Rocket league is pure gaming joy

The Game Room
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Rocket League is a game of soccer played with rocket-powered RC cars. A simple premise that leads to a tremendously fun game with a high skill ceiling. It’s out for PC/PS4 and does pretty seamless cross-platform play, although from what I understand you can’t form parties across platforms.

It’s super fun/intense in the same sort of way that video games made you feel when you first started playing them, and that’s not something I feel about many games. You get very into it, especially in intense, close games or sudden death overtime. It’s a pretty simple game - you can drive your little car around, roll around in the air, and perform double jumps (in any direction), and there are little nitro recharge points around the field, which allow you to build up your nitro to go fast or give yourself a limited ability to fly and control yourself in the air. There are no powerups, all experience-based unlocks are cosmetic, all of the different cars are just a cosmetic differences. It’s a fair playing field for everyone. All DLC is also purely cosmetic.

It uses a proper dedicated server system, which is utterly critical in a game like this. The physics system and controls feel tight and polished. You can play 1v1 up through 4v4, and each bracket plays out fairly differently. There are casual and ranked modes. There are around 40-80k people playing at any given time and the matchmaking system is pretty good so there’s very little time waiting around. There’s a good replay system where you can save your best matches after they’re done and watch them again from any angle.

They’re working on adding new stuff to the game. Just announced is a system of mutators like low gravity modes or turning the ball into a cube. For December they’re going to release a field of ice and a hockey puck to turn the game into rocket powered hockey. I’ve seen some concept shots for arenas that are different from a standard soccer field - I hope they release some of those.

Video from a high level match, video from a low level / average match

Anyway, if this sounds appealing at all to you, you’ll like it. It’s a really great game.

You have to log in to see the discounted price in their VIP section, but you can get it for $15 on Green Man Gaming right now. They take paypal and give out steam keys. It’s unlikely there will be a discount steeper than that for a while, since it just came out in July and it’s a very popular game, so I’d just grab it now if you’re interested. A $10 steam sale on Christmas is possible, but I wouldn’t say likely - maybe $12.50, in which case you’re waiting 2 months for a couple of bucks. If you want to play with us on PC, add me (same name) on steam or find me on the SDMB steam group.

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Oh, I forgot to mention that if you’re going to order a steam link or steam controller, you get a copy of rocket league for free. Or if you already ordered and didn’t realize you had it - go ahead and install it.

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It was free on PS+ over the summer and I played a bunch of it. Deceptively good game - it takes a while to learn the nuances of controlling the cars. At first it just feels like you’re careening helplessly around the arena, but it is in fact possible to be precise with them.

I never got very good at it, though.

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I pulled off this stop/start fakeout goal against someone who was a really good defender. I’ve been playing ranked 1v1 a lot. I’m pretty good at it. I have really good ball control and sometimes totally clown people by passing to myself by bouncing the ball off their face and scoring on them, or dribbling right over their heads, etc.

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The mutators came out today. Patch notes.

You can toy with ball size, weight, bounciness, or turn it into a cube. You can modify gravity, the power of boost, whether it recharges on its own. There’s a time warp mode that does slo-mo when people get near the ball. You can add friendly fire/destruction or set all cards to destruct on any contact. A bunch of minor settings too.

The public playlist for mutator only randomly selects from about 8 pre-sets worth of settings, but you can do whatever you want in private matches.

So far it’s pretty fun. A cube ball is a funny twist. I like the low gravity stuff. The pinball mode with the tiny, bouncy ball is really difficult.

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It’s on sale on steam for $16 for a couple of days. Not a huge discount, but if you were on the fence, let this push you over. I wouldn’t recommend waiting until Christmas since you probably won’t save much, since the game is still extremely active and selling well.

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Car differences are bigger than I thought. It’s worth trying out a few different cars to see what sort of car fits you. I’ve been trying to use a dominus, a more paddle-like car that most players seem to use probably for the directional control on aerials. I switched back to the roadhog, which is a more blocky car but fits my dribbling/ball control style better and played out of my mind and went on a 13 win 1v1 ranked winning streak, going all the way from 300 to 409 rank points.

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Just started playing a little today. It is kind of insanely fun. Dealing with walls is gonna take some experience.

What’s the multiplayer like? Specifically, how is the matchmaking done (am I gonna be sinking my team and getting yelled at)? How much coordination is there? In 3x3 or 4x4, does someone generally hang back to play semi-goalie?

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The matchmaker is pretty good at finding you a competitive game that you have 40-60% chance to win. There’s a hidden matchmaking rating that works like an ELO chess system. All casual brackets (1v1-4v4) use the same hidden rating. Ranked games have a separate rating per bracket.

You likely won’t get yelled at because it’ll probably put you in a game with other similarly inexperienced people. The community isn’t very toxic. The worst that happens is that people will spam sarcastic asshat emotes like “what a save!” if you make a blunder as the goalie, or “nice shot” if you accidentally own goal.

Whether there’s a dedicated goalie varies based on playstyles of who you’re matched with. At low levels you tend to get players who will blindly chase the ball and not put much thought into positioning. Some players tend to be very defensive and always volunteer to be a goalie, even when it’s detrimental to the team (like being down 2 goals with a minute left, and refusing to leave your goal).

Higher up in skill you’ll tend to have a back-fielder but not a guy who stays in goal. He’s defensively oriented, but he plays up towards the center when you’re getting in position to make a scoring move so he can assist if necesary.

Really high level play tends to have a rotation - people switch their roles depending on who’s in a given place and where the ball is so you more or less have a rotating goalie depending on the situation.

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Game is $14 as part of the steam sale.

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Lowest price I’ve seen, need to be logged in to GMG: Green Man Gaming $11.89

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We’ve been having private games with SDMBers fairly regularly lately, 3v3 and 4v4. Here’s an amazing (flukey) save from last night.

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That looks like a lot of fun!

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They released the hockey mod today. It replaced mutator mashup as a custom playlist. You play in a snowy, outdoor ice rink sort of arena. The cars don’t handle like they’re on snow (that would probably get annoying fast) but the puck more or less does. The puck physics are pretty fun.

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Picked this game up over the weekend to play with my girlfriend’s kid and holy shit I am full-on addicted. I am actually surprised at how good the matchmaking is, when I first started I was way too good compared to everyone, but now in most matches I’m very average. The community also seems pretty good, I have yet to run into any abusive players.

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Super late to the party on this one, but I just picked it up a few days ago and it’s a blast. I like that no matter how incompetent I may be, every goal I score looks brilliant in the replay.

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Solid game. One of the top games of 2015 for me. I’m not usually into sports game but I like how they made this one. The new hockey mode is pretty cool too.

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A couple of big announcements.

Sometime this week or next week, season 1 of ranked play ends and season 2 begins.

They’re going to get rid of the artificial rank point system and just tell you what division you’re in based on your (hidden) matchmaking rating. I applaud this, because the whole rank point system was just there to give you an artificial sense of progression.

But I know people will whine, because people play games nowadays more for the skinner box than for the fun/challenge/improvement. Taking away their illusory rank point game is going to make them say “I have no incentive to play the game, I’m not advancing!”

Now advancing only comes through genuinely improving your skill, rather than just grinding out a lot of games. I mean, in terms of the actual important metric, hidden matchmaking rating, that was always the case. Rank points just gave a facade of advancement through grinding up to your true level.

There are rewards in the form of crown toppers for your placement. Bronze/silver/gold/platinum. I was going to make a run for gold, as I’ve been close before, but unfortunately my skills have taken a severe nosedive after I haven’t played the game very much in the last month, and I’m not going to be able to hit it.

In other news, the new public mutator is going to be 3 new maps. One will be a torus in which the goals are on the opposite side of each other at one end, and you can travel through the goal to get to the other side, making switching between offense and defense very quick. One will be a much higher vertical map with a raised edges around the sides which will make vertical play a lot more flexible. And the other I’m not quite sure I have a feel for yet.

They’re minimalistically made now - they’re going to see which make the community likes most and then flesh that out into a full map.

It’s $13 on steam right now on the off chance that you don’t have it, or you could always buy it for a friend too.

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I think I know who’s going to be excited about that map :wink:

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Basketball is coming.