Rocket League can become very repetitive. That’s my opinion but I think many people will agree.

When Rocket League became free to play, it used to have a player base of over 1 million players at once. When this began to drop, Pysonix removed the player count implying just how low it has got.

There are different communities within Rocket League. You have the ranked grinders, the traders, the freestylers, and the casual players. Many players will class themselves in more than 1 of these categories.

But if you look within each community, what has actually changed for them?

Ranked Grinders

Ranked grinders take up the vast majority of the player base. New ranks to grind for have recently been brought out; Grand Champion 2, 3, and Super Sonic Legend. But this was only beneficial to all players that had reached Grand Champion already so they had a reason to play the game. It did not affect players ranked below GC.

In addition, tournaments were added around the time when free to play was released. This was a huge step forward for the game. And in our blog, 5 Updates that Rocket League needs to Release, we mentioned more tournaments should be added such as 2v2. And Pysonix recently added just that. However, an update like this can get players playing again and more often for only a short period of time. Especially when tournaments are limited.

What could Pysonix do to help this community?

I have seen that some people want an actual change to the gameplay, the physics of the game. But I totally disagree with this. I see both sides but I think this statement is very two-sided and risks making the game lose more players than it already is.

There is 1 change I would like to see happen for the ranked players. This is the Rocket League clubs. What is actually the point in creating or joining clubs? If you queue in a ranked match with members in your club and you play against another full club team, then the team colors change accordingly. But often you could have similar colors which can be very off-putting. It can be like Liverpool playing Manchester United both wearing their red home kit colors. I do not know exactly what I want to see with clubs but definitely, more could be done. A potential idea could be to create events where you play with your club members against other clubs. You gain points for each win and lose points for each loss. Then the top % of clubs within that event will gain rewards, e.g. free credits. This idea definitely needs improving but I definitely think more needs to be done with clubs.

I think the best way to keep this community playing or even bring some players back would be to develop some of the other communities as well. As I said, many players will be a part of more than 1. We discuss some really cool updates that the community wants and how Pysonix could improve those communities later in this article.

Traders

Traders do get new item releases fairly frequently but compared to games such as Fortnite, you could argue not often enough. And many new releases are car brand deals that Pysonix and Epic games are getting huge sponsorship deals for.

Pysonix has improved player-to-player trades massively over the years to cut down on the number of scams happening.

What could Pysonix do to help this community?

More frequent item releases would keep these players more active. Co-creation could really add to this. An example of a successful company that uses co-creation is Lego. Co-creation is where customers submit ideas and if they get enough support from the community, the company reviews the idea. For Rocket League, players should be able to submit item ideas which then gets rated by the community and if the item gets enough support, Pysonix would then review whether they include it in their game.

If you’re interested in Rocket League designs, check out this banner below to get RL items at the cheapest prices:

Freestylers

And freestylers? Besides players progressing, I can’t think of any update that has made a change for that community. I think this community is still going strong because new skills and freestyle tricks have been discovered over the years. For example, an air dribble would be classed as freestyling back when Rocket League was first released. But now, depending on your skill level, flip resets, etc is classed as freestyling and air dribbling is a fundamental aspect of a high skill level game. Is there a limit to this community? By that I mean, what is next after flip resets? We probably said the same comment after ceiling shots but surely there’s an end to this? If there is, then I see this community dying off very quickly if the game does not bring out updates. We discuss what type of updates Pysonix could release later on in this article.

What could Pysonix do to help this community?

Workshop maps allow players to play unique games. However, it is only available for Steam players. There is no limit to what can be done with workshop maps. If Pysonix adds workshop maps as a feature in the game rather than it being externally linked with the game, then I really do think it would not just help the freestyle community but others too. It gives freestylers more open space, challenges, and more. Players who want to play ranked would be able to create very specific training maps. And casual players would be able to create and play maps to have fun with friends. There literally would be no limit on what can be created. This also provides Rocket League with constant unique content to bring players back and keep them playing.

Casual Players

Finally, we have the casual players. These people play the game for fun. They tend not to touch competitive matches and rather stick to unranked matches.

What could Pysonix do to help this community?

An advanced career mode would really lighten this game up. I do think this would require a lot of work for Pysonix in terms of the bots’ skill level. We can all agree on how diabolical the bots are. But this can definitely be improved as long as Pysonix are willing to invest the time in improving this. Yes, it will be difficult but the limit of AI is endless so should RL bot levels.

Once Pysonix has improved the bots’ skill levels enormously, the potential of Rocket League becomes huge. Career modes can be made, where players can take the role of someone like Squishy Muffinz on NRG. Or even starting from the bottom in career modes and having to work yourself up to the top. Multiplayer careers could even become an option where you and your partner create your own career mode team. There are plenty more ideas that better-skilled bots could bring.

If you have any different suggestions on how Pysonix could grow their player base again, feel free to comment below.