7 things every Rocket League player should know

Rocket League has one complex community filled with trash talkers, professional athletes, content creators, tryhards and genuinely good-spirited players - the latter being a minority in and of itself.

Therefore, a lot of work has to be put in by newcomers to try to fit in into any of these groups and without the knowledge gathered in a wiki of some sort, unspoken things will go unspoken until some mid-Diamond player decides to write about it.

Some things you might’ve heard already whether when you were being yelled at by your lower rank teammate or spewed out by your favourite content creator/RLCS caster. 

(Picture: Psyonix)

Whichever the case might be, right now is a great time to learn something new and/or it wouldn’t hurt to hear them again.

Without further ado, here are seven things every Rocket League player should know.

Things every Rocket League player should know

1. Bind air roll to your controller

If you are a player that joined the community after Rocket League went F2P back in September 2020, you are excused if you hadn’t heard of this already, but if you have been around for longer than that, your world is about to be rocked.

Have you ever wondered how higher ranks, freestylers or even professional players get to do all these crazy spins, flip-resets and such? There’s only so much you can do working with only a dodge and a left-stick, right? Well, wonder no more.

If you go to Settings > Controls > View/Change Bindings you will find their magical power: Air Roll.

(Image: u/Bananas4Minion Reddit)

There you will have two options: you can either bind Air Roll to a specific button that, when held, will make your left stick an omnidirectional controller or you can bind Air Roll left and Air Roll right specifically to one button each so you can have more control over your car.

For some odd reason over at Psyonix HQ, they thought it would be a great idea to hide away one of the most important button commands when they assigned it empty in the Default control options. If you haven’t already, make the change and get used to it ASAP -- it’ll do wonders for your aerials and recoveries.

2. Your camera settings probably suck

This is one a little more debated amongst the community. While everyone agrees that the default camera settings are just not it, chief, there is no answer to what the camera settings should be across the board.

The default ones, though, are bad in comparison to anything else for many, many reasons. Your distance is limited, your height is behind your battle-car, the stiffness is too slow and the FOV too narrow.

Since there are no specific camera settings to work off of, we recommend doing one of two things, A, experimenting with each setting in Free Play then getting used to the ones that work for you or, B, straight-up copying your favourite pro player or content creator’s camera settings. 

(Picture: Psyonix)

Go ahead and do it right after binding air roll, they are much more important than you think.

Check out our Rocket League FOV and camera settings guide for some ideas.

3. Left Goes

While we have already covered this topic in the Unspoken Rules of Rocket League earlier in the season, it is worth getting the word out there some more.

Without going too much into detail, 'Left Goes' means that whenever in a 2v2 or 3v3 situation there is always going to be an unspoken designated kickoff player because of how closer they are to the ball than the other team members. But, when two players of the same team are the same distance to the ball, the rule of thumb to follow is that the furthest player to the left of your side of the pitch goes -- hence Left Goes.

(Picture: Psyonix)

This is just to ensure communication is not needed, kickoffs are clear for everyone and the 3, 2, 1 countdown is not wasted as you collectively panic over who should go for the ball. Of course, avoiding double commits is helpful, but those will happen in your rank either way.

4. Last-man-back jobs

If you know anything about rotations, you know double committing is bad. But there is something a little bit worse than a similar split-second bad decision and that is getting dusted as the Last Man Back.

The Last Man Back has two jobs and two jobs only. Either, A, stop the ball from going in the net (duh) or, B, stall the opponents making time for your team to rotate.

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It sounds simple, but it is helluva lot more complicated than that. Making the call of either going for it or fake-challenging for the ball without leaving an open net is an art learned only by playing.

So if you are ever The Last Man Back, do us all a favour and think twice before getting toasted anyways. At least you tried.

5. Parties are most likely to play other parties online

This one, for all intents and purposes, is for strategy and game-planning use, nothing more. If you are a fellow rocketeer that hates to solo queue with all your heart, first of all, welcome to the club. 

And second, make sure to check the scoreboard prompt right before your 2v2 or 3v3 showdown starts. If you are party-queueing with your clique, the matchmaking system will do its utmost effort to try and pair you up against other parties. 

If you are queuing with a full party, the matchmaking system will try to find a full party or at least the biggest party available to fill up the vacant spots.

(Picture: Psyonix)

What does this mean? If your opponents are not completely partied up, this is most likely their first game playing together ever. While they have only five minutes to figure out each others’ playstyle, adapt and overcome, your party has been playing together for much, much longer than that (hopefully). 

Figure them out still, just keep in mind they are figuring each other as they try to figure you. Use this to your advantage. 

Shoutout to all my Party Leaders out there that forget to queue after the game is over or that queue too soon before the party members are ready. Way to go!

6. Prospects Cup are the way to go

Tournament Rewards are fun. Besides Season Rewards, these are the other set of items that are untradeable and correlate some way or another to your own blood, sweat and tears.

Long story short, you get Tournament Tokens depending on your scheduled tournament placement and difficulty. These tokens can be redeemed for a variety of crates or Tournament Cups for a random drop of different rarities. The higher number of tokens you need to spend on a Cup, the higher the rarity of the item you will get back.

(Picture: Psyonix)

It is no surprise the best items are usually at the top of the rarity chain in the Exotic or Black Market tiers, and because the price-to-rarity ratio does not really match the time and effort it takes to get Tokens, we recommend you always spending them on the Prospects Cup, the cheapest one of the rewards.

This is to pile up on the lowest rarity items. while sometimes Rocket League throws you a higher-rarity bone, and trading up confidently all the way to the item desired. Other Cups will cost you 4x or even 10x the number of tokens it takes to redeem a Prospects Cup and you might end up with the same item or item rarity.

Roll the dice, shoot low and as the Prospects Cup description reads “anything’s possible.”

7. The Item Shop is overrated (and overpriced)

If you are a person of means or a trading aficionado, you might have some Credits stacked up on your account. There are many things that dictate the price of items in Rocket League but like in the real world, "supply and demand" is the biggest factor on an item's price.

Therefore, whenever you do hold the currency and see something shiny and attractive in the game’s Item Shop, do yourself a favour. 

Take a step back, head to RLInsider and look up the item of choice. Chances are the item is way cheaper “out in the wild” and even if it isn’t, keep in mind that however many Credits you invest in the Item Shop, you will not be able to get back as they are not tradeable amongst players. 

This basically implies that if you cash in on a 2,000 Credit Crimson Reaper, while it costs tens of thousands of credits in the trading community, you saved in Credits but are infinitely stuck with a 2,000 Credit Crimson Reaper without the option to trade it away to liquidate for revenue. 

If you are interested in more trading tips and tricks, make sure to check out our Ultimate Rocket League Trading piece for the full guide.

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While there are still many, many things to cover that you must know if you are to survive in the community, these seven will do the trick for the moment. At least until you hit the next rank and you come back for more.