Rocket League Freestyling Is About To Change Forever 

I find it ironic how most freestylers say bullying bronzes will help said bronzes improving yet don’t play at their own rank because they get bullied when they try to freestyle

Makes me wonder why they didn't create a new gamemode based on freestyling. One at a time players would hit shots and then you and the other players in the match would rate the shot (kind of like build battles in Minecraft if that makes sense). Would be cool IMO

so glad they did this. i remember when i was new and i was still trying to level up so i could play competitive and i just kept getting destroyed by 2 freestylers. like bro if ur not even trying to play against someone just open a private match.

We need a free styling playlist where people can actually freestyle without disrupting everyone else

After seeing the pov of the "noobs" I totally understood what psyonix was after, and totally agree that they should've handled it better.

There's now a matchmaking ban in casual for leaving matches. So, while they CAN leave a match if they want, they shouldn't be forced to.

Smurfing has been a growing problem for RL and I'm glad they are combating it. Agree 1month out of the blue seems too harsh should probably have been a week so people realise they're serious and then give them a grace period to get up to a more reasonable mmr

I think you didnt get why people were really mad. We are mad due to the reactions to the bans. Many fs said new players should be happy and be inspired by them. This statements really showed what kind of people they are.

I'm glad they are doing something about it. Watching a lot of those guys feels like watching Mike Tyson fight a toddler.

the difference now is that leaving a casual match gets you punished, so you can't just leave against a party of freestylers

The sad thing is that most of the freestylers are trying ti be flexible, but the few that are being annoying are making people hate the fs community

I would love to see a freestyling-only playlist as a possible solution. I would use this as well, as a champ 2, even though I'm not a freestyler, it would still be nice to go into it from time to time.

I know it's boring but maybe a freestyle playlist would be a cool idea that way everyone there wants to be involved

There obviously exists a large community that cares deeply about freestyling, but players who just want to play the game get frustrated because it really does suck to not even be able to touch the ball. In my opinion, the best way to fix this situation would be for Psyonix to implement a new category entirely for the freestylers. We'd have Ranked and Casual still, but have another menu option, like extras mode, specifically to go to for "100% willing participation." We'll call it something wild like "Freestyle" and nobody winds up there who doesn't want to freestyle, problem solved.

A few details that Wayton missed : 1. The freestylers who got a 30-day ban were the extreme edge cases who were literally abusing new players. Not simply hitting clips on them, but were intentionally dragging games out into overtime and then playing keepaway for as long as possible. 2. Most of the freestylers instead had their casual MMR boosted to 1600. Which they absolutely lost their shit over (yes, they lost their shit over having their MMR boosted by 1500 points). 3. Psyonix has stated that if freestylers play like how Fire and Evample do (which is to say, not own-goaling or forfeiting, or otherwise throwing), that's acceptable. So if you go for a crazy clip, miss, and get scored on because you've taken yourself completely out of the play, that's fine. What they don't want is people intentionally sticking around 100-300MMR so that they're only going up against absolute n00bs that don't have a hope in hell of even coming close to making a save. Also, there's a really simple solution to the problem of fake clips -- set up an RL Freestyle discord server. Anyone who wants to do clips must invite at least one person not in the same Freestyle clan as them to a private match, both players must record the match and upload the replay file at the end for the clip to be verified. This ensures the integrity of the clips, as well as ensures that the only people getting clipped on are 100% willing participants.

"When I play a bronze they get better, but when I play someone better than me, that's not fair" - 🤓

I totally missed this topic and the fact that freestylers did this for years to me is just mindblowing. Tbh they can be happy for just missing out for a month. Intentionally loosing games just says it all... it's wrong, no matter how you turn it. If you wanna freestyle go ahead, i think it's an awesome skill to have and as Wayton said those montages are amazing and helpful to the community but not at the cost of new players. I am totally on board with Psyonic here and if they wanna freestyle go private. It's their own fault for missusing the casual playlist for it. If they just played for fun at freestyling no matter the match outcome and no intentionally loosing i guarantee nothing would have happened. It's L for the freestylers yes but caused by themself as they did many times in the casual playlist. Karma always gets you.

I overall think that Psyonix is _more_ in the right here: The argument that "people can just leave" is not just faulty for the reasons you named - but even if people followed that advice, freestylers wouldn't be able to hit their clips because the game stops once all opponents have left. So at that point everyone loses. I do agree though that a full month with no prior statement about this measure being upcoming is unreasonably harsh - even if you count them as repeat-offenders (since they've done it for a while, and should know the game well enough to know what they're doing is not in the spirit (or even letter) of the rules).

i remember reading somewhere that psyonix should add a freestyle playlist, similar to the extra modes. that will guarantee 100% willing participants, bc you know exactly what you’re getting into before starting a match

Yesssss, I was hoping so much for a video from you to clear things up since the whole drama started, thank you!!!!!

I personally consider clipping on a silver to be a "fake clip" also. I like how Evample does his stuff. Those are great clips against people who didnt just start playing. Maybe Psyonix should work on a freestyle game mode? Each side taking turns defending or trying to clip. Maybe with defender being limited to one side of the field or something. idk.

Big W from rocket league personally me and my friend lost interest in the game cause of not being able to do anything while playing there are ALOT of smurfs in casual and not only, this had to be done

As a diamond myself I have played against a team of freestylers and it is still kind of annoying having someone with insane mechanics on the other team but It was still a fairly even match up because the other team only went for freestyles

This is great. The amount of times I've entered a casual match and opponents were talking shit cuz I wanted to play normal and would ruin their set up like I give a fuck. Hope they get banned aswell

Im a freestyler and i play at my rank cuz hitting clips in people just as good as you is so satisfying.

Take a cue from the speedrunning community on how to verify freestyle clips: require simultaneous video of the person performing the freestyling so you can see their controls at the same time they're performing the freestyling. Or require the clips be taken from a live stream showing the full match where the clip occurred from start to finish - creating the private match, showing all mutators, etc. Options exist. This is a problem that speedrunning communities have had to tackle for longer than most RL players have been alive! Psyonix could also update the replay system to save all active mutators from a private match (if they aren't doing so), show them during playback, and honor them in the replay. So if slow-mo is turned on, it's played back in slow-mo, not at normal speed. So if they aren't already doing that, that'd be the place to start.

Probably the only objective video I've seen on the topic that fairly explains the story from both sides. Fake clips are going to become a really big issue so psyonix should definitely do something about that.

They should add a freestyle playlist that has a horse mechanic in it

They should make a freestyle mode where each side gets a chance to hit a clip on the other and it’s a turn by turn game so both sides get equal time with the ball. Make up a rank system and everything for it

Thx a for explaining this, this was really helpful👍

thanks for going out of your way to explain why fake clips are bad some people ignorant to freestyling wouldn't have thought anything of it

I appreciate you not being biast towards any side of the arguements and that you really dug into both sides. Great video!

They could add a mode where there’s like 4 players and each one get a turn to make a freestyle or all have a certain amount of time to hit a goal that they like and have to vote on it or something

Bro your vids are always bangers. Good story telling.

love your videos wayton!

Freestylers should just clip on eachother if they're not good enough to do it at their own rank in casual/compe. Not that complex 🤷

If they can do this, they can ban all smurf accounts.

I agree with the decision, my girl just got the game and has been grinding to try and get better but she's been stuck with every other game there being a smurf and she can't really do anything so it feels like she can't even play the game. And when I was low diamond there were smufs everywhere and it's just so annoying.i report all of them even if they throw the game.

Love your videos I’m diamond now because of your videos and I have been putting in more then 20 hours a week

They should make a freestyler mode where you guys don't play competitively and get your turns alternatively and add some rules. that way, freestylers could match up against OTHER freestylers at their skill level.

Two other solutions: 1. Be able to check mutators and mods in a replay file 2. (Copy of my comment in that Psyonix Reddit post below) Make a mode called Freestyle where the ball turns the color of the player who should have possession and is placed near one end of the field (like kickoffs for Heatseeker). The other player is either ghosted out and cannot physically interact with the other player or ball, or is spawned outside the field. The player with possession has 20 seconds to get the ball higher than the crossbar. If it runs out, he took too long and loses possession (to prevent griefing). Once it's above crossbar height, the timer becomes 60 seconds. If the ball touches the ground or 60 seconds runs out, he loses possession and the ball and players are switched out for the new posession. If the ball goes in the net... yay! At a minimum, it's about giving each person 5 possessions per match (which could be nearly up to 15 minutes if both players always take almost the entirety of their time), but more realistically might take 2-5 minutes at low ranks and 5-10 for higher ranks. Maybe scoring could be done by means of tracking how high the ball was and how long it was at different heights. Each second the ball is a certain number of Unreal Units above the ground is worth points based on height above court. Presumably, a better player that holds it longer and higher is better. A low rank player could keep it just off the ground for a while with a ground dribble, but a higher rank player can air dribble all day. It's not perfect - obviously pogoing and other tricks take the ball down - but it's about the best I can think of. The mode would track four stats to deconflict ties. First (obviously), highest points earned by a scored shot. Second, total points earned by scored shots. Third, highest points by a failed shot. Fourth, total points by failed shots. If none of those decide a winner, a countdown starts, and an air strike missile shoots to random parts of the map every half second. The last player alive wins. If the strike kills both, whoever was further from the strike's contact point wins. If they were somehow equally distant, the game flips a coin. Oh, and they could totally turn microphones on for all in a freestyle match.

I remember seeing a video just weeks ago where it was mentioned that if you do the private match slo-mo trick, the "Boost" text in the boost meter will flash at double the speed.

ty for looking into both sides that enough is a W

A commonly proposed solution is to add a freestyling playlist where you get points for cool shots. I say you don't need anything but a verified freeplay sort of thing. Freestylers don't want defenders in the net, if they do then they can go hit clips in, well, ranked, high mmr casual, whatever. Make a freeplay server anyone can use to hit their clips.

What about instead of adding a extra freestyle gamemode, they make a little checkbox in the casual playlist that if you want you can tick it to allow freestylers to play in your games. This could also be just a feature around the mmr of diamonds and above so its more fair. The freestylers could either 'tag' themselves or be 'tagged' by psyonix so that they can only queue in casual with people with the checkbox ticked (which is reinforcing the 100% willing partcipants part)

I have a possible solution. If your ranked at a specific tier for example (grandchamp 2, champ 3...) your casual mmr should not drop below your tier 1 rank (grandchamp1, champ1). Like having an mmr floor you can't drop below unless you drop your tier 1 rank in ranked. I believe this would solve the big problems and keep the higher ranks in higher ranked casual.

With the slo-mo thing if you speed up the clip then the boost meters text flashes faster.

Several ideas here: 1. Add a specific game mode for freestyling. (Not necessarily a duplicate version of the casual mode). 2. Add a game mode for new/low-skilled players only. (Need rules to define that category of players). 3. Change the matchmaking rules in casual. (Take into consideration the number of hours played, the best rank and any other statistics Psyonix have).

I don't understand why psyonix does not create a "Freestyling" playlist? I don't see any downsides to that

It's happening in rank now n u see people leaving the team party so they don't look like they always play together

finally a good video about this situation

The story telling skills this guy has is insane!

I think a mode for free stylers would work well in this way: 1. There's lobbies of a handful of freestyles, when you que up you get placed in one of these lobbies and everyone has a set amount of time/tries to hit a clip. 2. Once everyone has hit thier clip, everything is anonymized and everyone goes through and watches all the clips in a kind of goal replay style. 3. Everyone in the lobby then gets to vote on their favorite clip(obviously not being able to vote on thier own) This idea could be expanded to include teams as well. It would allow for a semi competitive free style mode and because it's still public multiplayer it'd be more difficult to fake.

im around 1000 mmr in cas and i love seeing these crazy shots in casual it inspires me ngl

New player who peaked in Silver 3 here. There is more smurfing in this game than I recall seeing in anything I've played in the last 5 years if not longer. Being matched against people who wouldn't even let me touch the ball because they kept playing in the air at least every third match already discouraged me to quit. Matchmaking should at least try to be skill-based, this was just a frustrating experience even if those kids with bloated egos would often give me the win after I pretended to care about their tricks for a couple minutes.

They should make a freestyle HORSE playlist. Put a 10-15 second shot timer and alternate kickoffs. Assign pop ups for various car/ball interactions. (Ex: 3x air roll, ceiling bounce, flip reset, backboard bounce)

What about a new freestyle mode? You get extended time, take turns for scoring (or try to save each shot) and users get the chance to validate their achievements.

Great video... It did clarify something for me. Why in the ever living hell is my casual MMR close to yours? I'm no where near GC 🤣🤣

As a diamond 2 in some gamemodes it’s a pain, but in casual if I’m getting freestyled on it’s kinda fun to sit back and watch. Of course, if I was a fresh player I’d have no clue what was happening.

Honestly, I love being able to occasionally experience the full breath of player skill in my multiplayer games. Especially when it's a population as small as grandmaster. Like, if these people are getting free styled once on every hundred or so games, I perceive that as a cool, chance encounter.

Thank you for responding to this like an adult instead of just shitting on freestyling without knowing the facts. You took the argument of freestylers, which most people have been ignoring, and made it easy to understand. The amount of content creators i respected took a 15 minute look on twitter then made a video with horrible takes and arguments. Its important that someone with a big following like you actually decided to listen to us. I hope this video helps make the changes needed for the community.

Nothing like a freestyler with higher game sense playing in a way their teammates can’t read. Rotating across each other trying to hit a double touch.

Its so nice watching rocket league videos knowing damn well that I don't have rocket league and hate giving my email to epic games

It's not up to the community to find a path, it's Psyonix's responsibility to make way for freestylers by adding a dedicated game mode.

In my opinion the best solution would be if pysonix would remove these bans and reset their mmr to equivalent to their competitive mmr. In the other hand the freestylers should ask first the other side whether they want to freestyle or not. If not then they can just leave. (leaving from 1v1 wont lead to punishment)

6:25 “…but you don’t have a rank in Casual” We just went over the fact that MMR is something that is implemented in Casual RL, and Freestylers will intentionally abuse it to get easier opponents.

Yeah as a lower rank I really hate it when I get matched up with freestylers, I just quit as soon as I notice. Really not a good experience...

I wish more freestylers were like Evample. Do you know how high the skill ceiling would go if every mech god combined their mechs with game sense and were capable of freestyling on top 100 players

Comp freestyling should become the meta. The clips are rarer to create, yet are more authentic for the "real opponent aspect." As great as casual freestyling clips are, they are basically against bots with limited boost. I would imagine getting clipped on, or attempted to get clipped on while being sub silver would leave a sour taste on the game if forced to watch helplessly.

I wonder if Psyonix' "response" will end up being a new playlist/game mode. Very curious to see how that would work.

The fact that I’m at the same cas mmr as wayton made me realize I’m probly the problem every time I play casual 3s

As a very very new player like 3 weeks in I'll speak from a rare perspective. When I get in a game and someone starts doing freestyle off the ceiling stuff I get hyped. I pull back out the way and let them doit. I watch and learn. I don't wanna play the game on noob mode until I'm good. You get better and learn from fighting these clip demons.

I haven't looked at the flame war going on on Twitter, but has anyone proposed the idea of simply having a Freestyle Playlist next to casual and ranked? With maybe a disclaimer for new players entering it so they know what they're getting into? Sounds like the cleanest solution to me. Don't how doable it is on the psyonix side though.

I remember a long time ago when a friend and I queued for casual 2v2, we got absolutely bullied by some freestylers. We couldn't do anything, they were doing things that literally looked like hacks to me. I still have memories of that match and I still don't know how they managed to do what they did. I might still have a replay file but I don't know anymore. I peaked in P1-2 in my best ranked mode, and my friend was also at most P2, most likely P1. The opponents looked about C3.

all the love to you wayton you dont really choose a side and just get the cummunity togheter Thanks for doing that!

slow mo is detectable. the boost blinking on the boost meter is different when sped back up so you can clearly see its altered

When I was a noob at RL, (still am lol) I got paired against two insane freestylers and I saved that game so I could try to figure out what they are doing. I learned a lot just watching them play I started practicing the passes and try the shots lol

The easiest approach to this seems to be changing the way replays work and somehow make a "fake shot" be discernable.

First creator to actually include both sides of the problem.. others felt like they're only making the video to sh!t on the freestylers for some reason 💀, tysm man

I’m a Silver 3/Gold 1 in ranked and had my first experience with a freestyler in a casual 1s game. His name was “Legion.” and since I’ve heard about this situation, I suspected it was a smurf when he speedflipped into the kickoff, and then forfeited when he started an air dribble. I wish I would have played around with him/tried to save some of his shots, but it pissed me off so much that I really didn’t think about that. Sucks that these freestylers feel the need to try clip on silvers in order to prove that they’re good. I’m glad that Psyonix took action, but I think they need to deal out harsher punishments, especially now that people know that it’s not within the rules.

Getting destroyed by freestylers when i was a bronze was the only reason for me to get good to do stuff like that too

It’s literally easy to fix it, if rocket league just put your casual rank as your competitive rank

I was playing casual the other day. the other team was highly skilled hitting crazy shots. then they forfiet being up 3 goals with 30s left. doesn't t happen often but i thought it was kinda weird. now makes sense with the hidden rank

Up until recently I had not encountered really good freestylers/smurfs in where I was really outmatched. I happened to be playing with daughter...her first time playing. These guys were passing in the air back and forth without letting the ball drop, with multiple resets, double taps. At first I was excited since I scored a few goals on them, then I realized they were just letting me score. It made the game extremely unpleasant. I'm not by any means high ranked.. I'm a high plat/low Diamond normally. We were winning 4-0, they scored those goals in the last 30 seconds to tie the game. So we forfiet instead.

Diamond III, playing hoops, only matching agains grant champions. Couple times against SL. You can't even imagine the difference in skill. The guys can score like 10 goals and me and my teammate can't even get the ball. Matchmaking is way off and I don't really know why.

I appreciate you bringing in BOTH sides of this in and not being BIASED but also can’t psyonix just make a que based playlist for freestylers and EVERY RANK TO PLAY IN and just get into matches as fast as possible? Who would that hurt?

I’m honestly so happy they are doing something about this, coming from a player that isn’t a high or insane mmr because I don’t dedicate much time to the game. When I do play I like to get on and play people my mmr and skill level. Not get absolutely smashed and Smurfed on until they forfeit the match so they don’t gain mmr. Which also raises my mmr and makes me play again players that are also still out of my skill level and now I am again stuck playing against people who out skill me and I lose again but placed back in the mmr of the freestylers. It’s a never ending cycle, I think this is a great thing they are enforcing, also for people wondering I’m at about 600 hours over a 4 year period

Thank god for this 👍

Oh yeah the fact that people have been doing that for years totally makes it a reasonable thing to do that shouldn't have any consequences. I too have been stealing books from my local library for as long as I can remember, so when they find out, they honestly don't really have anything at hand that could incriminate me.

Its like when I'd play smash with my brother and his friends. Maybe 6 months before I could take 1 stock from any of them. Then slowly started adapting and got good from getting whooped on so hard for so long. Point being, if ur game is fun enough, WHICH IT IS, losing won't deter u from playing.

Imagine a new playlist that was designed for freestylers and didn’t have mmr, so it would always be against a randomly skilled player who wants to freestyle. Feel like it could be a good idea

3:42 ty wayton 🤝glad you enjoyed the edit/shots from my montage :))

i think a good alternative would be a Freestyle mode and freestylers can queue into. 2v2 or 3v3 or 1v1 (no sure what one) and each team is given a random shot that they have to complete and they get a score based on if they hit the shot correctly and there can be an MMR in that so the shot get harder and harder the higher your MMR goes. that way freestyle player get a chance to show off that, "oh i can hit that shot easy, here it is" (SIDE NOTE) you can get bonus points for doing everything in the shot and extra flair.

Problem now, is that they're hiding out in Diamond ranked with friends they boost. We get freestyled on constantly these days. They're ranked as P3 to D1. They have friends that are lower tier, to boost them, and so you have a bunch of D3s that play like platinum with one platinum teammate that takeover the game. It's pretty frustrating.

Ive seen alot of this in ranked as well...

There should be some kind of smurf buff… like a 1 useable key to create your RL acc which needs to be paired with ur phone number to verify. I mean they don’t care if they get banned on smurf accounts, they just create a new one

I'm not a fan of free styling and I hate smurfs which is what free styling up until this point has been forced to be. That being said I have an appreciation for the dedication free styling requires. After watching your video I also understand the need for authentication free stylers need for their clips. I think the easiest (everyone wins) solution is a new gamemode called freestyle. you que the game and it starts a public game with the people in your party 1-8 and with no time limit you can free style all you want with authentication. Best part is everyone is a willing participant.

My first game in a silver lobby years back in like the original season 4 or 5 I had a freestyler in my game they would have been about champion level at the time and I still remember how pathetic it made me feel

Good choice. I hated freestylers ruining my relaxed games as a beginner

I didn’t hear about this until this video, but by the thumbnail I thought they were gonna get rid of air-roll or sm😭