Someone get an ethics committee to take a long hard look at Psyonix's methods—Dr Frankenstein would fear some of the creations that crawl from its doors. First, it spliced rockets with sports cars, and we said nothing. Then it fused rocket cars with football, and still we stood by. Recently, it introduced a pitch in the shape of a doughnut, but its blasphemies continue go unchecked, because basketball is next on the chopping block.

In celebration of March Madness (a big ol' college basketball tournament in the States), the Rocket League Twitter account dropped the image above with the hashtag #RocketLeagueHoops ahead of an update "later this year".

There's no indication of whether Hoops will be part of the experimental Rocket Labs mode or a standalone like the hockey-inspired Snow Day, but I think it's safe to say it won't be appearing in Competitive.

While I'm disappointed that Psyonix has missed the opportunity to christen 'The Boom League' or 'Hyper Bowl', an official Rocket League Championship Series has been a long time coming.

Rocket League  has been supported by ESL almost since launch, allowing players to organise their own tournaments. MLG also held a thrilling open Rocket League series will a prize pool of $500, but Psyonix, in conjunction with Twitch, is now offering $75,000 to the RLCS victors.

Starting March 25, anyone can register for the qualifiers in teams of three—the format in which all RLCS games will be played. Season will last three months, and in addition to PC players, you can expect to be matched up against our funny ol' PlayStation cousins with additional platform support "to be revealed in future".

I'm a doubles man, myself, but if you feel like asserting dominance, I'll be playing some duels in the tournament gaming area at the PC Gamer Weekender this, well, weekend. Grab your tickets here.

Put to the back of your mind the blatancy of the promotional tie-in and the fact that Batman has about as little to do with Rocket League as it does with quality PC ports—that didn't stop the DeLorean after all. There is something inescapably fantastic about scoring rocket-goals and demolishing lesser cars as the Batmobile.

You'll be able to do just that from March 8 with the elegantly named Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Car Pack, priced $2. I must admit I'm more taken by the sound of that engine and the Bat-splosions than I am the look of the car itself, but for hardcore DC fans, there are also Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman toppers.

Sadly it doesn't look like the arena in the trailer will be making an appearance, but to achieve this much Psyonix's marketing department must be working overtime.

This news comes in addition to the sudden arrival of patch 1.13 last night, which splits competitive skill tiers into divisions so you can get a better feel for your progress, be it forwards or backwards.

Never let it be said that Psyonix doesn't listen to its community, even if that community is as fickle as can be. I was all buoyed up at the ranking changes that accompanied Rocket League's second season—they promised to solve the huge swings in rank that were a product of using a rank-independent MMR to handle the matchmaking. With the introduction of broad skill tiers, the swings are certainly gone, but the problem is that there's no indication of how close you are to the next tier. You don't know whether you're getting any better till a promotion (or demotion) hits you out of the blue. In the next update, Psyonix hopes to give us a hint.

Each skill tier will be split into five divisions, each representing 20% progress towards the next division. In Division V, you're close to promotion.

Apparently (being forever average, I wouldn't know from experience) there's a problem within the current highest tier of Champion. It contains too broad a range of players, from those with Jedi-like reflexes through to people of mere human skill. The answer is three new tiers: Superstar will occupy the position Champion has now, topped by Champion, Super Champion and Grand Champion. 

At present, Champion contains 0.91% of Rocket League players. After the patch, Grand Champion will hold just 0.07%. In addition, everyone in that Grand Champion tier will see their actual skill rating as opposed to a division to know how close they are to the leaderboards. Why this can't be extended to everyone beyond Psyonix's desire to "move away from the constant feedback of point gain and loss from individual matches" I couldn't tell you, but the extra gradation ought to prove a bit more compelling.

The patch will be released "as soon as we can".

I've played something like 140 hours on Rocket League's standard field: a rounded rectangle with sloping walls. That's a Rocket League field to me, and it feels strange to play on any other—try as Psyonix does to introduce experimental new maps. It's just not Rocket League to me when the map is a wacky circular track. Could the NBA add trapeze bars to the court so that Zach LaVine can swing into double backflip dunks? Yes. And it would be awesome. But it wouldn't be NBA basketball anymore—it's too radical a change to take seriously, and the game would lose meaning.

But the new 'Rocket Labs' maps like the circular one I mentioned aren't the big Rocket League controversy of late—they're sequestered in their own casual playlist so you don't have to play them if you don't want to. The Wasteland map, however, is now part of the competitive playlist, and that's got some voices raised (or capslocked, I guess). It's not all that different from the regular maps at first glance, but its gentle slopes do influence the ball quite a bit. The decision is so contested that Psyonix has had to prevent players from deleting the map to avoid it.

I was also against adding non-standard maps to the competitive playlist at first, but after some thought I've decided it's not a crazy idea at all. It's a good idea, even. Maybe Wasteland itself shouldn't be in competitive play—I don't particularly like the map—but slight variants should absolutely have a place.

If Rocket League is a simulacrum of physical team sports, why shouldn't its fields vary a little? The Arizona Coyotes, for instance, have had a notoriously hard time maintaining good ice quality in the NHL's hottest city, and you have to imagine they're more prepared than visiting teams when things are a little slushy (though it's better of late, I've heard). And because baseball is a weird sport that loves to defy consistency, ballparks can be all kinds of different shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, some of the most memorable NFL games have been played in inclement weather. What would the sport be without weird games like the 1967 'Ice Bowl,' in which the turf heating system failed and the Cowboys and Packers played on frozen grass on a  15  F day?

Variations in the playing field are coded into sports: we talk about 'home advantage' and 'hitter-friendly ballparks' and turf and ice quality. And Rocket League does such a good job of digitizing all the goofy flailing and wild bounces of sports that I don't see why it should leave out field variance, preferring strict computerized consistency. Imagine a Rocket League with a standard field, and, say, five or so slight variants. Maybe one has a couple bumpy patches, and another tilts a little to the side. Now you can introduce tournaments which allow teams to pick home fields, with the the top seeded team playing 'at home' first. As long as we're not talking about tossing in loop-the-loops or anything extreme, I imagine it'd be a fun extra layer of strategy, and make the game even more interesting for spectators. 

But no loop-the-loops, definitely. It's funny: in shooters, the number of different maps is a feature—12 maps! Holy cow!—but in Rocket League, anything that deviates too far from the standard field just distracts me with the notion that I'm not practicing proper competitive skills. Given how long it took me to find a match in the Rocket Labs playlist today, I'd say the feeling is shared.

I feel bad, because Psyonix has put some good effort into the Tron-styled deviations, and two of them work really well. One is a circular track with the goals slicing a small section such that you can drive through in one goal and out the other in a second. It means that, after a failed attack, you can boost through the opponent's goal, fly out of your own goal, and make a save. It's a regular Rocket League game with a wormhole between both sides of the field, condensing the play by removing all the sprinting between ends, and it's fun. Another is a traditional rectangular field, but each goal is divided down the middle into two, which mostly just means you have to tip the ball at different angles. The third, which I don't care for as much, has standard goals but adds raised platforms running along the sides of the field—it makes things more awkward, but I can't see yet what the intention behind it is.

Whether or not I like the Rocket Labs maps, though, playing on them just makes me itch for the competitive playlist and its standard maps. But as long as the competitive maps are roughly the same shape and size, and don't throw in any skate parks—just subtle variations I can imagine real field having—I'm all for a little variety. It gives me another thing I can hope to master in Rocket League.

I find  the inclusion of the Wasteland arena in Rocket League's competitive playlists questionable—it doesn't make sense to me that a lone, non-standard map should be included in a highly regular, sports-like format. Its like playing one in every five NFL matches at The Oval. Some people are bothered by the wide, sloped Wasteland map more than me, it seems, and they've been deleting its files to avoid it. This, Psyonix has declared, is just not cricket.

Patch 1.12 is in place, meaning that anybody found to have fiddled with their game files will receive an automatic time-limited matchmaking ban, giving them a chance to sheepishly verify the integrity of their game cache.

Reaction on the Steam forums is mixed, with some indulging their caps lock to demand Wasteland's removal and others simply sick of hearing it.

Also in the patch is a handful of bugfixes:

• Skill Rating calculation has been fixed on the League Rankings screen and now accurately reflects your MMR
• Fixed an issue that caused the Ranked Reconnect popup to appear improperly during gameplay
• Fixed an issue that caused players to lose input in the Muting menu
• Competitive games are now properly labeled on the in-game score card
• Players will no longer incorrectly appear to be in a party on the scoreboard
• Fixed an issue that allowed Ballcam to be enabled/disabled erroneously in the post game screen
• Fixed an issue that displayed party members' cars incorrectly in the main menu
• Fixed an issue with how the Max FPS slider capped frame rate
• Fixed an issue causing users with large Steam Friend Lists to experience graphical hitches

Play on. With Wasteland installed, of course.

Duel it out in Rocket League in the PC Gamer Weekender's tournament gaming area. Our UK live event is packed to the rafters with exclusive game premiers, PC gaming heroes and all the kit you ve ever dreamed of. Book your tickets now.

Rocket League is already pretty intense as a 3v3 experience, and the 4v4 is a nerve-wracking mode for punishment seeking petrol heads. Nevertheless, Psyonix won't rule out increasing the player count even more, according to the studio's Vice President Jeremy Dunham. In an interview on the Major Nelson podcast, Dunham said they might return to the idea one day.

"We experimented with larger player counts but it's too crazy," Dunham said. "Maybe one day we'll revisit it if we decide to go with bigger stadiums. But for now, more than 4v4 we think takes a little bit away from the enjoyment of the game. It gets a little too crazy."

It'd be good for a laugh though, right? Thanks to what appears to be a matchmaking bug, you can actually watch a 5v5 match below (albeit on PS4), and while it doesn't look terrible, those two extra vehicles make the field look much more crowded.

Cheers, Gamespot.

What would a PC gaming event be without some virtual blood sport? The PC Gamer Weekender, in association with EGL, will feature a heaving tournament gaming area when it opens in London's Old Truman Brewery, March 5-6. Dota 2, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Street Fighter 5 and Rocket League will all be available for you to test your mettle against fellow Weekenders.

In Street Fighter 5, it's winner stays on. In Rocket League, you'll be duelling it out. Dota 2 will be played in 1v1 solo mid mode, with the first person to score two kills or destroy a tower declared the victor, and a custom version of League of Legends will deliver one-on-one competition in Howling Abyss.

In every game, you stand to win top loot from the folks at Lenovo and GT Omega. Tournaments will operate on a first-come, first-served basis, so be sure to book tickets and head over to the Weekender's registration area early to guarantee a spot. The next 500 Weekender tickets are a trifling 9.99.

I'll even be playing a few Rocket League friendlies if you think you're hard enough. But no flying. Or ramming. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you didn't touch the ball at all.

Hallelujah. Since the announcement in mid-January that cosmetic crowns would be awarded based on your Season 1 rank, I've been too afraid to play Rocket League competitively lest I slip from my precarious score of 400—the very edge of Silver. Now the silver crown is mine, however questionably, and the entire ranking system has been thrown out the window for the start of Season 2, in addition to some welcome PC-specific changes.

No longer will players climb the ladder based on points separate from the hidden MMR score that attempts to match rocketeers based on skill. Instead, we'll be split into divisions, and it'll take more than a handful of losses to bump you one lower. Ten placement matches must be played to be assigned a division in each of the competitive playlists. You can read Andy's breakdown of the new system here.

In big news for people not keen on smack talk and widespread spite, a beta player-reporting feature has been added which submits the match's full chat log to Psyonix. Hopefully it'll water down some of the more poisonous 'What a save!' spamming, but I also expect each and every goal to be followed with a cry of 'Report!'

Performance has been improved overall, which is excellent considering the notoriously taxing Wasteland arena is now part of competitive playlists, and, most excitingly, the framerate can now be uncapped. Previously it was limited to 60fps. And good news for those of us running at 1440p and above: the UI has been made scalable to offset its unaccountable expansion after the last patch.

On top of all this, the experimental Rocket Labs playlist has been patched in, uncommon loot has been added and bugs with the hand-braking of a number of cars has been fixed. All in all, one heck of an update. Full notes here. Gl;hf.

I have an abusive relationship with Rocket League, to the extent that I've been banned from playing it in the office. Samuel refuses to talk about it at all. He wants me to get out of a bad place, but something keeps calling me back. I log back in, go on a hot streak, cross the line into the next division, then Rocket League sees its opportunity: "Back to unranked!" it yells. "No sense of personal achievement for you!"

This soul-destroying but inescapable cycle makes me extra grateful for the fluff that accompanies Rocket League's ranked playlists. The mutators are a laugh with mates, and the Snow Day hockey map was a surprising change of pace from ball-chasing. Alongside changes to matchmaking in this month's update, Rocket League will be enshrining the experimental spirit in a new Rocket Labs mode.

Rocket Labs is a test range for wacky new maps that would cause a stir if dropped into competitive matchmaking. The first three maps in the playlist are Utopia Retro, a circular map from Rocket League progenitor Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars; Underpass, with varying sloped sides for crazy aerial play; and Double Goal, a keeper's nightmare.

They're works-in-progress, and player feedback will help Psyonix decide which get finished and become a permanent fixture. One curious development, given its slightly non-standard shape, is the addition of the Wasteland map to competitive playlists—could we be looking at a future for Rocket League in which players must learn or specialise in multiple maps? If your PC's performance takes a hit on Wasteland (maybe due to those mysterious unused assets outside the arena), you'll be please to hear it'll be optimised.

Thanks, Gamespot.