A Rocket League fan’s tips for staying level-headed when you just feel like rage-quitting.
Before we begin, I’d like to clarify a few things about the following combative statement:
Rocket League is one of the greatest games of all time.
Some of your homies may try to keep you away from Rocket League, claiming it is a frustrating and often belittling experience to stay away from. I don’t entirely disagree with those homies. In fact, it’s the frustrating moments in Rocket League that keep drawing me in for just one more match night after night. Practice and dedication will help you overcome these belittling experiences, I promise. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, sure, but my own experience with Rocket League has only been made better by understanding that controlling a rocket-powered car while trying to score a ball in a defended goal will not come easy. It’s important to know that playing Rocket League is no different from picking up a basketball and walking onto a basketball court. If it’s your first time shooting hoops or dribbling a basketball, you’re probably not going to make a ton of baskets… You’ll have to learn your rhythm, learn how much force to apply from your arm and your wrist, and how high to jump before you start hearing swish after swish. With that being said, I highly recommend tackling your first few matches with a friend that has a better understanding of the game than you. This will help you convert the initial frustration into laughter as you both scream at your televisions. If you don’t have any friends to Rocket with on your current console, the developers have added support for cross-platform play, meaning PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and PC players can now play together thanks to the recent end of the Console Wars. (As it turns out, this option is only working as advertised for me while in a private online party in Custom Games.)
If you still can’t find a homie to play with on any of the supported platforms, message me on Twitter @HoolianOchoa and I’ll Rocket with you!
Here are a few tips that have personally helped me overcome grievances in Rocket League.
Rocket League is a simple sport.
You get one point every time your team gets the ball into the opposing team’s goal. The team with the most points after 5 minutes wins. If after 5 minutes the result is a tie, overtime is triggered and the next team to score a goal wins. After the match is over, you can vote to rematch and try again against the same people you just played against. I like to remind myself of this simplicity because it’s easy to fall into a frustrating trap of losing game after game. I like to imagine my current play sessions as “best of” a certain number of games in a series. For example, before even looking for any matches, I’ll tell myself that I’ll play to best of 5 games. After this series is over, I exit to the main menu, recenter myself, and try again with a new series. This way, I give myself a bit of breathing room to walk away and maybe even refill my water... Gotta stay hydrated.
May I also recommend running through a training session or two before the next “best of” series in a play session? You can browse the dozens of training setups found in the Main Menu to better yourself. Use these to your advantage!
Focus the camera on what’s important.
Rocket League lets you change your camera’s focus on command. One camera angle focuses behind the center of your vehicle, the other (aptly named “Ball Cam”) focuses on the ball, essentially putting it in the center of the screen. It’s tempting to try to stick to one of these and never alternate between the two, but personally, I don’t recommend this. For most of a match, I keep “Ball Cam” active, but very often and for a specific purpose I switch to the normal behind-the-car camera. (I’ll cover this specific purpose in the next tip, so hang tight.) Get comfortable with all of the controls and both cameras, and if something doesn’t feel right, make it right! I like my “Ball Cam” button on R1 instead of Triangle (on PlayStation Controllers) because I don’t like my right thumb doing too many things at once. Play a few matches, then customize your controls to feel right for you in the settings menus.
Everything about the camera can be changed too, from field of view to camera shake, so feel free to play around with this to find a style that feels most comfortable for you.
Perfect your ground game first. Or, get good at maneuvering around the playing field.
Psyonix (the development team behind Rocket League) has added so many ways to get around the field quickly. While driving, you can move your left stick forward and double-tap the jump button quickly to roll forward. Rolling forward increases your speed. Rolling forward twice in quick succession will get you at top speed quickly and efficiently. You know you’re moving at top speed when the bottom of your wheels leave behind a glowing “trail.” It’s great to know when you are at top speed because you don’t want to waste any of your precious boost if you can’t possibly go any faster anyway. On the subject of boost, it’s also nice to know that the smaller glowing boost pads on the field will increase your boost gauge by 12 (out of 100), and the larger glowing boost pads around the edges of the field with orbs above them will fully replenish your boost meter. It may be tempting to only go for the fully replenishing, larger boost pads, but the smaller pads are in far more abundance and placed in very strategic spots for your convenience all around the field.
In matches, I try to manage my boost as best as possible. I’m guilty of always trying to keep my boost meter as full as possible at all times, but in doing this, I’ve missed so many opportunities to make a play for my team. You only need a little bit of boost to make a lot of different types of play happen, so try to stick to a routine to look for boost. If I’ve just cleared the ball away from the net, I look for a few small boost pads on my way to the ball; I’ll likely be needing boost soon! Since I usually stay in Ball Cam, I still sometimes get confused on which way to steer my car when I’m technicaly driving in reverse according to the Ball Cam’s perspective, so I find it difficult to line myself up in the direction of the nearest boost pad sometimes. In cases like this, I toggle out of that camera and line my car up to the nearest boost pad. Once I’m lined up to hit the pad if I keep moving straight, I switch right back to Ball Cam.
You can also start learning the difference in hitting the ball at break-neck speed versus just giving it a little love tap with the tip of your bumper. Understanding that the faster your vehicle is moving when you hit it the faster the ball’s velocity will be a game changer in cherry-picking (when your teammate sets you up for a goal) tactics. Remember this when all the ball needs is just a little love tap to score, because hitting it with too much excitement could result in you completely missing the opportunity of scoring for your team.
Love Tap
With Speed
With Boost
Your opponent is more important than the ball.
Rocket League’s ball’s physics are very reliable. Over time, you can teach yourself to predict about 99% of the ball’s outcomes (with the 1% being moments like kickoff or when two cars clip the ball at the edge of the wall and it just sorta… flies away randomly?). This reliability is an important reminder because you can teach yourself not where the ball is, but instead where the ball is going to be in the upcoming moments of play.
Learning to read the room around me has helped me stay calm in tense moments. If I take a split-second to spin the camera around before going for a defensive maneuver, I usually spot an opposing team’s player going for the ball as well. At this point, I usually decide to go Boom the other player rather than the ball because unlike in real soccer, there are no red cards in Rocket League!
Learn to control your car in the air by extending your jumps.
Once you feel comfortable with all of the ground/near-ground controls, work on your jumps. Or rather, your loooooong jumps. You don’t need to know how to “fly” to properly defend in Rocket League. If you can read the room and use your third eye to predict when someone is about to score, try interrupting their shot by jumping at the perfect time! If you feel like they’ll hit the ball a bit higher than your typical jump will be able to reach, use boost to “extend” said jump. To do this, simultaneously hold the jump button and roll your car juuuust backward enough so that its hood is pointing upwards. As soon as you reach the peak of the jump, use the boost button to let out spurts of rocket boost. This too will come with practice, but if done correctly, you can pretty much stay in the air until you run out of boost. It has helped me to see scoring goals less as hitting a ball with a car, and more as scoring a beautiful header in a soccer match. Again, the physics of the ball is important to remember here too. The longer you are boosting through the air, the faster you’ll go, therefore the harder you’ll hit the ball.
A minute feels like a lifetime mid-game.
Just because you’re down by a couple of goals when it feels like time is running out DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD QUIT THE MATCH. I’ve had miracle goals more times than I can count, and tieing up a game with only 30 seconds left makes for a great gaming experience. A minute truly is a lifetime in Rocket League.
Smells like team spirit.
As stressful as Rocket League can get, I never fail to praise a beautiful shot, a sick-nasty save, or perfect pass. Using the D-Pad to Quick Chat my teammates and opponents is one of my favorite features in Rocket League. Voice chat with random folks online might make you uncomfortable, but Quick Chat is a great solution around that. The basic hotkeys included on the D-Pad are great, but again, the settings menu’s “Chat” page lets you completely customize the D-Pad to be whatever you want it to be. Using Quick Chat often has added a lot of chemistry to teams with people I’ve never met or played with before. It just feels good to be praised for doing something good for your team!
By default, voice and text chat are allowed in your game by everyone, but in the early days of Rocket League, I decided to disable typed text chat, and only allow Quick Chat in the settings screen. I love this feature, and recommend going this route if you feel some players get to be a little too toxic for your liking… A similar setting can be found for voice chat, where you can only speak to your own teammates, or no one at all if you choose!
And finally, jam out!
Rocket League does not hide its appreciation of dance-friendly music. The soundtrack has some of the grooviest tunes I’ve ever encountered in a game. A growing number of songs have helped get me through the stress of losing game after game. I’ve chosen a few songs from the expansive playlists available in the main menu to give you a hint of what it’s like to score a goal at the exact moment the beat drops with music like this.
Of course, if the “whub-whub” sounds and frequent beat drops don’t quite tickle your fancy, you can always play your favorite tunes via a music player of your choice. 99% of the time I’m playing Rocket League, Spotify is also fired up on my PlayStation and I’m listening to music while in a match. It definitely helps keep me loose in stressful moments.
Welcome, fellow Rocket Leaguer!
To wrap things up, I’d like to wish you the best in your Rocket League future. I cannot stress how much more fun this treasure of a game can be when played with a friend either locally or online. If these tips don’t help you in your pursuit of Rocket League enjoyment, I completely understand if this game is not for you. But if it is, and Rocket League manages to hypnotize you into an addictive trance... welcome to the club.