“Community First” has long been part of our mission statement here at Psyonix, and it’s a mantra we are always pushing to improve upon. The happiness of our players will always drive us to grow and influence the decisions we make in Rocket League, which is why I want to directly address the recent issues with our servers, matchmaking delays, and our PsyNet backend.

In regards to both backend (PsyNet) issues, and game server performance, we agree that the server outages and recent lengthy matchmaking times are totally unacceptable. We sincerely apologize to all of our players for the quality of online play, and we are focusing all of our available resources on addressing PsyNet’s capabilities and performance, and the quality of our game servers.

The number of monthly active Rocket League players has jumped roughly 40% over 2016 in the first few months of this year alone. While our player population continues to grow at a healthy pace, we need to do a better job at scaling up our systems and internal processes to handle this kind of growth. We are growing so fast, both as a company and as a game, that we are racing to fill new positions on our Online Services team (that's the group at Psyonix that builds and maintains our backend systems -- which makes this a good time to mention our Careers page, for those of you who want to come work on Rocket League with us.) We are effectively becoming an Online Service company, as Rocket League is primarily an online game, and we continue to grow in size and scope. Growing this team is one of our top priorities as we approach Rocket League’s two-year anniversary in July.

Our Online Services team continues to work on the PsyNet database; if you have hopped into Rocket League recently and seen, in red letters, “Cannot Connect to Rocket League Servers” where the Playlists normally live, you’re seeing the PsyNet DB gone awry.

Issues with the PsyNet database started spiking around the same time we had a free weekend on Xbox One last month. We have seen more and more of you playing Rocket League online, and this has led to new issues that hadn’t appeared as we scaled our capacity up to this point.

Further complicating the problem has been outages and performance problems within the Google Cloud infrastructure, which we use to power PsyNet. Some of our downtime has resulted from unexpected slowdowns on database operations that led to a death spiral, but ultimately do not appear to have been caused by our own usage or overhead. At the end of the day, however, we need to own our own game’s performance. Here’s what we’ve been doing to address these issues:

• Since the February outages, we assigned additional dedicated staff from our Online Services team to database stability and reliability. They are hard at work on changes like separating high-traffic features like Player Trading and “Scraper API” access used by third party sites from our core services. This will reduce load on the PsyNet database and reduce exposure to outages during peak hours. We definitely don’t want to keep you off the pitch on weekends or holidays.
  
• We are working closely with Google engineers to investigate the disturbances to our database performance from outside our cloud instance.

Issues with matchmaking delays have only become apparent in recent days, going back to the Dropshot release last week. Our matchmaking server has periodically fallen into a problem state with a huge backlog of match reservations -- there are empty servers for you to play on, but PsyNet isn’t putting you into the servers fast enough. This causes the extreme search times being reported on social media.

As this is a new problem, we are still investigating the root cause. We have made changes in the interim to reduce the likelihood of it recurring, but more substantial improvements will be made throughout 2017.

The last category of “server issues” deals with problems when actually connected to a dedicated game server. This is most commonly reported as in-game lag spikes or hiccups independent of the player’s ping to the server.

This problem is particularly difficult to identify because so many issues factor into a user’s experience with a dedicated server. Local connection problems can cause packet loss or an unstable connection despite a steady ping sample. Individual ISPs can have routing issues to one of our server hosts that causes unusually high ping that we have no control over.

However, these outside factors do not mean there are not legitimate issues at hand, and this is another set of problems we need to own. After reports of instability in January, we significantly expanded our hardware investment in Europe, US-East, US-West, and Oceania to reduce our dependency on virtual servers. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a “virtual” server exists in the cloud and can be rapidly spun up in quantity to meet demand. While virtual servers are not inherently bad -- and many games successfully and heavily rely on them -- we weren’t confident in their recent reliability.

For context, we do not view virtual servers as a cost-saving measure, but instead as a way to scale to unexpected demand. It takes time to order and deploy hardware servers, and without a virtual solution, players would be forced to wait in long queues to get into an available server if demand spiked above our capacity.

We ordered enough hardware servers to satisfy demand above our then-peak population to ensure a good experience for everyone. For a time, this seemed to have a positive impact, but the concerns have resurfaced since our latest update.

We are addressing the issues with our game servers on a few fronts:

• We are doing our own profiling as well as working with our server providers to investigate this issue further and seeking a resolution as quickly as possible.
  
• Part of this profiling is completing a performance pass on Dropshot, as we want to ensure the best server performance possible when you’re playing our new game mode. Some of these improvements will be coming in our next patch -- a hotfix we hope to deploy in the very near future.
  
• We are also working on improving our internal metrics to detect and isolate these problems more efficiently and rapidly.
  
• Finally, while we have already invested in new server hardware in Europe and North America, we are continuing to investigate new hardware options in other regions, including Asia, South Africa, and Central America.

Growing pains are just that -- painful -- and we cannot thank our players enough for sticking with us as we continue to grow. Some of the issues we face will be addressed shortly, including those in our next hotfix; while other projects, like growing our Online Services team, will take more time to bear fruit. We thank you for your continued patience during this time, and as always, we welcome your feedback on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. We promise to do better by all of our players in the future.

“Community First” has long been part of our mission statement here at Psyonix, and it’s a mantra we are always pushing to improve upon. The happiness of our players will always drive us to grow and influence the decisions we make in Rocket League, which is why I want to directly address the recent issues with our servers, matchmaking delays, and our PsyNet backend.

In regards to both backend (PsyNet) issues, and game server performance, we agree that the server outages and recent lengthy matchmaking times are totally unacceptable. We sincerely apologize to all of our players for the quality of online play, and we are focusing all of our available resources on addressing PsyNet’s capabilities and performance, and the quality of our game servers.

The number of monthly active Rocket League players has jumped roughly 40% over 2016 in the first few months of this year alone. While our player population continues to grow at a healthy pace, we need to do a better job at scaling up our systems and internal processes to handle this kind of growth. We are growing so fast, both as a company and as a game, that we are racing to fill new positions on our Online Services team (that's the group at Psyonix that builds and maintains our backend systems -- which makes this a good time to mention our Careers page, for those of you who want to come work on Rocket League with us.) We are effectively becoming an Online Service company, as Rocket League is primarily an online game, and we continue to grow in size and scope. Growing this team is one of our top priorities as we approach Rocket League’s two-year anniversary in July.

Our Online Services team continues to work on the PsyNet database; if you have hopped into Rocket League recently and seen, in red letters, “Cannot Connect to Rocket League Servers” where the Playlists normally live, you’re seeing the PsyNet DB gone awry.

Issues with the PsyNet database started spiking around the same time we had a free weekend on Xbox One last month. We have seen more and more of you playing Rocket League online, and this has led to new issues that hadn’t appeared as we scaled our capacity up to this point.

Further complicating the problem has been outages and performance problems within the Google Cloud infrastructure, which we use to power PsyNet. Some of our downtime has resulted from unexpected slowdowns on database operations that led to a death spiral, but ultimately do not appear to have been caused by our own usage or overhead. At the end of the day, however, we need to own our own game’s performance. Here’s what we’ve been doing to address these issues:

• Since the February outages, we assigned additional dedicated staff from our Online Services team to database stability and reliability. They are hard at work on changes like separating high-traffic features like Player Trading and “Scraper API” access used by third party sites from our core services. This will reduce load on the PsyNet database and reduce exposure to outages during peak hours. We definitely don’t want to keep you off the pitch on weekends or holidays.
  
• We are working closely with Google engineers to investigate the disturbances to our database performance from outside our cloud instance.

Issues with matchmaking delays have only become apparent in recent days, going back to the Dropshot release last week. Our matchmaking server has periodically fallen into a problem state with a huge backlog of match reservations -- there are empty servers for you to play on, but PsyNet isn’t putting you into the servers fast enough. This causes the extreme search times being reported on social media.

As this is a new problem, we are still investigating the root cause. We have made changes in the interim to reduce the likelihood of it recurring, but more substantial improvements will be made throughout 2017.

The last category of “server issues” deals with problems when actually connected to a dedicated game server. This is most commonly reported as in-game lag spikes or hiccups independent of the player’s ping to the server.

This problem is particularly difficult to identify because so many issues factor into a user’s experience with a dedicated server. Local connection problems can cause packet loss or an unstable connection despite a steady ping sample. Individual ISPs can have routing issues to one of our server hosts that causes unusually high ping that we have no control over.

However, these outside factors do not mean there are not legitimate issues at hand, and this is another set of problems we need to own. After reports of instability in January, we significantly expanded our hardware investment in Europe, US-East, US-West, and Oceania to reduce our dependency on virtual servers. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a “virtual” server exists in the cloud and can be rapidly spun up in quantity to meet demand. While virtual servers are not inherently bad -- and many games successfully and heavily rely on them -- we weren’t confident in their recent reliability.

For context, we do not view virtual servers as a cost-saving measure, but instead as a way to scale to unexpected demand. It takes time to order and deploy hardware servers, and without a virtual solution, players would be forced to wait in long queues to get into an available server if demand spiked above our capacity.

We ordered enough hardware servers to satisfy demand above our then-peak population to ensure a good experience for everyone. For a time, this seemed to have a positive impact, but the concerns have resurfaced since our latest update.

We are addressing the issues with our game servers on a few fronts:

• We are doing our own profiling as well as working with our server providers to investigate this issue further and seeking a resolution as quickly as possible.
  
• Part of this profiling is completing a performance pass on Dropshot, as we want to ensure the best server performance possible when you’re playing our new game mode. Some of these improvements will be coming in our next patch -- a hotfix we hope to deploy in the very near future.
  
• We are also working on improving our internal metrics to detect and isolate these problems more efficiently and rapidly.
  
• Finally, while we have already invested in new server hardware in Europe and North America, we are continuing to investigate new hardware options in other regions, including Asia, South Africa, and Central America.

Growing pains are just that -- painful -- and we cannot thank our players enough for sticking with us as we continue to grow. Some of the issues we face will be addressed shortly, including those in our next hotfix; while other projects, like growing our Online Services team, will take more time to bear fruit. We thank you for your continued patience during this time, and as always, we welcome your feedback on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. We promise to do better by all of our players in the future.

• Dropshot game mode is now available in the unranked playlists
  
• Neo Tokyo has been removed from Casual and Competitive playlists
  
• Turbo Crate has been added
  
  • Painted Endo bodies and Tachyon Rocket Trails can be found in the Turbo Crate
• Seasonal Easter Items can be acquired March 22 to April 17
  
• Season 3 of Competitive play is ending and Season 4 begins. Titles and items will be awarded for the highest rank achieved during the season

Complete list below...



ARENAS

• “Core 707” is now available when playing Dropshot
  
• “Mannfield (Night)” is now available in all playlists
  
• “Neo Tokyo” has been removed from Casual and Competitive playlists
  
  • The map will remain playable in offline and private matches
    
  • In a future update, Neo Tokyo will return to online play with a standard layout

CRATES

• Turbo Crate has been added
  
• Painted versions of the “Endo” Battle-Car are available from this crate.
  
• Painted versions of the “Tachyon” Rocket Trail are available from this crate.

EASTER 2017

• Seasonal Easter Items can be acquired March 22 through April 17
  
  • Easter Egg Antenna
    
  • Bunny Ears Hat
    
  • Easter Basket Hat

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Registered Voter
  
  • Head to 'Arena Preferences' and use all of your votes
• Metaverse
  
  • Equip the Halo Topper and win a match on Starbase ARC
• Brave the Elements
  
  • Complete a match on wasted land, under the sea, and in outer space
• Damage Control
  
  • Win a Dropshot match via shutout
• Full Course
  
  • Score a total of 18 Goals in Dropshot
• Buckminster
  
  • x10 Damage a total of 320 panels in Dropshot

GENERAL

• Dropshot
  
• The new Dropshot game mode is now available in the unranked playlists
  
• The goal of the mode is to break the floor with the ball on the opponent's side, and knock the ball through the hole

• AquaDome has undergone further performance optimization and its overall color saturation has been reduced
  
• “Spell (Sando Remix)” by Hollywood Principle has been added to the soundtrack
  
• In-game code redemption has been added
  
  • In the future, Players can go to the “Extras” menu, select “Redeem Code,” and enter codes to unlock in-game items
• Arena Preferences
  
  • Preference weighting has been updated to be simpler. A map’s odds are now changed based on the net percentage of the lobby who like or dislike a map
    
  • If all players in a lobby Dislike a map, it will now never appear
    
  • If half of the players in a lobby Like a map, it will appear 50% more often
    
  • If one player Likes a map and another player Dislikes it, it will appear as often as normal
• Time Played is now tracked as a statistic
  
  • Time played before this update will not be included in tracking

USER INTERFACE

• Trading Updates
  
  • The Trade interface has been updated. All trade offerings will appear on screen without players needing to scroll the list.
    
  • The trade timer now runs for five seconds, up from three seconds.
• Key Selection
  
  • A new “Key Selection” setting has been added to the Options Menu (Use Oldest, Use Newest, or Ask Me)
    
  • If the user chooses “Ask Me” a new UI modal will appear when opening a crate that allows players to pick which key to use.
• Free Play Training
  
  • You can now select which map to train on after choosing “Free Play” from the Training Menu.
    
  • You can now exit directly to “Free Play” from the end of match menu.
• Custom Training
  
  • Custom Training sequences can now be discovered and played cross-platform.
    
  • The Custom Training feature can now be accessed while offline
    
  • A new “Featured” tab has been added that spotlights selected Training Sequences chosen by the Psyonix team
• Forfeiting a 1v1 match now requires confirmation.
  
• Loading Screens now reflect the arena being loaded into as well as the game mode
  
  • Game Tips are now included on the new Loading Screen
• Painted Items now show a colored border in the UI
  
• PS4 and Xbox One players can now bind “Air Roll Left” and “Air Roll Right” from the Controls menu
  
• PS4 and Xbox One players can now disable Light Shafts in the Video options menu
  
• The default binding for Create Party and Invite Players has been changed to “X” on Xbox controllers, and “Square” on PS4.

COMPETITIVE

• Season 3 has ended. Titles and items will be awarded for your highest rank achieved during the season
  
  • Season 3 Prospect Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Challenger Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Star Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Champion Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Grand Champion Title
• Season 4 brings a new set of Skill Rankings to provide more clear divisions between skill levels
  
  • You are now classified into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Champion, and Grand Champion ranks
    
  • The new Grand Champion rank will be harder to attain than in Season 3
    
  • There are now only four divisions per skill tier (e.g. Gold II, Division IV) due to each tier covering a smaller range of skills
• Skill Reset
  
  • After placement matches, you will be assigned a skill rating influenced by your Season 3 ranking
    
  • This ranking will be lower than where you finished Season 3 and you will have to climb back to the highest rank you can reach
    
  • We are not doing a full reset like Season 3 due to the lengthy period of matchmaking disturbance it created. This “soft reset” means players start separated by skill to keep things balanced but can still climb back to top ranks
• Matchmaking Abuse
  
  • In the interest of enforcing fair competition, a small number of accounts have been identified as abusing the matchmaking system, and will receive a hard skill reset. These accounts will not receive Competitive Season 3 item rewards
• Placement Match Updates
  
  • The placement match system has been revised to allow players to climb faster if they win the majority of their placement games
• When rejoining a Ranked Match, the default option is now “OK” instead of “Cancel”

ESPORTS

• An “Esports” button has been added to the top of the main menu
  
• The Esports button will take you directly to live, official Rocket League tournaments on Twitch, including live RLCS streams
  • This button will only be visible during associated live events
• Spectators can now see a player’s Boost Meter and Rumble Power-up when in Player View

GENERAL

• The Boost Meter now rounds down when you have a fractional amount of boost.
  
• Party Members can now rejoin Private Matches after exiting to the Main Menu.
  
• Fixed a rare issue where items would disappear after a completed trade
  
• The achievement “Rocket Genocider” has been fixed
  
• Xbox One: Removing a split screen user from a party no longer ends the party
  
• An issue with the Dominus GT tail lights not working properly has been fixed
  
• Turning on/off Color Blind Mode no longer causes the field to change colors in Free Play
  
• Players can no longer pass through the Arena wall on Double Goal (Rocket Labs)
  
• Trading with one player in your party no longer prevents you from trading with other party members afterwards
  
• Painted Items are now displayed correctly in the Trade-In menu
  
• Lobos Wheels now have glowing eyes on both sides of your Battle-Car
  
• The gun turrets behind the arena in Starbase ARC no longer shoot indefinitely
  
• Fixed an issue causing Motion Blur to be incorrectly disabled on PS4 and Xbox One
  
• Optimized the performance of the majority of the Rocket Trails in the game

• Dropshot game mode is now available in the unranked playlists
  
• Neo Tokyo has been removed from Casual and Competitive playlists
  
• Turbo Crate has been added
  
  • Painted Endo bodies and Tachyon Rocket Trails can be found in the Turbo Crate
• Seasonal Easter Items can be acquired March 22 to April 17
  
• Season 3 of Competitive play is ending and Season 4 begins. Titles and items will be awarded for the highest rank achieved during the season

Complete list below...



ARENAS

• “Core 707” is now available when playing Dropshot
  
• “Mannfield (Night)” is now available in all playlists
  
• “Neo Tokyo” has been removed from Casual and Competitive playlists
  
  • The map will remain playable in offline and private matches
    
  • In a future update, Neo Tokyo will return to online play with a standard layout

CRATES

• Turbo Crate has been added
  
• Painted versions of the “Endo” Battle-Car are available from this crate.
  
• Painted versions of the “Tachyon” Rocket Trail are available from this crate.

EASTER 2017

• Seasonal Easter Items can be acquired March 22 through April 17
  
  • Easter Egg Antenna
    
  • Bunny Ears Hat
    
  • Easter Basket Hat

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Registered Voter
  
  • Head to 'Arena Preferences' and use all of your votes
• Metaverse
  
  • Equip the Halo Topper and win a match on Starbase ARC
• Brave the Elements
  
  • Complete a match on wasted land, under the sea, and in outer space
• Damage Control
  
  • Win a Dropshot match via shutout
• Full Course
  
  • Score a total of 18 Goals in Dropshot
• Buckminster
  
  • x10 Damage a total of 320 panels in Dropshot

GENERAL

• Dropshot
  
• The new Dropshot game mode is now available in the unranked playlists
  
• The goal of the mode is to break the floor with the ball on the opponent's side, and knock the ball through the hole

• AquaDome has undergone further performance optimization and its overall color saturation has been reduced
  
• “Spell (Sando Remix)” by Hollywood Principle has been added to the soundtrack
  
• In-game code redemption has been added
  
  • In the future, Players can go to the “Extras” menu, select “Redeem Code,” and enter codes to unlock in-game items
• Arena Preferences
  
  • Preference weighting has been updated to be simpler. A map’s odds are now changed based on the net percentage of the lobby who like or dislike a map
    
  • If all players in a lobby Dislike a map, it will now never appear
    
  • If half of the players in a lobby Like a map, it will appear 50% more often
    
  • If one player Likes a map and another player Dislikes it, it will appear as often as normal
• Time Played is now tracked as a statistic
  
  • Time played before this update will not be included in tracking

USER INTERFACE

• Trading Updates
  
  • The Trade interface has been updated. All trade offerings will appear on screen without players needing to scroll the list.
    
  • The trade timer now runs for five seconds, up from three seconds.
• Key Selection
  
  • A new “Key Selection” setting has been added to the Options Menu (Use Oldest, Use Newest, or Ask Me)
    
  • If the user chooses “Ask Me” a new UI modal will appear when opening a crate that allows players to pick which key to use.
• Free Play Training
  
  • You can now select which map to train on after choosing “Free Play” from the Training Menu.
    
  • You can now exit directly to “Free Play” from the end of match menu.
• Custom Training
  
  • Custom Training sequences can now be discovered and played cross-platform.
    
  • The Custom Training feature can now be accessed while offline
    
  • A new “Featured” tab has been added that spotlights selected Training Sequences chosen by the Psyonix team
• Forfeiting a 1v1 match now requires confirmation.
  
• Loading Screens now reflect the arena being loaded into as well as the game mode
  
  • Game Tips are now included on the new Loading Screen
• Painted Items now show a colored border in the UI
  
• PS4 and Xbox One players can now bind “Air Roll Left” and “Air Roll Right” from the Controls menu
  
• PS4 and Xbox One players can now disable Light Shafts in the Video options menu
  
• The default binding for Create Party and Invite Players has been changed to “X” on Xbox controllers, and “Square” on PS4.

COMPETITIVE

• Season 3 has ended. Titles and items will be awarded for your highest rank achieved during the season
  
  • Season 3 Prospect Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Challenger Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Star Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Champion Wheel
    
  • Season 3 Grand Champion Title
• Season 4 brings a new set of Skill Rankings to provide more clear divisions between skill levels
  
  • You are now classified into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Champion, and Grand Champion ranks
    
  • The new Grand Champion rank will be harder to attain than in Season 3
    
  • There are now only four divisions per skill tier (e.g. Gold II, Division IV) due to each tier covering a smaller range of skills
• Skill Reset
  
  • After placement matches, you will be assigned a skill rating influenced by your Season 3 ranking
    
  • This ranking will be lower than where you finished Season 3 and you will have to climb back to the highest rank you can reach
    
  • We are not doing a full reset like Season 3 due to the lengthy period of matchmaking disturbance it created. This “soft reset” means players start separated by skill to keep things balanced but can still climb back to top ranks
• Matchmaking Abuse
  
  • In the interest of enforcing fair competition, a small number of accounts have been identified as abusing the matchmaking system, and will receive a hard skill reset. These accounts will not receive Competitive Season 3 item rewards
• Placement Match Updates
  
  • The placement match system has been revised to allow players to climb faster if they win the majority of their placement games
• When rejoining a Ranked Match, the default option is now “OK” instead of “Cancel”

ESPORTS

• An “Esports” button has been added to the top of the main menu
  
• The Esports button will take you directly to live, official Rocket League tournaments on Twitch, including live RLCS streams
  • This button will only be visible during associated live events
• Spectators can now see a player’s Boost Meter and Rumble Power-up when in Player View

GENERAL

• The Boost Meter now rounds down when you have a fractional amount of boost.
  
• Party Members can now rejoin Private Matches after exiting to the Main Menu.
  
• Fixed a rare issue where items would disappear after a completed trade
  
• The achievement “Rocket Genocider” has been fixed
  
• Xbox One: Removing a split screen user from a party no longer ends the party
  
• An issue with the Dominus GT tail lights not working properly has been fixed
  
• Turning on/off Color Blind Mode no longer causes the field to change colors in Free Play
  
• Players can no longer pass through the Arena wall on Double Goal (Rocket Labs)
  
• Trading with one player in your party no longer prevents you from trading with other party members afterwards
  
• Painted Items are now displayed correctly in the Trade-In menu
  
• Lobos Wheels now have glowing eyes on both sides of your Battle-Car
  
• The gun turrets behind the arena in Starbase ARC no longer shoot indefinitely
  
• Fixed an issue causing Motion Blur to be incorrectly disabled on PS4 and Xbox One
  
• Optimized the performance of the majority of the Rocket Trails in the game

Hopping alongside Dropshot and the start of Competitive Season 4 in the March 22 update, Rocket League will be scattering hidden Easter surprises as post-match drops for the first time ever!

Starting with this Wednesday’s update, players will have the chance to celebrate their spring enthusiasm with the Easter Egg Antenna, Easter Basket Topper, and for those jumping with excitement: the Bunny Ears Topper!

These FREE items will be random post-match drops in all online Playlists, and will be available to collect until April 17 at 12:01am UTC. So be sure to get together with some friends, play some Rocket League, and be the first to get the new Easter items! Check out the rest of the Easter items below.

Hopping alongside Dropshot and the start of Competitive Season 4 in the March 22 update, Rocket League will be scattering hidden Easter surprises as post-match drops for the first time ever!

Starting with this Wednesday’s update, players will have the chance to celebrate their spring enthusiasm with the Easter Egg Antenna, Easter Basket Topper, and for those jumping with excitement: the Bunny Ears Topper!

These FREE items will be random post-match drops in all online Playlists, and will be available to collect until April 17 at 12:01am UTC. So be sure to get together with some friends, play some Rocket League, and be the first to get the new Easter items! Check out the rest of the Easter items below.

We announced our new mode, Dropshot, earlier this week, and its release will also bring with it the end of Competitive Season 3, and the beginning of Competitive Season 4. Here's a breakdown of what you can expect beyond the Season 3 rewards:

The most significant change for Competitive Season 4 of has to do with how we rank players. A big part of why we provide visual skill rankings like “Challenger Elite” or “Champion” is to give players visual feedback about the skill of their teammates and opponents.

However, as the overall skill of the community has grown, our current ranks are no longer sufficient. The skill gap between a “Challenger I” and a “Challenger Elite” is significant, but they both sport golden “Challenger” icons that are only differentiated in subtle ways.

To better represent the evolving skill distribution of our players, and to better reward players who progress up the ladder, we will be introducing a new, wider set of skill tiers shown below.



We think these new tiers will do a better job of breaking up wide ranges of skill and also provide a more rewarding feeling of progression.

As part of this change, we will be reducing the number of divisions per skill tier from five to four. For example, the Gold I tier ranges from Gold I, Division I to Gold I, Division IV.

We felt this change was necessary to preserve a similar frequency of division updates from previous seasons. Five divisions per tier with our new, smaller skill tiers would create too much divisional churn for most players.

Based on the feedback we received regarding the Grand Champion rank during Season 3 recalibration, we have taken the following steps for Season 4:

• Champion I, II, and III includes players of skill ranging from Champion to low-end Grand Champion from Season 3.
  
• Grand Champion has been made more exclusive and given a distinct icon above the Champion ranks. It will not be quite as difficult to obtain as the original Season 3 version, but significantly more difficult than post-calibration Season 3.

Like previous seasons, Season 4 will “reset” your skill tiers for each Competitive Playlist. However, we do not want to repeat the matchmaking frenzy of the first few weeks of Season 3 when we did a full skill wipe. Average match quality was poor as the entire playerbase churned through placement matches and climbed back to their relative skill rankings.

Instead, your placement matchmaking and eventual skill ranking will be informed by your previous season rankings. While we don’t aim to place you at the exact same rank you left off, we do want a clear initial separation so that Grand Champions aren’t wiping the floor with Bronze players during their climb.

For example, Season 3 Champions will likely place into the Platinum tiers, while All-Stars and Superstars from Season 3 will place into Gold initially.

We have heard your feedback on season length and agree that Season 3 lasted too long. We think an optimal season length is roughly four months, but the ultimate end date may depend on what changes we feel are necessary before a new season can begin. For this reason, we don’t want to promise an exact end date for Season 4 just yet, but we will be listening to your feedback on the topic carefully.

We are hard at work on a variety of matchmaking improvements, but it’s worth talking about a specific change in the context of Season 4 that will help improve overall match quality. With the new season, we are moving to a new model for how we rank and matchmake players by skill.

The most significant change is in how we are calculating your Matchmaking Rating (MMR). In previous seasons, MMR was a conservative estimate of your skill. A conservative MMR formula is common in modern skill systems and subtracts a few standard deviations of your “uncertainty” (how confident the system is about you) from your “skill” to generate a safe estimate of your potential.

This made for a smooth introduction to the game, but created inconsistency in matchmaking and ranking that we have now eliminated. Your MMR (and your Skill Tier) are now only based on your Skill value itself. This has a few direct benefits:

• Good players with high uncertainty aren’t under-ranked anymore, leading to fairer and more fun matches with more consistent skill gains and losses.
  
• Players will more quickly reach their appropriate rank, which means less unbalanced games overall.

We are also testing a variety of other matchmaking enhancements. Some of these will come online with Season 4, and some will be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead. A few of the things we’re looking into:

• General speed and quality enhancements to allow for faster, more reliable matchmaking.
  
• More intelligent matchmaking based on how populated your selected playlists and regions are.
  
  • For example, if you’re in Gold II and there’s a ton of Gold II players searching 'Doubles' in your region, we’ll try to be more restrictive about the type of players we match you against.
    
  • Conversely, we’d like matchmaking to be a little faster and more flexible for off-peak hours when there are less players to match against and the wait times can get a bit long at higher levels.

The Neo Tokyo arena is being removed from our competitive and casual playlists. It will return to online play as a standard format arena in a future update.

We recognize that alternate format arenas are a controversial subject and did not make this decision lightly. The data we gathered since the Arena Preferences feature launched in December showed far less dislike for these arenas than one might expect from reading social media, but it did amplify our internal concerns about whether the Neo Tokyo arena design met our standards as a team for Rocket League.

We still feel that alternate arenas provide a valuable dose of variety to the online experience. However, the infrequent usage of these arenas in pro tournament play - an important part of the reason we introduced them in the first place - has us thinking deeply about their future. Going forward, we will continue to look at Arena Preferences data and community feedback on the topic.

Additionally, we are making a few changes to the Arena Preferences system to make it more consistent and understandable. An arena’s odds are now modified by a simple percentage of the lobby that likes or dislikes it. For example:

• If half of the players in a server dislike a map, it will appear 50% less often.
  
• If one player likes a map and another player dislikes it, it will appear as often as normal.
  
• If all of the players in a server dislike it, it will now never appear.

We hope you’re as excited for the new Competitive Season as we are, along with all of the amazing content we have coming in next week’s Dropshot update. We’ll see you in Core 707 soon!

We announced our new mode, Dropshot, earlier this week, and its release will also bring with it the end of Competitive Season 3, and the beginning of Competitive Season 4. Here's a breakdown of what you can expect beyond the Season 3 rewards:

The most significant change for Competitive Season 4 of has to do with how we rank players. A big part of why we provide visual skill rankings like “Challenger Elite” or “Champion” is to give players visual feedback about the skill of their teammates and opponents.

However, as the overall skill of the community has grown, our current ranks are no longer sufficient. The skill gap between a “Challenger I” and a “Challenger Elite” is significant, but they both sport golden “Challenger” icons that are only differentiated in subtle ways.

To better represent the evolving skill distribution of our players, and to better reward players who progress up the ladder, we will be introducing a new, wider set of skill tiers shown below.



We think these new tiers will do a better job of breaking up wide ranges of skill and also provide a more rewarding feeling of progression.

As part of this change, we will be reducing the number of divisions per skill tier from five to four. For example, the Gold I tier ranges from Gold I, Division I to Gold I, Division IV.

We felt this change was necessary to preserve a similar frequency of division updates from previous seasons. Five divisions per tier with our new, smaller skill tiers would create too much divisional churn for most players.

Based on the feedback we received regarding the Grand Champion rank during Season 3 recalibration, we have taken the following steps for Season 4:

• Champion I, II, and III includes players of skill ranging from Champion to low-end Grand Champion from Season 3.
  
• Grand Champion has been made more exclusive and given a distinct icon above the Champion ranks. It will not be quite as difficult to obtain as the original Season 3 version, but significantly more difficult than post-calibration Season 3.

Like previous seasons, Season 4 will “reset” your skill tiers for each Competitive Playlist. However, we do not want to repeat the matchmaking frenzy of the first few weeks of Season 3 when we did a full skill wipe. Average match quality was poor as the entire playerbase churned through placement matches and climbed back to their relative skill rankings.

Instead, your placement matchmaking and eventual skill ranking will be informed by your previous season rankings. While we don’t aim to place you at the exact same rank you left off, we do want a clear initial separation so that Grand Champions aren’t wiping the floor with Bronze players during their climb.

For example, Season 3 Champions will likely place into the Platinum tiers, while All-Stars and Superstars from Season 3 will place into Gold initially.

We have heard your feedback on season length and agree that Season 3 lasted too long. We think an optimal season length is roughly four months, but the ultimate end date may depend on what changes we feel are necessary before a new season can begin. For this reason, we don’t want to promise an exact end date for Season 4 just yet, but we will be listening to your feedback on the topic carefully.

We are hard at work on a variety of matchmaking improvements, but it’s worth talking about a specific change in the context of Season 4 that will help improve overall match quality. With the new season, we are moving to a new model for how we rank and matchmake players by skill.

The most significant change is in how we are calculating your Matchmaking Rating (MMR). In previous seasons, MMR was a conservative estimate of your skill. A conservative MMR formula is common in modern skill systems and subtracts a few standard deviations of your “uncertainty” (how confident the system is about you) from your “skill” to generate a safe estimate of your potential.

This made for a smooth introduction to the game, but created inconsistency in matchmaking and ranking that we have now eliminated. Your MMR (and your Skill Tier) are now only based on your Skill value itself. This has a few direct benefits:

• Good players with high uncertainty aren’t under-ranked anymore, leading to fairer and more fun matches with more consistent skill gains and losses.
  
• Players will more quickly reach their appropriate rank, which means less unbalanced games overall.

We are also testing a variety of other matchmaking enhancements. Some of these will come online with Season 4, and some will be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead. A few of the things we’re looking into:

• General speed and quality enhancements to allow for faster, more reliable matchmaking.
  
• More intelligent matchmaking based on how populated your selected playlists and regions are.
  
  • For example, if you’re in Gold II and there’s a ton of Gold II players searching 'Doubles' in your region, we’ll try to be more restrictive about the type of players we match you against.
    
  • Conversely, we’d like matchmaking to be a little faster and more flexible for off-peak hours when there are less players to match against and the wait times can get a bit long at higher levels.

The Neo Tokyo arena is being removed from our competitive and casual playlists. It will return to online play as a standard format arena in a future update.

We recognize that alternate format arenas are a controversial subject and did not make this decision lightly. The data we gathered since the Arena Preferences feature launched in December showed far less dislike for these arenas than one might expect from reading social media, but it did amplify our internal concerns about whether the Neo Tokyo arena design met our standards as a team for Rocket League.

We still feel that alternate arenas provide a valuable dose of variety to the online experience. However, the infrequent usage of these arenas in pro tournament play - an important part of the reason we introduced them in the first place - has us thinking deeply about their future. Going forward, we will continue to look at Arena Preferences data and community feedback on the topic.

Additionally, we are making a few changes to the Arena Preferences system to make it more consistent and understandable. An arena’s odds are now modified by a simple percentage of the lobby that likes or dislikes it. For example:

• If half of the players in a server dislike a map, it will appear 50% less often.
  
• If one player likes a map and another player dislikes it, it will appear as often as normal.
  
• If all of the players in a server dislike it, it will now never appear.

We hope you’re as excited for the new Competitive Season as we are, along with all of the amazing content we have coming in next week’s Dropshot update. We’ll see you in Core 707 soon!

Another FREE mode is coming to Rocket League later this month!

Dropshot is a brand new take on Rocket League gameplay as we introduce dynamic breakable floors and an electrified ball, all within the confines of a new hexagonal Arena, 'Core 707'. Instead of pushing the ball into your opponent’s goal, your objective is to destroy panels on the opposing team’s floor, and score goals through those gaps.

Our new game mode is all about Damage! Along with our usual stats like Goals, Assists, and Saves, Dropshot introduces Damage as a statistic -- the more damage you do, the more floor panels break, and the easier it is to score a goal! Each panel can be hit by a ball twice -- the first hit activates the panel, while the second breaks the panel, creating a new scoring opportunity.

The new ball has three different phases, each more powerful than the last, that determine how much damage is done when the ball smashes into the floor panels. The second and third phases are activated by multiple Battle-Car hits, so the longer the ball stays off the ground, the more powerful it becomes. While the first phase of the new ball only damages one tile upon impact, the second and third phases can damage up to seven and 19 panels, respectively. Check out the Dropshot trailer below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdBvId4DyIg

Along with Dropshot releasing on March 22, we have a host of other changes coming to Rocket League, including new achievements/trophies, painted Bodies and Rocket Trails, an Esports content button, the end of Competitive Season 3, a new Skill Tier hierarchy, and more!

Check out our dedicated page for the update here!

Another FREE mode is coming to Rocket League later this month!

Dropshot is a brand new take on Rocket League gameplay as we introduce dynamic breakable floors and an electrified ball, all within the confines of a new hexagonal Arena, 'Core 707'. Instead of pushing the ball into your opponent’s goal, your objective is to destroy panels on the opposing team’s floor, and score goals through those gaps.

Our new game mode is all about Damage! Along with our usual stats like Goals, Assists, and Saves, Dropshot introduces Damage as a statistic -- the more damage you do, the more floor panels break, and the easier it is to score a goal! Each panel can be hit by a ball twice -- the first hit activates the panel, while the second breaks the panel, creating a new scoring opportunity.

The new ball has three different phases, each more powerful than the last, that determine how much damage is done when the ball smashes into the floor panels. The second and third phases are activated by multiple Battle-Car hits, so the longer the ball stays off the ground, the more powerful it becomes. While the first phase of the new ball only damages one tile upon impact, the second and third phases can damage up to seven and 19 panels, respectively. Check out the Dropshot trailer below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdBvId4DyIg

Along with Dropshot releasing on March 22, we have a host of other changes coming to Rocket League, including new achievements/trophies, painted Bodies and Rocket Trails, an Esports content button, the end of Competitive Season 3, a new Skill Tier hierarchy, and more!

Check out our dedicated page for the update here!