GC1s have improved significantly since the game became free to play. In South America, at least, there have been noticeable changes. I remember reaching 1550 MMR in 3v3 without knowing how to execute challenges in the air, double taps, reading the ball, or air dribbling. Nowadays, if I hadn't learned these skills, I would likely be stuck at C3 at best.
Yeah here in US East servers it's getting increasingly difficult to hit GC without learning advanced mechanics. I hit it other seasons without much effort mech wise, now I can barely get above C3 div3
Gc has gotten so much worse in the 3 years since the game went free 2 play. I was at 1750 MMR exactly when it went free and then i stopped playing. When I am playing now, with much less mechanical skill then before, I observe people in gc1 dont know how to play as a team, defend and position themself correctly. So I think GC1 has switched from people knowing the basics and lacking mechanical skill to people getting way better mechanically while forgetting the basics.
You definitely dont need those mechs if you play smart and have good basic mechs to reach gc in any region aslong as you can fake, fake challenge, flick, dribble, bounce dribble, backboard save, backboard read on offense, shadow defend and position and rotate well you can get gc1
Really good overview! Really liked the vibe of jumping to each season and a good idea to mention small bits of key history. Despite being a person who really loves data and as much of it as possible, this video goes to show that sometimes the data isn't that meaningful in multiple ways. This video was a great trip through memory lane for me! I don't often hit like on videos and whatnot, but it deserves one for sure :)
Great video I was glued to the screen the whole time. The rapid increase in skill level during the early seasons was really cool to see. Definitely seems like things started plateauing somewhere around season 10, but it's hard to tell off of a few selected clips.
great video - started playing in 2021 so have always wondered about some of this history. I've watched plenty of other content too, but no other creator has give this much in-depth insight so I appreciate it! Cheers from a Diamond 1 on the way to Champ
I think some new mechanics may be found, but in watching Zen, that is where we will see the biggest change in meta. Overall consistency in what was consider “insane” plays will be the baseline for the top tier, if it isn’t already after this last RLCS. I hate that Vitality (Zen) is dominant, but it’s well deserved.
I keep noticing how consistently the pros were hitting really fast side wall doubles. it really stood out to me and at one point a caster said the player whiffed when they didn't read their side wall double. it was definitely a whiff but not like how the average player whiffs lmao. the filthy mechanical consistency is starting to be baseline and it's nutty.
@@killingfreely If you aren’t hitting double taps off the back wall, you probably aren’t making into champ at this point. It used to be that IQ could get you to high champ, now it’s speed and mechanics, along with IQ. I’ve been hard stuck in diamond and as my gameplay gets better, so does the requirements for each rank, so here I stay until diamonds are flip resetting consistently.
You don’t need any fancy mechs to get into champ. Fast aerials and half flips are all you really need. Wave dashes and good use of power slide will make life easier. When I have coached diamonds into champ, I have never had to coach someone on any mechs other than wave dashes and hitting the ball harder (which is really 90% positioning) If people are double tapping in diamond I’d guess they’re smurfing. At least from my experience coaching people
@@Average-Lizard Agreed. I will say that at high diamond, I play private matches with my champ and GC friends all the time. The most recent set of champs I played with were just faster. Still popping off with some mechanics, I just felt like I was trying to force speed I didn’t have. You are correct about positioning, but I feel like the skill level of every rank has been rising, as the top ranks become even more mechanical. My experience is really skewed because I’m 1550 in casual, but only D3 in ranked 3’s, so sometimes my expectations for tm8’s and opponents don’t match. My point really is, that as GC’s are essentially expected to be able to hit insane plays, the old GC’s are pushed to champ with what used to be GC mechanics, like double taps. I know a few former GC’s trapped in champ, and former champs trapped in diamond.
I was stuck at C3 from Legacy S12 until finally breaking through to GC1 at FTP S4. While I improved, I didn't improve as quickly as the rest of the playerbase, so this old man had to take a lot of L's before getting there. Even today, I don't get my GC title every season. I've missed a couple since S4. It's hard out there in the champ ranks.
@@reecewithoutherspoon1324 I can only speak for myself but same situation as OP, I just got my rewards and I had to bust my ass off for it. C3 is always hell but S11 definitely made it more difficult. I have gotten much better over this season but am still struggling to maintain GC1
Great video Man. I honestly think that the gc rank, even though the % is bigger, because of the game speed, recoveries and mechanics. It sure isn't a bug difference as u showed us but it's still there and reaching GC means not only that you are really hood but also that u don't touch grass on the rocket league map 😎
Love watching the progression of players over the years. I got a code to play in Alpha and I've been playing since. Highest reach was gc3 div 1 in s10, It's crazy how different it is from where I was at playing at GC in legacy season 9. The skill ceiling never stops, people are still learning new mechanics all the time. It's a beautiful game. Keep up that amazing work dude, love your videos!!
Great video! I'd love to see a similar breakdown on the rank requirements between the different modes too; I know some seasons have seen a ridiculously low percentage of players reach GC in 1v1 for example.
I love these little documentary videos of the lifespan of a game. I think 2020 massively shot put the skill ceiling as many people were indoors most of the day. Zen might transform the top side of the game, but I don't know about the average GC pulling off what he can. Some players can only be described as outliers if we look at regular sports as a reference.
As a coach, rocket league skill is very misunderstood. At the base, the difference between a win and loss can be a clash of play-styles and adaptability. You either control the pace of the game or you match the pace. I am gc and I have mechanics, but my play style and specialty revolves around my shooting. All I do is stay present in the middle of the field more or less and whenever the ball happens to be available I slam it. Conclusion: You don’t need mechanics if you know how to play without them, however, the less tools you have in your arsenal the less you can adapt
Good points. Yea there's lots of ways to achieve GC, it can look very different depending on your playstyle or even the opponent you are facing at the time.
The proportion of GC to the rest, does not indicate how the player base progressed through years. I'm champion 2, and 3 years ago i was also champion 2, but i can do lots of things now i could not back then, so i would beat my old self. The problem is that everyone continues to play and to improve, so the percentage of GCs remains about equal, but this fact doesn't give any insights on the skill required to be GC
@@246bro9I do like using rl tracker to see that kind of information, but my understanding is that it isn't fully accurate since it only has data for the players that have been accessed within it. Higher-ranked players are more likely to check rl tracker.
gc is a weird one. i was gc in ftp s3 just for the titles and i didnt play the game after that really due to life. in s10 i hopped on with some friends and the level you have to be for gc has seemingly dropped crazily.
there are a lot of small improvements in recent GC compared to the early free to play era, some of which are: walldashes, zapdashes, holding jump to get more flip time, more confident aerial plays, consistent in-and-out saves, reverse challenges, air dribble bumps, Spanish kickoff, doing the reverse diagonal flip against the wall to land more efficiently, way better backboard defense and wall clears, and so many more. I'm sure a current 1500 MMR in 2v2 could beat a 1650 MMR from 2020, easily
I remember grinding like crazy in (I guess I have to put the word "legacy" here) season 3 because of all the comments saying "anyone can get GC this season". It wasn't until season 12 or 13 that I actually got GC rewards though, which was largely born out of the frustration at seeing SunlessKhan hit GC before me when I had slapped him in 1's back in like legacy season 6 lol. Time flies.
Kind of wild as I was pissed off also that Sunless got GC before me and it made me grind more. Didn’t hit it until season 3 ftp but makes me wonder how many other people out there did he motivate to grind lmao
Ik how you feel, hit GC back in season 13 after grinding like all hell for months and then once i hit that sorta fell out of touch with RL at least in the tryhard sense, Now im down in C2-3 and lacking in my ability badly
I started playing around the tail end of legacy season 1. However the first time I got GC was in free-to-play. I have GC for S1, S3, S4, and S9. With everyone constantly getting better, It has been hard to keep up. I have been hanging around C3 since the last time I got GC, and it's really impressive how much better everyone is at each rank. After the recent rank changes, that puts me at around C2, but I'm still working on improving and getting back to GC if I can.
The fact that stats show very little drift even as the skill of players increases over time is really an indictment of the incredibly simplistic stats we have.
Actually ballchasing.com is able to track a wide range of stats and even positioning from the replay files. Everything from amount of boost pick ups to how much time is spend in each area of field. I think the stats more prove that despite mechanical changes, what makes a high level player is still heavily based on the same basics: positioning and speed.
I love how everyone watches old GC clips and starts proclaiming that today's diamonds would be the GCs of old. Watch any great player do one of their smurf runs to GC and notice how they don't have to use any fancy mechanics to get back to the top. The GC's of old were still so much better at the "non-mechanical" aspects of the game than us current lowbies that they could Flake their way past today's diamond and champs with ease.
Obviously not diamond, but very old GC was definetly not as good as today. Today it would be low C3 no more. (For very low GC players, not players who were already GC 1800+ MMR at the time.)
I agree, for the most part. I don’t think most could break champ, due to their lack of experience with defending air plays (which are more consistent in higher champ). They would also be greeted with much faster players (in regard of how fast their car travels. I am unsure about thinking speed), which would be very hard to deal with after slower lobbies with less fancy mechanics. I do think they would get farther up in champ before getting stuck, but they’d have to then take the time to get used to all the new stuff people commonly do, as well as teammates who leave you in 1v2’s on a regular basis.
If we are talking about 3s and maybe 2s, yes. But 1s you put a C1 vs a legacy S1-2 GC and that champ is winning 9/10 times, it’s just they are at such a mechanical disadvantage it’s not even funny. Tbh I’d say S1 GC 1s players are probably close to mid to low diamond, it really depends bc those diamonds could just cheese with speed flip kickoffs and score like 8 kickoff goals lmao
2016 and 2017 rocket league with the old crates and no one knowing how to Play the game was peak rocket league Having fun with Friends and gambling your items away 😂
I've been playing since legacy season 6 and I've been hard-stuck at c1/2 since season 7. I can't do anything even remotely fancy. My consistency and game sense have improved a lot but I just can't rank past c2 without advanced mechanics. I'd say the player base has improved a lot in that time. I'm improving but less quickly than the player base.
Felt that. I’ve been playing since 2016. I’ve been champ 2-3 almost every season since free to play and I just learned how to half flip a few months ago 😂. It’s crazy how kids in diamond can flip reset but just have zero awareness of the risk/reward of their shots and field position.
My God I got the game in a humble bundle im unsure when but didn't play until it was literally F2P in 2020 even though I owned it from earlier. Crazy to see the progression of the player base and really cool for the guys that stuck to it. I'm Hard stuck Gold, Plat occasionally diamond but always Solo only player ( well apart from the very rare occasion ) I very rarely Train as games are fast don't practice any "set Moves" as such and figuring it out as I go, enjoying losing as much as winning its fun i don't care to be the best unless I do it my way, I guess I learnt some basic rotation stuff and goal defending as for ages I was a goal sitter and didn't even know what rotation was cause well... it took some time to watch a video. My Experience has been fun and have thought about "trying to learn the Meta" but I feel i would miss the feeling of the aha moment of me figuring it out for myself. Much love to the community Majority are cool and the ones that are obviously toxic a little love to them makes them feel warm and cozy in the hate, Great vid thanks.
Current GC vs previous years would dominate, the skill level the past 3 years especially have been off the charts. Zen alone is introducing all whole new skill level everyone else is trying to decode.
i don't get why so many people get salty when they see someone with a GC tag in their lobby who sucks. obviously they put in the work to get it at that time but maybe no find the game enjoyable or play/grind like they used to. i still wear my gold GC tag from legacy even if i get flamed every so often tho lol
some ppl just hate cuz they wish they had the title too.. cuz im in d3 and i see some of the gold OG gc titles and it looks cool and i might be jealous cuz i wish i had one but i dont hate like other ppl
Ive been playing sense late 2015 early 2016 granted i did play on and off throughout the years but i finally hit gc and got the gc rewards this season took forever and at points thought i would never reach it but i finally did it and i finally feel accomplished in this game!
Dang bruh, 296k subs? I remember tweeting you when you hit 6,969 subs, good ass video too, I haven't really been too familiar with tas but now I understand it and these shots look absolutely insane.
I've been GC since OG season 2. The hardest seasons (in my experience) to get GC before F2P were S2, S4 and S8. Season 3, 12 and 14 were insanely easy all of the rest were just "regular".
I mean obviously overall the average gc is better than back in the day, but I do think the skill gap is smaller thus making it technically easier to reach g1 now. As a washed one the stuff I see in my champ/diamond lobbies now still blows me away though, the community has gotten good
It’s funny because I played a season 14 gc in a c1-d3 game yesterday and we destroyed him 😂 the skill level of this game is always improving drastically and that’s why it’s so amazing. Shoutout to zen.
You also can't omit the fact that Season 14 was 3 years ago. People take breaks or stop playing the game for extended periods of time and thus will not no longer be at the same level they were previously. But if you transferred a fresh S14 GC from 2020 to C1 today I have no doubt it would dominate.
i got gc in the first season 3 and stopped playing later that season and came back in season 11 and got gc again and played to season 14, got gc every season between 11-14 and stopped playing again. came back in chapter 2 season 2 and got gc again and stopped playing, now im back again after a while and hit gc again, i feel like the gc's has not changed at all meanwhile the lower ranks has improved so much.
Was watching and comparing my current rank to past GC ranks and I think current high c1/low-mid c2 is pretty close to the season 8-10 range GC level. Funny thing is I've been mostly c1-c2 since like 2019 lol
I remember being a rising star in 2016 and olaying RLCS qualifiers. Today i dwarf the skills posessed back then but am about the same rank respectively. That ranking system seemed to be best with the majority of the players around silver/gold. Anything above diamond should be top 25-33% IMO.
I hit GC the first time in season 5, the feeling I had the night the update dropped was insane. Today it’s nothing special anymore but that’s most likely because since f2p I feel like boosting as become more popular. Every time I see a red tag I feel like the person playing is boosted. Which is sad since there are many people who got it legit but at the same time I see so many in casual playlist just playing like diamond or low champs.. I always check their stats on rl stats tracker and most of the time I’m guessing right. You can clearly see who is boosted and who’s not on their Stats tracker profile.
Considering the amount of people walll dashing, flip resetting, etc, in Champion 1, I would argue, you do need to be able to do all that stuff consistently to get into GC1.
I remember playing the game in 2015 even the ball physics were different if I’m not mistaken. And if u fall of the top ceiling u don’t get a flip reset. And there was like no ranks it was just rookie, pro, all stars. So if u saw a an all star u know ur doomed haha. Now that I came back ti the game damn people play absolutely different and been learning how to get better to keep up. So far i have hit plat and got to plat 3 in one day tomorrow hopefully diamond and we continue the grind
You might be confusing xp titles with ranks. Which both existed since launch. You can check out my recent video on the xp system if you want a reminder. It's on the front page of my channel.
no no sledge i dont think u realize. IT IS AN INSANE AMOUT OF GC10 TITLES as in like for comparison last season there were just occasional amounts of season 9 gc titles in champ 2 and youd only really see full lobbies of gc tags around high c3. bro now? full gc tag lobbies in c2 can happen like multiple games in A ROW. i cant explain why this happened and im curious if it wwill be the same for s11 gc too@@Rocket_Sledge
This season I went down a rank but I feel like the opponents are just as hard as last season. I hit champ 3 div 4 last season, almost tasted a little bit of gc. I think people are getting better faster than me which is fair enough. But it still hurts that the goalpost keeps moving. I already understand that SSL is not for me but it hurts they gotta kick me down out of champ lol
Just for reference: I finished S10 at 1545 mmr, which was top 1.2%. I am currently sitting at 1515mmr which is top 0.9%. This doesn't mean gc is any easier, this just shows how many smurfs and boosted accounts there were in S10, I even did an experiment, deranking myself from 1500 to 800 mmr, then going back to 1500 and I was seeing S10 gc titles in diamond 3 and champ 1 lobbies claiming that they were legit.
If this was 2s, keep in mind there was a stronger reset by roughly an extra 80 rating, which actually lines up nicely with the new distribution. But this seasons distribution isn't out yet, and TRN's MMR website is 3rd party and lacks many players in the bottom end. Won't be fully representative of the full distribution.
I don't believe the rank was diluted in 2020, rocket league purely went free to play to attract more players, because the player base was low, the main people still playing were those that attained a high rank, which obviously would skew the percentages
Cant say much for GC, but I've been hard stuck champ for a few years now, mainly since I dont have time to play as much. I've gotten significantly better at the game, but my rank hasn't really changed all that much. Like when I first hit champ, I couldn't dribble, now I can do the dribble challenge in under 10 min. I've also gotten significantly better at things like double taps and air dribbles, things that I would have no hope of doing when I initially hit champ. I can also say that the games feel faster and the players seem to have gotten better. Its kinda disappointing because it feels like the goalposts are moving.
The goalposts will always be moving in any game with a huge skill gap like this. Active players will usually be constantly improving. It's not just GC that's gotten better, it's also Gold, Plat, Diamond, and Champion that have gotten better. In order to rank up, you must improve at a faster pace than your peers do to win more than 50% of your games against that rank. If you improve at the same rate as them, the winrate will stay around 50%.
hmmmm, under this implication would u say that, you do in fact need to be "built dif" to reach ssl, since you need a inherent ability to improve faster than those around you and thats arguably built in to your personality or u can just grind crazy hours to make up for it or have coaches point out all your flaws or other external intervention.@@HoraryHellfire
@@PantsofVance I dont strictly think that. I only refernced mechanical skill because thats actually measurable whereas decision making isnt. I 100% have improved at the game all arround and I would dominate a champ lobby from a few years ago. Psyonix is obviously trying to keep the ranks at certain percentiles, but I'm saying thats a naive approach since the player base as a whole has improved significantly. They dont want the upper ranks to grow over time but I'm saying thats exactly what should happen with a game that hasnt existed for decades.
@@mike777881 That is not at all how it works because skill will always be relative. I'd argue it's more naive to think it should grow. But also... the ranks HAVE grown significantly already. The highest rated players used to be around 1800-2000 in Legacy Season 4, now they're hitting 2200+ before the next season resets it. Additionally, the median rank used to be Gold 2/Gold 3, now it's closer to Platinum 3/Diamond 1. That's not mentioning the fact that GC used to be the equivalent of ~1300 rating in today's MMR but back in Season 3 (2016), it's now 1435 but no longer the highest rank, which is now SSL at 1875 rating.
i feel like the average skill of the whole game just kept getting higher until FTP came out where a bunch of new players joined and made the average skill go down but by now the skill floor is definitely higher than its ever been due to all of the tutorials and coaching that the community made. The community skill level will forever keep getting higher because of people pushing the skill ceiling.
i joined this game season 2 and only now did I finally hit gc 1 lol. I wish I could see my full stats if they didnt have the random stat wipe when epic joined
The level of play has vastly improved, at least at lower ranks where moves only seen in GC have made their way into diamond lobbies. Also what about the people who have grinded their way every session to finally make GC. And/or the extra smurfs since FTP who may have multiple GC accounts? How does all of that affect the statistics
My S14 tag feels less special now. I did solo queue to 1620 mmr though, and in 3s, so I think I was probably a lower percentage than 0.91%. I wonder what that 1620 would be in today's mmr, I hover around the low 1500s so I imagine that.
Yea smurfing exploded with free to play and now gate keeps many ranks including gc. It’s not even people wanting to play lower ranks, they just want to play with their friends. Getting gc was so hard but once I got into gc the games were all so much easier. Almost got to gc 2 the first time I ever got gc.
I see these weird clips from rocket league streamers where they’ll watch a clip and try to guess the rank, guess too low and be like “aw man, so *this* is what passes for GC nowadays??”. Meanwhile in reality, the collective skill level of the community continues to rise every season. GC is tough to reach these days, that’s why you see so many GC tags in champ.
Sledge you definitely deserve way more subs bro. Question how’s your son & is he still playing? My son actually a bit more mechanical than me but lacks game sense. He still better than me 😅
I think you can tell who WAS a GC versus who IS a GC. you can tell those guys with legacy titles are no longer any better than C2 or C3s. I think free to play opened up for a lot of people who didn't want to pay, then realized they're very good at this game. But I'd say most legacy GCs are not anywhere near first time GCs since SSL was brought in.
Losing a lot of casual players might be the worst thing to ever have happened to Rocket League. Who am I supposed to dunk on now? GIMME BACK MY OLD PEAK RANK PSYONIX!
Nah man, I understand it was a different time but up until 2017 Season 5 its all worse than diamond lobbies. Like maybe a plat couldnt do it because theys have to think too much but any D3 or C1 player now is equivalent to those GCs
GC1s have improved significantly since the game became free to play. In South America, at least, there have been noticeable changes. I remember reaching 1550 MMR in 3v3 without knowing how to execute challenges in the air, double taps, reading the ball, or air dribbling. Nowadays, if I hadn't learned these skills, I would likely be stuck at C3 at best.
Yeah here in US East servers it's getting increasingly difficult to hit GC without learning advanced mechanics. I hit it other seasons without much effort mech wise, now I can barely get above C3 div3
In eu this is the opposite gc has become accessible to player lacking the basics😂
@Sahil_sw__ i think thats mainly bc I believe the eu has more rl players so maybe that makes a big difference too
Gc has gotten so much worse in the 3 years since the game went free 2 play. I was at 1750 MMR exactly when it went free and then i stopped playing. When I am playing now, with much less mechanical skill then before, I observe people in gc1 dont know how to play as a team, defend and position themself correctly. So I think GC1 has switched from people knowing the basics and lacking mechanical skill to people getting way better mechanically while forgetting the basics.
You definitely dont need those mechs if you play smart and have good basic mechs to reach gc in any region aslong as you can fake, fake challenge, flick, dribble, bounce dribble, backboard save, backboard read on offense, shadow defend and position and rotate well you can get gc1
Really good overview! Really liked the vibe of jumping to each season and a good idea to mention small bits of key history. Despite being a person who really loves data and as much of it as possible, this video goes to show that sometimes the data isn't that meaningful in multiple ways.
This video was a great trip through memory lane for me! I don't often hit like on videos and whatnot, but it deserves one for sure :)
That’s for sure
Excellent video & yes a very nice trip to memory lane 😅
Great comparisons. OG's remember when the Kuxir pinch was the hottest mechanic in the game.
Great video I was glued to the screen the whole time. The rapid increase in skill level during the early seasons was really cool to see. Definitely seems like things started plateauing somewhere around season 10, but it's hard to tell off of a few selected clips.
I would probably agree with you!
great video - started playing in 2021 so have always wondered about some of this history. I've watched plenty of other content too, but no other creator has give this much in-depth insight so I appreciate it! Cheers from a Diamond 1 on the way to Champ
Great video man, earned my sub and good luck for 300k!
I think some new mechanics may be found, but in watching Zen, that is where we will see the biggest change in meta. Overall consistency in what was consider “insane” plays will be the baseline for the top tier, if it isn’t already after this last RLCS. I hate that Vitality (Zen) is dominant, but it’s well deserved.
I keep noticing how consistently the pros were hitting really fast side wall doubles. it really stood out to me and at one point a caster said the player whiffed when they didn't read their side wall double. it was definitely a whiff but not like how the average player whiffs lmao. the filthy mechanical consistency is starting to be baseline and it's nutty.
@@killingfreely If you aren’t hitting double taps off the back wall, you probably aren’t making into champ at this point. It used to be that IQ could get you to high champ, now it’s speed and mechanics, along with IQ. I’ve been hard stuck in diamond and as my gameplay gets better, so does the requirements for each rank, so here I stay until diamonds are flip resetting consistently.
You don’t need any fancy mechs to get into champ.
Fast aerials and half flips are all you really need.
Wave dashes and good use of power slide will make life easier.
When I have coached diamonds into champ, I have never had to coach someone on any mechs other than wave dashes and hitting the ball harder (which is really 90% positioning)
If people are double tapping in diamond I’d guess they’re smurfing. At least from my experience coaching people
@@DrBojanglez105 I'm GC2. I'm talking about the fast side wall double redirects that pro's are hitting consistently.
@@Average-Lizard Agreed. I will say that at high diamond, I play private matches with my champ and GC friends all the time. The most recent set of champs I played with were just faster. Still popping off with some mechanics, I just felt like I was trying to force speed I didn’t have. You are correct about positioning, but I feel like the skill level of every rank has been rising, as the top ranks become even more mechanical. My experience is really skewed because I’m 1550 in casual, but only D3 in ranked 3’s, so sometimes my expectations for tm8’s and opponents don’t match. My point really is, that as GC’s are essentially expected to be able to hit insane plays, the old GC’s are pushed to champ with what used to be GC mechanics, like double taps. I know a few former GC’s trapped in champ, and former champs trapped in diamond.
I was stuck at C3 from Legacy S12 until finally breaking through to GC1 at FTP S4. While I improved, I didn't improve as quickly as the rest of the playerbase, so this old man had to take a lot of L's before getting there. Even today, I don't get my GC title every season. I've missed a couple since S4. It's hard out there in the champ ranks.
how did S11 affect your rank?
@@reecewithoutherspoon1324 I can only speak for myself but same situation as OP, I just got my rewards and I had to bust my ass off for it. C3 is always hell but S11 definitely made it more difficult. I have gotten much better over this season but am still struggling to maintain GC1
Great video Man. I honestly think that the gc rank, even though the % is bigger, because of the game speed, recoveries and mechanics. It sure isn't a bug difference as u showed us but it's still there and reaching GC means not only that you are really hood but also that u don't touch grass
on the rocket league map 😎
Love watching the progression of players over the years. I got a code to play in Alpha and I've been playing since. Highest reach was gc3 div 1 in s10, It's crazy how different it is from where I was at playing at GC in legacy season 9. The skill ceiling never stops, people are still learning new mechanics all the time. It's a beautiful game. Keep up that amazing work dude, love your videos!!
Thank you!
Great overview in my oppionin. Loved the vide of the whole thing and the sections of key history from that moment, thanks for the great vid!!!
Great video! I'd love to see a similar breakdown on the rank requirements between the different modes too; I know some seasons have seen a ridiculously low percentage of players reach GC in 1v1 for example.
OG’s remember the original change in season 3 with GC MMR being 1155 lmao
ngl this video is pretty interesting and i appreciate the depth of research you did brotha, well done !
Glad you enjoyed!
And now, we have a ZEN! Just rewriting every mechanic there is making it better lol. Great video.
I think you forgot the mmr change for gc1 implemented in season 3 (ftp)
That was a massive change regarding the % of players.
I love these little documentary videos of the lifespan of a game. I think 2020 massively shot put the skill ceiling as many people were indoors most of the day. Zen might transform the top side of the game, but I don't know about the average GC pulling off what he can. Some players can only be described as outliers if we look at regular sports as a reference.
Sledge, you make some of the best analysis rocket league videos out there. Props to your dedication and methods to study how players tick.
P.s. idk how I haven't subbed yet. Been watching you since 2017 i believe. Subbed now though.
It took 5 years but I finally gottem.
Great content, homie. Keep it up 🎉
you've been banging it with the content man, i remember when u had less than 70k subs. came a long way
As a coach, rocket league skill is very misunderstood. At the base, the difference between a win and loss can be a clash of play-styles and adaptability. You either control the pace of the game or you match the pace. I am gc and I have mechanics, but my play style and specialty revolves around my shooting. All I do is stay present in the middle of the field more or less and whenever the ball happens to be available I slam it. Conclusion: You don’t need mechanics if you know how to play without them, however, the less tools you have in your arsenal the less you can adapt
Good points. Yea there's lots of ways to achieve GC, it can look very different depending on your playstyle or even the opponent you are facing at the time.
Rocket Sledge the GOAT.
Literally the only Rocket League News Cast that matters, right here on UA-cam 👌
The proportion of GC to the rest, does not indicate how the player base progressed through years. I'm champion 2, and 3 years ago i was also champion 2, but i can do lots of things now i could not back then, so i would beat my old self. The problem is that everyone continues to play and to improve, so the percentage of GCs remains about equal, but this fact doesn't give any insights on the skill required to be GC
i just looked on rl tracker and gc1 is like top 3%
@@246bro9I do like using rl tracker to see that kind of information, but my understanding is that it isn't fully accurate since it only has data for the players that have been accessed within it. Higher-ranked players are more likely to check rl tracker.
Early legacy GC looks like D3/C1 today. That's quite impressive imo.
gc is a weird one. i was gc in ftp s3 just for the titles and i didnt play the game after that really due to life. in s10 i hopped on with some friends and the level you have to be for gc has seemingly dropped crazily.
everyone used to make their cars look like lachinio back in the day
3:30 this has never changed, you just need to be consistent and don’t make mistakes to reach GC. Flashy mechanics are not needed
there are a lot of small improvements in recent GC compared to the early free to play era, some of which are: walldashes, zapdashes, holding jump to get more flip time, more confident aerial plays, consistent in-and-out saves, reverse challenges, air dribble bumps, Spanish kickoff, doing the reverse diagonal flip against the wall to land more efficiently, way better backboard defense and wall clears, and so many more. I'm sure a current 1500 MMR in 2v2 could beat a 1650 MMR from 2020, easily
ye i thought this too.
i was like u can not be serious if u dont think a high season legacy clip wouldnt be noticable from a ftp6 clip
I remember grinding like crazy in (I guess I have to put the word "legacy" here) season 3 because of all the comments saying "anyone can get GC this season". It wasn't until season 12 or 13 that I actually got GC rewards though, which was largely born out of the frustration at seeing SunlessKhan hit GC before me when I had slapped him in 1's back in like legacy season 6 lol. Time flies.
Kind of wild as I was pissed off also that Sunless got GC before me and it made me grind more. Didn’t hit it until season 3 ftp but makes me wonder how many other people out there did he motivate to grind lmao
Ik how you feel, hit GC back in season 13 after grinding like all hell for months and then once i hit that sorta fell out of touch with RL at least in the tryhard sense, Now im down in C2-3 and lacking in my ability badly
I started playing around the tail end of legacy season 1. However the first time I got GC was in free-to-play. I have GC for S1, S3, S4, and S9. With everyone constantly getting better, It has been hard to keep up. I have been hanging around C3 since the last time I got GC, and it's really impressive how much better everyone is at each rank. After the recent rank changes, that puts me at around C2, but I'm still working on improving and getting back to GC if I can.
Was looking for a long time for this video.
The fact that stats show very little drift even as the skill of players increases over time is really an indictment of the incredibly simplistic stats we have.
Actually ballchasing.com is able to track a wide range of stats and even positioning from the replay files. Everything from amount of boost pick ups to how much time is spend in each area of field. I think the stats more prove that despite mechanical changes, what makes a high level player is still heavily based on the same basics: positioning and speed.
agreed i bet if there was a stat to show simply ball control itd be a nice increase each season@@hiddenleif6854
It's crazy to see the evolution of this game. Like GC2s be hitting double/triple resets like nothing, it's crazy
Thanks, Sledge! Great video
Love your videos. They always make my day. Keep Up The Good Work❤
I love how everyone watches old GC clips and starts proclaiming that today's diamonds would be the GCs of old. Watch any great player do one of their smurf runs to GC and notice how they don't have to use any fancy mechanics to get back to the top. The GC's of old were still so much better at the "non-mechanical" aspects of the game than us current lowbies that they could Flake their way past today's diamond and champs with ease.
Exactly!
Obviously not diamond, but very old GC was definetly not as good as today.
Today it would be low C3 no more.
(For very low GC players, not players who were already GC 1800+ MMR at the time.)
I agree, for the most part. I don’t think most could break champ, due to their lack of experience with defending air plays (which are more consistent in higher champ). They would also be greeted with much faster players (in regard of how fast their car travels. I am unsure about thinking speed), which would be very hard to deal with after slower lobbies with less fancy mechanics.
I do think they would get farther up in champ before getting stuck, but they’d have to then take the time to get used to all the new stuff people commonly do, as well as teammates who leave you in 1v2’s on a regular basis.
If we are talking about 3s and maybe 2s, yes. But 1s you put a C1 vs a legacy S1-2 GC and that champ is winning 9/10 times, it’s just they are at such a mechanical disadvantage it’s not even funny. Tbh I’d say S1 GC 1s players are probably close to mid to low diamond, it really depends bc those diamonds could just cheese with speed flip kickoffs and score like 8 kickoff goals lmao
2016 and 2017 rocket league with the old crates and no one knowing how to Play the game was peak rocket league
Having fun with Friends and gambling your items away 😂
I've been playing since legacy season 6 and I've been hard-stuck at c1/2 since season 7. I can't do anything even remotely fancy. My consistency and game sense have improved a lot but I just can't rank past c2 without advanced mechanics. I'd say the player base has improved a lot in that time. I'm improving but less quickly than the player base.
Felt that. I’ve been playing since 2016. I’ve been champ 2-3 almost every season since free to play and I just learned how to half flip a few months ago 😂. It’s crazy how kids in diamond can flip reset but just have zero awareness of the risk/reward of their shots and field position.
My God I got the game in a humble bundle im unsure when but didn't play until it was literally F2P in 2020 even though I owned it from earlier. Crazy to see the progression of the player base and really cool for the guys that stuck to it. I'm Hard stuck Gold, Plat occasionally diamond but always Solo only player ( well apart from the very rare occasion ) I very rarely Train as games are fast don't practice any "set Moves" as such and figuring it out as I go, enjoying losing as much as winning its fun i don't care to be the best unless I do it my way, I guess I learnt some basic rotation stuff and goal defending as for ages I was a goal sitter and didn't even know what rotation was cause well... it took some time to watch a video. My Experience has been fun and have thought about "trying to learn the Meta" but I feel i would miss the feeling of the aha moment of me figuring it out for myself. Much love to the community Majority are cool and the ones that are obviously toxic a little love to them makes them feel warm and cozy in the hate, Great vid thanks.
Figuring it out on our own is how we did it at launch! It is part of the fun for sure.
Current GC vs previous years would dominate, the skill level the past 3 years especially have been off the charts. Zen alone is introducing all whole new skill level everyone else is trying to decode.
i don't get why so many people get salty when they see someone with a GC tag in their lobby who sucks. obviously they put in the work to get it at that time but maybe no find the game enjoyable or play/grind like they used to. i still wear my gold GC tag from legacy even if i get flamed every so often tho lol
gotta love the post game: "CARRIED TO GC" or "YOU'RE A GC!?!?!?!?" like bro, relax, i don't even play this game anymore
some ppl just hate cuz they wish they had the title too.. cuz im in d3 and i see some of the gold OG gc titles and it looks cool and i might be jealous cuz i wish i had one but i dont hate like other ppl
Ive been playing sense late 2015 early 2016 granted i did play on and off throughout the years but i finally hit gc and got the gc rewards this season took forever and at points thought i would never reach it but i finally did it and i finally feel accomplished in this game!
Dang bruh, 296k subs? I remember tweeting you when you hit 6,969 subs, good ass video too, I haven't really been too familiar with tas but now I understand it and these shots look absolutely insane.
I was Champ 3 div 4 and then SSL became a thing. Stopped playing for a while lol
I've been GC since OG season 2. The hardest seasons (in my experience) to get GC before F2P were S2, S4 and S8. Season 3, 12 and 14 were insanely easy all of the rest were just "regular".
I mean obviously overall the average gc is better than back in the day, but I do think the skill gap is smaller thus making it technically easier to reach g1 now. As a washed one the stuff I see in my champ/diamond lobbies now still blows me away though, the community has gotten good
It’s funny because I played a season 14 gc in a c1-d3 game yesterday and we destroyed him 😂 the skill level of this game is always improving drastically and that’s why it’s so amazing. Shoutout to zen.
You also can't omit the fact that Season 14 was 3 years ago. People take breaks or stop playing the game for extended periods of time and thus will not no longer be at the same level they were previously. But if you transferred a fresh S14 GC from 2020 to C1 today I have no doubt it would dominate.
@@Rocket_Sledge yeah I agree, they most likely took a long break. I was still nervous seeing the title. Gc is still incredible to get.
So fun to see how The play have changed this years!👍
i got gc in the first season 3 and stopped playing later that season and came back in season 11 and got gc again and played to season 14, got gc every season between 11-14 and stopped playing again. came back in chapter 2 season 2 and got gc again and stopped playing, now im back again after a while and hit gc again, i feel like the gc's has not changed at all meanwhile the lower ranks has improved so much.
I remember picking up the game in FTP S2 with my friends. Now we all got GC and haven't played in months.😢
Visually, it looks like gameplay speeds up quite a bit after free to play came out.
Has there been any discussion about adding SSL 1 and SSL 2 to differentiate between highly talented players and pros?
dont think that should be a thing tbh
It's not exclusive enough until it's held by 1 person.
And that 1 person is me
great video brother
Was watching and comparing my current rank to past GC ranks and I think current high c1/low-mid c2 is pretty close to the season 8-10 range GC level. Funny thing is I've been mostly c1-c2 since like 2019 lol
I remember being a rising star in 2016 and olaying RLCS qualifiers. Today i dwarf the skills posessed back then but am about the same rank respectively. That ranking system seemed to be best with the majority of the players around silver/gold. Anything above diamond should be top 25-33% IMO.
im curious, how many season 1 ssls were there and what percent there is as I was one but I'm not sure how rare it is.
I hit GC the first time in season 5, the feeling I had the night the update dropped was insane. Today it’s nothing special anymore but that’s most likely because since f2p I feel like boosting as become more popular. Every time I see a red tag I feel like the person playing is boosted. Which is sad since there are many people who got it legit but at the same time I see so many in casual playlist just playing like diamond or low champs.. I always check their stats on rl stats tracker and most of the time I’m guessing right. You can clearly see who is boosted and who’s not on their Stats tracker profile.
Me trying to understand statistics: "The numbers Mason! What do they mean!?"
This was such a great video.
Thank you!
Good to see Wayton rotating backpost in 2018.
As a diamond player im feeling fear from the next ranks
Considering the amount of people walll dashing, flip resetting, etc, in Champion 1, I would argue, you do need to be able to do all that stuff consistently to get into GC1.
started playing in 2019 but didnt take the game seriously till 2022 now im gc and climbing
been champ for 8 years all i need, is a time machine to reach GC
I remember playing the game in 2015 even the ball physics were different if I’m not mistaken. And if u fall of the top ceiling u don’t get a flip reset. And there was like no ranks it was just rookie, pro, all stars. So if u saw a an all star u know ur doomed haha. Now that I came back ti the game damn people play absolutely different and been learning how to get better to keep up. So far i have hit plat and got to plat 3 in one day tomorrow hopefully diamond and we continue the grind
You might be confusing xp titles with ranks. Which both existed since launch. You can check out my recent video on the xp system if you want a reminder. It's on the front page of my channel.
This is a banger.
so you're telling me i couldve been a top player back in 2016
No
Do A vid on ssp super soniq plat
idk how credible this is but Ive seen many s10 gc titles on people who are currently c2, is this something to do with the reset?
Probably a part of the reason yes, though there can be many factors including the fact that sometimes they've earned the title in another playlist.
@@Rocket_Sledge I use a plugin that shows their best rank and what playlist it's in and it's usually c2 in 2v2
no no sledge i dont think u realize.
IT IS AN INSANE AMOUT OF GC10 TITLES
as in like for comparison last season there were just occasional amounts of season 9 gc titles in champ 2 and youd only really see full lobbies of gc tags around high c3.
bro now? full gc tag lobbies in c2 can happen like multiple games in A ROW. i cant explain why this happened and im curious if it wwill be the same for s11 gc too@@Rocket_Sledge
This season I went down a rank but I feel like the opponents are just as hard as last season. I hit champ 3 div 4 last season, almost tasted a little bit of gc. I think people are getting better faster than me which is fair enough. But it still hurts that the goalpost keeps moving. I already understand that SSL is not for me but it hurts they gotta kick me down out of champ lol
I remember old GC. It was very fun back then and I remember the brilliant experiences with friends like it was just however many years ago 😂
yeah, and you and your friends got excited everytime you hit a redirect or something like that, now it's very dry i feel like unlike how it was.
@@quickify5462 the game just feels boring nowadays. If only we could go back 🥲
I remember buying RL like a month before it went ftp😂
Just for reference:
I finished S10 at 1545 mmr, which was top 1.2%.
I am currently sitting at 1515mmr which is top 0.9%.
This doesn't mean gc is any easier, this just shows how many smurfs and boosted accounts there were in S10, I even did an experiment, deranking myself from 1500 to 800 mmr, then going back to 1500 and I was seeing S10 gc titles in diamond 3 and champ 1 lobbies claiming that they were legit.
If this was 2s, keep in mind there was a stronger reset by roughly an extra 80 rating, which actually lines up nicely with the new distribution. But this seasons distribution isn't out yet, and TRN's MMR website is 3rd party and lacks many players in the bottom end. Won't be fully representative of the full distribution.
Yooo just came out how are there comments from 1 day ago
I'm new to watching this channel but I see they have a patreon. They might upload videos as unlisted for patrons to watch early
I don't believe the rank was diluted in 2020, rocket league purely went free to play to attract more players, because the player base was low, the main people still playing were those that attained a high rank, which obviously would skew the percentages
Keep the good work up
you said how ftp s10 was 1.13% of players for gc1, but with the mmr reset at the start of season 11 ftp, was this affected?
As I said shortly after that in the video, it remains to be seen what the effects of season 11 changes will have on distribution.
10:26 how is Fluump doing these days?
He has 80k subs with a motorcycle channel called "Bart".
@@Rocket_Sledge Thanks for the update, I will check him out
Cant say much for GC, but I've been hard stuck champ for a few years now, mainly since I dont have time to play as much. I've gotten significantly better at the game, but my rank hasn't really changed all that much. Like when I first hit champ, I couldn't dribble, now I can do the dribble challenge in under 10 min. I've also gotten significantly better at things like double taps and air dribbles, things that I would have no hope of doing when I initially hit champ. I can also say that the games feel faster and the players seem to have gotten better. Its kinda disappointing because it feels like the goalposts are moving.
The goalposts will always be moving in any game with a huge skill gap like this. Active players will usually be constantly improving. It's not just GC that's gotten better, it's also Gold, Plat, Diamond, and Champion that have gotten better. In order to rank up, you must improve at a faster pace than your peers do to win more than 50% of your games against that rank. If you improve at the same rate as them, the winrate will stay around 50%.
hmmmm, under this implication would u say that, you do in fact need to be "built dif" to reach ssl, since you need a inherent ability to improve faster than those around you and thats arguably built in to your personality
or u can just grind crazy hours to make up for it or have coaches point out all your flaws or other external intervention.@@HoraryHellfire
You thinking your mechanics have improved so therefore your rank should improve is probably the reason why you're still champ
@@PantsofVance I dont strictly think that. I only refernced mechanical skill because thats actually measurable whereas decision making isnt. I 100% have improved at the game all arround and I would dominate a champ lobby from a few years ago. Psyonix is obviously trying to keep the ranks at certain percentiles, but I'm saying thats a naive approach since the player base as a whole has improved significantly. They dont want the upper ranks to grow over time but I'm saying thats exactly what should happen with a game that hasnt existed for decades.
@@mike777881 That is not at all how it works because skill will always be relative. I'd argue it's more naive to think it should grow. But also... the ranks HAVE grown significantly already. The highest rated players used to be around 1800-2000 in Legacy Season 4, now they're hitting 2200+ before the next season resets it. Additionally, the median rank used to be Gold 2/Gold 3, now it's closer to Platinum 3/Diamond 1. That's not mentioning the fact that GC used to be the equivalent of ~1300 rating in today's MMR but back in Season 3 (2016), it's now 1435 but no longer the highest rank, which is now SSL at 1875 rating.
i feel like the average skill of the whole game just kept getting higher until FTP came out where a bunch of new players joined and made the average skill go down but by now the skill floor is definitely higher than its ever been due to all of the tutorials and coaching that the community made. The community skill level will forever keep getting higher because of people pushing the skill ceiling.
Diamond 3 - Champ 1 for the last 3 years I just don’t play often enough to advance past C1
It's incredible how much people care about how "exclusive" their little club is. Good video though!
i joined this game season 2 and only now did I finally hit gc 1 lol. I wish I could see my full stats if they didnt have the random stat wipe when epic joined
The level of play has vastly improved, at least at lower ranks where moves only seen in GC have made their way into diamond lobbies.
Also what about the people who have grinded their way every session to finally make GC. And/or the extra smurfs since FTP who may have multiple GC accounts? How does all of that affect the statistics
My S14 tag feels less special now. I did solo queue to 1620 mmr though, and in 3s, so I think I was probably a lower percentage than 0.91%. I wonder what that 1620 would be in today's mmr, I hover around the low 1500s so I imagine that.
Yea smurfing exploded with free to play and now gate keeps many ranks including gc. It’s not even people wanting to play lower ranks, they just want to play with their friends. Getting gc was so hard but once I got into gc the games were all so much easier. Almost got to gc 2 the first time I ever got gc.
The good old days where there went t 50million smurfs in diamond
I see these weird clips from rocket league streamers where they’ll watch a clip and try to guess the rank, guess too low and be like “aw man, so *this* is what passes for GC nowadays??”. Meanwhile in reality, the collective skill level of the community continues to rise every season. GC is tough to reach these days, that’s why you see so many GC tags in champ.
I got to c3d4 this season without even trying multiple times you gotta be on your shit to get gc
Very interesting
Nice vid
300k sub gangg
Me looking back to how I didnt start playing until 2021. Im gc2 now btw
Sledge you definitely deserve way more subs bro.
Question how’s your son & is he still playing?
My son actually a bit more mechanical than me but lacks game sense. He still better than me 😅
SealKing is doing well, he doesnt play a lot but he show up in the odd video, including the one linked at the end of this!
I think you can tell who WAS a GC versus who IS a GC. you can tell those guys with legacy titles are no longer any better than C2 or C3s. I think free to play opened up for a lot of people who didn't want to pay, then realized they're very good at this game. But I'd say most legacy GCs are not anywhere near first time GCs since SSL was brought in.
Losing a lot of casual players might be the worst thing to ever have happened to Rocket League. Who am I supposed to dunk on now? GIMME BACK MY OLD PEAK RANK PSYONIX!
Coll vid 😊😮❤
Nah man, I understand it was a different time but up until 2017 Season 5 its all worse than diamond lobbies. Like maybe a plat couldnt do it because theys have to think too much but any D3 or C1 player now is equivalent to those GCs
Top 100 titles would be dope