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Rocket League’s Autumn Update Out Now With Over 90 Free Items, Patch Notes Detailed

Plus new arenas and more goodies.

Rocket League

The autumn update for Rocket League is live for all platforms and adds new arenas, items, and more alongside a new season of its competitive mode.

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The update adds over 90 free items for players to unlock after completing matches. This includes the new Player Banners, which surround your in-game name in menus and during goal replays. More arenas have been added to the update, including the all-new Farmstead and new day or weather variants for DFH Stadium, Champions Field, and Mannfield.

Competitive Season 5 has ended with the update and Competitive Season 6 has begun. Players will need to complete placement matches to rank, but winning half of the placement matches will rank players near their previous season ranking, according to Psyonix. The update also adds new settings for video, audio, and controls. Check out the full patch notes for the autumn update, via Psyonix, below.

Rocket League is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC with a Nintendo Switch version coming later this year.

NEW CONTENT
Arenas

  • ‘Farmstead’ is now available as a Seasonal Arena in all Playlists
  • ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Starbase ARC’ have been redesigned as Standard Arenas.
    • Previous versions are now called ‘Badlands’ and ‘ARCtagon,’ can be found in Rumble, Private Matches, and Offline
  • ‘DFH Stadium’ (Day)
  • ‘Champions Field’ (Day)
  • ‘Mannfield’ (Snowy)
    • Snowy Arena variants will return to Casual and Competitive Playlists during the holiday season

Player Banners

  • Player Banners are new Customization Items displayed in the main menu and during Goal Replays.
  • Some Player Banners have customizable background colors, while others may have an animated background.
  • Some Player Banners may drop with a ‘Painted’ attribute
  • Player Banners will be available as Common items after any match, while others will be Rare or Very Rare drops after Online Matches, or via the Trade-In system:

General

  • More than 90 FREE new items added to the drop rate (including the Player Banners listed above)
  • ‘Accelerator Crate’ has been added

Community Flags

  • ‘Jon Sandman’
  • ‘Woofless’

CHANGES AND UPDATES
General

  • Players can now change to another Custom Training pack while playing a Custom Training pack
    • While in a Custom Training pack, pause the game, choose ‘Change Training’ from the in-game menu
  • ‘Stick Sensitivity’ has been added to the Controls menu
    • At the default value of 1.0, your controller will behave the same as before
    • Your analog stick input is multiplied by these values. Increasing them makes your controller more sensitive at the cost of some fine-tuned control
    • At the maximum value of 10.0, your controller behaves like Keyboard steering, turning at maximum speed from any stick tilt
  • ‘Camera Transition Speed’ option has been added to the Camera menu
    • Increasing this value makes your camera blend between Ball Cam and Player Cam more quickly
  • ‘Always Show Nameplates’ option has been added to the Gameplay menu
    • When enabled, this option will prevent other players’ nameplates from being hidden even at long distances
  • All cars are now using one of the standardized presets for handling and hitbox introduced in the Anniversary Update

Main Menu

  • The Main Menu has a redesigned blog UI
    • The blog is now collapsable
    • The blog will auto expand if new news has been added since your last play session
    • More information about live esports events is now included
  • The new ‘Play’ submenu consolidates all Offline and Online play modes into one section.
    • Exhibition and Season modes can now be found under ‘Play Local’
  • ‘Stats,’ ‘Leaderboards,’ and ‘League Rankings’ are now found under the ‘Career’ submenu

Transparent Goalposts

  • A new ‘Transparent Goalposts’ option has been added that causes goalposts and some walls to become see-through when necessary to see the ball
  • All Arenas but Rocket Labs use this new feature
  • Transparent Goalposts are enabled by default, but can be toggled off to return to their previous, non-transparent behavior
    • To disable, uncheck the ‘Transparent Goalposts’ box in your Video settings under the Options submenu

Audio

  • Introduction of sound ducking in the audible items of the garage
  • When browsing customization items with audio (Goal Explosions, Boosts), in-game background audio/music volume will automatically lower
  • Added delay before playing ‘hover’ item sound to reduce audio spamming in garage
  • Performance pass on general gameplay to reduce voice count on lower volume assets

Director Camera (Beta)

  • A new Spectator camera option called ‘Director’ has been added
  • The Director is an AI-controlled Camera mode that predicts Shots, Goals, and Saves and cuts to the best player view to frame the action

Competitive Season 5

  • Competitive Season 5 has ended. Titles and items will be awarded for your highest rank achieved during the season. Season 5 Rewards are custom, non-tradeable Player Banners
  • Receiving the Season 5 Reward Player Banners is also contingent upon successful completion of Season Reward Levels
  • Reward Player Banners:
    • ‘Season 5 – Bronze (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Silver (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Gold (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Platinum (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Diamond (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Champion (Dragon)’
    • ‘Season 5 – Grand Champion (Dragon)’
      • Season 5 Grand Champions will also receive the ‘Season 5 Grand Champion’ Title
  • A second set of Season Reward Player Banners will also be awarded, with the same requirements outlined above:
    • ‘Season 5 – Bronze’
    • ‘Season 5 – Silver’
    • ‘Season 5 – Gold’
    • ‘Season 5 – Platinum’
    • ‘Season 5 – Diamond’
    • ‘Season 5 – Champion’
    • ‘Season 5 – Grand Champion’

Competitive Season 6

  • Competitive Season 6 has begun
    • Season 6 brings a “soft reset” that requires you to do placement matches in each playlist to recalibrate
    • Winning half of your placement matches will land you near your previous season ranking
    • Rank requirements have been updated to distribute more players into Platinum tier and higher, and to reduce the amount of players in Bronze I
    • League Rankings will be temporarily empty until players complete their placement matches

Local Match (Steam Only)

  • Players on Steam can now host and join LAN matches directly through the Play menu
    • ‘Host Local Lobby’ to create a LAN server that other players can join on your network
    • ‘Find Local Lobby’ to browse for LAN servers you can connect to
  • Local / LAN matches allow you and your friends to compete without the need for an internet connection
  • The LAN Lobby creator is hosting the match on their computer. Using Alt-Tab in Fullscreen mode or taking other actions on that computer may affect server performance. Using a Spectator PC to host the lobby for LAN events is recommended

KNOWN ISSUES

  • Starbase ARC has a few textures that aren’t rendering correctly at map start
    • These textures should correct once a match begins, should not affect gameplay
  • Xbox One may crash in Main Menu if opening and closing too many menus quickly

BUG FIXES
General

  • Bumping and Demolish Updates
    • Fixed an issue where car collisions could be incorrectly handled depending on the order the physics engine processed them in
    • Fixed an issue where Demolishes and Bumps could be incorrectly handled depending on the depth of its bumper penetration into the other car’s collision.
  • Ball Indicator on Champions Field has been fixed
  • Restored Batmobile to its pre-Anniversary Update state based on community feedback
  • The Steam Controller now works as intended on Mac hardware
  • Party members can no longer be pulled out of a Ranked match by a Party Leader
  • Winning player no longer receives a loss when leaving a Ranked 1v1 match during an overtime Goal Replay
  • Entering Free Play while joining an Online Match no longer prevents players from joining an Online Match

Xbox One

  • Crash fixes
  • Fixed a performance issue related to a few Achievements
  • Fixed an issue where VSync was not being properly disabled even when checked off in the Video Options

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About the author

Tom Meyer

Follow on Twitter @tomeyerz for musings on video games and things that confound him.

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