The problem with my problem with Rocket League

I hate being wrong. Most people do, but for me, a perfectionistic university student, it’s especially acrid. That said, I love being corrected; otherwise I’ll keep being wrong. In a recent, shall we say, foolhardy piece, I was very, very wrong—and, fortunately, swiftly corrected by the GameZone community.

The piece in question is titled “Rocket League has a goalie problem,” which in and of itself demonstrates how fallacious its (read: my) argument was. See, the piece was born from both my experience with Rocket League and that of my friends—the people I’ve played with. All of the half-dozen people I spoke to, including some of my coworkers, felt that net goalies were detrimental for the flow of the game, a cheap way to ensure blocks best likened to the infamous campers of first-person shooters. I agreed, hence the presumptuous article and the egg on my face.

My first mistake was assuming that a sample size of roughly six constituted substantial evidence against Rocket League’s existing model of defensive play. Rather than base an argument on my limited data, I should have first gauged the community’s experiences as well—perhaps with an article titled, “Does Rocket League have a goalie problem?” Of course, at this point I think we all know the answer to that, if only because developer Psyonix was kind enough to share some statistics disproving the rampancy and superiority of net camping.

"People that only stayed in the goal, people that were aggressive the whole time, people that would hang back and wait," said Psyonix Marketing and Communications VP Jeremy Dunham. "We watched all these different approaches and what we saw was there was no one key to victory they would find—either facing AI or another player—if they were facing the right group, they would find a way to circumvent them and beat them."

But by far my biggest blunder was suggesting the erection of a wall to prevent net camping. The idea itself was helter-skelter, hastily slapped together in an effort to provide an example of a potential “fix” to the “problem” I was targeting. I never meant to posit it as a single, absolute solution, nor did I ever expect it to be taken seriously, let alone actually implemented.

Here, too, the GameZone community was invaluable: even in jest, you provided far better options, the most popular being a longer respawn timer on destroyed cars and an area timer dictating how long you can be near your own goal. The respawn timer I can actually get behind, not to remedy the non-issue I spent an entire article rambling about but to make destruction kills more impactful. As it stands, blasting an enemy car means they’re out of the game for a mere second—which is, crucially, more than enough time to score a goal, but not enough to impact a mid-field fight for the ball very meaningfully. But again, these are ideas, not requisites.

I’m the sort of person who would prefer 1,000 criticisms to a single compliment, because the latter isn’t going to get me anywhere. I didn’t quite get 1,000 out of my previous article, but on the scale of wrong to corrected, I’m still handily in the black in my book. I also still find goalies irritating, but that’s because they’re doing their job, not because they’re exploiting a hole in the game’s mechanics.

So what came of all this? Well, I learned that my being in the top .5 percent of every game I’ve ever played competitively (Uncharted 3, Destiny, Hearthstone) doesn’t count for jack in Rocket League, and that I’ve still much to learn of the ways of the slam. I also picked up a thing or two about community, namely the value of listening to yours. With that in mind, I’d like to formally apologize—to Rocket League for my baseless criticism, and to the GameZone community for my presumptuousness. Rest assured, I’ll git gud.

To help me close this particular envelope, here’s a small collection of my personal favorite comments from the-article-which-shall-not-be-named (usernames withheld for privacy reasons):

“Guy, this is a *you* problem, not a Rocket League problem.”

“This complaint seems more like a person who's upset that their straightforward shots to the goal don't work anymore. The same thing is happening to me, but I'm trying to get better instead of trying to change the game to suit my lack of skills.”

“Honestly Austin. This article shouldn´t have left your brain…”

“Git sum nutz. Whiner.”

“This game is not football. Its Futsal.”

“Git gud.” That particularly elegant contribution was from our editor-in-chief Matt Liebl, who I remain convinced is no better at the game than I am—which is a low bar, so ha!