Formula One and NASCAR Coming to Rocket League in May

Rocket League's been partnering up with a whole bunch of different external organizations to get their names and branding in the game, but a lot of it from what I can tell becomes forgotten after some months. So other than exposing a ton of young players to these names, I don't see what other motives there could be outside of that.

McLaren out of nowhere got their 720S into the game as a $2 DLC for a car body and about 2 cosmetic player banners. And almost everyone stopped using it by now.
Fast & the Furious got brought in. F&F1's Charger and Skyline, and later the Ice Charger came into the game. Only the Skyline now sees some use.... probably because it's a Skyline.
 
They could easily add a racing element into the game, most goals + most laps of the track your team can take the ball around the circuit it could be a nice spin to the game.

Anyone who has not had a go of the game give it a try its fun but also very deep, so much to learn in terms of play style and skills trick shots etc.
 
Rocket League's been partnering up with a whole bunch of different external organizations to get their names and branding in the game, but a lot of it from what I can tell becomes forgotten after some months.
Could it be because most DLC cars don't fall into the "meta"?

Back when I was active (2016-2017) the Octane and the Dominus were the "meta cars" and any car that didn't have similar body proportions to either of those wasn't as popular.
 
Could it be because most DLC cars don't fall into the "meta"?

Back when I was active (2016-2017) the Octane and the Dominus were the "meta cars" and any car that didn't have similar body proportions to either of those wasn't as popular.

In my eyes, there are several factors that influence most players to use the popular cars:

1) The bandwagon belief they are the "best" car bodies for competitive use. Not to oversimplify the argument, but all car bodies are ultimately rectangular hitboxes with its own center axis. The biggest differentiator between cars is the location of its axis, even between cars with the same size hitbox. In theory all cars can do the same sorts of flicks as the rest; but it will have to be done differently.

2) The popular car gets all the love in the cosmetic department. Some players choose their cars for certain decals you can apply on them. I'm no different. Some DLC cars, like the Batmobiles, dont allow you to change the wheels or boost on the car, eliminating all your options for customizing your ride.

3) Branching off of point 1, most people don't want to dedicate the time to learn to adapt to using other cars when they can get the results they're looking for more easily with the popular ones.

I think most DLC cars don't fall into meta primarily for point #1. I love the Tim Burton Batmobile, but I've tried for so long to get dribbles and flicks to work effectively on this car, but I haven't been able to make sense of it like I can with the Breakout/Dominus. For me, DLC cars don't get used for very long because they don't get enough cosmetic items to keep people coming back for it. Once in a blue moon I'll come back to the F&F Charger that you see almost no one use now, but I think I ended up stopping because I still love looking at the Heiwa decal on the Breakout.
 
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Anyone who has not had a go of the game give it a try its fun but also very deep, so much to learn in terms of play style and skills trick shots etc.
Totally agree, I've been trying a number of the most-played e-sports games since getting fed up with ramming in racing games, and RL is the game I play the most now. The mechanical skills are extremely hard to master, but the great thing is that it doesn't really matter how good you are at it, because the player base is huge, and because the games are short, people are re-queuing quite frequently, so you can get matched into a game at your skill level pretty much immediately. Being bad at it doesn't really make it any less fun. It's best if you have one or two friends you can team up with and have voice chat to play 2v2 or 3v3 as a pre-made team with them. Just set your rank expectations low - even if you're top 0.1% in racing games, you will not be getting to that level in RL in any sort of short amount of time.
 
Can you not keep vehicles you purchase?
Yes, but if you don't buy them during the relatively narrow purchase window then they're unobtainable, and you can't trade items that were purchased.

It's the same as the season pass model that replaced lootboxes, basically preying on the fear of being permanently locked out of content if you don't buy it when they say you can. Which is kind of a whatever when it comes to generic cosmetic stuff, but for something like this that would have a broader appeal, it just feels even scummier to put that kind of pressure on to buy it now now now or it's gone foreeeeeveerrrrrrrr.
 
They have to fund the game somehow, though. You can play it on many different platforms, completely for free, without pay to win elements. It has a big e-sports scene with frequent Twitch streams covering high level games with casters, presumably paid. Honestly, if these cars only being available for a limited time window and not being tradeable is the price we pay for that, then I think that's not a bad deal compared to many other games. Even if someone were desperate to buy these specific cars, it's still cheaper than buying everything in ACC, for example, and much cheaper than getting seriously into iRacing, and in iRacing the cars and tracks you buy have a functional impact.
 
Before this game got bought out by Epic, there used to be a DLC store where all the DLC car bodies sat in shop available for you to purchase at any time.

The Item shop currently now only cycles through in-game items that I think you can technically roll in your next item unlock or trade up on (I could be wrong), but there's no shop for licensed bodies like before any longer, so without implementing a menu like before, I can see why they can't just make the Nascar and F1 bodies available indefinitely.
 
Before this game got bought out by Epic, there used to be a DLC store where all the DLC car bodies sat in shop available for you to purchase at any time.

Psyonix actually did away with that shortly before Epic made the decision to buy them, at the same time the lootboxes were phased out. Excluding the licensed stuff which was discontinued altogether, DLC bodies and their extra parts were moved into random drops.

This does have a slight advantage in that non-legacy versions of these things are tradeable, so if you care to jump through the hoops that trading involves you can obtain them with no extra cost. (though I suspect most people just shell out to a Chinese trading bot, which still make up a noticeable portion of the online player count)
 
Confirmed the Nascar has the Dominus hitbox. Such a massive disconnect from the actual car shape, just like the Lambo they released previously.

If dribbling and flicks mean anything to you, this will impact you.
 
I guess this means there’s a chance of official F1 liveries when its pack is out :)
Well would you look at that :D

rocketleague-f1-alphatauri-20210519.jpg
 
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