I Played Rocket League for 30 Days — Here is What I learnt
So I might be a little late to the party, rocket league has been around for several years now, but I chose to pick this game up as I was struggling to find time to play the games I enjoy such as Apex Legends and Minecraft. To fully immerse myself in an Apex legends session I felt like I needed at least an hour, and for Minecraft, it was closer to two hours. On the other hand, I found that rocket league provides a much different experience, with its quick-fire games I found myself completely engrossed in around 15 minutes. This fits very well into my lifestyle so I decided to keep playing and see what I could learn in 30 days.
Time to get training, car football eh? How hard can it be? Pretty darn hard I would soon discover. I didn’t conduct this journey alone, I played heavily with a good friend and he was somewhat of a rocket league wizard. He introduced me to some of the more advanced techniques and gave me some tips on how to progress. There was a fair amount of cursing directed my way, the term “braindead plays” and “you’re a bot” were thrown around a lot in the early stages.
Fortunately, to save my ego, a few of my family members also picked up rocket league at the same time as me. This helped me to gauge my skill level and meant I wasn’t constantly the weakest player as I was frequently playing ranked doubles matches with my friend.
My initial strategy was playing safe and waiting for players to make errors which provided good opportunities for a counter-attack. At times, this worked rather well, many players at low levels tend to overestimate their abilities, and when they fail at attempting intermediate to advanced techniques, you are often left with a good opportunity to score.
After noticing that committing to such plays left me highly vulnerable if I were to miss, I became a very safe player. I happily planted my car on the ground for 95% of games, somewhat relying on mistakes from my opponents, and most of the time, they came.
The problem with this strategy is that rocket league relies heavily on aerials, and by not meeting the ball head-on for aerial shots mid-pitch, I had to hang back near my goal line for fear of being lobbed. This allowed my opponents to drive far up into my side of the field which put the ball in difficult positions to defend.
It did not take long to realize that this tactic was not sustainable, and when my opponents started to learn that driving the ball up the side of the wall drops the ball nicely over my goal line for an easy finish, it was time to become a more aggressive player.
Learning the mechanics of aerials took a long time to get the hang of. Whilst simple 1 jump finishes near the goal became relatively simple early on, meeting high balls in the open pitch is still an issue that plagues me today.
My main problem starts with my car positioning, when lining my car up for an aerial shot I found that most of the time I was too close to the ball, and by the time I had got to the desired height I had been lobbed, which puts me out of the game for a while whilst I’m in the air, leaving my poor partner in a 2 vs 1 situation.
Similarly, the double jump mechanic proved difficult to learn. In rocket league it is essential to meet the ball first, if you feel like your opponent will meet the ball in the air quicker than you can, it is always best to not contest in the air and wait for the ball to fall. This is why double jumping is so essential; it is the quickest way to gain elevation to meet the ball.
My problem with double jumping stems from my over-reliance on the flip forward mechanic. By holding any direction on the d-pad and pressing x your card rolls and you get a quick burst of speed. Unfortunately for me, I found it difficult to get out of the habit of holding a direction whilst double-tapping x to double jump. This resulted in an undesired flip forward or backwards.
The only mistake being made here is holding a direction too early, to perform the double jump correctly, x has to be pressed twice prior to tilting your car in the air, but due to my muscle memory for the flip forward, I always hold direction first. I fear it may take a while to break this habit.
But onto the successes. By frequently attempting more difficult plays I found that I improved at a much quicker rate. I learned where the ball was likely to fall, how to use angles, and how to play cohesively with my teammates. My abilities in the air have seen great positive strides, I am very confident in low aerial balls, and my defending on the goal line has improved immensely; by double jumping and boosting I am able to cover the whole goal now which has significantly reduced the number of times I get lobbed.
I also learnt the weaknesses of the people I was playing with. My brother, who is a very safe player who is strong on the ground is great at defending, but still has too much reliance on staying on his goal line. I developed a strategy to expose this weakness in 2 vs 2 matches. Either I or my partner would roll the ball up the sidewall of his goal, and whilst my brother was lining up his car to defend in the air I would demolition his car, taking him out the game long enough to score a relatively simple goal.
I can say that I am very happy with the progress I have made in rocket league during these 30 days, and whilst I cannot do many of the advanced techniques I understand the mechanics of how to perform them, and in time I am sure they will become part of my arsenal.
If there are two things I have learnt about this great game it’s that consistency is what separates average from great players, and that you should never give up on a game if there’s theoretically enough time on the clock to make a comeback. Scoring 3 goals in 30 seconds is not as unheard of as you would think. Here’s to the next 30 days, I can’t wait to see what I can master.
