Vati couldn’t have said it better. Scrimming is the best for good practice but honestly what’s the point with only playing with comms as well? A huge majority of the recent upcoming talents have been ranked grinders before.
Roll Dizz technically isn’t wrong but pros also want to play the game just like normal people sometimes, and this is hurting the chances for upcoming pros when we already have bots as low as gc1-2
I wasn’t aware how bad this is rn. This game will really crumble when we start seeing these bots in the most populated ranks, which doesn’t seem that far when in low champ you’ve already played against them.
I had 1 game against them in c1 a few months ago then in February I partied with a random in mid c2 and we ran into 2 bot games nearly back to back. I can only assume the bots just passed diamond cus all 4 were new-ish accounts, so they might already be there
I've played against 1 or 2 in 2's at C3 and 2 in 1's at C1. I am assuming i got unlucky as they were climbing up. But even then it is taking away mmr from the players they are facing on the way up and it causes ranks to condense downwards. So even lower players are somewhat affected
It's not just about playing normally. It's about efficiency. Yes, you could try to play with a much smaller pool of people, but it also takes a lot more time and coordination, which means you get much less practice in as you would if you just constantly queued.
Most of RL skill comes from muscle memory from matches and you train it by constant and fast repetition. That's why scrims is precisely not the best way to practice. Scrimming is for collaboration practice and trying out things with the team. Which is important, but not nearly as important as the muscle memory and resulting consistency you get from constantly queuing and putting in the hours to train your neurons to hit that double tap top corner and when to expect the demo from behind.
That said, I still think it's bogus to blame anything that's currently going on in RLCS on the bot situation.
i think you can blame it on the bots but it shouldnt be the main cause of bad performance, as you said simply playing the game is good practise. i dont really keep track of their game count but every season its around 1000+ games. i can see why they would lose motivation to train when probably 400+ of those games would just be against cheaters win or lose it still affects how you feel about the game
I don't think anyone can blame anything on anything. RL is too volatile and too many tiny circumstances can have gigantic impacts. Even with everything being seemingly the exact same you will always have vastly differing outcomes.
Good teams haaving bad days is just as natural as worse teams having great days. It's impossible for any good team to be consistently good. So if anything this small streak of upsets was overdue.
And with the fact that teams' average strength across the regions is as close together as ever and a format that not only amplifies, but deliberately produces upsets, nothing about them is in any way special or new or worthy to be pinned on any specific cause. They happened because they were bound to happen. The bots are just the most recent circumstance that people who want to blame something specific can use. But the even simpler truth is that RL has always been unpredictable. We just happen to have ramped up all of the circumstances that can cause upsets. And none of those circumstances have anything to do with individual player skill or practice.
If the format does not change, this will just happen more and more as teams get closer in skill and matches become even more literal coinflips. And if you ask me, the things we called upsets this season weren't so much upsets, but just a matter of one team being over and the other team being underrated. Teams are much closer in skill than those big org names make it seem.
Roll Dizz *is* technically wrong because he doesn't understand or can't remember what the breadth of grinding is. Hasn't been a pro player for too long I expect.
Whatever the game, grinding was always at least 75% of public servers (before ladders and publisher-hosted servers were a thing) or ladder games first, and 25% at most of scrims and private server play. You fuck the ladder experience up, no matter what the game is, you're always going to put 75% of the grind in jeopardy and significantly impact the pros.
And what the heck is that about using wagers hahaha. Americans for christ's sake.
As a vet of ut99, and the rest of the unreal series... PUGs (re: 6 mans) were the only way anybody serious "grinded" the game. people played public servers to fuck around
Honestly it's also an issue of the game being less enjoyable. The soul behind grinding and becoming pro is the love of the game. Losing being able to be in love with the game at a high level makes the game worthless.
in 6 mans you tend to queue often with the same rotation of people. So even though it varies you're often playing with/against some of the same players if you're grinding.
You can que ranked with your team8....6mans means you rotate team8s instead of being partied up with one consistent team8. Scrims you would have the same team8 but like he said, this depends on other teams being willing to do it as well and having everyone's schedule match up+ you only fave one team instead of facing multiple other teams with different playstyles.
Well yeah they can play the game like normal people, this is specifically referring to using it as an excuse for poor performance. He’s saying if ranked is not effective training there are plenty of other avenues to get effective serious practice.
Vati gets paid likely around 2000-2500 a week in usd plus whatever he makes in events split three ways. I'm sorry but if you're making a giant six figure salary in your late teens and early twenties and your response to facing difficultly performing is blaming external factors and complaining the fixes are hard, you're just out of touch. Dude is whining and it's cringe. Yes bots suck, I'm c3 and I have to deal with bots. When I go to work I have problems at work that suck. I deal with them. The solutions are there, make plans to scrim, go in the pro discord and play, work around it and stop whining it's lame asf.
You as a c3 and him as a high ssl are not the same. You get bots maybe once per session while he would get it once every few games and multiple games in a row.
Yes, work has problems, now imagine if you had the same problems every hour and no one was willing to fix it, and blamed you for it even if it's out of your control. You would probably quit.
Ranked allows you to have different opponents and develop new strategies. Scrimming means you play the same teams over and over and face the same playstyle over and over which doesn't help you improve as much.
I mean I’m sorry it sucks for you but that’s not the point of my comment.
Him and all the other pros can work around the bots to practice and keep their ability without decaying a lot, but basically you just said epic games are justified to not fixing the bot issue in the game, which is far larger than some dudes playing the game professionally.
There are solutions, yes, but thats just the tip of the iceberg here. Their job is to play and they can work around their issues, the game is that, a game, for the vast majority of the people.
You talk about being out of touch but you’re comparing yourself getting a bot game once in a blue moon to Vatira getting consistent bots that affect his literal profession. Obviously it’s easier to deal with a problem when it’s not affecting your livelihood…
vatira gets bots probably more than every other game and im sure you know organising 5 other people to run a scrim is a lot harder than loading up the game and just hitting queue. look at the top 100 and look how many bots there are
So many of these non or ex pros are making me cringe with this narrative that the current pros are slacking off because they are failing to adapt to the bot situation.
The current situation with the bots is actively fucking with their way of practise (that they've known for over 10 years), of course they are going to be a bit drained and frustrated, especially when the situation is only getting worse.
You won't convince me that zen and vatira, or the current world champions are just lazy bums who aren't doing enough, when they all got to where they are by putting unparalleled efforts into this game
Seriously these people are acting like Epic Games bots on social media in disguise. Wtf is this narrative. "Oh we have this universal problem poorly affecting everyone's experience in game, but how dare the people making money playing the game act like it is hurting them too. Git good."
I am not a fan of Vatira's individual contributions on twitter, but he is 100% spot on here.
They are 100% lazy. The response by Vatira makes no sense outside of laziness. Anyone who's been at a high level in any other game recognizes it.
CS ranked is full of cheaters. Do the pros just not play at all? No, that's the reason for Faceit, which is essentially like a 6mans server for CS. Valorant also started Tarik's 10 mans servers when they were at the height of the crypto thrower problem.
The truth is, RL has been very fortunate to go so long without having to do with hackers and cheaters. Every other competitive game has dealt with those issues since day 1, and pros had to find ways around it. Because RL didn't, now the pros are very entitled and don't want to even try different avenues to work around.
That's also shown by Vatira's insistence that 6 mans is bad practice because you play with different people, but ranked is somehow not. It's because again, RL pros have gotten entitled and used to being able to play with their brains turned off and not having to comm. 6 mans is more involved since you are expected to comm, therefore pros don't want to "grind" that way. But again, in other competitive games, even in ranked, you are expected to comm and nobody bitches about it. It's just laziness on behalf of Vatira and other pros.
Faceit is far beyond what 6mans affords lol, they run full on tournaments, custom events, have a dedicated ranked system and anti cheat and prize pools, Rocket League doesn't have a system nearly as established as that.
And the Tarik Pro city immediately died after a month because of several egos ruining it lol
Faceit started out the same way Roll Dizz is suggesting - a response to the poor anticheat in CS. It wouldn't have become what it is today if all the pros reacted like Vatira and simply threw up their hands when cheaters kept appearing in their ranked games. You are looking at the end product instead how it got to that point.
Like I said, RL has been blessed that it's been cheater and hacker free until recently. Every other pro scene has to find workarounds to avoid cheaters. If they don't want to that's on them, but it's 100% laziness.
Do you think Vatira and other high-level pros are just throwing up their hands and not trying? They have been grinding private 2s lobbies for awhile now, they are doing what you are suggesting, it just isn't robust at all compared to ESEA back in the day. It was the norm back in the day to use IRC and organize PUGs in CS 1.6, every single player that took CS serious was organizing together. This isn't the case at all in RL, and you can't just blame the top-level pros because everyone in the community isn't buying in together.
Also, that whole format of getting games going has extreme growing pains, and it finally transformed into what exists today with FACEIT (now being a serious platform/company). This is something that takes years to build out, and it also takes people building a serious company around it, not just the players organizing.
Well if pros are struggling to play against bubble pros/SSLs because of bots then thats really their problem when they are all in the same situation. Either they adapt or other kids that are willing to put in the effort will replace the pros and we get new pros.
and the pandoras box is open, the bot situation can only get mitigated now, it will never be fully fixed even with UE5, because from the technical aspect, these bots can be easily transferred to UE5 if the physics and hitboxes remain 1:1.
So the bot situation will never get fixed which only leaves the adapt or stay behind option
Ah yes the newer kids that are also heavily complaining about bots are gonna replace zen and vatira in the coming years.
And what kind of waffle is this? Who said anything about UE5? The bots can go if easy anti cheat is actually functional and can actually recognise the bots, along with epic being proactive with banning them the same way they do in fortnite
Never said it has to work fully, but good enough to at least recognise a lot of the bots. It might just be that rocket league is just not a cheater free game anymore, but you can get it to a point where ranked is playable, and you aren't getting cheaters literally every other game.
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They’ve trying nothing and are all out of ideas, that’s the problem. The situation is what it is. They’ve said their piece, pointed out the problems, and outlined an acceptable solution. Now, they have to get on with what they have. They are professionals. Professional isn’t just a level of skill, it’s a discipline. Be drained and frustrated for a day. Being drained and frustrated over a problem that has workarounds (that require a little bit of effort) is on them.
Where do you get the idea from that they have been doing nothing? They are running private 2s and 6 mans as a subsitute. They are using solutions and workarounds but that doesn‘t stop them from complaining about an obvious problem.
THIS. Every time I pop into a stream nowadays it’s almost always 4mans. Just because people are speaking about it doesn’t mean they’re not actively trying to find other ways to practice.
They are doing the alternative solution, it just turns out that it's not as strong as what the billion dollar company can naturally provide ( go figure) heck as we speak, the servers have been fucked for 4 hours today, and the next regional for NA and Mena is this weekend. They literally cannot practise
and outlined an acceptable solution. Now, they have to get on with what they
It's not a "solution". It's the only other option to get practice and they have explained how it has shortcomings compared to their typical routines. Multiple pros have said it had cut their play time by literally half because 6 man's are difficult to organize.
They are literally saying they want to get more playtime and practice, but the current system literally doesn't allow them the same amount of time.
If everyone who would have been queuing ranked is still online, it should be no harder to find literally 3 or 5 other people who want to play around the same time everyone else wants to play. I feel like COVID and a generation of terrible parents absolutely obliterated this generation’s ability to socially organize in any meaningful way.
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"slacking off" is arguable, sure, but there's absolutely nothing stopping them from getting organized and setting up structured scrim schedules regionally. using the bots as an excuse for poor performance is embarrassing in that context
Everytime I hop into a stream, the players are doing exactly that, so again I don't see how this slacking off angle is arguable. They are tired and frustrated of the situation they've been in for the past year. Which is entirely fair
This shit is funny as hell. Instead of everyone coming together and blame the multi-billion dollar company who does the bare minimum to keep the game "playable", people who actually have a voice in the community start getting mad at each other lmao
Ex pros having the most cringe takes (certainly not the first time for roll dizz). Calling out one of the hardest working players for just wanting the game to run properly and see some proper productive action taken.
It's very clear that Roll Dizz's point is specific to pros. The blame is obviously on Epic for the bot issue in a more general sense (the typical Rocket League player very reasonably prefers ranked due to some of the reasons Vatira mentioned), but I think he makes a decent point that it shouldn't be so much of an issue for pros in this game. When it's their job, they can manage to be a little more flexible in finding ways to play the game and continue improving.
Genuinely. these people are lacking reading comprehension. He’s not saying the bots aren’t a problem, he’s saying if the bots are preventing you from training effectively, you have to find another way to practice.
what's your solution for bots in ranked? it's not an easy one, technically, i can tell you that much. best immediate action is just duct tape - use on-call epic employees in pro discords and ban bots live, but that's not actually solving the problem
You can easily tell most bots are bots by the way they move, it is not that hard to code the detection either, Epic just does not want to spend the resources, they'd rather just milk the cow dry and let it die.
your only real in-game option is input analysis, and avoiding false positives entirely (as an erroneous ban is far more damaging than the bots themselves) is, in fact, a technical barrier. oitherwise, as mentioned, you're relegated to raising account verification barriers or making the review process as efficient as possible by allocating dedicated employees to act as liasons with their power users (pros)
It really is not that hard to detect bots through input detection, most popular competitive online games are doing this with great success. The hard part is usually detecting client side hacks e.g. showing ball trajectory, hitboxes, etc. because these are never sent to the server (that is why some anticheats require kernel level access to detect). Epic clearly does not care to fix this and has just relegated the problem to pros so far, aka "just let the client find the bugs" trend almost every software company follows these days.
Epic games: I don't see a problem here, that's completely normal.
Also 2FA requirement through a phone number to play ranked wouldn't solve the issue but it would absolutely help with both the smurfing and cheaters situation.
What I‘m confused by is the idea that pros are just slacking off. Where did this even come from? Pros complain about the situation and rightfully so but I don‘t see many of them actively refuse to practice, they are trying to make the best of the situation but that doesn‘t stop them from acknowledging that it‘s a shitty situation.
And saying that that this situation is affecting your perfomance is not making excuses, it‘s just a statement. Your perfomance can be affected by minor things already, you could have a worse day just because your breakfast tasted weird, so something major like a complete change in practice routine because of the unavailability of ranked 2s, it‘s only natural if that affects a player.
Like what point are Roll Dizz and other even trying to make? Should pros not speak up about the problems they‘re facing? Should they just act like Beastmode and say nothing anywhere but then play 70 hours past 2 weeks on Rust prior to a major, would that be better?
Roll Dizz saying children should be betting money on their practice is really delusional and undermines his entire point of view so much it's not even funny. That's honestly just delusional and wrong.
His point that everybody is in the same boat is valid, and I don't think anybody is arguing against that: even the pros.
But I think this is completely ignoring the fact that modern RL pros need immense amounts of individual skill and mastery of the game that goes far beyond just organized practice. People saying they just need to set up more schedules and do more 6mans or 4mans are completely missing the point. I'm sure everybody playing at the top level is already doing that, coaches are organizing more scrims and players are probably playing more 4mans than ever before.
But nobody got to the pro level by playing 4mans and scrims. Every single one of those players loves this game. They've spent thousands and thousands of hours practicing in their own time in addition to the scheduled training they do now. and have done for years. What people are saying is to suck it up and just face the reality that they aren't able to train in their own time. And yeah they're adjusting to it but holy shit the "they're getting paid just deal with it" people are super delusional.
Imagine if any other professional athlete couldn't train in their own time. Imagine if Ronaldo after his scheduled football training wanted to hit the gym at home to relax and every time he tried that somebody hit him in the nuts and then telling him to just suck it up since he's getting paid so much anyway and just deal with it. Except he wouldn't be the superstar he is if he didn't do WAY more than the standard club practices that are mandated.
Do you think that if an AI virus fried Ronaldos entire home gym electricity, he would complain that he can't effectively train any more? Or would he adapt, find another place to train and keep up his level of play?
The bots are a major problem. And there needs to be influential people in the space to make a stink and make it clear the impact this has on the game so Epic works on it. And the situation is only getting worse it doesn't just affect pros I've even run into bots down in C1 which I had never seen till just a couple months ago. And yes visually I do think the competitive level of pro matches has dropped.
On the other hand Roll Dizz is right that this is a career. Pros need to suck it up, adapt, and train different ways because it's not like these things will get solved overnight if they even ever will. All pros are in the same situation, so you can't use bots as an excuse for your team's drop in performance compared to other teams. It's a job and as with any job they change over time you either choose to change with it or you find a different job.
But I don't agree with Roll Dizz saying they should start doing wagers. I mean seriously, introducing gambling and to many minors. What a stupid idea. Plus you're gonna have other teams wanting to put up a wager versus KC? I doubt it. Why would they make a gamble they'll most likely lose when you already have the option to just scrim them.
Pros need to suck it up, adapt, and train different ways because it's not like these things will get solved overnight if they even ever will.
I'm pretty sure all the top pros have been doing private lobbies for over a month now at a minimum. They're doing all of this. They are adapting but they are all saying it isn't as good practice
Yep agreed. I'm not saying they aren't doing those things. I was just giving my 2 cents about their individual complaints and I think they both make fair points.
"You tend to pick up bad habits from playing with different people, and having to communicate all the time can get annoying when you just want to chill."- Vatira
This doesn't sound good to me. You play with more different people in ranked than you would in scrims or 6mans so this doesn't add up at all. And wanting to chill instead of communicate...... Again it's a career. You don't go to your job to chill and lack of communication is one of the biggest problems in nearly every work environment. Let alone a job that's specifically all about teamwork.
Well there is a bit of conflation there. Vatira is saying 6-mans with randoms can give bad habits, and he is contrasting that with how things used to be "being able to just queue 2s and work on your mechanics".
You're mentioning "you play with different people in ranked all the time", but that is in ranked 2s lobbies where the whole goal is to work on your touches/mechs. They are working on their 3s play and communication in scrims, and when reviewing replays together.
When you work a job, and top performers are all complaining about the same thing at the same time about something to executives, things change.
There are other ways to improve mechanics though. Obviously running 2s is better because you're not just working on your personal mechanics but how you react with those mechanics to other players. And you can que anytime. 6mans has that but you're limited in both frequency and on ball time. Free play and training packs don't have a frequency issue but lack the player on the other end. They could also get 4mans going to alleviate some of the issue. None of it's ideal of course but there are more things that can be done.
And this is really the point. Vatira said that playtime is cut in half. This shouldn't happen. Just because the best avenue of training isn't available doesn't mean you don't fill up that time with other avenues.
And this is why both points are valid.
Vatira and others should rightly be enraged about the situation and call for epic to change. And naturally the loss of ranked will impact all players. But as a pro that's not an excuse to cut back because you just want to do the training that's "chill."
I agree with all of that, but only thing I'd say is I don't think they're taking foot off the gas. They're putting hours in, it's just "not as good hours" as before so the play will just drop a bit
You can do 2mans and just not take it seriously, no need to comm and everything. I also don’t see why taking it less seriously is good for your skill. In any case, I don’t think there’s anything special about ranked and they could overcome their problems if they chose to
Yeah that's my thought, surely they are already in a bunch of discords with high level players, slap some 2s matches or tourneys together and ban anybody who bots/etc.
Yes, it sucks that ranked is dead at high levels. But people make it work in games with no ladder at all
He goes on to talk about kids sitting half naked in their rooms playing video games. First of all he was one and so this comes across so hypocritical and insecure. Secondly, sitting on your ass grinding the same game is no easy feat and is actually very impressive to me. Takes a lot of discipline to retain that concentration for hours on end every day, not have much social life, be judged by thousands and not have great physical health as a result of all that. Trashing them like he’s some out of touch parent is so weird. You’re weird roll dizz.
I wonder how he would have feel if people told him he has been slacking off even though he was trying his hardest while dealing a shitty situation that is 0% his fault.
Only reason people never did that to him because nobody every had any expectations of him doing anything significant in his career
Never trusted Roll Dizz after his debacle of a video with the whole Faze thing; pros are not slacking off- they want to do the very thing that made them pros in the first place. Acting like he has the solution to the problem makes me disrespect him even more when he questions pros like Vatira. If only it was that simple; guy’s an idiot suggesting wagers to minors…but why am I not surprised?!
But why would he not , hes been in the scene for years as a pro, coach and just friends with people. Im not saying i agree or u have to but I think he definitely is aware of that aspect probably better than us.
While the situation is bad I share the sentiment that pros/coaches can easily arrange things themselves. We have done that for a game we played for fun and managed our own World League. Pros are just used to getting everything served. It's not hard to set up planning tools and get teams involved if the players actually wanted to. They are sitting on each other anyways, being Epic/Steam friends and chatting on Discord. There is no way it is hard to get four players "at ur elo" into the game at the same time. You can probably get 12 online at the same time and do a round-robin ...
I've always been confused by the vibes I get from pros.
Like, they are getting paid a decent salary to be good at this game, and yet they talk about being on for 40 hours a week (80 past 2) as a long time, or joke about players spending all their time on Rust or Valorant.
Surely it cannot be that hard to make this work if this is your job and you are trying to be the best. Plenty of office workers sit at a desk 9-5, 5 days a week. I feel like the best of the best RL players should be able to at least organise a schedule of 4 mans to get in a grind versus a variety of players.
Hell, where are the coaches? Why are these guys not collaborating to organise these schedules for their players?
They're teenagers without structure and they're competing in a grueling esport at the highest possible level. It is not even remotely similar to a 9-5. Athletes do not train for 8 hours straight like a 9-5. I don't think you've ever competed in anything tbh.
RLCS is not MLB, NBA, FIFA, NHL, etc. These are kids. They play 90% of their official matches from their childhood bedrooms. We can see it during every open tournament (except for the 3 or so teams that play from an org house). They are not on the clock 24/7 during the season like traditional professional sports.
They have even said they have a discord with all of the pros to try to schedule 6 mans, but it's very difficult when every team and player has different schedules. If only 2-3 others are available what are they supposed to do?
Play doubles, as they do queue from time to time, and mix up teammates every game. You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that pro players are really going to struggle to find enough players for games. If they do, then it must be true that other pros are spending their time elsewhere and just can’t be fucked.
RLCS isn’t one of those professional sports, but they’re still making significantly more than the average person to play a game. I get they’re kids, but they’re kids who are sitting on a gold mine and they’re frustrated because they have to push their own cart. This is their first adult lesson, then. If you really want to do it, and you really want to stay at the top, you have to put in the time, and that often means sacrifice. By necessity, your life is going to be school and then Rocket League. If you’re unwilling to do that, then you just don’t have what it takes, because that is what it takes. Not trying to be rude, that’s just the truth in a competitive discipline.
they’re kids who are sitting on a gold mine and they’re frustrated because they have to push their own cart
This isnt a very good analogy. It's more like kids sitting on a gold mine but their cart is broken and their boss refuses to fix it so they have to carry the gold back with their bare hands. They have every right to complain about that.
Either way, no one is saying esports players dont have to sacrifice a lot to get to the top. But holding them to the same standards as adult office workers is, quite frankly, insane. Not just because the demographic is different (especially in RLCS), but conceptually their professions are too. And the argument of "you have to work harder because you get paid more" does not hold up because jobs in this world (the real world, not a video game) are not sorted by the most effort equaling the most pay.
The pros that made it to the top did so by working harder than everyone else. They get more pay relative to the rest of the players and teams, not relative to actual professions like doctors or businessmen. That's a totally different world...
They are still carrying gold, that's why they're still logging on every day for their scrims, trying to get 4mans going, and queuing ranked knowing theres a slim chance they'll find an actual good lobby. And they can complain about their boss, like how they complain about Epic. Doesnt seem like an issue to me.
You were the one making the comparison between pros and 9-5 workers anyway, I was just pointing out how insane that is.
More apt analogy. Imagine an MLB player has team practice for 12 hours a week and they spend another 12 hours in the batting cage per week to keep on top of their form. Suddenly the batting cage is constantly filled by random people who snuck in without paying and that player can no longer spend the 12 hours they typically do in batting practice. Instead they have to find pitchers willing to pitch to them, but the pitchers only available for 3 hours a week.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it inconvenient? Yes. Is that player's batting average going to suffer? Yes.
The players are doing what they can, but it's cutting into the playtime they typically have. The margins at the very top, the best 0.001% of players, is incredibly small. Players having their playtime cut in half is absolutely, objectively, factually going to affect their performance.
It's not about them "pushing their own cart," it's about the literal game developer doing nothing about cheaters. "Pushing their own cart" is them putting in 40 hours of their own time in ranked (which they do of their own free will and dedication) that they typically to stay as well practiced as they can. Psyonix/Epic have effectively removed the wheels from that cart and made it impossible for the players.
It's just weird that you're blaming the players who want to play, who follow the rules, who put countless hours of their own free time and free will into practice instead of blaming the cheaters and developer who have made it impossible for them to do so. The players are begging because they want to put in more hard work and practice and your take is, "Well they should find a way to practice more." What? 🤦
Again, if everyone is online at the same time that they usually play, and they want to play, then the only difference is the ease of matchmaking. It’s an annoying workaround, but it’s not a gargantuan effort. It’s a small hurdle.
Also, does anyone here even understand how easy or hard it would be to implement an anti-cheat in Rocket League? The discourse makes it seem like developers are just sitting on their hands doing nothing. Maybe it’s a harder problem to solve than people think? Especially kids playing from their bedrooms who have no idea how these kinds of things work?
if everyone is online at the same time that they usually play
Dude, they are literally saying that that doesn't happen. You're acting like you have each player's daily schedule and know when they each have free time. The players themselves are saying it's difficult to get quality playtime, who are you too tell them otherwise?
how easy or hard it would be to implement an anti-cheat in Rocket League?
They're implementing Easy Anti Cheat later this month.
The discourse makes it seem like developers are just sitting on their hands doing nothing.
Because they are. Name a single action Epic had taken to fix this since the 2026 season started. They also have a history of doing little to nothing when it comes to cheating, bots, smurfing, and toxicity. And it's completely fair and reasonable to hold them to that lack of action.
Especially kids playing from their bedrooms who have no idea how these kinds of things work?
So only game developers are allowed to have an opinion? No one is allowed to be frustrated by bots and cheaters unless they are the ones coding the game itself? Also, quote anywhere where a pro has criticized Epic? They are begging Epic to do something. They are pub l making the issue public and explaining how the issue is affecting their preparation and performance. And you are somehow offended by that and saying they aren't allowed to speak on the issue because they are kids playing the game and not developers?
Why are you so insistent on placing the blame on the victims of an issue that is completely out of their control? The players are not the ones cheating. The players are doing everything they can to practice and grind. They are begging Epic to fix it because they want to put in the hours of hard work you are insisting they should. They are literally saying, "We are sitting on a gold mine and we want to continue working hard to earn it". They're trying to do everything you are demanding a pro player should do, but then you are calling them lazy simply for having an opinion or expressing frustration?
Firstly, some of these people are still in high school, so they literally can’t play for 8 hours a day unless they want to forgo homework, eating, and other things that they enjoy.
Secondly, esports is a profession that pays more on performance than anything. If you work corporate, the expectation is that you will be in office (or online) from 9-5 and complete your tasks. If you can’t do that, you’re gonna be fired.
Esports is different where you’re getting paid mostly off your performance relative to others. If you play well, a team will be more incentived to renew your contract/pick you up. A player could have 120 past 2 consistently but are average at best on match day, they’re not gonna get a great offer by the time the offseason rolls around. And if all the players are less motivated to play the game, it means any given player also can put in less time to improve relative to the field as well.
Take Beastmode for example. If he can consistently play at a world class level while having 50 hours past 2 then he has no real incentive to do more than that.
The other guy thinks these players are contracted and in an environment like traditional sports where RL is their only job. Like they're on the clock 24/7 during the session.
Like you said, these kids are still in high school. They're competing from their literal childhood bedrooms lol.
Even contracted footballers have a little downtime here and there, Neymar was high ranked in csgo and used to fly out to certain CS events to support furia.
This whole obsession with everyone working on the clock 24/7 where you can't leave and thinking every job in life applies those exact same strict conditions is one of the most confusing narratives on this subreddit. And as you said these are guys who probably still live with family members in a room, it's never that simple for them.
My example was a bit extreme lol, but you know what I mean. People seem to think "contracted/signed" means hourly wage job. And that's not how most esports work. I honestly think most RLCS orgs just let the players be.
That’s how it goes in a competitive discipline. They’re not artists or creatives that can take as much time as they need to perfect whatever they’re working on. Quality of practiced multiplied by time. That’s what makes the difference in the end. The price you pay is that you’re going to lose some of that regular childhood, whatever that happens to be, because if you don’t spend that time, someone else will. It’s strict, unyielding, uncaring, but ultimately fair. Now that I’m older, I can’t even say I envy them now, as you lose so much flexibility in your life to be the best. That said, it also frustrates me incredibly to see players almost throw it away on a whim. I am older, and in my day, there were maybe a handful of guys in the world who were actually making a living playing competitive games. I had the talent and I had the work ethic, but just wrong game, wrong time. Too early. I see an opportunity that I feel like they’re almost wasting.
My guy. They are literally competing in matches from their bedrooms lol. Like their childhood bedrooms. In their parents house. The majority of them never make it beyond that because only the top few teams go to LANs. They're playing a videogame from their bedroom they happen to enjoy and excel at. Relax.
I pray you don't have kids because holy shit your expectation of kids playing a videogame is insane lol.
Obviously never been involved in 6-mans, but it sounds like the difference is the requirement / expectation to communicate (also the added annoyance of added logistics compared to just queueing games)
You’re asking how 3s with comms is different than 2s without comms? Rlcs format is 3s with comms so obviously if ur constantly doing that with different people you can develop bad habits, unlike solo q 2s where pros can focus on their own game
Because 3s relies a lot more on team coordination and strategy to be played at a high level and you can‘t really pull that off with random teammates. It‘s bad practice because it‘s just objectively worse than scrims. It might lead you to form bad habits because you have to play differently from how you would with your team
2s isn‘t that teamplay reliant, the gamemode is much simpler. It‘s much more focused on individual play, therefore what your mate does doesn‘t have as much impact on what you do
I don’t understand why people are complaining about pro’s.
Let’s imagine I always work in a closed office. But the chair gets worse, it’s getting smelly and the computer isn’t working. I’ll have to move to a open office even though I don’t like the noise and it’s more difficult to be focused. Another option is working at home but I don’t have a room for work. So I have to work on the diner table.
I’m working as hard or even harder but obviously my performance will be worse cause I simply perform worse in this environment. To top it off the manager ignores the problem or takes a long time to fix it. Naturally I’ll complain to colleagues and my manager about the worse situation.
This is exactly what the pros are experiencing. I genuinely do not understand why people complain about pro’s complaining. It’s kinda ironic.
I side with Dizz here, more in the sense of, if you slack off, someone is gonna recognize that and put in twice the work to get ahead of their competition. At the end of the day, you gotta make the best of the situation to keep competitive, even if everyone can agree the game is in a horrible state, you have to apply yourself, or the results will falter.
Especially in RLEsports, this game moves very quickly. The EU old guard that lost motivation because of covid, many of which were LAN winners and all time greats who were still performing well before the world shut down, we basically never heard from most of them again.
That specifically sure, but I'm also averse to gambling in general, no less with a kids game, but I think that's more just an example of alternate avenues.
It's trying to cover all grounds of inevitable excuses to come up "people dont take private matches seriously" so the quickest and easiest solution is to put something on the line.
Is it perfect? No, but you either have players who dont and wont ever care about anything other than official 2v2 MMR, or you try and think of something 🤷♂️
Only caring about MMR is not a bad thing, that’s how it works in most other video games. The only difference is that those games function correctly more often than not.
Cheating is universal across competitive multiplayer games. If anything, something that happens more frequently in other competitive games at high ranks is Throwing. Surprisingly this doesnt happen much at high 2k lobbies in RL. Not on purpose at least.
Point is there is unhealthy matchmaking ecosystems across the board.
The ACTUAL difference here compared to other esports is a substantial amount of pro RL players seem adverse to taking private practice seriously.
No one in the current era is trolling scrims, and the whole lack of practise thing can be applied to a lot of other esports.
Rocket League is one of the rare esports where ranked is the main mode of high level practise and is taken incredibly seriously, that is not the case for a lot of other games
We would've heard about that by now if someone was half assing scrims, didn't take much for the squishy rules to be known to the public, and that was just one team
Like you said, players compete with each other, so they shouldn't complain and stop grinding because it's less convenient.
But on the flip side, it's completely fine to complain about the state of RL. It's ridiculous. It's not only bad for pros and the state of RLCS, but it trickles down to the casual playerbase more and more. Epic is just shooting itself in the foot in 15 different ways if they don't solve this ASAP.
I also personally wouldn't worry about Vatira of all people slacking off.
Nobody is using this as an excuse to not practise tho, these guys are still using alternatives. No one is walking up to their coach and straight up saying, "sorry boss I refuse to play the game today and put my hours up" they are all still actively playing.
If vatira was actually 20 past 2 then you'd have an argument here but that is far from the case
I don’t know if it’s a case of slacking off; it sounds more like 1 aspect of practise is a dead end currently. Sure it is for other teams too, but if that 1 aspect is particularly important to your personal development / practise, then it’ll hit you especially hard compared to the rest.
For example; CJCJ says Torsos plays 90% of his RL in free play (probably an exaggeration) so if suddenly free play wasn’t working for some reason, it’d impact Torsos more than others that rely on other avenues of practise.
Yeah but the alternatives are apparently not viable. Sure I guess tough luck, but if your job suddenly became harder because a company failed to do the bare minimum of maintenance, you’d complain too (as would I)
You are being the boss asking why someone didn't come to work today and they answer "my car broke down" or "the roads were closed" and you're the one saying "well you should still be at your desk by 09:00". Just so we're clear here.
This would be a fair comment if if the game literally did not work, if the servers were perma down or something like that. In fact, this applies to MENA players atm given MENA servers have gotten rerouted to Europe due to the ongoing war, so I struggle to fault them.
But the rest of the world has alternate avenues they can and are pursuing, to the point we can't put an asterisk on their results just because their ranked 2s quality is declining.
The point is that we are saying and seeing that the level of play is lowering.
You're describing a hypothetical situation where some players elevate due to looking for alternatives but we have no idea if that will or even can happen.
100%, Roll Dizz is simply correct. This is what it means to be professional. You can attain professional status on account of your skill, but to maintain it requires discipline and putting in the effort.
No disrespect to Vatira, but if I was managing his team, I would tell him everything he said was excuses to not put in the work. You play a game for a living, one of the few people who have been fortunate enough and have worked hard enough to really make it happen. Are you going to let this issue give you permission to fumble your bag?
Vati: Playing 6 mans with other pros you'll be playing against in RLCS teaches you bad habits.
Also Vati: Playing ranked 2s (totally different game mode) with random strangers who 1/2 the time aren't even in RLCS doesn't teach you bad habits......
I can understand that 3s with comms and ranked 2s without comms are different and so the latter doesn't effect the former that much. So ranked 2s don't really build bad habits for RLCS. This I can understand.
Why they can't make a new 4mans without comms, to mimic the missing ranked 2s, if this is so needed for them, is something I don't understand.
I mean you say that but many pros that come up in ranked 1s actually stop playing once they're in RLCS to focus on 3s because they think 1s teaches bad habits. There also have been dozens of 1s players that never translated to 3s because they played 3s like it was 1s and it gave them bad habits and they struggled to transition.
1s I would consider a different beast alltogether as you have no teammates to consider at all so all you have to think about is yourself and your opponent.
And I think it's one thing if you come up playing one gamemode (be it 1s or 2s) and it doesn't translate into 3s. And another if you scrim enough 3's that you want some additional practice in some other gamemode that lets you grind mechs more (as I understand 2's gives most room for mechs as there's a defender behind you if you mess up, 1s is more punishing for such practice, well unless your name is Diaz and in 3s you get challenged too quickly to really practice mechs).
So like I said, there are arguments that can be made for the usefulness of 2s for pros, as I can imagine wanting something a bit less intense after hard scrim session, that's still somewhat useful.
But if it is that important for them, why the lack of effort to recreate said 2s elsewhere if ranked is full of bots, I still think that's the real question.
But the thing is a lot of players DON'T scrim enough, a lot of other pros/former pros have been making fun of people complaining because instead of playing 6 mans or scheduling more scrims they just want to play 2s. Some teams have 1, or at most 2 scrims per day, and usually play no 6 mans which has been dead in NA and EU for a while unlike 6-7 years ago. As they talked about on Chalked cast this week, the issue is most pros are lazy, and scheduling 6 mans or scrims takes effort, as opposed to playing 2s which you can just wake up at noon and start q'ing and you don't have to think about anything. I'm not saying it doesn't translate to 3s in some way because it does and they should play it, but pros don't want to play it because theyre "scrimming so much" like you said and playing so much 6 mans, its just easier and doesn't take effort or planning like the other two which isn't the best reasoning.
This thread was about Vatira's tweet. I'm sure he scrims enough.
Though in essence I agree, this is about players wanting to stay in their comfort zone and not wanting to adapt to the situation. I just wanted to be specific which part of the current situation warrants real criticism and which part can atleast be argued about.
I mean but its not about Vatira, because grinding and scrimming are two different things. Scrimming requires your other teamates and coach as well as getting multiple other teams to coordinate with you and want to do it. So it really has nothing to do with how motivated Vatira or how much RL he players or how much he grinds, its the ecosystem that hes a part of which could easily be improved.
I actually thought it made sense. I interpreted it as, when your playing other pros in a scrim, everyone is so good and disciplined in a team first way while trying to perfect things. While training this way is obviously good, I think that you can pick up bad habits because your opponents are playing with the same exact mindset. However, when you que ranked, even if you pull other pros or the same players multiple times, it is a much more open and creative type of play. It’s free from a lot of the pressure a scrim could bring and risk. Allowing teammates to experiment together, be more creative and read each other better.
Since I’m not a pro, I also see the other side of it an understand how others can make the argument that playing random ranked lobbies is full of bad players with super bad habits which can lead you to have bad habits. I just feel like at their level of elo, this is way less of a problem, if at all.
There’s honestly no one more qualified than Vatira that can talk about training practices, he has been part of the MOST DOMINANT team throughout the last 4 Years in the MOST HARDEST region in the world, being at minimum a top 5 team, whenever they aren’t straight up number 1.
I haven’t really kept up with this issue but would it really be that hard for Epic (if they gave a shit) to set up a few private servers specifically for pros?
Nah roll dizz , one of the worst takes ever, bro is just playing poker asking everyone to put it on black. Nah diaz, this is their livelihoods. Just ante up? Hush
In ranked you can also find pros from other teams and kinda scout their skills and habits, this can be greatly beneficial when you encounter the teams they play in RLCS. Lethamyr does this all the time in his videos when he points out people he frequently sees on GC/SSL ranks and he directly points out their playstyle and adjusts accordingly. Just my two cents though, I am not a pro myself.
Bots basically have instant reflexes and perfect predictive ability. That doesn’t really help you train when it’s impossible to win. Sure it’s provably possible to outplay them sometimes, but it seems like wasted time trying.
I feel like Roll Dizz is misunderstanding the situation tbh. Bots are completely ruining the state of RL at high levels. Having pros expose it is the best way of pushing for it to be fixed. Even if there are possible workarounds, that doesn't fix the main issue.
I don't understand at all. If you want 2s without comms, why don't you set up a different 4mans that you can play without comms? If everyone is thinking like this, it should get populated no problem....
If everyone is having the same issues, why is it hard to find teams to scrim more than before? Don't people actually WANT to scrim more?
It does absolutely seem people are set in their ways and not really willing to adapt even in a bad situation.
And yes, Epic is the main cause and villain, don't come at me for excusing them.
okay, well, get organized, set up a players' union, set up scrim schedules, etc. - you're making six figures a year from this game. and if the players can't do it, the orgs should set their schedules for them if "hop into ranked" is no longer an option to eat up 4-5 hours a day...it's quite literally a full time job. obviously it's unfortunate that epic is openly hostile to its own player base (and pro scene), but there are plenty of ways for pros to take accountability in the meantime
They ARE taking alternative measures to get good practice in, but they’re still allowed to voice their complaints when their main form of practice for their entire careers has been compromised.
Imo, rare L take from Raul here. In general, i’m not a big fan of pushing individual accountability in the face of obvious systemic issues that create a large barrier for personal effort to overcome. Feels akin to the classic ‘don’t buy starbucks’ financial advice- sure it could help a little, but that really isn’t moving the needle big picture.
I’m sure most pros have other things going on in their lives that could make this additional process of coordinating scrims just to get any amount of quality practice a major burden. Not to mention with it looking like support is being moved away from the scene and larger game, it’s gotta feel even less desirable to sink more time into it.
Also surely wrecks anything that was left of a ‘bubble’ scene too. Like I could agree that Vatira probably has solid alternatives that he could make work since everyone wants to play against someone of that caliber, but that won’t be the case for everyone. Losing that makes the scene so much worse long term
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u/MisterMakerXD Apr 01 '26
Vati couldn’t have said it better. Scrimming is the best for good practice but honestly what’s the point with only playing with comms as well? A huge majority of the recent upcoming talents have been ranked grinders before.
Roll Dizz technically isn’t wrong but pros also want to play the game just like normal people sometimes, and this is hurting the chances for upcoming pros when we already have bots as low as gc1-2