Hey guys! I'm making this small guide to help new players and those stuck in ranks below diamond to learn more about Rocket League since the game has a pretty high learning curve. And of course feel free to ask questions and comment more tips and tricks!
So, a little backstory. I've been playing Rocket League since early last year. It was fun the first few weeks but I ended up stopping for a few months because I felt like I wasn't learning anything or improving at all. I watched all the tutorials that I could watch and yet, I felt like I was still lacking something. And then one day, I came up with a solution that made me improve in the span of a few months. But i'll tell you guys what the solution is after I discuss the guide.
To this day, I still strongly believe in these 3 words that sum up the game play of Rocket League. And to me, these are the core components of anybody playing. Whether they play solo or are in a team.
Positioning
So a team in Rocket League consists of either two or three people. One attacks, one supports, and one anchors and is ready to defend or continue the attack by rotating. But every person in the team must know how to do all of these things because of rotation. In a nutshell, rotation is basically swapping your position with a teammate because either you need more boost, or your teammate is in a much better position to attack now so you race back to a defensive position to be ready to defend or pass.
Now in lower ranks, the rotations are very clunky or sometimes even non-existent. There'll be a lot of times where everybody just follows the ball and tries to get a touch just for the sake of playing. Which brings me to the next area of positioning which is:
Patience
Take your time. Wait for the next touch. When I was stuck around silver this was something I lacked. If you see everybody crowding up on the ball, try to imagine where the ball will go next. And position yourself so that you'll be ready when it does happen. In bronze and silver there have been numerous scenarios where the ball would just simply roll slowly towards the goal just because nobody was there to defend it.
In higher ranks though, even though without communication, most people know their rotations so a basic tip would be to make a triangle always with your team. If you form a triangle, on most occasions, the ball will end up nearer to one person thus there won't be much confusion as who should hit the ball. Another tip is to read your opponent, see if they have any patterns and if they do, think of how you can exploit that pattern to use it against them.
Recovery
This skill is simple to learn, and yet, can make all the difference in a match. It improves your positioning by tenfold. Say if you were bumped by an opponent, or on some occasions, your teammate. Back then, All i'd do was just to wait till my car stopped flipping around and i'd press the jump button to get back in the game. But that cost me time, maybe about 5-10 seconds. And in Rocket League, every second counts. So I'd advise you to watch videos on recovering in rocket league and practice it in training mode. There's still some days where I just stay in training mode for a few minutes before jumping in a match just to keep my recovery skills in check. Also make sure to learn how to half-flip too. Half-flipping gives you tighter angles for defense and an easier way to get back in play when the ball bounces behind your car.
Passing
Rocket League is basically soccer, except with explosions, and with jet-propelled cars so of course the good teams will know that passing is a very dangerous advantage. For example, why would I decide to shoot from the side, when a teammate who is in the middle, has much more options of shooting. There are some exceptions to this e.g. when everybody else is low on boost and you're the only one who has enough to continue the attack. But on most occasions, passing plays are very hard to defend, especially when the opposing team doesn't communicate very well.
The most basic pass in lower ranks is usually just hitting or rolling the ball on the corner wall and across the opposing team's goal for an easy tap-in by a teammate. But then we have teams like Cloud 9 that thrive on small in-field passing. So get creative, find what works for you and your team.
Communication
Backstory again! So I played solo for a maybe half a year, Too shy of my skill, one day I decided, "Maybe a team could help improve me more.". So I found a team, but they were all from the US. But they were cool with me joining. And I played with these guys for maybe a month, the only disadvantage I had was my ping. Since majority of the team was from the US, we played on the US servers. But boy did I learn a lot from them. Even though they were all better than me, they were patient and taught me different mechanics. And one day, ESL came. My team didn't have anybody available for the 1v1 tournament bracket but me, so they decided to let me participate. And of course I was scared, Did I win the tournament? No. Of course not, those are all Grand Champions playing for money there. But I won the first round. And I was proud as hell, my team was too! I finally felt that I actually improved at the game and this was the turning point for me to make Rocket League my main game.
TLDR : Find people to play with constantly, and you'll improve each other as you play.
And now, I've been playing with some Filipinos for maybe half a year already! And our communication has gotten to the point where we don't even need discord to know who has the ball or who's going to try to take the ball. We all started at around Plat and Gold and now all three of us are diamonds!
Play-style
Now, for new players and mostly those in lower ranks, they'll be confused as to what they specialize in. But as you play more and more, you'll eventually get to know that you do have a preferred position, and way of playing. For example, in my early days, I just used to be the goalkeeper, I'd barely step outside of the goal because of fear that there'd be a ball hurtling toward the goal in a split second (Which has actually happened, and still does) But now I've changed into an anchor/supporting role (one who is ready to defend and intercept passes, or punt/pass the ball back up to keep pressure going). Play-style develops and sometimes even changes over time, so my tip here is to know your strengths, and build on those strengths. And know your weaknesses, and find ways to lessen, or even negate your weakness.
So that's it that's the end of a pretty short guide, and the solution I was talking about earlier? It's practice. No, not practicing every single thing you see listed here all in one day. But practicing a single thing I talked about till you master it. Then after you master it, move to the next item on the list! That was my main problem, I wanted to learn everything in a day when I could have been mastering one thing for a day.
Anyways, here're some additional tips that I find useful:
So, a little backstory. I've been playing Rocket League since early last year. It was fun the first few weeks but I ended up stopping for a few months because I felt like I wasn't learning anything or improving at all. I watched all the tutorials that I could watch and yet, I felt like I was still lacking something. And then one day, I came up with a solution that made me improve in the span of a few months. But i'll tell you guys what the solution is after I discuss the guide.
To this day, I still strongly believe in these 3 words that sum up the game play of Rocket League. And to me, these are the core components of anybody playing. Whether they play solo or are in a team.
- Positioning
- Passing
- Play-style
Positioning
So a team in Rocket League consists of either two or three people. One attacks, one supports, and one anchors and is ready to defend or continue the attack by rotating. But every person in the team must know how to do all of these things because of rotation. In a nutshell, rotation is basically swapping your position with a teammate because either you need more boost, or your teammate is in a much better position to attack now so you race back to a defensive position to be ready to defend or pass.
Now in lower ranks, the rotations are very clunky or sometimes even non-existent. There'll be a lot of times where everybody just follows the ball and tries to get a touch just for the sake of playing. Which brings me to the next area of positioning which is:
Patience
Take your time. Wait for the next touch. When I was stuck around silver this was something I lacked. If you see everybody crowding up on the ball, try to imagine where the ball will go next. And position yourself so that you'll be ready when it does happen. In bronze and silver there have been numerous scenarios where the ball would just simply roll slowly towards the goal just because nobody was there to defend it.
In higher ranks though, even though without communication, most people know their rotations so a basic tip would be to make a triangle always with your team. If you form a triangle, on most occasions, the ball will end up nearer to one person thus there won't be much confusion as who should hit the ball. Another tip is to read your opponent, see if they have any patterns and if they do, think of how you can exploit that pattern to use it against them.
Recovery
This skill is simple to learn, and yet, can make all the difference in a match. It improves your positioning by tenfold. Say if you were bumped by an opponent, or on some occasions, your teammate. Back then, All i'd do was just to wait till my car stopped flipping around and i'd press the jump button to get back in the game. But that cost me time, maybe about 5-10 seconds. And in Rocket League, every second counts. So I'd advise you to watch videos on recovering in rocket league and practice it in training mode. There's still some days where I just stay in training mode for a few minutes before jumping in a match just to keep my recovery skills in check. Also make sure to learn how to half-flip too. Half-flipping gives you tighter angles for defense and an easier way to get back in play when the ball bounces behind your car.
Passing
Rocket League is basically soccer, except with explosions, and with jet-propelled cars so of course the good teams will know that passing is a very dangerous advantage. For example, why would I decide to shoot from the side, when a teammate who is in the middle, has much more options of shooting. There are some exceptions to this e.g. when everybody else is low on boost and you're the only one who has enough to continue the attack. But on most occasions, passing plays are very hard to defend, especially when the opposing team doesn't communicate very well.
The most basic pass in lower ranks is usually just hitting or rolling the ball on the corner wall and across the opposing team's goal for an easy tap-in by a teammate. But then we have teams like Cloud 9 that thrive on small in-field passing. So get creative, find what works for you and your team.
Communication
Backstory again! So I played solo for a maybe half a year, Too shy of my skill, one day I decided, "Maybe a team could help improve me more.". So I found a team, but they were all from the US. But they were cool with me joining. And I played with these guys for maybe a month, the only disadvantage I had was my ping. Since majority of the team was from the US, we played on the US servers. But boy did I learn a lot from them. Even though they were all better than me, they were patient and taught me different mechanics. And one day, ESL came. My team didn't have anybody available for the 1v1 tournament bracket but me, so they decided to let me participate. And of course I was scared, Did I win the tournament? No. Of course not, those are all Grand Champions playing for money there. But I won the first round. And I was proud as hell, my team was too! I finally felt that I actually improved at the game and this was the turning point for me to make Rocket League my main game.
TLDR : Find people to play with constantly, and you'll improve each other as you play.
And now, I've been playing with some Filipinos for maybe half a year already! And our communication has gotten to the point where we don't even need discord to know who has the ball or who's going to try to take the ball. We all started at around Plat and Gold and now all three of us are diamonds!
Play-style
Now, for new players and mostly those in lower ranks, they'll be confused as to what they specialize in. But as you play more and more, you'll eventually get to know that you do have a preferred position, and way of playing. For example, in my early days, I just used to be the goalkeeper, I'd barely step outside of the goal because of fear that there'd be a ball hurtling toward the goal in a split second (Which has actually happened, and still does) But now I've changed into an anchor/supporting role (one who is ready to defend and intercept passes, or punt/pass the ball back up to keep pressure going). Play-style develops and sometimes even changes over time, so my tip here is to know your strengths, and build on those strengths. And know your weaknesses, and find ways to lessen, or even negate your weakness.
So that's it that's the end of a pretty short guide, and the solution I was talking about earlier? It's practice. No, not practicing every single thing you see listed here all in one day. But practicing a single thing I talked about till you master it. Then after you master it, move to the next item on the list! That was my main problem, I wanted to learn everything in a day when I could have been mastering one thing for a day.
Anyways, here're some additional tips that I find useful:
- Demo the goalie if you hit the ball high to make a pass
- Bumps are useful when you see the opposing team rotating to attack or defend
- Play smarter first, faster second.
- Rocket League is toxic. But if you focus on improving yourself every single game instead of winning. That's when the game gets fun.
