like the video if you've ever had a bad teammate, played against a smurf, or breathed in air before. i expect at least 15 likes with that criteria. Also don't forget to check out the Eswap S Pro Controller, now available at Walmart: bit.ly/EswapCbell

I feel like it’s impossible to get a win streak going, it’s more like you win a game with a fairly good teammate, then get paired against significantly harder opponents with a weaker teammate, and lose and the cycle repeats

There's two other issues with ranked that really suck for climbing in the higher ranks: - So many people get tilted and throw a ff or even just go afk, start trolling, or just leave the game, even after just one or two goals. Happens literally like every 3-4 games if you play late at night. - You get matched with the same people every game since there arent that many people queueing. So if you lose a game with somebody get ready to lose with them a couple more times in a row unless you want to take a break between games. Thank you for coming to my ted talk

I was a huge advocate of "don't blame your teammates blame yourself" but last two seasons been a real struggle

This makes sense, I’ve been C2 for few seasons now but this season I’m only low C1 & I even still get games against D3’s who are better then my players I had in high C2 last season. I thought I just sucked but it adds up after seeing this video. I also GRIND when the season drops so I will stop doing that now knowing it’s part of my problem😂😂

me literally getting a C2 and GC1 opponents in casual C1:

Honestly this season has been quite strange. Early season is always tough for sure, this season was no different. I was 1650 in 2s in the first couple of days & played in 2200+ lobbies (Top 100 at the time) & I honestly did really well, beat some pros & consistent top 100 sweats. Was able to maintain around Top 100 for a couple days but I'm not a very consistent player & my gameplay dropped off a bit, so my rank did as well. Dropped to around 1500 playing sporadically for the next few days. Ended up burning out so I stopped playing for a couple of weeks. When I come back I figured it'd be super easy to get back to 1600-1700 since Top 100 MMR was 1800-1900+. But I swear it really seems you're playing against players who are similar to yourself (usually much higher MMR) & your teammates are usually ones who are at the rank they should be at. I even dropped into the 1400's recently which I haven't been to in many years. 100% you can say it's all on me, if I was better I could carry my way out. But my autopilot should be able to win me basically every game low GC1 considering I have 12k+ hours & have been SSL every season & Top 100 in every game mode multiple times. I find myself needing to hard focus & mega carry to win games. Some of the players I go against blow my mind with how solid they are. Not the one to usually agree with this stuff as people say similar things every season. But I think with everything going on with the game lately, many players being burnt out & not playing as much as well as the general skill level increase; among other factors, is genuinely causing the rank system to be in broken state. I suppose a solution might be to stop doing soft rank resets? I'm really not sure what the answer is. But this is just another problem to add to everything else going on to cause this incredible game to completely fall apart. TLDR: Ranked is cooked, Rocket League is cooked. Epic please save the game 🙃

Same thing happened to me at a lower rank. I was C1, struggled to get back to that. I took a break at the end of a season and played the very start of the next season and de-ranked to d1.I'm playing better than I ever have now, excellent ball control, positioning, field vision, mechanics, everything is way better than I used to be. But I'm struggling to climb back. I struggle to compensate for the overcommits, complete misses and more. Sometimes I basically have to 1v2 to win. Sometimes my teammate leaves and I start doing better. I've had games where teammate was AFK and I was up a goal or two, they came back and started playing and quickly lost us the game. It's so frustrating. I've also noticed there is a huge variety in skill level in the rank. Lots of overcommits and throwing the ball away, setting up the other team, as I would expect in diamond, but struggle to deal with. But a few games the players have solid game sense and mechanics. There seems to be a sweet spot where you can get stuck about a full rank below where you should be. You aren't good enough to outright win games there by just dominating the lobby, but you are enough better it's hard to predict when the players will make just awful decisions because you aren't close enough to their headspace. I got hard stuck back in platinum for a while, but that was different. That was definitely a skill issue I needed to level up. I have bad games, but a bad game here and there doesn't get you stuck.

I feel like these two guys too, I'm stuck C2 C3 and I really needs to beat two GC tags everytime with a dude that doesn't touch the ball at all the whole game. I put 4 goals on my own with pure 1v2 and the second I turn my back and it's my teammates time to play or defend he gets scored on or give the ball away in front of our net (when he's just not straight up going for the boost at the other half of the field) and now they scored 4 goals too while I was rotating and had no control over the game. Sometimes I go watch the replays to see what I could have done better and everytime I find myself playing ok and switching to my teammates pov to see how gapped he is by the game. It's not even his fault he's probably what a champ player should look like but you switch to the other side pov and it's clearly not a match. You can see this is broken because the moment I find a teammate that actually plays the game around my level I spot it in the first 40 seconds of the match and it's EVERY TIME a 8-0 or some stupid score like that. This is so annoying because even if you don't play for the rank you can't see your progress getting rewarded, this feels to me like you can progress all you want in freeplay, training map and pack etc and you will never see a good enough transfer of skills in actual ranked games. I was even starting to use wall dashes to start recovering and rotating faster to minimise my teammates placement mistakes. I had to 1v2 so bad I had to learn WALL DASHES, IN C2. Anyway that was too much I don't have the energy to play 2k games a season I just stopped the game.

As a c1 there is definitely a problem. Once you get into higher c1 then you start playing some ex gcs and even ssls at one point. I’m starting to realize d3-c1 is like drastically different, but sometimes you q with them and it’s harder for them. Like it’s no dig at people who are d3, it’s just harder for diamonds and champs to get along

As a C3, I can confirm I play all my games against GC's and I even come up against them when I drop down to C2. This has been an issue for a couple seasons

It has been the same for me too, being matched up with low plats against ex-high diamonds/champions in the plat 3-diamond 1 range

Thank you for doing this. I solely play RL with my wife, we've peaked at C3 right before the hard reset from a few seasons ago and never got back to it since then. We hover around C2 and every match is different, we'll get clipped on in the first and then go on to win 7-0 the next game. But I learned to stop caring, we're approaching 30 and could not care less about our rank, we play for fun at night after work and are super proud of what we achieved ! Ranks are a marker of your progression though, I could see people getting mad

This video confirms my suspicions I’ve had for the past few seasons. Ever since I started playing I gradually got better and increased ranks slowly over time eventually getting to C1. Now I’m stuck in D2 or D3 depending on the day and which champs I end up queued against. It’s frustrating knowing my mechs and game sense have both improved yet my rank does not.

That’s crazy because I’m in their exact situation. I peaked at 1494mmr 2 seasons ago and I’m currently at c2. Funny thing is most 2s lobbies I queue have at least 3 players with gc titles. Great vid Cbell!

being in this range, i see the struggle. But people aren't realizing why you're losing and how this video doesn't truly explain the differences in rank. The reason i think theres a struggle for the two c2s is because they finally had the chance to socialize and work with one another through comms. The other 2 gcs are most likely gc because they're better at adapting to situations that only arise when having a random teammate, something i feel the c2s would struggle with when playing ranked.

GC2 here writing an essay. The main issue here is that it's hard to carry teammates once you get decently high ranked due to the way the meta has developed. And no matter what skill you are both mechanically and strategically, there's only so much you can do as a single player and you need to work as a team to some extent to succeed. i believe the thing that makes it feel so difficult lately is that the meta has evolved (at least in NA) in such a way that compels players to just always instantly push the ball upfield whenever you have it regardless of your team's positioning or boost and try to make a 'hero play' where you use flashy aerial mechanics to outskill the defenders with a solo play. the problem is that defenders have gotten so good that you rarely ever score on a first chance like that anymore and all you really end up doing is passing the ball back to the opponents who then have an even cleaner counterattacking opportunity than you just had. the first team to get overly aggressive ends up being scored on. basically, its the more advanced version of the classic beginner mistake of just booming the ball forward when you get possession. whenever you try to push a slight advantage such as simply only having the possession of the ball, you will get counterattacked even harder in return. my advice is to stop trying to push on small advantages that you have and only play for a goal once you either have a massive single advantage like a direct counterattack opportunity or many smaller advantages such as full possession of the ball (opponents arent close enough to challenge you for a while), prolonged offense, boost starving/boost advantage, forcing opponents to slow down at times where your team can stay fast (if your team has to slow down too then it could actually be really bad for you instead, so dont take too long). also, whenever you gain possession without enough advantages but are forced to move forward anyways, try getting out into offense in a slower way than you might normally do - the goal here is to preserve boost, delay for teammates to be more prepared with you, and bait a challenge from the opponents. unless you get them to mess up badly, you often want them to challenge while you stay behind the ball and get a weak 50/50 BACKWARDS to your teammate or to your back corner boosts which is even better because then youre assured that the teammate can take full ball possession with 100 boost at the same time while you reposition with pads or even a 100 boost yourself. instead of a 50/50, sometimes you can even turn away from the 50/50 and let the opponents hit the ball hard behind you to achieve the same effect. easiest move in the game. just do nothing and let them outplay themselves by hitting it too far away while you get a headstart on your rotation and positioning. this is especially great for when you realize your aerial play is doomed to fail and you just give up early while the opponent's challenge comes in and you use the rest of your boost to get back into a good position quicker and fill up on boost, meanwhile your teammate was able to get free possession and continue the offense because the opponents hit it away from themselves. but what do you do when your teammate has the ball? this is a lot trickier. when you have the ball yourself, you can control the pace of the game and use whatever strategies you like. and often at high levels of gameplay, that means that at some point you will create a winning position for your teammate to then continue the play instead, which means that you no longer have control of the game from that point on. with such a selfish and aggressive meta right now (and whenever you think you deserve a higher rank than you are), you cant expect your teammates to do the same for you, so what can you do? i deranked down to champ myself briefly at the beginning of the season because teammates would constantly lose possession in devastating ways. after working so hard to create winning situations for us, they would always ruin it. what brought me back up to gc2 was learning how to play the game better while off the ball in such a meta. i now assume all teammates' plays will fail instantly and give away possession. my main goal whenever they have solo possession of the ball is to take the ball back to our corner boosts and completely reset our attack with full possession and full boost for both me and my teammate. if the teammates' offensive play is developing fast, ill often swing wide on the opposite side of the field at high speeds as well, ready to cut inward or backward for a save if they mess up badly / waste a lot of boost doing nothing and youre now in a 1v2. if so, use your continued high speed to steal possession of the ball going backwards to your corner boosts where both you and your teammate can have full possession and boost at the same time and hopefully create an even stronger attack. sometimes when stealing possession you can resume the offense right away instead, but note that unless you have a really good setup and position, youll probably just end up throwing the ball away yourself as well, especially since your teammate probably wont have enough time to recover into a good position with boost as well to help you out if anything goes even slightly wrong. keep in mind that you are choosing to 1v2 them for a while in this case and its your fault if it fails and gives them a good position afterwards. if the teammates' offensive play is developing slowly and dangerously, or youre just not quite sure whats going to happen (they might be low on boost and baiting a 50/50 for example which could pinch anywhere) , just stay standard and safe by being well enough back on defense, make sure youre full enough on boost, maintain speed whenever applicable, but basically just overall be a good last man and wait for something more concrete to develop. if you have enough time to do so, you can even swing a little wide like the previous option and aim to secure the ball back towards your corner boosts. if the teammate's offensive play is developing slowly and safely (starting a full boost air dribble with full unchallenged possession for example, especially if you see it really early on by them rolling it up the wall at mid boost first for example), immediately rush to the opponents and be a nuisance to them as much as possible, threatening bumps, demos, boost steals. even if you try it and fail, your presence alone will mess with them and they wont be able to get as good of a possession even if your teammate fails badly. often, again, even in the worst case, while doing this you can still maintain the speed and positioning required to swing around the ball and take it all the way back to your corner boosts before the opponents can get to it. but if things go well, the opponents will at the very least be struggling to defend for a while and you will either directly score or often be able to build up more advantages as you keep up the offensive pressure while they cant get possession and are slower and lower on boost than you.

I've experienced this in the lower ranks too, this season is aweful and they have consistently got worse every season since Epic took it over. I was c1 two seasons ago, and I'm stuck in D1 playing underranked competition with poor teammates. I'm not sweaty, solo queue most of the time, and don't care about my rank, but there is CLEARLY a problem.

Here’s my perspective. Two seasons ago I was 3 wins away from making champ in duos. Now I’m hovering between diamond 1 and 2. I play champ players all the time in casual and have no issue beating them. What screwed me is when playing placement matches this season, 5 out of the 10 games I had teammates that were afk, so I was playing 1v2 for HALF of my placement games. They REALLY need to add a feature that negates any loss where a teammate leaves

I believe the situation will resolve itself. Although I'm currently at a mid to high C2 level, I don't feel confident enough in my abilities to firmly consider myself as a C2 player. When I play, both my teammates and opponents seem noticeably more skilled, and this stands out even more because I solo queue.

Yup I have the same problem. The soloq experience got so worse, it’s not actually playable in champ. It’s not every second game that your teammate leaves or ffs early… it’s even more often

I used to play ranked to get consistent matches but lately I feel like there's so much variation. I peaked at C2 but now I'm struggling at low C1 with either my teammates being too weak, or with me lagging behind significantly. Very rarely do I get an evenly skilled teammate. Combine this with random opponents and you usually end up dominating the opposing team or losing miserably. At that point you really can't make out whether you're actually making progress or not.

I've been GC since before the season numbers reset back when SSL was first added to the game and even hit GC2 once. I used to be able to not play for months and come back to the game and get back to GC without any issue. Now playing ranked is a bad experience every time I pick up the game due to the complete randomness of the quality of teammates. One game I get people that play flawlessly and the next I get someone who can't keep up with anything happening around them. It is kinda obvious the rank system has failed in some way, but the part that has me lost is how it worked for so long but now all of a sudden it's become this much of a mess.

I definitely agree that ranked is in a real bad spot right now, but a huge part of solo q'ing that people overlook is the ability to adjust your playstyle to compliment your teammate. Punish and Greyhounds are a great example. If you're able to play around and support passive and aggressive playstyles, you will have less bad teammates. Save a replay with a horrible teammate and watch it from their perspective, there is probably a few things you could have done to be a little more cohesive with them. I do hope that Epic finds a way to fix the imbalances, especially early season. I just doubt Epic will even admit that there is a problem.

This is spot on. Previous season GC2 in 2s but this season I'm c2-c3. I've mostly been playing casual this season because I get matched with high GC and some SSL players and it's actually easier to play with/against higher ranked people. You're teammate will be much more reliable and predicable and once you learn to challenge properly it doesn't matter if someone can do 8 flip resets. Champ teammates seem to spend 95% of their time in freeplay and are super good with mechs but have zero clue how to actually play with a teammate and limited boost.

Feer uploaded a video yesterday showing off games with Monkeymoon in C3 lobby... I know pros don't always queue ranked 3s, but seriously? C3? Monkey will have to play so many games to get back to SSL and then back to top 100 and demoralize every one that goes against him in the C3-GC ranks. It's so silly.

When bro got k and m mixed up 😂😂😂 love the video btw

My friend and I used to be Champ 1 around a year ago, but for the past several months, we've been struggling to get out of Diamond 3. In every other game, we get paired up with a teammate that scores an own goal on us, and then spams "What a save!". If not, they always at least once in the game, will pass the ball directly to the other team, which puts us in a terrible spot and we get scored on. I don't know what we're supposed to do about that. If we say "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!" at our teammate, then they start playing against us and now it's a 2v4. We always report these guys and we get at least one person banned every week (mind you, my friend and I only play on the weekends because we're busy with college during the weekdays). We literally haven't even played Rocket League in a month because of how horrible the ranked has been. My friend and I find casual games to be too easy, so we play ranked, but then we just get the worst possible teammates in ranked. We're sick of our teammates own-goaling, passing the ball to the other team, playing against us, and ending up with below 100 points every other match.

This explains why my D2-D3 games went from feeling reasonably challenging to suddenly feeling like I was facing literal gods every other match. I usually chalk it up to smurfs when I face someone with lower MMR who plays like they’re lightyears ahead, but if they’re actually high champ players who have drifted down and are struggling to get their rank back up, then it makes total sense that they would destroy me (mostly because I suck at the game).

I usually float around d2 but this season I’ve dived down to plat 3 after placements where I STILL see champ tournament tags, banners, explosions etc. This issue is pushing everyone down the ladder I feel

About time this issue was brought to light personally I feel like this has been the case for a few seasons now where high c2 c3 is filled with former gc1 gc2s. I'd suggest playing with someone you know if you ever want to get out of it, solo queue is hell up there...

I’ve been champ 2 in 2s and champ 3 in rumble for the past 7 seasons, but this season is the first season where I’m stuck at diamond 3 division 3 and every time I get close to champ again I go back down a few ranks.

As a player stuck in c3 right now but was 1502 peak last season, the way to rank up this season is playing less mechanical and more as a very good second man cause you just cant always trust teammates with how broken ranked is. In other words solo queueing it is very difficult to reach GC this season.

I first hit GC in S6. I was on my GC game this season when the lobby is suddenly playing much faster than I was ever used to. Compared to my last 10 matches, there was definitely something off.

Crazy at one point I went from d1 last season to clawing my way up from g3 now I’m stuck between p2-p3

I took a break from the game and came back and played with a friend. We played some comp and were losing a lot. I looked at our mmr and was like “I don’t remember struggling this much at 1150 mmr”. If I was able to identify that without having known that the community was having issues with ranked after a break then there’s definitely something to it.

Would love to see ssls vs these c2s/gcs and see if the ssls could tell the difference between them

Ive been getting into C2 the past 2 seasons after starting 1 year ago and it is insane how varied everything as far as teammates and opponents.

Absolutely. In S10, a bud and I peaked at Diamond 3 for just a few games and kept ourselves D1-2 majority of that season. I now struggle to maintain Diamond 1 even with significant improvements in my gameplay since S10 (I train almost daily). I encounter so many ex-champs from past seasons that clearly shouldn’t be stuck in diamond… and that’s not including the many GC/SSL Smurfs that often make their way into the high plat/diamond ranks. The teammates comment was also on point… I see tons of dudes going up for a spin shot, yet lack SO much basic mechanics like rotations and basic game-sense (like knowing how to hit the ball on a bounce to pop the ball up instead of being impatient and single jump/flip shooting without following and popping the ball all the way across the field and losing possession).

Dude that letter was great. You’re hilarious cbell.

As a GC1/2 this season so far, I can say YES! I was stuck in Champ 2 / 3 forever before finally breaking out. I've been 1875 at peak...so something is definitely off.

I've been GC1 for 12 seasons now and the last couple seasons have definitely been scuffed. The way I describe it is that GC1 feels no more difficult than in the past, but getting to it is way more difficult. I've peaked GC1 div 4 several times, and regardless when I've fallen to Champ 2 (which is several times over the last few months) I get stuck for several weeks. I'm pretty mechanical, maybe similar to the Champ 2's in this video. I have a little montage of clips here for reference: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p9mned2Gtae-dYk.html But it really does feel like RNG in mid Champ. Do I get the ex-GC's and we stomp? Or do I get the "normal" Champs and we get slapped silly? I'm currently sitting in GC1 in 2's and Champ 3 in 3's. When I was Champ 2 this season, it felt no different than now in GC1.

I‘m a gc player who was stuck in c2 the whole last season. I got my rank back now but the point is, even tho I was in champ, I was always in a gc lobby. They weren’t actually smurfs, just ppl like me who were lower rated for some reason. But I actually like it this way, maybe because I got too used to it. You can get better faster now by always playing in a better lobby. It helps a lot, however it’s kinda annoying knowing that your actual rank should be higher than what it is right now

Is the thrust master controller actually hood though? I was going to buy one a year ago but decided against it due to reviews I read.

Ranked 2s and 3s are both significantly harder right now. I have improved dramatically over the last 6 months and I fluctuate between D3 and C2. It has become so much more important for me to warm up in freeplay and Casual before I queue ranked. I play a lot of Hoops as well and have been dealing with GCs in C1 for the last couple of years, so I feel comfortable with this situation in Soccar 2s and 3s. My consistency is the main issue.

11:11 I think that’s the biggest and most frustrating thing. So as you said you can rank up by playing good defense. But the problem is that your m8 who is actually a champ, is consistently panicking. So the only realistic chance to rank up, is by simply outperforming and basically winning 1v2. Which is impossible since your m8 will get upset because he wants the ball. So yeah I have absolutely 0 clue how to rank up. I’m playing the most consistent I’ve ever played, I have hit gc as a soloq main even in 3s last season. But now I can’t even get it in 2s, even tho I feel like I have improved my own gameplay and playing close to my peak. But once your mate doesn’t understand the fundamentals, there is not much you can do… just hope someone on the other team has a worse experience and maybe get frustrated

Yes, i have noticed this as well. I used to get to D3 quite easily. Unfortunately never reached C1. But this season i'm even struggling to stay in D1. Many of the games i'm playing it feels like i'm up against someone who is an entire rank higher. And when i'm playing casual its the same story. Couple days ago i even faced a player that had a grand champ title of last season. To my suprise i won against him (1v1). But at the same time i'm losing to plat players in ranked 1v1. Its really fucked up at the moment.

Plus, they played that well with you in comms bantering and talking about Fortnight.

I have been C1 for the last few seasons but in this season I have constantly been getting ex-GC teammates and opponents, they always seem so irritable and ready to snap at me for making mistakes but I can kind of understand their frustration now

I’ve been gc1 every season for over a year, I took a break to grind Diablo & came back a full season later. After 8-2 placements I was c1, and now I’m honestly struggling to hold mid c2 in 2s & 3s even though I feel better than ever..

"...and toxicity will disappear forever." 😂🤣

Yep. I hit 1500 at my peak and have been a GC since season 8, but ever since they did the MMR adjustment it has been actual hell trying to get back to GC solo queuing 2s. It’s clear that it’s just not fair but there isn’t anything I can do about it. People think I’m smurfing or ball chasing depending on who I get, and it’s made playing the game so much less enjoyable

I totally agree with this video. Ranked is just not as fun as it used to be. Now a days ppl are so toxic and I get teamates who are gold and stuff when I'm in platinum. Along with this, some ppl in my rank flip reset and have champ tournament titles so it's just blatantly unfair. Either I get good teamates with incredibly strong opponents or weak teammates with incredibly strong opponents. I even tried to dm psyonix but that didnt work. Psyonix, if you are looking at this specific comment. Fix your game. Please fix it. Skilled based matchmaking is a blatant lie.

What's been working for me in ranked has been playing extra conservative. Wide rotations, defer to defensive positioning as a second man, buy time for your teammate's positioning when you're third man with an opponent barreling down on you for the shot, etc. The quality of teammate varies so wildly but mechanically I feel like players have never been better and playing conservatively seems to give you a good margin for error to counter that discrepancy. But... it's not a fun playstyle, and seems extra susceptible to tilting because it's about being opportunistic, it gets me results when I solo queue but I'd rather wait to get on with my friends so we can sync up and don't have to rely on that playstyle.

I agree I have friends that are c2 that use to be gc and they are constantly facing these kind of c2s I notice that it’s a lot harder for them after 9 pm eastern time it seems like that’s when they get queued against peaked gcs the most and I hear their frustrations in discord and they made me get on one of their accounts to test it and I’m a gc2 peaked 1840 and I struggle to beat some of them it’s ridiculous and I think it’s because of the rank resets making everyone that’s like above 1600 mmr start at 1500 in the beginning of the season even pros and it causes a domino effect down the ranks

Shame literally nothing will happen tho, epic bought the game just to merge it with Fortnite to make a mid asf racing game (there are millions of racing games why would it even be special). They’ve made literally no attempt at improving the game what so ever with the sole focus on cosmetics. rocket league truly is the one game that scratches that itch no other game can but i find it harder and harder to load it up because it’s just an obvious cash grab now and it couldn’t be more blatant

I just ran into and teamed up with a decent teammate with similar skill and who used voice chat. We ended that session around 950 while my peak was 808. Just a bit of “I might have a pass for you here,” we didn’t even have to call out to avoid almost all double commits. One teammate who understands spacing and teamwork and the results were massive

I kinda have the opposite problem. I've never been GC but when I queue against ex-GC players I win almost every time because I actually know what they're doing. I'm not a mechanical player so I lose against players who are actually champ bc they suck and I have no idea what they're doing but I'm not mechanical enough to just score on them.

What I do in new season, I wait a couple of weeks or a month to start playing on my main. I have several accounts on my rank. it’s a good way to feel how this season is going and staying in shape. “I love this game so much I can’t stop playing it”

Used to be high C3 the last couple of seasons and am now stuck in low Champ. Am currently top 3% in 1v1, but yet only top 20% in 2v2, this season has been complete madness.

The champs should play every ranked game together they work so well with eachother

Something I have noticed is that as a diamond 1 I am consistently getting placed in games with people that have the champ goal explosion from last season. And they play like it it too. It's actually been crazy.

Yeah that’s kind of my story as well these past couple of seasons. Got GC in 2s pretty comfortable last time in S10 and haven’t been able to climb my way out of C2 ever since. Smurfing and boosting is also a big issue they need to fix as well.

Its all the way through the ranking system too. Im Diamond 2 and I've found I get paired with high Plats and they play like low Plats and I'm left thinking wth!? Voice Chat I use, just to call out what Im doing but I find my teammate turns it off. I find it better if I just wait till I can play with a friend at a similar rank. Solo queuing is just asking to lose a bunch of games; you met the worst of people. And I find, as you mentioned, calm in defense and even if there is a fast paced game & bringing the tempo down, is a life saver.

I have 5600 hours and solo queued to grand champ previously. What I've found is the game plays differently the higher you go. A lot of things like spacing and positioning, understanding what ball is yours to hit and which ball is better played by one of your teammates. When to apply pressure, when not to fall back and continually bring themselves under attack. The lack of ability to direct a pass that is properly weighted and in the correct direction, the lack of understanding to play the ball where your teammate has a higher chance of winning it, ie not passing it to the other team and giving away possession with no gain. But the biggest thing for me is that I expect for example that the right person will be in the right place at the right time and play the ball in a beneficial manor and that rarely happens which leads me to have to change how I play as I have to spend more time playing in a fashion where I can cover teammates errors so that we don't lose 2 weak goals for no reason and lose the match. Another thing is that for how I play keeping momentum is incredibly important, however I constantly can't play at any great speed and keep my momentum because teammate a or b is in a position which prevents me from being able to make the play that I want to, because to make the play would create an unacceptable risk, that I'm aware of, so need compensate for. It's basically like this, you're only as good as your teammates, how they play will affect everything about your positioning and decisions, unless you are unduly reckless, in which case you won't go to grand champ, because if you don't understand those basic fundamentals they will be exploited consistently by the opposing team. So I see a lot of players who spend a lot of time playing over the top plays, that they shouldn't have made because they have opened us up to danger, when they could have made a more simple play to keep possession for example. In my opinion they think that to be a good player you to be ultra flashy, so they've practiced scoring flashy goals, but don't have the base fundamentals and their ego is telling them they are a rlcs world champion. Anyway Rocket league is my favourite game, I've played since Beta and i can say it's honestly just painful to play nowadays. The enjoyability of having teammates that understand and can construct plays, where you can really start to enjoy the game is gone. That leaves me feeling like ah rocket league can be so much better than this. For me the best matches have been the closest matches, tight competition and whether you lose 2-1 or win 2-1, that was a bloody good game, enjoyable. Anyway that's my input. Be well.

Im in the same boat as these guys this season ive peaked 1500 in both 2s and 3s multiple times but this season so far 1400 has been the peak and early on i was almost back to c1. It seems like the ranks are just getting worse every season and that its more about luck than skill at this point.

Ranked is fucked, you can play 3 matches in a row against people who can’t hit the ball then you’ll play 5 matches in a row where they live in the air and you can’t touch them.

I only started a couple season ago, and diamond rank is terrible. From teammates quick-chatting, throwing, abandoning, and just trying to FF when down 1 goal, it's been very frustrating at times.

I have been GC1 since season 8. Have had no issue getting there until this season. Peak rating was 1535 and now im struggling in 1300... Literally just talked about this last night how this season feels impossible to actually rank up. Glad I'm not the only one seeing the issue. Love the vids CBell!

I feel like this issue is even worse for the smaller regions such as OCE that I play in. I always hover around D3-C1 and this season I started at D3 and dropped to D2 and in one of my first few games of getting de ranked I came across 3 GC tagged players. one was sitting in C1, one was sitting in D3 and the last one was sitting in D1. a few games later I was about to lose D3 and came across the D1 ranked GC player this time with a D2 with a SSL tag......... This season has made me almost call it quits too many times.

I recently came back to the game after a year or so and my peak was Plat 1. Knocking the rust off and climbing up thru gold, mostly 1’s, and the skill parity is so inconsistent. I will play games that are super evenly matched, and very fun win or lose, but I get very frustrated when I get an opponent that clearly is out of my league. Glad this isn’t just a me thing!

It’s the same down here in diamond. Lots and lots of prior season champs kicking around in the three D’s

I hover around C1/C2 and agree that it’s saturated. But I personally enjoy queuing early in the season so I get to play more difficult opponents.. even though I loose a few mmr. Currently at D3 bc I queued too early in the season but. I like to play to improve instead to playing to just rank up. Love u CBell

I'm not in champ but me and my friends feel this so hard. We're all in low diamond and are constantly getting champ tournament winners in our lobbies that are somehow diamond 2 (or sometimes actually in champ) and then randomly getting a gold 3 player in the next game. It's just so discouraging trying to get win streaks with lobbies that just are not consistent

Great video. I know a ton of people that have not been playing at least the 1st two weeks each season for the last 4-5 seasons. Problem is that a lot of boosting/smurfing is happening beginning of the season as well and due to seasonal reset the ones having been kicked out of GC or any rank for that matter are trying to get back up. Towards the end of the season is bad too when people are trying to get their season rewards with the help of their smurf "friends". As for what I believe the root cause of the whole rank disaster is: Epic/Psyonix decided to make this 2s 300 MMR reset in S9 or so. They screwed this up so bad that people who played in the first few days did not get their old rank back after Epic "fixed" it. It looked like a ton of people decided to take the free derank. It is bad across all of Champ, Diamond and Plat. The worst thing is the loss of consistency in every rank. You won't even know if someone is a smurf anymore or if they are a player that is there due to the rank reset in S9 and every subsequent season. What really should happen imho is a full reset and after that no more seasonal resets, so that every season people stay at their MMR, the whole lowering MMR with every season is complete nonsense imho and will likely keep this problem go on forever until a hard reset or UE5 or whatever comes first - hard reset being more likely :)

yeah.. this has gone for at least 3 season by now I noticed it right when I was about to become gc1, LITERALLY C3 div4 and then I started to fight gc in every match and got terrible team mates. now ever since I try play competitive, it's gc every game and hardly good team mates.

Im a C3 right now and with friends who were high GC2 low GC3 last season have been saying this and this confirms it! its so obvious in ranked games when you play the real champ players..1 in every 10 games then the other 9 are playing like they are ready for RLCS lol

Yeah, this definitely carries even down into Diamond. I peaked at D2 div4 before the MMR squish as someone with literally gold level mechs because I just had good positioning and rotations. Over the last several months, my mechanics have gotten significantly better. I'm much more comfortable off the wall, making backboard saves/clears, and I actually have a presence on offense in addition to the solid defense I already had. Yet despite my massive improvements all around, I'm now stuck in D1 and just barely keeping myself from falling back into Plat3. Feels like every other game I'm up against 2 Champs with a teammate who throws up the ff vote after 1 goal and then trolls the rest of the game when I don't ff with them. It's insanely frustrating.

This makes me feel better about hitting D2 last season or two seasons ago, and now being stuck around Plat2 while feeling like my opponents are still mid-high diamond level, airdribbling, and double tapping when I just started to learn those mechanics. Games are insanely inconsistent, with literally most games having a smurf against you or a teammate throwing to derank, or rage throwing/FF’ing after we go down a goal or I or they whiff like it’s not expected for plat/diamond to whiff sometimes. In addition to fixing the ranked mmr system, there HAS TO be higher punishments for players consistently voting to forfeit while games are winnable, throwing, and smurfing. If they don’t try to get rid of bad attitude players, fixing the ranked system isn’t going to matter anyway.

I was C3 like 2 seasons ago. 1400 mmr peak, close to GC1. And now I'm stuck between C1 and C2. It is soooo frustrating, I was close to get my GC titles and now it feels like it's unreachable anymore. My games make no sense : one game I play against GCs, the very next game I play against Diamonds... I feel like i'm close to uninstall the game after 2k hours.

My experience of this is during August of 2022, I went from a consistent 1400-1500 player in 2v2 and dropped all the way down to the C2 DIV 2 for about a 2 weeks. I don't know why i kept losing but I continued playing to get better, instead of playing to win, and despite focusing so much on mechs in freeplay and workshop maps, I continued to hyperfocus on gamesense and playing around my teammate that I knew was worse than me so I didn't have to be the reason I would lose, and if I lost because of my teammates mistakes, then it was my fault for not backing up my teammate. My only answer to myself when I was "stuck" in c3 this season for 2-3 weeks even though I've been gc2 before was "you're ass get back on the game and don't stop grinding until you've learning fucking something."

D2-D3 here( peak C1). I'm seeing a lot of C1/2's in my matches. A lot of carry pairs too. This season has been pretty rough. I could definitely work on my mechanics to get higher, but every couple games we'll get hit with a higher ranked player that is lower and it's soo punishing.

100% agree even in high diamond / low champ one match I feel like we playing in RLCS the other time it feel like gold all over again. Actually play in gold on ps4 with a friend of mine and tbf that's pretty consistent, even so in my own games in diamond/champ I often have games that are similar.

That mental switch in game 4 happens all the time. Anytime my friend and I feel like our opponent is better than us it messes us up the rest of the game. It’s bad mental but it feels like it happens so frequently now

Everything that's been said in the video is exactly what is happening to me. Was mid to high GC1 in previous seasons, now I'm stuck in C2 or low C3.

This makes sense. I'm D2 and I'll have games where opponents are obviously WAY above D2 level mechanically. Maybe this issue is creating a sort of top down pressure where good players get stuck in too low of a rank, then people of that actual rank can't win and get de-ranked.

One of the issues I’ve noticed is the older my account is the lower MMR gains are for a win and the more my MMR loses are. I’ve legit had win streaks where I’ve gained a total of 25 MMR and a loss of 22 LP when I lost. Like imagine winning against GC 5 times in a row just to lose once and lose 30 minutes worth of win streaks. Yet my second account experiences losses that are less than 1 games win worth of mmr gains so literally as long as I just have a 50/50 win loss rate the account still climbs.

I experience this problem at a constant pace. I'm currently around gold 1-2 and in my ranked matches I'm being placed against lower plats (Which I can hold my own against them and win a decent amount of matches against them) which is no problem. The problem is that I also get put up against mid tier diamonds and early champs. It's damn near impossible to stay at my rank or ascend past my peak Gold 3 division 4

Literally described my entire situation, I've been stuck in C2 for 2 years. Hope they fix and great video (I know it might be on me but I'm seeing GC after GC in my games for a few months now)

I recently took a 6 month break from the game, before which i was mid gc1 in both 2s and 3s. I revisited the game recently and started in c1lmao and am now in high c2. I think the issue has been longer standing than you think. I touched upon it in my steam review, the constant incentivisation to boost people to gc has muddied the waters of c1 through low gc1. And so, the luck factor manifests itself in either versing easy opponents who were previously boosted, or very difficult/impossible games where you're paired with someone who was boosted. Pair this with the general toxicity of the community, and you get a really unfun environment to play in. It keeps the ball rolling because solo q'ing keeps getting less fun. So yea, I believe gc rewards are the sole reason for this issue which has been brewing for years now.

I'm not a high rank. Currently I'm at Diamond 1, but I can tell you for sure that ranked is on its head. For about 18 months, I was mid to high diamond, piquing at champ 1. Not exactly the world's greatest player, obviously, but damn... The past 2 seasons I've barely been able to get out of plat. What's crazier is that after 5 years of farting around with RL casually, I finally started to learn some mechanics these past few months. I'm currently playing better than ever by a HUGE margin. Not even close to my previous best. But I'm getting clapped in plat 3 lobbies?! Just 4 or 5 months ago, if I had a bad losing streak and dipped into plat 3, I'd annihilate the other team in a solo carry and be back up after just a few matches. Seriously, what the hell is going on?!

I concure with having worse teammates that normal this season. I've always been a passing player. So I started the season doing the same as normal. Then I dropped 150mmr and decided to try mostly solo plays and hardly ever trusting my teammate. I have finally grinded back to champ 3 but seem to be hard stuck again.

Tbh at first I was kinda pissed that I dropped from c3 to c2 this Season, But it made me a better player. Because you get d3 Players in your Team and your playing against gc. But you also Play with Gc Players against also not that bad Opponents. So you have to look out how your tm8s are playing a lot more. It made me getting a better overview of the whole field and I am better at adjusting to my tm8s.

I think something to consider is the unnecessary expectations of formerly being gc as well as the current gc’s. It’s mentally taxing and throws you in loops mentally, especially seeing as ranked is extremely inconsistent it puts you at a disadvantage mentally. (Don’t sleep on the mentality) That being said this is a problem for all ranks. The community as a whole has an issue with expectations. We expect our tm8s to be perfect and as soon as they mess we seek a scapegoat. We likely expect ourselves to be somewhat perfect due to the correlation between viewing others and ourselves. Expectations are resentment in waiting. What is resentment? Resentment is defined as bitterness. I think it’s definitely amongst the spectrum of anger. What is depression? Depression is defined as anger towards the self. Expectations=depression Rocket league community=depressed However there is a bright side to this idea! Why do we hold ourselves to such expectations in the first place? Why do we expect so much from our tm8s? Well, we’ve gotten this far (x rank) I know I’m good I know I’m capable. My tm8s here in the same rank. Ideally that means they’re similarly capable right? At the core expectations are simply the BELIEF that you or someone else is CAPABLE of achieving something. You’re tm8s have such high expectations because they BELEIVE in YOU. You believe in you. You can’t control a toxic tm8 but what you can control is how you perceive their toxicity. They just believe in you. And they have an ego so it comes out all funky. Ego derails this communities minds. People become attached to their successes. In turn their failures. But the truth is neither one defines who we are. Just because you hit a three pointer last time does not guarantee that you will ever hit one ever again. Just because you missed your last three pointer does not guarantee that won’t EVER make one. Now comprehend the analogy and translate that to your rocket league rank, your ability to hit an open net, your mechanics. Translate it to your life. Nothings that deep. Just enjoy life. Don’t stress out over some fucking title that no one’s ever gonna care about. Ask yourself, why do I desire to play this game? Is it the title or prestige? (Cares about others perception of you) It could be anything really. I’ll tell why I play (Peak rank C3 D4) This is the hardest game I’ve ever played. There’s no other skill set that’s transferable. The sky’s the limit. I’m gonna hit GC so I can beat the game. (It used to be peak rank and there’s no way in hell I’m spending more than a 1k hrs on this game. Or any game) Hope this message helps someone out there gain perspective on their situation, either in rocket league or any facet in life. Everything I said is extremely transferable.

literally every single game feels like I'm playing gods on the other team. People with Champ tournament titles in G3

This is so true i hit gc for the first time 2 seasons ago. Right now am playing even better then i used to play but somehow am in c2 and get matched with people who can do 4 resets it feels like every game i play is against smurf's, but sometimes i get players who are so lost it feels like am playing diamonds.

I'm an EU player and I'm witnessing the same problem. My peak is 1500 in both solo 3s and solo 2s, but now I barely manage to get out of c2, honestly i feel like my problem is that i really struggle to adapt to a tm8 with c2 skill and end up trying to play too fast for them, so they leave holes in the rotation and everything falls apart (+ champs are really trash at defending ngl). Differently from the guys in the vid i'm not a mechanical player at all, i'm very focused on basic mechanics, positioning and speed (efficiency basically), so if my tm8 sucks i have a very hard time hard-carrying the match, cause solo playing my way to a win it's not my playstyle, especially if my oppos are monkey challenging me every second like champs are known to do

I am currently in diamond 1. Before ranked changed, my peak was diamond 3 and I had beaten a lot of champs before, including smurfs, but ever since the ranked change, I have been playing against ex-champ 2 people with ex-platinum 3 people. It's really annoying and that's why I usually like to play heatseeker more, because it's not about skill, but strategy.

I was Grand Champ in Season 10 and Season 11. I have been stuck in C2 in S12 and this season. the issue with the rank system is that psyonix only does significant mmr setbacks on GC and Higher so when people play at the beginning of the season like champs for example. They are sitting at, around, or slightly lower than those that were GC and SSL in the prior season. This causes a chain reaction where SSLs are beating GCs pushing them into lower ranks so that they can climb. GCs then push Champs into lower ranks like Diamond, Diamonds push towards plat, etc. The issue with ranked is that they need to do even mmr drops across the board instead of doing higher mmr drops on higher rank players and barely touching the mmr of lower ranks. For example lets say I have a measuring cup that can only hold 1 cup of water but I try and fill it with 2 cups of water instead. Well it overflows bc there isn't enough room to hold that much. The same thing happens when the season resets. Theres not enough room in champion for actual champion players to play in because theyve already filled champion with Grand Champs from last season. But when those Grand Champs are trying to get back to GC, GC is already full of SSLs or high GCs from the previous season trying to make it back to their own rank. It's a terrible system and rocket league needs to change it or they need to do rank locks like they do in fortnite where if you get to a high enough rank you can't fall back below that rank. Just an idea.

Yea I’ve been stuck in c1-c2 for the entire season and I feel like I keep getting questions against ex gc’s and get actual c1-c2 teammates, it drives me crazy the fact that I have to carry EVERY GAME. I’m not kidding when I win the majority of my games by getting my teammates to LEAVE the match and leave me to a 1v2. I’m not kidding I win more 1v2’s than 2v2’s it’s a problem…