YMMV / Rocket League

• Abridged Arena Array: There used to be more variety in competitive field shapes. Now every competitive map is identical to the next, with only the backgrounds differing.
• Broken Base: Varied stages like Wasteland, Neo-Tokyo, and Starbase Arc were this before everything became standardised, especially to those who played Ranked. They are either in favor for stage variety, or are familiar to normal stages.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Hoo boy!
  • In general, regardless of whether you go into casual or competitive gamemodes, if you're just out there having fun with people you've never met, you will get yelled at. In casual gamemodes, if you are playing to win as though it were a competitive match, you will get called a tryhard. Playing too loose gets you yelled at, but playing too hard also gets you yelled at. Find the right balance.
  • As far as mechanics are concerned, it will quickly become apparent as you climb up the rankings that the better a person is when it comes to playing the ball in the air, the higher ranks they will achieve. Lower-level players play the game almost entirely on the ground, with maybe the odd wall-hit. Then you make your way up to a high level and you have to be just as good in the air as you are on the ground, or else you'll fall right back down the ladder.
  • If one uses the 2016 Batmobile, they are almost immediately accused of being a tryhard, especially back when it was considered the best car, and a pay2win DLC car (actual skill irrelevant). If you use any of the worst four (the Backfire, Scarab, Roadhog, or Merc), you will get laughed at or jeered by your teammates.
  • Casual players generally loathe demos. Competitive players will demo whenever it is constructive to do so.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: You are likely to see the Batmobile, the Breakout, the Dominus, the Octane, the Plank, and the Hybrid in almost every ranked match because these are generally considered the vehicles with the best combination of stats. Other vehicles are good too, but those six are considered the best and are frequently used by the majority of the playerbase.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Aerials. To the point where even basic Aerials aren't even regularly used until around low Diamond. The professional scene and higher Champion divisions play almost as much of their game in the air and on the walls as they do on the ground.
  • Flip reset, an Aerial move taken to its conclusion. If you touch the ball with all four wheels at once, the game will count it as a surface contact and regain your flips, allowing for further maneuvering and air dribbling. Actually doing the thing requires complex setup and near-perfect execution (to the point where even professional players struggle to nail the trick consistently), but it pays off with gravity-defying shots that are both entertaining to look at and very hard to defend against.
• Fandom Rivalry: With the Undertale fandom. After winning the award for "Best Independent Game" at the 2015 Game Awards, fans of Undertale were split as to whether or not Rocket League deserved it, since the game can be considered superior gameplay-wise, but is in all other regards a very conventional multiplayer game, whereas Undertale was more experimental and attempted to push the envelope on video games as a medium by commenting on and even deconstructing many of the gameplay mechanics and story elements found in RPGs.
  • Recently, it started clashing with Fortnite due to Epic Games acquiring Psyonix and subsequent plans of Rocket League being released on Epic Games' store. Doesn't help the fact that, aside from a poorly worded announcement that made so many players believe that Rocket League would stop selling on Steam once the acquisition was complete that Epic had to append the announcement clearing up confusion, both Fortnite and Rocket League has both a season pass and a rotating in-game shop of cosmetics.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Merc car is referred to as the "Paedo Van" due to its shape resembling the stereotypical "Free Candy" vans often made fun of around the internet.
  • For a time (not so prevalent anymore), Starbase was referred to as "Stopsign" when it was octagonal in shape instead of the typical rectangle it is now.
• Friendly Fandoms: Within the competitive scene itself, there are two sets of players: people who play the game, and people who freestyle. The former crowd, of course, is full of people playing one of the many varieties of car soccer that Rocket League has to offer with the goal of being as good as possible. The latter crowd, however, tend to spend most of their time in Free Play creating acrobatic tricks or skill compilation videos to show off the most stylish ways to score a goal or play the game. These two crowds intersect, however, as freestylers will often be the first players to discover a new mechanic or a new trick in the game, and the competitive scene will find a way to adapt it and use it within the game.
• Gameplay Derailment: "Rule 1", an unofficial gentlemen's agreement among Rocket League players where if two opponents ram into each other nose-to-nose and both are locked in place, they must continue trying to drive forward. Jumping over or backing out of your own volition isn't punished or called out, but it is somewhat frowned upon. It is even observed in the pro circuit.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • There are a few jokes, found in the game's Subreddit, calling this game "Hot Wheels Soccer" (to the point that a few of these examples are from a subreddit named as such). Try to guess what DLC cars are next... Heck, there was this animation of Hot Wheels back then in 2009 where they basically played Rocket League, Watch it yourself!
  • Someone made a YouTube video in 2018 showing what would happen if Rocket League was owned by Epic Games; Psyonix and the Rocket League IP was acquired by Epic on May 1, 2019, much to the dismay of Steam users.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Pretty much anything from Video Game Dunkey's videos of the game, naturally.
    • Daaaaat'sss a goal!
    • "It's a slaaaaaaaam dunk!"
    • The clan IKON has become a mini-meme among donkey fans.
  • The quick-chat phrases. Especially when taunting.
    • What a save! Nice shot! Nice one! Great pass!
    • Calculated.
    • Chat has been disabled for X seconds.
  • Change Team.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Wasteland featured a gentle but noticeable incline on its sides that did affect the ball's bounce. People hated it to the point where even now that the ground has been entirely flattened, it's one of the most-blocked maps in peoples' playlists. Neo Tokyo had a much more obvious setup, with three levels and slopes between them, but it is still played on after the different levels were taken away.
  • Aquadome is infamous for causing low framerates on some players, especially to those who play on laptops or "mid-end" PCs. Even though this problem is patched, there are a few players who are still not convinced at this fact.
  • Starbase used to be octagonal in shape (it was sometimes referred to as Stopsign because of this). While this map modification was far more manageable than Neo Tokyo or Wasteland were, there was still plenty of Damn You, Muscle Memory! involved, particularly when it came to boost pads. It was patched into a normal shape pretty quickly after release.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Among lower-ranked players (even as high as Diamond), demos. While demos are very important to gameplay at a high level, as they represent disrupting the opposition's positioning and/or mechanics, at lower levels if you demo, you run the risk of retaliation and the match just devolving into a demolition derby cycle of revenge. Not to mention, typically at lower levels, if a player is constantly demoing and ramming the opposition, it usually means they're trolling or throwing by not contributing anything directly (or they're tilted and angry with one particular player), while sometimes even hitting their own teammates.
• Sequel Displacement: It's quite easy to forget that this game is a sequel to a similar game with a much longer title.
• That One Level:
  • Starbase, Aquadome, Neo Tokyo, and Wasteland were considered this due to their changes to the field dimensions, or due to low framerates and poor optimization. They've all since been fixed, though all four remain unpopular.
  • From the Rocket Labs arenas:
    • Pillars. Two huge pillars stand between you and the goal, effectively splitting the field into 3 thin corridors, requiring you to have excellent rotation to guard all three of them at once.
    • Double Goal, As it name suggests, has you guard two adjacent goals. Sounds simple enough, until you realize that both goals are angled in a way that makes a simple wall-riding ball much more likely to roll right into your goal! Oh, and don't expect to just be able to take a straight shot towards center, cause there's a divider in front of it.
    • The limited-time Corridor. A thin, long arena which makes it very easy for the ball to be powershot across the field at high speed, especially if all your teammates are currently at mid-field.
  • The Throwback Stadium can be intimidating for new players due to the walls being moved back from the goal.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The game went free-to-play and tied to the Epic Games Store in mid-September 2020, and with that rollout came a user interface change that saw the main menu be streamlined and several options be nested within others. Of note, Quick Play and Training both disappeared and were nested under "Play Game", causing loads of backlash from players who overall felt that although the new design was flashier, it was functionally a downgrade.
  • Further changes have been made which are not popular. 4v4 mode was removed, as well as a move to a Seasons model, making some extra game modes alternate - so in winter, you can't play Dropshot, which has its fans due to being a different vibe entirely. Game modes being removed for no understood reason is not well accepted.
    • Plus, when Epic bought it, people panicked thinking it would be removed from Steam. Epic denied this. Give it a year, and.. The game is not available on Steam.

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