Rocket League Tournaments

Psyonix has been hyping up an impending update for Rocket League on the Switch for some time now, promising new graphics modes, tournament support, and a whole slew of other goodies to keep players hooked in the crazy battle car sport. At last, the update has now gone live, and boy, is it a doozy.

The headlining feature of this update is the improvement made to the graphics, but you’ll find that it includes something for everybody; virtually everything is included except for a kitchen sink. Here’s the full patch notes:

THE HEADLINES

  • Players can now create and join Tournaments
  • Quality Connection Status icons will appear in the HUD if players are experiencing connection problems
  • Players can now receive a “Chat Ban” that restricts the banned player from sending chat messages in online play
  • [Nintendo Switch] Video Capture and ‘Quality Mode’ have been added
  • Expanded inventory organization and filtering in the Garage
  • Enhanced Crowd Audio
  • ‘Rocket League x Monstercat Vol. 2’ is now available to all players under Music Playlists

NEW CONTENT

Country Flags

  • ‘Brunei’
  • ‘Monaco’
  • ‘Nauru’
  • ‘Tuvalu’

Crates and Keys

  • ‘Triumph’ Crate has been added

Monstercat

  • ‘Rocket League x Monstercat Vol. 2’ is now available to all players under Music Playlists
  • ‘Monstercat’ has been added as a Flag Folder
  • Monstercat Flags have been added
    • ‘Anna Yvette’
    • ‘Intercom’
    • ‘Koven’
    • ‘Pegboard Nerds’
    • ‘Protostar’
    • ‘Slippy’
    • ‘Stonebank’
    • ‘Uncaged’
    • ‘Uncaged Cat’

CHANGES AND UPDATES

Tournaments

  • Players can now create and join Tournaments via the Main Menu
  • Tournaments have a maximum bracket size of 128 teams, minimum of eight teams
    • Team members must be in a party in order to register for a tournament
  • Cross-platform tournaments are enabled
  • Tournament creators can set minimum and maximum thresholds for entry based on a player’s Rank in the related Competitive Playlist

Quality Connection Status

  • In addition to showing your ping on the scoreboard, you will now also see in-game icons on the HUD if you are experiencing connection problems. This will help you better diagnose if gameplay issues are related to server performance or your connection.
  • You may see one or more of the following warnings when the client detects issues with your connection:
    • High Latency
    • Latency Variance
    • Packet Loss
    • Server Health
  • Additionally, if you are experiencing any of these issues, you will see a warning “!” symbol next to your ping on the scoreboard.
  • If one or more of these issues persists, you will also be notified via a pop-up notification in the Main Menu after exiting a match

Chat Bans and Report Feedback

  • Chat Bans
    • Players can now receive a “Chat Ban” that restricts the banned player from sending chat messages in online play
    • If you are Chat-Banned, you will receive a notification on the main menu with information about the chat that contributed to your ban
    • Quick Chat is still allowed but chat-banned players can only send one Quick Chat message every 5 seconds
    • Chat Bans do not affect Private Matches or Party Chat
  • Report Notifications
    • If a player you reported receives a ban of any kind, you will now be notified of the ban via a main menu notification

Items and Inventory

  • Favorite Items
  • Item Stacking
    • Most items will now automatically stack in the Inventory to reduce clutter in the inventory and trade windows
    • Duplicate items with different attributes (e.g. Painted or Certified) do not stack
    • Duplicate items with different trade holds do not stack
    • Each item in a stack still counts towards the maximum items in a trade
    • When adding a stacked items to a trade, you can select how many from the stack to offer with a slider
  • The Garage now supports Search and Filter functionalities
  • The Inventory screen now has tabs to quickly switch between different categories of items
  • Items can now be sorted by Date Acquired and Quality
  • Different Painted Car Bodies can now be equipped to the Blue and Orange teams

User Interface

  • A new “Interface” tab has been added to Options that contains all settings that control the user interface
  • Gameplay
    • Text Chat can now be set to ‘Team Quick Chat Only’
    • Client Send Rate – Limit how many packets your client sends per frame (may help on weak/wifi connections)
    • Server Send Rate – Limit how many packets the server sends you per frame (may help on weak/wifi connections)
    • Bandwidth Limit – Limit total bandwidth used by the game client
  • Camera
    • Camera Presets are now available
  • Controls
    • Controller Vibration now has multiple levels to choose from
  • Interface
    • Nameplate Scale – Adjust the size of player nameplates in the world
    • Nameplate Mode – Combines the old ‘High Contrast Nameplates’ and ‘Always Show Nameplates’ option. ‘Default’ is the former ‘High Contrast Nameplates’ setting.
    • Match Notifications
      • All – Show all HUD stat notifications and match time updates
      • Time Only – Hide stat notifications, only show “One Minute Remaining” and countdown
      • Kickoffs Only – Only show “3-2-1-Go”, don’t show “One Minute Remaining” and similar messages

Map Rotation

  • Aquadome and Starbase ARC have been added back into the Competitive Playlist map rotation

Team Colors

  • Expanded the palette of Blue and Orange team color choices for customization
  • In Private and Exhibition matches, you can now select from the full color palette for primary team colors

In-Game Music

  • You can now listen to Rocket League soundtracks during a match
  • Under the ‘Audio’ Tab in the Options Menu, you can set ‘In-Game Music’ to:
    • Always On
    • Matches Only
    • Training Only
    • Off

Enhanced Crowd Audio

  • The in-game crowd can now predict shots and saves using the same logic as the Director camera in Spectator mode
  • Now that the crowd can predict exciting moments, they will get louder and more excited in advance of events instead of only making noise after something happens

Nintendo Switch

  • Video Capture has been added
    • To use Video Capture, press and briefly hold the Share button (below the D-pad) and the last 30 seconds of gameplay will be saved as a video.
  • Switch players can now choose between ‘Performance’ and ‘Quality’ under the ‘Video’ tab in the Options Menu
    • Performance Mode (60fps)
      • Docked: Optimized for 60fps/900p, can scale down to 60fps/720p
      • Handheld: Optimized for 60fps/720p, can scale down to 60fps/576p
    • Quality Mode (30fps)
      • Docked: 30fps/1080p
      • Handheld: 30fps/720p
      • Quality Mode also enables several graphics features automatically, including Lens Flares, Light Shafts, Dynamic Shadows and Depth of Field

BUG FIXES

General

  • Black Market Decals no longer cover Painted portions of some Battle-Cars
  • Trim on Octane no longer changes color when ‘Superman’ Decal is equipped
  • Primary Colors are now consistent on all car bodies
  • Fixed a bug causing Supersonic Trails no longer flicker across player screens during a match
  • Equipped Banners are no longer equipped as a phantom item if they are traded in
  • Boost will now regenerate while waiting for additional players to join a Dropshot match
  • Players can now see the ‘Vote to Forfeit’ option in the menu if they already initiated a forfeit vote
  • Fixed a French translation error related to Takumi RX-T
  • Fixed a Dutch localization error with Uncommon Toppers

What do you think? Will you be jumping back into Rocket League now? How many points do you average per game? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[source rocketleague.com]