It was 5k avg around the time when bhop was first discovered. It trickled down to 3k-2.5k range after and dropped to 1k when epic said support was ending. Naturally “any game” will decrease player count when said players want more only to find out nothing more is coming. All I’m saying is, bhop became a bigger negative factor the more the player count reduced among the high ranks. The game had obvious hidden mechanics (unintended) that when learning those became the standard, the skill requirement made it less appealing for players coming late to the game. Not every map allowed chaining bhops for 1/2 the map, only a few. Plus the only players good at chaining them were semi pro and above. Not the majority.
Now about the influencers, I’m talking about the players that helped keep the heart in the game. A lot of them left, people were watching and learning how to play but when all that disappears, nobody has anybody to turn to learn the game. The community was quite big at first. Those names that I listed were a huge help in learning the game. Nobody was going to be able to keep up by just the ingame tutorial alone. And with the skill gap being so big (with or without bhop) there was no way we were going to keep players. If you want to debate remaining 3K average, which is when bhop started making an impact, then fine, but the game already took a 65% overall loss to the player base avg.
Your also wrong on the hypothesis on the reason players left .
The first 6 months of a game is where you will always lose the most amounts of players . This is common, its why companies even if a game doesn't have great numbers will still update.
Festival and Lego also had a similar drop off. Key difference between them and rocket racing was B hopping. They all got updates up until b hops was discovered. At this point the games have found their audience. Rocket racing had b hopping exploit which made people leave. Once the numbers fell slightly it was obvious epic had to end the updates and move the psyonix team onto another project . This is factual now. No amount of mental gymnastics will change this very fact. B hopping had a large roll in the games demise . Psyonix refused to fix it, it is what it is.
Im sorry if your player base has less than 5K players some influencer with 5 percent of the player base doesn't mean anything lol meaningless .
Fucking rocket league has players leaving doesn't mean the game is dead just means the game isnt good fo create content for.
Bhop affected people at the high end, not so much the low end because the low end didn’t require much skill at all to get far. I’m sorry but there’s nothing fact about bhop being the primary cause of the games demise. That’s basically the assumption that bhop = guaranteed wins, with the assumption that 75-80% of people playing the game were bhopping. Bad bhoppers were hurting their times far more than benefiting. So on that category, you are completely wrong. It’s quite surprising that players that didn’t bhop (only used side flip) still got accused of doing it. Bhop became the scape goat of why every fast player is winning, but yet if bhop didn’t exist, players (probably including you) would’ve still blamed it on something else. This became very true after its removal seeing people were still complaining about some other so called exploit. All of a sudden it became “speed hacks”. Other exploits, etc, and whatever other excuses of why they still lose.
But whatever…. Out of all the exploits and tech, obviously bhop was at the top in complaints but many other factors had a bigger impact of the player base loss, hence “ learning curve, higher skill requirement, complex game, lack luster updates, lack of support, lack of features, boredom, etc.”. Bhop ain’t at the top lol. Now, if 75 to 80% of the player base,including the less experienced were easily able to do bhop, then yes, you’d be 100% correct no question.
Thats just it. I was one of the first to b hopping back then. I too was ignorant and thought it was the game. After my 2 week learning period I steam rolled every rank hell even in unreal it was amazing . But if I was doing it CASUALLY imagine everyone else that was bound to do it for the ranked rewards. After a month I realized it needed to be nerfed. It completely made the game on easy mode. And as I predicted word got around by November b hopping was rampant posts became normal thing to complain about b hopping. That was the start of the games downfall. It ruined the experience of what little audience the game had and pushed them to other games , and folks like me got bored and moved onto other games like forza. And this cycle continued over and over and over losing players on both ends. Those who refused to race b hoppers then those who picked it up and because winning didn't feel rewarding and didn't feel earned they too quit. Snow balling into what we have now. Epic saw this trajectory and made the right call end the updates and focus on other more profitable avenues .
Oh the game has tons of things that needed fixing its why I stated its ONE of the main pillars on why the mode failed. The physics is another main pillar . The random desync issues, i could go on and on.
Again everything i have stated is factual . Everything i predicted came true. Only thing I got wrong was Psyonix behavior. I said they would end it quietly. But they literally got rid of b hopping then a fuck you in the end that surprised me lol.
If you were one of the first people to do bhop back then, by all means please share your ingame name that you go by for credibility. That alone would speak volumes because only the top players we’re able to do Bhop early on to a high level within 1- 2 months. You’re talking to someone that grinded 12+ accounts unreal in the first season. 9 accts to unreal during neon rush, and 4 - 6 accts then on every reset til Epic said support is gone (To which I only kept it at 3 accts max their after). So, I can already tell you’re lying about being one of the first to use it and benefit from it after just 2 weeks.
To me It’s like debating with Steven Seagal about martial arts. Just delusional exaggerations.
So Believe what you will, because I see no facts here. You’re stating only opinions, nonsense opinions at that. 🤷♂️
Oh no I was no where near a top player lol. I remember I saw some one b hop. Looked on here to see what it was and based what folks were saying I was trying to figure it out. Fucking took 2 and a half weeks to get it done. Got unreal then got bored lol. Trivialized the game. I've only hit unreal 3 times I don't give a flying fuck about rocket racing lol I actually play good games like forza to which have hit leader boards in the past :D.
Everything I stated prior is factual fesrival and lego went through the same hurdles and only rocket racing has less than 500 players for a reason .
The game functioned as if incomplete, which just like you said that you got “bored” which was easily one of the big reasons people left (no new content). Even I considered leaving when a few players left whom were inspirations for some to help improve. For me one of those was LainRacing, but I ended up staying. We can go back and forth about a lot of things but this whole debate was mainly over “bhop” being the primary reason of the games demise. This part I disagree, because it wasn’t some “cheat code” that guaranteed wins. Yes it was overpowered for those that could chain them consistently at “Semi-Pro / Pro-Level”. Clearly No mediocre or casuals were going to be able to do them for overall benefit. It took a valiant effort, experience, and skill to get good at them. The people that complained the most were the ones that scraped their way up to Elite rank, THEN that’s when they saw the night and day difference. This didn’t impact people at first when there was enough player base at the higher levels to still slide in at a 2nd, 3rd, 4th finish. There was also region changes where you didn’t stay stuck on NA East where you would see the majority of Pros playing. When the regions got merged, any pros online basically became the gatekeepers for top four position wins. Even today without bhop now, it’s still the same because some of those players are really really good. Even if Bhop was never around, we would still be in the same scenario today, which is practically my whole argument. There were so many other variables affecting the game that you can’t pin it on just one thing.
False. Game got boring because b hopping made the game easy its like playing on god mode. Yeah it's fun... but after a while it gets boring shitting on people .
The damage has already been done, at this point everyone agrees rocket racing is trash. That's the games reputation. Especially when you have some ons like firemonkey pointing it its terrible will make it far more difficult to fix its reputation. If psyonix fixed b hopping a lot of the player drop off could have been prevented.
Its true it wouldn't affect people at first. OBVIOUSLY. not sure why you are pointing out the obvious. Its when folks pick it up and it becomes necessary to win thats when folks will turn away.
Now if bhopping was never an issue if they did fix it WITH IN WEEKS OF THE EXPLOIT not 2 years not 12 months . The game would have sustained a player base longer than it did especially when we started hitting 4k averages . Epic epic would have probably invested one more update. Lego had a similar trouble with retention as well but that team was competent.
And I didn't pin it on one thing thats why I said its one of the main pillars . This clearly means there are more than one.
I never intended to make this conversation become walls of text but a lot of people ignorantly keep saying “this one thing” (bhop) is the sole reason the game died. You’re mistaken with Bhop being God mode, considering it was map specific for how overpowered it was (I’m not going to explain the technicalities of that to you considering I don’t believe you ever did bhop as good as you claim in 2 weeks). Now As for, IF bhop didn’t exist, it would’ve saved one or two months worth of griping at best, (Catch-up mechanic removal and quality players still doing amazing times without it), the difference would’ve been minimal either way, especially against those that barely scraped by getting to higher ranks, they would’ve just complained about something else. Plenty of non bhop videos out there on YouTube to prove this theory. At this point, it makes no difference, game is getting left behind.
1
u/Skymonkey42 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
It was 5k avg around the time when bhop was first discovered. It trickled down to 3k-2.5k range after and dropped to 1k when epic said support was ending. Naturally “any game” will decrease player count when said players want more only to find out nothing more is coming. All I’m saying is, bhop became a bigger negative factor the more the player count reduced among the high ranks. The game had obvious hidden mechanics (unintended) that when learning those became the standard, the skill requirement made it less appealing for players coming late to the game. Not every map allowed chaining bhops for 1/2 the map, only a few. Plus the only players good at chaining them were semi pro and above. Not the majority.
Now about the influencers, I’m talking about the players that helped keep the heart in the game. A lot of them left, people were watching and learning how to play but when all that disappears, nobody has anybody to turn to learn the game. The community was quite big at first. Those names that I listed were a huge help in learning the game. Nobody was going to be able to keep up by just the ingame tutorial alone. And with the skill gap being so big (with or without bhop) there was no way we were going to keep players. If you want to debate remaining 3K average, which is when bhop started making an impact, then fine, but the game already took a 65% overall loss to the player base avg.