your play, then moving to the next position and then playing that position (which might involve playing the ball or might involve rotating again), etc... If everyone is rotating well then the person who is best to hit the ball is obvious. The problem occurs when two people fall into the same position then both go for the ball, or go for balls that are not for their position. Or what was happening yesterday, where the pubby was rotating in the opposite direction which left us with a lot of same team collisions.

But I do agree that what the rotation strategy is does depend on the team (not necessarily specific to skill level). A team may decide that the rotation is the other way and if they can make it work then good on them.

But in the end, like every sport there is a standard rotation (the basics) that everyone should be able to fall back on if things are not meshing.

I've solved a lot of my own rotation issues I was having, only to discover I have others cropping up. Of particular note for me right now -- I often fall back to defense too far and I still find myself rotating back along the trajectory of the ball which puts me in the way of teammates moving up for it. Oh, and shortcutting rotation too often-- aka hitting the ball just because I'm there and not because I actually have a good hit.

Antichulius wrote:

Oh, and shortcutting rotation too often-- aka hitting the ball just because I'm there and not because I actually have a good hit.

This is what I see happen a lot of the time and is something I've been working really hard on for myself. It can be frustrating to have a clear shot at the goal only to have a teammate come flying in from a weird angle and knock the ball off to the sides.

Antichulius wrote:

Of particular note for me right now -- I often fall back to defense too far

i did this too often too. i think it was a bad habit i picked up coming up through the ranks where people, especially in bronze/silver, think someone needs to be sitting in goal all the time.

instead of always being back at a certain point, i think about at that moment how far and how hard could someone reasonably hit the ball downfield and i get into the positions where i could keep it from getting past me and keep adjusting. i guess it comes down to i switched from thinking about defending the goal to thinking about defending the ball.

I played against pro player Mijo today. He is G2's sub in RLCS this season. It was unranked and he beat me but I put points on the board so I feel good about it.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/P6xVKLL.jpg)

before that we played Kuniv and won. His teammates were dragging him down but,... we won.

IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/945085490137736799/BDFF41B71A53A2746188004076E0B6033C513B3D/)

Panda if I would have stayed matchmaking probably wouldn't have put us in that match.

ragin_redneck wrote:

Panda if I would have stayed matchmaking probably wouldn't have put us in that match.

Maybe not. My MMR was around 1700 when I played Mijo.

It's been a while since I've seen a recent take on "the X mechanics for low level players" so I checked this out when it showed up on my feed to see if it was worth sharing. He is not saying low level players should be experts at these. He means you should consider incorporating them into your game early and work at getting better at over time. These are all things I learned a looooooong time ago but have never stopped getting better at.

He is absolutely not right about every aerial shot needing to be a fast aerial tho. There are many cases where saving that flip for a midair flick is really useful.

I would replace half flips with movement/recovery mechanics in general. The sooner you start to learn some movement/recovery mechanics the faster you get at RL. I have yet to find a good video that covers movement/recovery mechanics well tho. I learned them by watching Squishy play on stream and emulating his movements and I’m constantly finding ways to move and recover faster.

That makes me feel a little bit better about doubles.

all good tips that worked for me. i've spent a lot of time in freeplay doing the last one while watching TV. massively improved my reads.

pandasuit wrote:

That is a good tip.

Snap10a did another video. He says these are for “low ranked” players but he includes gold and platinum which means he is claiming they are for the vast majority of players since only a very small subset of players are above platinum. Not sure if this is helpful or obvious to you guys but it seemed like it applies to a wide set of ranks so I thought I’d share. /shrug

My teammate is the best goalie for the other team

ragin_redneck wrote:

My teammate is the best goalie for the other team

What a save!
What a save!
What a save!

When is that clip from? I don’t remember that car design.

I can be a good goalie for my own team sometimes too....

Man. Won a game. Ranked MVP. Down a division. That’s the third time it’s happened.

Any ideas why??

Did you recently have any matches end where you left before it showed your rank change? I’ve seen that happen where I leave a bunch of matches before seeing rank change then the next time I stick around for the rank change animation it appears to jump from my very old rank to the current one (sometimes down and sometimes multiple divisions).