Rocket League Catch All

pandasuit wrote:

How would you recommend a brand new player start learning Rocket League?

Yeah, keeping things simple is smart vs throwing them to the online wolves. Are there any multiplayer games out there that do this well? Personally, I'd love to see more gamification around skills and drills. Let people earn xp and rewards in drills that teach fundamentals like rotation, faceoffs, hitting through the ball.

On that note, it has been great seeing some new and old faces back in Rocket League. I'm thinking of Nuean, Tboon, and my buddy Heeth (BagoPucks on steam). I have had fun in the private just messing around. No pressure, discussing skills and strategies, focusing on making it a positive experience and a friendly learning environment. I'd like to do more of that in this community.

I used to play ping pong at my previous job. There was a core group in every day and we were pretty good. More casual players stopped showing up because they were intimated by the level of play. There was usually some combination of embarrassment, not wanting to handicap other players, and frustration at getting beat consistently. We dedicated a day for newbies and focused on teaching skills and strategy and it went pretty well. I think we could do something similar to draw more people in that may want to play but are put off by the skill ceiling or multiplayer scene.

Drills, then ones.

If I had mainly done drills and ones when starting out I would have quit this game 1000 hours ago.

pizzaddict wrote:

If I had mainly done drills and ones when starting out I would have quit this game 1000 hours ago.

I did do 1's when I started mainly because it ingrained in my head the importance of not missing, guarding the far post and not chasing into corners. You don't have to worry about rotating with teammates and can focus on the fundamentals of trying to make contact with the ball.

I agree with training/drills. I'm sure many folks get a lot of out of that and see its value, but for me as I've said plenty of times, I do not equate "fun" with "higher rank" or "more skill". Fun is just getting out there and playing. I hit Champ 1 once, and I'm pretty convinced I will never hit it again. If someone told me with just an extra XX hours of dedicated training I'd be Champ guaranteed... I'd say I'm fine with Diamond, thanks. I'd rather do something else with that time.

I had a blast the other night in that unlimited goal private server. It was good playing with some old tf2 folks again and I had fun practicing things together instead of in solo training. It helped me out a lot. I can see clear improvement already.

I mean, I'm still terrible, but I think I've mostly moved beyond the mash-the-buttons-in-a-panic-when-the-ball-gets-close stage.

Mostly.

WTF, I quit and tboon comes back?

Bah, I don't want to be demoed all night anyway.

Nuean wrote:

I had a blast the other night in that unlimited goal private server. It was good playing with some old tf2 folks again and I had fun practicing things together instead of in solo training. It helped me out a lot. I can see clear improvement already.

I mean, I'm still terrible, but I think I've mostly moved beyond the mash-the-buttons-in-a-panic-when-the-ball-gets-close stage.

Mostly.

We'll do it again!

Something Psyonix could do to reduce the smurfing by new accounts is to force you to play some large amount of casual before you are allowed to play any ranked. Overwatch does this last I checked. I’m pretty sure I’m still not allowed to play ranked in Overwatch because I haven’t played enough.

They could also make it harder to derank existing smurf accounts by giving temporary bans to anyone who forfeits too many matches in a row.

This looks like RL re-designed for all you demo hungry players (you know who you are):

An RL mode completely about demos and destruction could actually be pretty fun

Just got back into RL.
Loving the Season 6, and generally had a great time.

Couple things: Have a couple duplicates of blueprints, anyone want to trade?
And what is with the "we are down 0-1, lets forfeit". I cant get myself to agree, why is that even an option, what is the benefit? Then someone leaves and fun fun, it is 1-3 or 2-3.

Also, finally figuring out aerials, and got my first aerial goal. So exhilarating.

steamname: thedirtyelf (dont ask, lol) if you want to friend up.

ceri

Welcome back to the fun!

No dice on that Steam name. Look me up, FlamingPeasant on Steam too.

Pop into the Rocket Cars Discord too, there are people in there most nights.

cerithe wrote:

Just got back into RL.

...

steamname: thedirtyelf (dont ask, lol) if you want to friend up.

I saw your other post about discord. Once you accept the Discord invite over here you should see a Rocket League section on the GWJ Discord channel. The "bottle rockets" voice channel is where we hang out on Saturday nights with optional beverages. The "rocket cars" voice channel is where you'll see people most other days around 7pm PST / 10PM EST and later. I'm not sure if GWJ RL players outside NA use those Discord voice channels during other time periods.

The steam account linked to your GWJ profile is cerithe. I added you.

Didn't play this game for 2 years.

I'm worse now.

boogle wrote:

Didn't play this game for 2 years.

I'm worse now.

You'll be fine, lets goooo

boogle wrote:

Didn't play this game for 2 years.

I'm worse now.

That’s better than if you did play it and are now worse

Recent GWJ Rocket League Highlights 2020-06-13

For everyone's sake I think Red needs to change his watermark picture....

Is there a GWJ 'guild' in RL? I am tired of turning down random penis-related name invites.

cerithe wrote:

Is there a GWJ 'guild' in RL? I am tired of turning down random penis-related name invites.

Yes. Animated_Jay has to invite you from within the game.

pandasuit wrote:
cerithe wrote:

Is there a GWJ 'guild' in RL? I am tired of turning down random penis-related name invites.

Yes. Animated_Jay has to invite you from within the game.

The guild is called "MiPenusBigur"

-BEP

I had a lot of fun playing Chaos with Flaming, Dork, and Caro last night. That really is the only mode in RL where every single player goes in just to mess around and have fun and not care about winning for a while.

We had a bunch of 4 player commits that we laughed off instead of people being annoyed like they would in a regular game mode. At one point in one game we all lined up as a 4 car centipede in front of our net like a 4 person rule 2 with just our team.

Earlier yesterday I played Chaos with my wife and kids 4-player split screen on Xbox. My 5yo was just hunting demos. My 9yo just learned aerials the day before and spent the whole game flying for things that made no sense. My wife hit me more than the ball (on purpose I’m sure). Fun all around.

If they completely removed the skill based matchmaking from Chaos and added the anniversary map, old Tokyo, and some of the labs stuff that mode could become the pure casual mode I’ve been wanting in RL. As is it is probably the best place to go for mixed skill teams.

We should play Chaos more often in the GWJ discord lobby.

The longest unbroken RL pro team roster has finally broken up with Squishy joining NRG. Now I guess I have to cheer for NRG if I want to keep cheering for the best Canadian player.

Here's a tribute RLFX made showing the best of The Muffin Men who became Cloud9:

pandasuit wrote:

I had a lot of fun playing Chaos with Flaming, Dork, and Caro last night. That really is the only mode in RL where every single player goes in just to mess around and have fun and not care about winning for a while.

We had a bunch of 4 player commits that we laughed off instead of people being annoyed like they would in a regular game mode. At one point in one game we all lined up as a 4 car centipede in front of our net like a 4 person rule 2 with just our team.

Earlier yesterday I played Chaos with my wife and kids 4-player split screen on Xbox. My 5yo was just hunting demos. My 9yo just learned aerials the day before and spent the whole game flying for things that made no sense. My wife hit me more than the ball (on purpose I’m sure). Fun all around.

If they completely removed the skill based matchmaking from Chaos and added the anniversary map, old Tokyo, and some of the labs stuff that mode could become the pure casual mode I’ve been wanting in RL. As is it is probably the best place to go for mixed skill teams.

We should play Chaos more often in the GWJ discord lobby.

I 100% agree. Would be great to have a full 8 person server with goodjers. We can also set this up ourselves in the private with the maps we want.

Playing with GWJers would be fun. I have had alot of good experiences with randoms, but every other week or so I get the trainwreck match...

FlamingPeasant wrote:

I 100% agree. Would be great to have a full 8 person server with goodjers. We can also set this up ourselves in the private with the maps we want.

IMAGE(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/188/243/vader.jpg)

sigh....I guess....if I have to

haha was wondering when Red would chime in.

Yeah I knew Red would disagree. There are lots of problems with Chaos for sure. It can reinforce terrible habits if you let it. I think you have to go in with the right mindset.

When I was playing with Flaming, Dork, and Caro we were playing purely casual. That doesn’t mean we weren’t trying to play well and do cool plays and stuff. There was a lot of passing going on and an attempt at playing positions as well as we could. At least one time we managed to pull off a full team passing play that worked out. Definitely there was ball chasing but also some good rotations too.

Here’s the thing: how often in the GWJ lobbies is at least one person taking it too seriously and getting upset at themselves or their teammates? How often does someone feel like they can’t keep up? What can we do to make the environment in the lobby more casual so that people are having fun without any expectations on themselves or their teammates that cause frustration? Some people are always casual and it doesn’t matter. Some people will always take it seriously and get frustrated. We can’t fix everything but is there something we can do to try to improve it? I’m suggesting we try Chaos. Maybe it will be terrible. Maybe it won’t.

I also feel we need to find a way to be more accommodating to mixed skill groups in the GWJ lobby. Not only have we lost many of our long term players and heard them express frustration but also if free to play finally happens we could have an influx of new players who will not have fun in a more serious lobby. If there was a big enough group (like the old days) we could split into two lobbies so people could pick which level of seriousness they want but that isn’t possible right now.

cerithe wrote:

Playing with GWJers would be fun. I have had alot of good experiences with randoms, but every other week or so I get the trainwreck match...

We get our fairshare of GWJ trainwrecks!

Panda: I like the idea of having a 'safe' casual space. I think it was Norfair who said recently that it's more fun to have a group of three against pubbies, vs six goodjers facing off. When we're on a public server with all goodjers, the balance can go sideways creating very uneven matches which isn't fun. I've been on both sides of that and it's not super fun either way. We can do fours in public or private servers, just screw around in private for training/practice, groups of three doing casual or ranked modes, and sixes in public servers. We shouldn't feel locked into always doing sixes on a public.

My upshot here is I love playing with you all, and I want it to be fun and rewarding for as many people as possible. I'm not here for a rank, I'm here to have good times with good peoples.

Any mode not named Hot Pockets or whatever it was is fine with me!

FlamingPeasant wrote:
cerithe wrote:

Playing with GWJers would be fun. I have had alot of good experiences with randoms, but every other week or so I get the trainwreck match...

We get our fairshare of GWJ trainwrecks!

Panda: I like the idea of having a 'safe' casual space. I think it was Norfair who said recently that it's more fun to have a group of three against pubbies, vs six goodjers facing off. When we're on a public server with all goodjers, the balance can go sideways creating very uneven matches which isn't fun. I've been on both sides of that and it's not super fun either way. We can do fours in public or private servers, just screw around in private for training/practice, groups of three doing casual or ranked modes, and sixes in public servers. We shouldn't feel locked into always doing sixes on a public.

My upshot here is I love playing with you all, and I want it to be fun and rewarding for as many people as possible. I'm not here for a rank, I'm here to have good times with good peoples.

We kind of solved the uneven teams by making private matches and setting a goal limit. Unfortunately the draw of season XP has more recently limited that. Given how often I change my car, I really could care less but I do want to at least get the 110 level just to make next season free, but after that I'm fine not earning XP and maybe saving those public sixes for 2x XP weekends.

As Panda and Flaming have said, it was a lot of fun doing team chaos. The centipede thing was pretty organic too. I think Caro hit me in goal, so to jokingly tag him back I reversed into him. We locked and honored Rule 1, Flaming saw it and joined in. Panda was coming back for defense since the ball was going towards our net, he says, "What are ya'll doing?" and instead of being annoyed, he joined in and it was a great laugh. Heck, I think even our opponents were wanting us to join them in their Twitch chat.

It was a swell good time.

I will say I prefer public servers over private, but I honestly couldn't tell you why. I don't care about my Exp Level, I don't care about any Rocket Pass items... maybe I want the randoms opponents/teammates to keep it a little shook up and add a little variance? Maybe I like having someone safe I know I can demo more than twice? I'm probably just conditioned for public when I was worried about leveling/ranking up... so I'm game to try otherwise if we as a group want to do that.

Definitely up for Chaos though. It seems it would be much easier for us to get a room together/quicker because of the amount of players not playing that mode. Even when they "go down" we just say "Queue East at the same time" and probably a good chance some of us are together... maybe...