What is this game to you?

Nobody is really engaging here, so I figured I'd talk about my experience with Rocket League and see if any of you have similar or wildly different stories.

I started playing when it went F2P during COVID. I tried on Switch and my shitty old laptop, but moved to PS4 with my friends, and PS5 later when I got one.

I'm now in my mid to late 30s, mostly playing with friends over some drinks and catching up on how family or work or whatever is going. I watch some YouTube content here and there, and play solo sometimes too, but it's all for fun. I'd like to get a little better, but I'd be happy to hit champ. I've come close, but as I get better, the threshold gets higher. People are hitting flip resets and double taps and shit in diamond, but it wasn't that long ago that diamonds weren't even jumping for most stuff lol.

My buddy and I just won a diamond 2s tournament while slamming some beers, and that felt great. Probably the best individual and team play from us both, ever.

I'm loving the recent additions. I know people are butthurt about losing their mod, but it fixed the cheating problem for a much longer time than I was expecting, and they improved the experience for console peasants like me. I'm cautiously optimistic about the move to UE6.

This is the only competitive multiplayer game I play, and it's nearly the only game I play at all anymore. I was always all about story in games or couch co-op stuff, but Rocket League just feels so different. There's nothing like pulling something off just right. Now that I have such a demanding full time job, it's hard to justify spending any time on Ubisoft slop or whatever anymore. I'd rather hang out over drinks with my friends 200 miles away and play against the middle schoolers that are down here in diamond with us lol.

What about you guys? Console or PC? Casual or obsessed? Old or young? Solo or with friends?

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Disco_Dougie

piefed.social

This post is two months old, but I've been stumbling through Piefed recently, trying to scratch that Reddit itch. Pretty new to the "platform."

I bought Rocket League in 2016, before Epic owned it and all the cosmetics were unlockable. It was a weird little game that was starting to gain some traction, and I caught it while it was starting to gain hype (I think). From what I remember, the community was significantly less toxic and folks didn't take the game quite as seriously. That may be rose-colored glasses though.

It started off as an awesome couch game with my friends. It was really fun getting a little drunk, talking shit about a game we all sucked at together, either against each other or online strangers.
I got waaay too into it for a year or two, before I had a good grasp on how my brain worked. It got to the point where I was either way better than my friends (so I wasn't as fun to play with), or way worse (so I wasn't as fun to play with).
I realized that I wasn't having fun anymore, and it became a thing I "had to" do. So I quit playing for quite a while.

For like eight years, if my friends and I were all together, we'd play for a night. I would get frustrated from time to time because I "used to be so much better" or whatever.

When I hit like 35, I hadn't played in a while. A friend of mine got back into it, and we played a couple games. All that dumb stress was gone, and it was just fun to bump cars into a ball and be kind of bad at it again. We played off and on (maybe once a month), but rarely against anyone but each other.

Part of that stuff was just being in my thirties. I was a calmer dude, and didn't feel like my identity would be erased if I wasn't good at a soccer-car game, or whatever else. It was just fun to drive a car into a ball.

Now, I'm 38 and way into it again. But it's much different. My friends and I have our own ELO board, and we play 1v1s and 2v2s for a trophy every season. It's all goofs. It's an excuse to hang out and talk a little shit again. It's 100% fun, no stress, and no real stakes. A lot of times, we'll hop online vs strangers. We care juuuust enough for some healthy competition and we all like to improve, but it doesn't matter that much. I'll play ranked with a friend ranked significantly lower than me (and watch my rating tank), and it doesn't matter to me anymore. It's just fun.

These days I play a LOT. But like 80% of it is spent in various training modes. I treat it like a skate park. It's fun to grind over and over to see if I can nail a perfect wall-to-air-dribble or whatever, and I send clips to my friends. I'll usually sit and watch TV while I drive my stupid little car around and whatnot.
I watch a lot of videos and love watching tournaments. It's an awesome game, and I adore it the same way I love skate culture but have never been able to kickflip.

It's kind of cool to be 38 and realize my brain isn't capable of learning anything well enough to be the best at it. It takes the stress and frustration away from a lot of the things I tend to hyper-fixate on. I have a much healthier relationship with competitive games because of that. It's neat!

(My highest ranking right now is gold. Heh.)

Oh also, I've always been a PC player. I have it on PS5, but I rarely play on there. Mostly when folks come over and we want a bigger TV. I like having a square deadzone on my controller and I can't set that up without Steam.