I agree with Jack entirely. I LOVE this game, and I absolutely love watching the esport. I follow RLCS more religiously than I follow any professional sport. It’s incredibly frustrating and saddening when it feels like Epic is content to neglect the game and esport that we love so much for the sake of their profits. Rocket League is such a unique game, and RLCS is so unique in the esports scene. A family can sit down and watch RLCS and actually digest what is going on. It’s just like a real sport. That can’t be said about almost any other game. If given sufficient support and care, I feel that RLCS has a huge amount of potential to reach not only gamers, but non gamers alike. Rocket League is a special game. There is no other game like it. It is its own genre. It’s entirely unique, and that has value. I hope that Epic realizes what they have, and starts to give the game the support it deserves.

Bro. Everyone talking in a serious mood and then i see the fking Chicken wing sip on beer, i lost it😂 Rizzo is a genius.

This episode is a prime example of what happends when a developer doesn't communicate with its community

I agree 100% with Jack this episode. I have 0 desire to play Fortnite or any Rocket League anything in Fortnite, I want Rocket League to get update and stay a separate app. I'm passionate about this game as well, about the pro scene, and I'll be truly hurt if this game dies.

@ 32:30 I think Jack is spot on! Smart guy.

Feel bad for Jack on this one. Man is pouring his heart out about the game just to feel like the 3 just aren't understanding or caring. I was genuinely getting upset listening to them 3 talk this time after jack trying to express.. what hes saying is we want CAR BALL, not fucking racing..

Really wishing Lethemyr and Sledge were able to get in on this and shed some light on where the game needs to go. Leth with his consistent and unique content creation constantly pushing boundaries of the game and Sledge with grasp on the sub community members ie. Air Races, Bot Programmers, RL Artists, Rumble Mains ect. We forget there’s more to Rocket League than standard soccer and RL Esports. It’s already a whole world. It’s just needs to be recognized the way it should be.

AppJack has to get roles in a tv-show or something, he has a very distinct look.

the problem and conversation shouldnt be stuck on whether or not racing is a good or a bad thing. The whole idea behind this change being problematic isnt the topic itself. But rather the willingness to sacrifice a significant aspect within Rocket League for more engagement and something new in fortnight. Thats the issue Jack is trying to express I think.

I don't understand how Rizzo and Johnny don't get what Jack is saying. It's like they haven't spent the past several years of their lives in Rocket League. Jack has a very clear understanding of this situation, and it's very frustrating that they're just not seeing how this compromises Rocket League's uniqueness and independence. Tossing a stepchild version of our game into the backpack of Epic's main game does NOT benefit Rocket League. Thank god Jack got Rise and Virt in there lmao

its gotta be so irritating for jack to hear people basically try to tell him what he's saying as if he's not making any sense while explaining precisely what he means

That was a GREAT one guys! I really enjoyed watching

If Epic does move RL into Fortnite permanently, I'm probably going to write it off as a loss for good. I loathe Fortnite and I am not going to install it even if that's the only way I could access RL. And for what it's worth, that's coming from someone who does engage with the item shop from time to time. I understand the game needing to be making money to continue to be online; I'm ok with them making money, that's just not the way.

Glad to know they're making a racing game with the cars from a car game popularized by its uniqueness of not being a generic racing game🤦🏼‍♂️.

W episode it kept me engaged for all 3 hours

We can all agree that there's no way any game will be as big as Fortnite, RL Racing is not trying to promote RL it's a bid to get RL players to play FN WHILE trying to squeeze more money out of RL right now. Fortnite is their biggest money maker so they'd rather try and get Fortnite back to where it was than ever get RL to that height. This episode was just absolute delusion assuming that Epic is trying to support RL you can see from everything they do even things not pertaining to RL that they just want to prop up Fortnite. Look at Fall Guys bro, they're trying to do it to RL as well

What people are forgetting in this context is that Epic JUST got shit on in a lawsuit having to payout for overpurchased fortnite items (that might not be the full details - i never played FN). So Epic has a massive payout that is needed here in the immanent future for short term funds. They will likely do whatever is necessary to sufficiently make that payout while staying a profitable company. And if that involved graveyarding one of their less popular games (RL fitting that category) makes it a highly likely scenario. This comes in conjunction with the layoffs which is a terrible look for Epic's financial health. So overall i hate to be the debbie downer but Jack isnt far off on this.

Watched this live and this episode is so frustrating, whole time Jack is making good points and nobody else is listening to or understanding what he's saying 😭😭

Just discovered this pod shocked I hadn’t heard of it before but I loved this episode and think y’all made great points ❤

Funny how in the longest rl off-season ever we get the longest chalked cast episode ever

I’ve never disagreed with Johnny this much

i agree with jack. ultimately what would be amazing for the game is not only to have rocket league racing, but for that to be the gateway to a “extra training/maps” tab in the game. hopefully make it community driven just like the fortnite maps with a creative mode. rings maps, dribbling maps, random other shit people come up with. that would be huge dude and it’s such a waste of opportunity not having it for so long now

Episode 60 is the BEST 😂

Great discussion ! To me, it comes down to whether the game is fun to play or not. It is what will retain players, make them spend money, make them tell their friends to play it, and currently the game just doesn't have any hooks apart from it's core (physics based, fair, high skill ceiling gameplay) which will not retain most people that won't have the time it currently requires to get decent at the game. My wife and I have been playing this game for 4 years and have not bought a single rocket pass, which is a massive problem for a game (and esport) that wishes to thrive. Progressing in this game is 100% reliant on community effort, the game should be filled with better training content, learning you to get better, teaching you mechanics. Not everybody will go down the youtube rabbit hole to learn air rolling because they want to do what they saw Zen do when they stumbled onto the Worlds stream. Epic has the monetization and dev expertise to make addictive games with objectives, various modes, but we're left with the daily objectives handing out basic crates and 10k xp. To that point, Fortnite is absolutely not the same as RL, yes the core gameplay loop is constant but their is so many things to do in a game appart from playing the BR competitively. Virt is also right on the kids attention span, they have been raised with games that constantly stimulate them, and RL might be stimulating as a competitive experience, but the grind is too much without any other objectives to reach. They must give the players something to build towards, because the will to reach the next rank is currently not appealing enough to most players. Basic anti-smurf feature is also a start and a must-have for a free to play game. To CJ’s point about a game belonging to a company. It is this way with RL because it doesn’t have any competition. FPS games are a stimulant for one another, the same goes for Dota and LoL. RL is so singular that Psyonix/Epic have no incentive to do better. The core of the game is a gem, but everything around it is just rough and not engaging !

It's kind of interesting that Rise can't imagine people wanting to come home from work and play the game casually.

You know, this last RLCS they had all these video interviews with players, etc, where almost every story was a tear jerker, and the whole thing came off giving me a sinking feeling that I was watching the last RLCS. I hope I am wrong, and I don't want the game and more specifically the E-Sport side of it to die. But I share Jack's fears.

Jack is really spittin.

in terms of arcadey racer, the most recent disney one (speedstorm) was surprisingly fun and had a pretty fun aspect to it. im hoping whatever the RL racing becomes will feel like that/mariokart/motorkombat (the mini game from mortalkombat on the wii) the potential is there for it to be fun, inclusion of rumble items as power ups. tracks based from RL maps and other epic titles (alan wake, fall guys etc) it is still odd it may require FN installed to play it but i hope it can feed into keeping RL healthy and fun for all

This sums up the episode pretty well: Jack: I want epic games to support the game long term, add more content, and have better comunication towards the playerbase. Johnny: Oh so you think it would be better to have rocket league racing inside rocket league instead of fortnite? Jack:????

You just know that Epic is using RL like a cash cow, just by viewing their activity. Instead of improving/investing in the game by adding new game modes, new unique maps, car unique stats, they're getting rid of trading, no new update in years, asking players to pay for items. So either they're making a new RL and leaving this one for now, or they are letting it die.

Johnnyboi is soo naive, bro wants to not acknowledge his bias, Appjack is speaking soo much truth, Epic is a ruthless Company. They are one of the many big organizations that buy out a developer studios and put their own people into those studios so they have more control and say over what projects are being made and how.

Looks like a chicken leg tho 🍗 lol

Also agree w/ Jack, Epic seems to be running short-term solutions that could burn down entire gaming communities in the name of the almighty $. FN is bigger sure, but merging IPs, integrating RL-specific gameplay into a different game AND not communicating with the community is a recipe for disaster. It kinda looks like they'll see how RLR does and if it's not hitting benchmarks, bye bye RL updates. TLDR: Epic will leave RL for dead if it's not profitable short-term. Hope I'm wrong but historically it doesn't look good. Also - lots of interruptions this episode. I know it's longer so that's harder to avoid, but it's harder to listen to (at least for me).

I think Epic are positioning themselves to dominate the market of future gaming. They hit the jackpot with Fortnite Creative and have potential to bring that into more games (as they absorb them into Fortnite). I’d suspect they eventually make Fortnite like the other games and rename the “parent game” something to the effect of “The Epic Hub”. And later down the road they can more easily incorporate VR technology into the games, eventually becoming their own meta-verse

1:31:52 Sure, if Rocket League becomes bigger than Fortnite, I have no doubt Epic will invest more time into the game. But I think what Jack is trying to say is that Epic won't *try* to make Rocket League bigger than Fortnite. I think that's what he means by "They won't allow it to". These past 2 years it feels like they don't really care about developing the game anymore and they don't listen to the community. They just want more exposure for the game as an easy way to make more money. Merging it with Fortnite will get them that. It will just become some gamemode that they won't have to pay much attention to. 1:59:40 Further elaboration by Jack

App jack is right, disappointment stacks up.. I had an iphone and Imac, after enough misplays by Apple I completely switched out of principle. It's not like I completely stopped after a single change.

As a both RL and Fortnite player I feel that this is actually a good move on Epic. Whenever I play actual fortnite with my squad we always get sick of all the sweats and end up switching to the "custom games" if not starting with them. It is not even close to the same player base for the two games. Why would they promote it in a game where the player base is large but semi stagnant (RL) instead of one that has a massive player base?

Jack killing it on this one

Jack spitting facts, Johnny clearly a paid Epic actor L

Ur welcome herculyse for having this poddy on as background noise at work

Common technique in development/project management is when you want a live test of a new system is to package it as a new product/brand and see how people react to that, then make your adjustments and release the proper product without those criticisms. In that context it does seem like RL:R is a test bed for RL in UE5. Better to have any backlash to mechanics confined to a sub mode in FN than it would be to have it linked to RL2.

I think because rocket league is harder to learn, having kids learn the mechanics through racing would then translate into rocket league where these new players will already have an understanding and some skill to then play the game.

1:28:28 ty very much CJ that's all I wanted xD

always love jack and rise's perspectives, class acts, critical thinkers. rocket league needs to be built into an institution with legacy like live action sports. derbies/rivalries should be hyped up. more stadium-type arenas should be created. imo it needs more prestige mixed in with its lightheartedness. i agree with their points. idk if anyone is going to care about rocket league racing content other than kids.

what if RL Racing is a teaser for RL2 getting released (as its own game)? It's kind of exciting to imagine them using UEFN as the custom map engine for RL2, to finally replace the Steam workshop and give us a way to have multiplayer built in to custom maps. a surprise release of RL2 would at least explain why RL updates have been so vapid for so long...

43:25 LMAOO

I hear Jack 100%, but if you look at the situation as Epics attempt to merge the games so that they can slowly create their own version of a metaverse, where you launch Fortnite but it's really just a "home menu" where you then decide what type of gaming experience you wanna have (thanks to the thousands of creative maps that will be a available, now for two games instead of one), then i think you could see this as a good thing for RL. The old RL as we know it will no longer be it's own giant game, it will certainly just become a part of the fortnite universe, but there's no reason the player base would fall off due to that. If anything, it grows. How could that be bad for RL? I think Jack's pessimism comes from his fear of losing the pro RL scene, which is definitely a valid fear. But I think there's hope.

There’s even a crew pass on Fortnite where you get the pass for Fortnite and you get the pass for rocket league, it’s like they are shifting more towards Fortnite than rocket league. Maybe that’s why they are going back to season 1 on Fortnite with the very first map and start over

I just don’t want to download 80gb worth of Fortnite to play rl😭 I would rather see them invest in the existing community rather than removing features

It's honestly a disgrace that RL is not available in Korea. Most Koreans have never even heard about the game which for a top 10 esport is a joke.

If Rizzo wants to play Rocket League x Trackmania game so much just play Rocket Assault then. It has Rocket League physics and car control with Trackmania style setting records on tracks trying to get best times. And yes, you can wavedash...

I love that this entire episode is Jack not realising he just hates capitalism

Maybe with the merge into fortnite they could also do in game weekly 2day cash cups like fortnite and have a rank requirement to join

I think the problem here is the same problem of most companies rn, they want to give their investors the fastest market growth possible, so a move like RL in fortnite, or RL racing in fortnite, gives them a starting boom, but it then becomes just another secondary mode, and eventually dies, while more attention on RL base game would help the long term stability of the game, without seeing any big fast growth. It's the general problem with the stock market that is also ruining streaming services and video game launches

I feel like rocket league racing would be normal racing except with Ariels where you have to jump and fly over thinks with the same mechanics as normal rocket league (kind of sounds fun tbh)

Epic is putting it in fortnight because that is where the engine 5 is. Engine 5 files are not in RL. It’s a stepping stone before a UE5 RL.

I can only speak for my experience, but to me, the lack of communication is biggest reason why I'm not spending money on the game anymore. I used to buy credits regularly, and I'm someone whos very reluctant to ever put money into a game. But now that things have taken a turn for the worse, I need to know that there is some sort of plan to keep the game alive and thriving in order to justify putting more money in. There's not been anything to convince me that the game will slowly die from this point on, or as Jack said, that it has peaked. Maybe my choice of not putting more money into the game is only shared by a small minority of the community, but I'm convinced that it has to be enough of a loss of money to warrant any communication at all. If there was just a crumb of communication like: "hey, UE5 is in the works", or "we are actively working to improve ranked", or "we removed trading, but we have plans to implement a crafting system", then I would keep buying credits. The lack of any of this tells me that there is no plan, or rather, that I have no reason to believe that there is one.

I just saying we now have 2 high profile examples of what happens when you try to re-release a popular game onto a brand new engine and slap a 2 on the end of the title. Consumers do not like it, players don't like it, nobody likes it. Even if the game is objectively better, people don't like it. Putting all the eggs is the RL2 basket is not a good idea unless there is more to it than UE5.

Listened to this on Spotify, but came to KZfaq to comment. I agree w/ Jack 100% I don’t think this is good for RL in the long run, and it’s saddening that Johnny and Rizzo were dismissing Jack’s points.

I know it's not exactly the same, but the way i see it is like when rockstar had RD2 blow up and there were soooo many ppl that wanted RDO to get more attention. Sadly, Rockstar chose to focus on other things including gta5.

I need the name of the cruise!

I made a documentary on why they removed trading in RL, it explains a lot of the questions around what’s happening at Epic and the whole reasoning behind it. Defo would recommend if u want to know more about this whole issue 👍

I've given up on epic a long time ago, 0 faith they'll do anything good even next year

I play NA east coast and I can find a game in 10- 20 seconds anytime of day or night, so a lot of people are playing. But also I’m plat 3 so there are probably way more similarly skilled players around where I’m at.

What if.... What if there is no rocket league UE5? Like we discovered that possibility through sneaky backdoor public access details. What if the Rocket league UE5 leak* was always going to be Rocket league racing and that's all. So we have a whole community waiting for something not in development at all. Anyone got any direct confirmation on that? I feel like it's pretty obvious they haven't hyped it up AT ALL in-game or online but we hear all about this fort nite release.

Question you guys. Is there a chance we won’t have like regionals and majors, worlds again at all??? That would make me very sad.

Chalked cast officially signed by epic. RIP.

Rocket league racing means nobody will have teammates to blame when they lose. This mode will not last. It will be about as popular as the current 1v1 mode imo. Also, they are simply trying to expand the audience of all their games. If they can consolidate everyone into 1 game. Into 1 "metaverse"(where you own the metaverse), that's the goal. Epic has been pushing this metaverse idea for a while. That's what it is. I think it's inevitable that all of epic games will be in 1 launcher or in fortnite itself. I would expect changes to get more casual players into rocket league soon. Play it now, while the skill ceiling is high and there is no pay2win and all of that. We ARE in the peak of rocket league

epic bought psyonix for a billion... thats insane. i dont think psyonix is anywhere close to that evaluation

Need to watch more virtuoso

34:20 they should listen to Jack

Fortnite is calling it quits in China. The wildly popular battle-royale game, developed by Epic Games, will shut down its local Chinese version on Nov. 15, according to an update on its website. Users were prevented from registering for new accounts starting Nov. - CNBC

I may be inhaling a lot of copium... but Im hoping Rocket League Racing is just testing the UE5 assests for RL. They know if it doesn't feel the same on UE5 it is going to upset the whole community. Im hoping they are just releasing the RL Racing mini-game in Fortnite to have the community test the driving and such before making the full game. I just assume recreating the physics engine and have it feel similar is a tough task and this would honestly be the easiest way to implement large scale testing.

In Fortnite with the octane car you can actually boost, flip, wavedash but the flying is terrible because their gravity seems different so that's probably why they are putting Rocket League Racing in the game since the flying part won't be relevant, it'll probably be a racing game with all the rocket league mechanics without a ball in the air, you pick up boost like in mario kart and can utilize walls to chaindash, speedflip etc. Could be fun tbh

Jack is 100% right you guys are cooked

Can chalked cast pick a few questions from the chat for the guests to answer?

Cruises are mid for people who don’t have kids. Me, having kids, sign me up for a cruise / break

johnny and rizzo only 'disagree' with jack because they want to keep in epic's good books. can't be pissing off the boss when you want to become RLCS's official talk show

The whole spiel of “well epic likes money more than anything” that Johnny and Rizzi are doing is such a goddamn throwaway argument cause OBVIOUSLY any company wants to make money and wants to grow in profits. BUT a gaming company should also love their games AND WANT TO WORK ON THEM and put effort into them so that people will enjoy them. Like yes money is priority nr 1 but in a sense of they should still care about priority nr 2 which is gameplay and enjoyment of their customers. That’s why money is such a short term sight as Jack says it cause if they don’t care about their customers and their enjoyment they will lose them. You’ll only put money into a game you love.

It's really frustrating seeing chalked cast write off Jack's concerns as him being a doomer (@34:20). He brought up so many good points about the direction that epic is taking rocket league.

I really think they are gonna put Rocket League 2 UE5 into Fortnite and just let the old version what it is untill it is so dead they can discontinue. They are not gonna invest in Rocket League 1 to upgrade it to 2. I don't think Rocket League will stay a main focus at that point. RL1 will die and RL2 would be a side project with the focus on making money of casual players and not a pro scene competitively balanced game.

Johnny is completely missing Jack’s point. Even if rocket league racing got popular in fortnite, it will not bring more players over to rocket league, and it will incentivize epic to not care about the base game of rocket league. Also the feasibility to put the entire game of rocket league into fortnite is next to none. Jack even said that Rocket League is a massive game, which I don’t think people actually realize how much more complex the base game of rocket league is. It would be so silly to port it to fortnite. The servers would be even worse in that environment. Also there’s no profit to port it to fortnite. They make all of their money off of the e-shop.

Johnny has this “no accountability for massive corporations” mindset that I am not vibing with.

Cruises are baller. If you think they're lame you haven't been on a good one.

October has been the lowest player month in years.

One possibility is that they are gonna launch RL racing on Fortnite to introduce an easier game to the young kids and try to get more eyes on rocket league before they release RL 2 on UG5? Optimistic view for everyone

they should add a CAReer mode 🤷🏼‍♀️

I'm actually friends with a lot of the developers of fornite. i was just asking them about this the other day, obviously they are devs and not EPIC upper leadership but when i say these guys love fortnite because it is their baby i mean they LOVEEEEE fortnite

I think tossing BR into RL might have been a better move.

I don’t trade either but its the principle of respect. Epic disrespected the community and consumer by not saying why they were removing a core piece of the community (trading). That disrespect is why I’ve ditched the game. I don’t want to support a game that doesn’t support or respect it’s community

The gaming industry layoffs are not due to the companies not having enough money to pay their staff. It is purely greed. How many of the multi million dollar execs from all of these publishers/developers have taken pay cuts? It's purely about greed and infinite growth. Everything they are doing with RL screams short term growth, and profits in the now. They don't care about the IP, they don't care about the players, they don't care about the esports scene. They care about money, and only money, and they will sacrifice every last ounce of goodwill and potential for the game if it means they can make an extra dollar today, because when it crashes and burns they'll just lay off more people to keep their pay check.

Johnnyboi tries to come off way smarter than he is

Jesus Johnny stop interrupting.

Instead of doing RL Racing on Fortnite they should’ve just pushed for RL on UE5 and have UEfn type feature which would make RL more interesting for casuals with all the fan made content.

virt, jack, and rise are delusional lmfao they keep saying rl had the potential to pass fn

40:04 OK Johnny but look what we are paying for it, removing the trading? wasn't there any other way to do it???

I’m pretty sure there are 100M players bc my TRN has me at like 56 millionth in the world in ones haha

Is this rocket league's downfall? Or is it just a drunk rizzo in a chicken wing costume?

WAYTOODANK

The way I see it: Rocket league is gonna be made into a shitty minigame for fortnite (which is an already dying game with 90% 9-12 year old player base) and they're gonna make rocket league pertain more to kids for more money and ultimately kill the game along with what they are already doing to fortnite. Pretty easy to figure out with common sense.