Rocket League's next update makes tourney organization simple
Supersonic, acrobatic
Rocket League's enormous success was long overdue. I liked this game back in 2008, but it didn't seem to catch on until they chopped a few words out of the name. The weight of those extraneous syllables lifted, the game launched into the stratosphere, almost like some kind of supersonic acrobatic rocket-powered battle-car.
Psyonix aren't resting on their laurels, either. The game still commands enormously huge audiences worldwide, so it's no surprise that they're working hard on polishing up just about every eSports feature the game could ask for. The centerpiece of the next major patch, due early next month, is Tournaments, allowing players to organize a jet-assisted kick-around using just a handful of in-game menus.
I'm eager to take a look at the final tournament feature in action. From the looks of it, they've only got the one tournament format implemented at present, and I would have loved to have seen losers league matches running in parallel with the main thread. Still, it's a major step forward for anyone trying to herd the cats required to organize any kind of large shared nerd event, and having an automated system handle the match-ups should streamline things greatly.
Tourney stuff aside there's a few quality of life tweaks coming to the game. You can read about them in detail over on the Psyonix dev-blog page here, but probably the most important ones are new indicators showing exactly what kind of problems are happening to your internet connection, and some new chat moderation features, including the handy Team Chat Only mode. It's bad enough being berated by your own team - it's downright humiliating to be sassed by the other team.
One thing only mentioned off-hand in the trailer above is that there's not only more music coming to the game, but the option to finally play the whole soundtrack mid-match, rather than just soaking in the noise of the crowd and the roar of your engine. I think this might go a surprisingly long way to chill out the players a little - you can't scream at someone if you're humming a tune, right?... Right? Oh, and there's a new loot crate which can possibly (but probably won't) contain the Samurai car skin, pictured up top.
The Tournaments update will be going live across all versions of Rocket League this April 3rd.