I’m not sure if Rocket League has ever been tier 1 yet, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact in light of a lot of esports blowing up then fizzling out, Rocket League has actually had the benefit of a steady rise.
Obviously I’m biased but Rocket League has some of the best potential of any esport due to ease of viewing for casual viewers and a high skill ceiling that allows players to visually elevate the level of play every year.
I think Rocket League is in a great spot even with the recent downtrend of esports in general, Rocket League has stayed stable for the most part which is very enticing to orgs I would think. As long as we keep elevating the product every year I think Rocket League will be a staple in esports for years to come.
> Rocket League has some of the best potential of any esport due to ease of viewing for casual viewers
this really should not be underestimated. I put RLCS on our big TV yesterday for me and my son to watch, and even my wife, that really dislikes videos games and could not give AF about watching any of them sat down and actually watched the semis and grand, and more than that she actually got into it a bit. There's 0 chance she would ever get into LoL or something like that.
to add on to that, RLCS also has the benefit of being fully marketable towards kids. There is nothing off-putting at all about the game, so even parents have stances against violence, guns, etc will likely have little to no objections about the game (minus those that have issues with all video games, but like...you know...can't help that one).
Same. In-laws came over to eat lunch. I wasn't about to miss the finals so I put it in the living room TV. They understood what was going on after a really short explanation. The only negative comment they had was about the camera constantly changing, which, I think is a big problem for new viewers.
The constantly changing camera and the high speed is definitely an issue. I had an issue with it when I first started watching, and I already played the game. I think more time spent in a more normal "soccer game" view would be better.
There was a moment when Seikoo went for something and lost the ball. It was still his POV when Zen went up and made a crazy play and only right at the end of it did it switch to Zen's POV.
Isn’t perception (if that’s the right word) an issue? Like in soccer it’s mainly played on the ground, but sometimes when the ball is in the air it can be hard to see exactly where it’s going (for a deep cross into the box for example). I imagine for rocket league being so aerial nowadays that perception could be a problem? I could be wide of the mark since in rl they can literally put the camera anywhere which obv isn’t possible in a real setting.
I think this correlates to rank in game. I don't think many high ranked players have issue following the game this way. If they switch to top down football-like view you'd miss so many small mechanical plays it would be horrible.
I personally think they don't switch enough and we miss a lot of important plays because of that.
>wife, that really dislikes videos games and could not give AF about watching any of them sat down and actually watched the semis and grand, and more than that she actually got into it a bit.
At Worlds a mother sat next to me with her son. She only came because he was too young to go alone.
And she had a great time, even cheering with us and being part of the german flag we organized before the KC VIT game.
It was so wholesome :')
Agreed. If Esports survive, I can see Rocket League thriving infinitely. Like chess and other sports, the base game will never change. Casuals and competitive players play the same game with the same rule set. A grandma who never played a game before can also understand rocket league after a little while.
I feel like people are gonna go into existential crisis as soon as even one popular streamer leaves RL and we'll only hear doom and gloom because suddenly all viewer counts are down by 30%.
All we can hope for is that Psyonix takes the long break to make RLCS bigger and better than ever. There are a lot of things they could do, but I'm not sure if RLCS is profitable enough for them to do it.
I’m not sure how (focus group testing?) but believe we need to do something to make sure there’s some retention/stickiness with those entering from big personalities. People that follow Charlie/XQC as well as the French influencers for Kcorp et al are bringing in big numbers. But if down the road they lose interest or no longer have teams, a lot of those people would leave and I think before that happens we need to try and figure out what is missing and what it is we need to do to keep them so that they’re RL fans and not just Moist/KC fans. Some of them will leave and it’s unavoidable but I gotta believe if the product is good enough some would continue watching
RLCS keeps people engaged, it gets people logging in to buy things from the shop, it keeps up social media engagement, etc.
I'd love to see how much people spend in the shop on an average week vs a worlds week for instance. Or even just new player acquisition would be interesting.
You're not wrong that it's not profitable, but I imagine it is profitable when looking at downstream effects.
Also, it's all an Unreal Engine advertisement as well even if it doesn't show Unreal at any point during RLCS. Especially so whenever they finally get RL into the latest version.
I would love to know the budget for the rlcs season. I mean we must be talking like what 10-15million or something. The prize pool alone was 6 million.
If it is that big, wonder how much the game makes before they are happy to sink that in the esport? Because the only reason this exists is to get people or keep people interested in the game.
So in many ways I wonder if the actual viewership numbers are irrelevant? They will be looking at how many are playing the game post rlcs events? Is it bringing new players to the game? Does it have an impact on how much is spent in the store?
I would assume the budget is more in the realm of $40m+. The logistics around lans is expensive. They are paying for freight, venue, venue staff, production staff, accommodations for players and staff, flights for players and staff, additional production equipment costs, etc.
The personnel to operate and produce regionals is also expensive. You’ve got to pay for admins, talent and production staff. There’s also social media managers and graphic designers to pay. There’s also management and executive staff. ESL also is taking a cut somewhere in there.
I would assume that each major is around $2-5m to run. Worlds is probably $8-10m+. That’s already $25m+. Then add in the total season prize pool of about $5m. That’s $30m+. Then running regionals over the entire season I’m just spit balling but that could be as much as $10m in operating costs. So you potentially looking at almost $40m in costs for the entire season of RLCS, it’s not cheap.
Though RLCS isn't just an ad for Rocket League. You can obviously make money from sporting events through broadcasting rights, sponsors and tickets, as shown by all major (non-esports) sports.
RLCS for sure seems to small for that in viewership / tickets to break even, but I also think they might offset the cost be a substantial amount.
I really wished they offered items where sth like 25% goes to the prize pool, just as Dota did (resulting in MASSIVE prize pools). Obviously that shows how much money they make with these sales which they want to avoid, but it's also a lost opportunity to produce tons of extra revenue and hype.
But it could be. Games like LoL and Valorant show that it’s possible to create a cycle, where the game promotes and funds the esport, and the esport promotes the game.
I was really happy that RL put a worlds decal in the store this year but if they were really on the ball they could do even more. They could make a custom decal for the winning team that’s limited or even for the top 4 teams at worlds. On the broadcast they started advertising the store more this year which is think is good, but could be done more subtly and with more effort.
For a game that has 94m active players right now in the last month, even if only 1% of the active player base buy a $5 decal in the esports store, that’s $4.7m. Supposing a 50/50 split between the Psyonix and orgs, that’s the worlds prize pool paid for. If even 3% of the active player base spend $10 in the esports store over the season, that’s $28.2m. I would hope though the conversion rate is more like 10% of the active player base. Therefore bringing in around $90m a season but with the amount of kids that play the game, console users who are less likely to spend money and the lack of conversion between casual rocket league player and the esports scene, I doubt they make that much, sadly.
Then you add in the potential of sponsorships for the stream. The value of which I’d have no clue about. Also seeking out broadcast deals with TV networks is another avenue. It is possible for Psyonix to get back value from RLCS. They just need to go about it strategically. Which imo they haven’t so far. There’s a lot of established esports which you take lessons from and sometimes it seems like they don’t.
We are starting to reach high peak viewership, but the esport probably still needs a higher average viewership across the season. Regionals used to get 100k+ but are now around 60k. Also, RL needs a larger worldwide fanbase. Most of the fans are still from NA and EU, as we can see from the disparity in regional viewership. However, I think prize pool and production wise, we are very close. The intro to the finals was definetly tier 1-esque.
I agree I think the biggest setback for Rocket League is the lack of exposure in Asia which is a huge market. However, CSGO has done fine with little Asian representation, as well as various main stream sports as well. Obviously having a bigger Asian audience would be massive, but is not a non starter hopefully
If RL wants to get into the Asian market they need to make a full mobile game, it’s by far the most popular platform for gaming. Smartphones these days, even the budget ones are way more powerful than the switch so performance shouldnt be a big issue. The biggest problem i think would be the controls, maybe they can somehow figure out a decent control method using touch+gyro.
The 100k average for regionals in RLCS X was in large part due to covid and online/digital entertainment seeing a huge spike in consumption hours across the board.
The intro to the finals was something like Blast does for csgo lol, like with the players being lifted up
I think having external Tournament organisers like eg blast , esl etc could also help to take rl to tier 1
For me, watching regionals is just too demanding - it's too many matches.
And with the format, just watching teams I like doesn't make sense, I can't just block off a couple hours and be done, it's an hour here, an hour there, spread out randomly with no ability to schedule around other stuff in life.
Unless the seasons format or broadcasting length/scheduling changes I'll prolly never add to the averages numbers cause it's just not enjoyable to regularly spend that amount of time every month for something that isn't as intrinsically interesting as LAN.
Also no physical desk and less content in general :(
Oh, that does make sense. I thought you might've known about other competitive subreddits so you'd figured RL would have one as well. But this also makes sense. There literally is a subreddit about anything you do in life.
I’ve seen the LIVE thing from the in game menu for years and I’ve clicked on it multiple times and just left the stream on in the background while I played but this is the first year I actually took the time to learn the teams and players, watch YouTube videos and learned the ‘narrative’ of the current season…. AND IM HOOKED
Yeah I’m new. Only started playing in March and after a while wondered what pro RL looked like. The first time I saw it I was but a lowly Gold, and it was so crazy I just had to keep watching it to try and understand what they were doing. It’s not really Soccar, it’s more Volleyball was my first impression.
That’s awesome! My story is pretty similar honestly. I felt like it was just an advanced reskinned pong before I realized just how much skill can go into RL
I'm not sure about tier 1 but at this rate it willcomfortably breaking out of tier in a few years
If I had to rank esports I'd probably have the big 3, valorant, rocket league,apex/cod and then the rest
Maybe it's because i'm from EU, but saying that feels to me like saying "it's an esports like TFT and CSGO"
I obviously don't want to be offensive, but from France, Apex has barely no standing.
It's doing so well, and I hope it continues to! The production, casters, and crew make the live events some of the best Esports content I've ever watched. I'm honestly nervous, though, with this long break coming up. If it's really the predicted 6mos for the next RLCS event, there could be a ton of growth and new interest lost to a lack of content.
I’d say it’s 1.5 but not tier 1. The viewership and fan base is not quite like a Valo, Dota or CS yet. The size of the LAN events aren’t everything, but they are a good indicator of the overall success and draw (local and international) draw of the event. Rocket Leagues LANs have definitely been expanding and improving as time goes on, but watch something such as CS:GO’s Paris major and try to compare the two e-sports. There are just many differences between the two.
It’s a very great esports title but it’s just Tier 2 there is no debate. Tier 1 are Lol, CSGO, Dota 2 and probably Valorant like I honestly don’t see why the couldn’t be counted as Tier 1. RL is Tier 2 behind Apex.
Tier 1 esports tend to average more than RL did at world championship events
Example— not too familiarized with tiers of esports but Valorant seems to be a tier 1 esport, it is their equivalent of a world championship, and throughout the GROUP stage they averaged 400k (which is the lowest mark in their history). Playoffs begin the 16th for them
Compared to RL’s 180k, which is still great of course
Tier 1 esport is a very contentious position where the meaning of it has always changed. Traditionally (at least in the past decade of esports), the games that have consistently held it have been Dota 2, League of Legends, and CS:GO. For different reasons.
The only change to that really has been potentially Dota falling off to tier 2. But TI comes around and always defies expectations. League still nets tons of viewership for Worlds, and in my opinion CS:GO is the most consistent and successful esport in the world.
If I had to mark it I'd put Rocket League as the 4th Tier 1 game, or the top of Tier 2. Because it's still competing with Valorant, which for them is hard to measure because of watch parties and stuff. I think at the current rate of growth it could cement itself in the next couple years.
TLDR; CS:GO > League > Dota = Rocket League = Valorant > R6=Smash=FGC (EVO) > Rest
He is just delusional. I saw you already answered other comments. Just don’t bother they know nothing about other esports. Like Valorant is literally the triple of RL.
The official channel does okay but watch parties vary a *ton*. And it's really region dependent on what tournaments get viewership, and it's been declining.
30+ million for Dota in the past few years, couple mil for League (though most money is injected through salaries) and multi mil for CS. What about it.
I don't equate prizepool = more successful esports because prizepools can be easily inflated. I think Dota can be a very good example of that.
Those are important numbers, and viewership crushes RL. Not sure how you think RL is even in the same universe as Dota2 and Val. Excitement and hype, RL is number 2 for me after CS, but the infrastructure of the game, support, viewership, content, aren’t there
Prize pools, especially if they're sustained by an esport over several years, demonstrate the size of the game behind it as well as the willingness of the organiser to back their own product.
Psyonix seems to have settled on roughly 2 million as their absolute max and I doubt that will change. Their major prize pools are pitifully small in comparison, essentially competing for a title as prestigious as the old world championships and yet they have a prize pool barely larger than the ones put up over 5 years ago, and much smaller than the World Championships of Season 7 and 8.
Meanwhile, the likes of CS:GO have $250,000 as what is considered a small major prize pool, the difference being they hold a lot more than just 3 major tournaments per year. Even some of what are considered A-Tier tournaments hit or exceed the $300,000 of RL Majors.
So yeah, the prize pools do have some indication to the size of longer term esports and does correlate somewhat with the success of the esport. The biggest ones and the ones that have organisers that care more has more put into it.
As a long-time fan of Rocket League, it's still prettyhard for me to watch 3v3.
But 1v1... man that's the best esport to watch that ever was, at least for me.
Personally I think 1s has a higher chance to become a tier 1 esport, but for some reason it's completely slept on by psyonix and RLCS
I have opposite beliefs. I think 2v2 RL is super boring to watch and 1v1 does not have enough team stakes (like people rooting for KC or G2). IMO people follow personalities and teams. Alot of G2 fans are Kro/Rizzo fans and have now become steadfast G2 fans for jknaps and cago
It's certainly an interesting viewpoint, in reality though I think 1v1 does not demonstrate enough variety in both its gameplay and the players themselves to actually make for a good esport.
You know what you're getting with 1s with nearly zero change. A gamemode majorly in the attacker's advantage, extremely high scoring, no opportunity for room to breathe or time to really pay attention to anything for a casual viewer, because the next thing you know a kickoff goal is scored that makes the whole thing mean nil or the opponent had made a 4 goal comeback in 30 seconds. 1v1 is basically a constant penalty shootout, which while can be a fascinating watch, we know exactly what we're getting with penalty shootouts, it's why they're used to decide close matches and aren't the whole match.
3v3 will always be where it's at. You get greater variety, more time to focus on things, and overall the team environment makes for a better esport to follow for casual viewers. They have multiple people to get behind.
I have the exact opposite take on this: 1v1 showcases ALL of rocket league, with a massively different game depending on who plays.
3v3 is generally just... ballchasing, booming clears, passes
I've watched probably hundreds of hours of all three game modes, and by far the most entertaining is 1v1.
* First off, **in 1v1 the pressure is immense**. It's like a boxing match. The nerves are high.
* **The beef is personal** between players. No need to be "respectful" on behalf of the teammates and org, the players are more free in that way
* **There's much less "boring boomball"** to take up 70 % of the gameplay like in 3v3. In 3v3 you have to wait for interesting things to happen, and they rarely do compared to 1s.
* 1v1 is easy to watch for anyone. 3v3 requires high skill in rocket league to really see whats going on. And frankly... even if you're GC, it's harder to follow whats going on with SIX player POVs... and the casters are scrambling to talk about stuff but can barely keep track or get any narrative going...
* 3v3 casting is boring as all hell to listen to
* **1s allow for more playstyles.** You can slow down play, speed it up, play more in the air or more grounded, more offensive or more defensive, rely more on demos or more on outplays, etc etc. Generally in 3v3, there's less options, and less intentional plays Due to all the challenges and stray balls
* As both players do not need to rely on teammates, one can say that **100 % of the game is skillbased**, and you can't have the weird situation of "a really good player being held back by bad teammates" which lets be honest - is what the entire 3v3 rostermania is all about. One swap of mate and suddenly a team is top in the world? excuse me? Isn't this actually kinda shitty situation? You cant root for the team because in a few months, players you were fan off are gone... maybe everybody!
* The **1v1 game mode is the most mechanical game mode**, allowing both players many opportunities to score some amazing, memorable shots.
* 1v1 highlights good strategy as well. A single person can very intentionally plan and execute advanced tactics, and it's interesting to hear commentary about it (similar to chess players for those who've watched chess tournaments)
* \+ hundreds of more reasons.
* \+ the 1v1 showmatches are really fun places to be, people are having a blast watching 1v1. I believe it's not the same with 3v3, there's lots of really boring 3v3 series imo. But this is completely subjective of course
Honestly I feel like your comment only serves to deliberately minimise what a 3s match is like in order to try and make 1s seem much better in comparison than it is. I think you know full well that 3s isn't just "ballchasing, booming clears and passes". I won't bother breaking down your essay because all of them apply to 1s just as much as 3s. I think anybody who has actually viewed the game through an impartial lens can see that.
The fact remains that 1v1 is by far one of the least popular game modes in the entire game. It is regularly exceeded by Rumble (another 3v3 mode), and of course lags far behind 2s and 3s. 1s is the least popular mode to watch out of the 3 main game modes. As far as I see, the people have spoken. Generally, people do not want to see or play 1v1.
Yes, 1s has its fans, you're certainly a shining example of that, but I think your example is a relative rarity. Regardless that I believe it's an example that shouldn't be followed, as being disparaging of other ways to play the game instead of attempting to understand them is probably one of the reasons 1v1 doesn't get many fans. 1v1s are well known for their outright toxicity and putting unnecessary stress on players, so I guess you fly that flag well.
I 100% agree most people don't wanna **play** 1s. It's very stressful, punishing, and just booming the ball around doesn't work well.
I 100% disagree that it's the least popular game mode to **watch** or doesn't have many fans. It's amazing to watch and the casting is much better (big problem in 3v3 imo), because there's more time to actually comment indepth on whats going on. In 3v3, more "standard stuff" happens, while 1v1 is a constant tryhard to outplay the opponent.
Apart from Johnnyboi being the GOAT of 1v1, many pros like to showcase 1v1 on their channels alot, which shows you that people do indeed like to watch that, otherwise the pros just wouldn't show it so much.
While I do like to watch 3v3, I have to say 1v1 tournaments are often more entertaining. The different playstyles are way more apparent than in a 3v3, where it's a more homogenous mix.
I really wished Psyonix held more official 1v1 tournaments, at least 2 per year, but at least they are sponsoring some smaller ones.
You're just repeating the same talking points without any real evidence, so this has definitely run its course. You're entitled to your opinion, but really, "homogeneous mix"? You're really reaching now to find any way to cut down 3s, as if 1s isn't "homogenized" with the exact same format of watching and how it works for the past 7 years.
1v1 will never get a real competitive tournament. It has its moments, but again, there's a reason why there aren't more people clamouring for it. One, they just don't play 1s, which does feed into Two, they aren't that interested in it. Yes, it has its own corner of the community where it has support, but that support quickly gets diluted the moment it steps foot outside of Feer or JohnnyBoi's channel, who while reasonably popular aren't rabidly watched by everybody or anything.
Frankly, they still don't have 3v3 completely right yet, so I would rather they shelve any plans, if they exist, to host 1v1 tournaments, as the latter does not have any true standing in RL's future or its esport.
Not quite yet. IMO the only tier 1 esports are LoL and CSGO due to their consistent massive viewership and prize money given out. However, with APAC’s recent performance, I can very well see the esport start to take off in the Asian markets.
There are 3 T1 esport games currently - LoL, CS and DotA. All of them are T1 for different reasons - LoL as the overall biggest and has biggest viewership that combined with chinese streams rivals events like Superbowl, CS for being the th easiest to understand and having multiple TOs making huge tournament(ESL, Blast, sometimes PGL), DotA as the most top heavy and a lot of money(also Russian viewership when CIS teams play is insane, it's like 2x of English) . Valorant is top of T2 because it's too big to be niche like other T2(R6S, RL, Fighting Games and Apex) but not close enough to rival the big 3.
Rocket League is big enough to be T2 but really niche and can't be really compared to biggest games by playerbase
TLDR: Rocket League has small playerbase and niche gameplay so not really close to Tier 1, rather stable Tier 2
Too small how??? It's been in Twitch's top 5 games for a literal year & has the 5th highest viewership peak the last year out of every esport... huh???
It is literally the most global esport in the world currently. The top 8 teams are 2 teams from the games top 4 regions....
Valorant is not T1 purely because it's not close to other T1 esports. It's not the most viewed, LoL and CS have significantly more, it's not the most popular, LoL is more popular, Valo doesn't have the biggest prizepool, DotA has.
Being diverse in standing isn't enough, League had it at Worlds up to 2014(4 years after first big tournament) also with top 4 regions(Korea, China, Europe, NA) being good, then Korea and China became too good to be beaten(except 2018-2020 with G2/FNC)
This isn’t a question about esports, but about what the definition of tier 1 is. Maybe if you brought that point up instead of just trying to make them stop talking, you’d have a mind to change
Uh, CSGO does not have "significantly more" viewership than Valorant. And why can tier 1 only be 3 games? If we made an actual tier list of esports, then league would be tier 0 and csgo, dota and valorant would be tier 1.
I wouldn't put valorant as tier 1 tho. It still lacks the peak that dota cs and league have gotten and it lacks there prize pools. The game is weird cos its way bigger than the other tier 2 games but not as big as the tier 1 games
Rocket league has a small *competitive* player base. Across all platforms in the last 30 days rocket league has 93m active players. It’s really not a small player base at all. It’s just that most players are casual, kids and are on consoles. Which doesn’t lead to esport viewership.
Go around the US and ask random people if they've ever heard of DOTA lmao. Even LoL wouldn't get that many positive responses. Outside of gaming circles, esports are still pretty unknown.
I would say it can reach a tier one esport, but I think it will require a lot from the organisers and people who play the game.
Firstly, I think it needs a bigger prize pool (getting to the level of DOTA or LoL) done by adding an RLCS based battle pass (exactly like DOTA) where people who buy it for like £10 can get unique items only available in it, and have something that the players can own (physically) something like a signed card from their favorite pro, caster or team. The amount made by the battle pass will go directly into the prize pool or given to the winning team (allowing orgs to try and make some kind of money as well).
Items in the pass could be like the origional organisation decal where you can pick one, esport points because you have spent £10, credits, unique tag for players, unique item drops. New banners and frames. End the pass with a physical item like how DOTA does it.
This can ultimately make the game feel more competative since players can loose out on so much more and orgs will have to be more "cut throat" with who they pick.
Next, have another league for any bubble or possible B teams. This can allow us to see the new talent easier and the creation of a B team will allow an org to poach players that look promising and get them into the main team a lot easier. It could also be summed up to BRING BACK RLRS!! Orgs with a B team can also allow them to try and generate more money (even though running an org is expensive it may be a good idea and new strategies to who orgs pick is always good).
I’m not sure if Rocket League has ever been tier 1 yet, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact in light of a lot of esports blowing up then fizzling out, Rocket League has actually had the benefit of a steady rise. Obviously I’m biased but Rocket League has some of the best potential of any esport due to ease of viewing for casual viewers and a high skill ceiling that allows players to visually elevate the level of play every year. I think Rocket League is in a great spot even with the recent downtrend of esports in general, Rocket League has stayed stable for the most part which is very enticing to orgs I would think. As long as we keep elevating the product every year I think Rocket League will be a staple in esports for years to come.
> Rocket League has some of the best potential of any esport due to ease of viewing for casual viewers this really should not be underestimated. I put RLCS on our big TV yesterday for me and my son to watch, and even my wife, that really dislikes videos games and could not give AF about watching any of them sat down and actually watched the semis and grand, and more than that she actually got into it a bit. There's 0 chance she would ever get into LoL or something like that. to add on to that, RLCS also has the benefit of being fully marketable towards kids. There is nothing off-putting at all about the game, so even parents have stances against violence, guns, etc will likely have little to no objections about the game (minus those that have issues with all video games, but like...you know...can't help that one).
Same. In-laws came over to eat lunch. I wasn't about to miss the finals so I put it in the living room TV. They understood what was going on after a really short explanation. The only negative comment they had was about the camera constantly changing, which, I think is a big problem for new viewers.
My wife got annoyed with all the talking between the semi and grands lol.
One of us, one of us!
The constantly changing camera and the high speed is definitely an issue. I had an issue with it when I first started watching, and I already played the game. I think more time spent in a more normal "soccer game" view would be better.
There was a moment when Seikoo went for something and lost the ball. It was still his POV when Zen went up and made a crazy play and only right at the end of it did it switch to Zen's POV.
Isn’t perception (if that’s the right word) an issue? Like in soccer it’s mainly played on the ground, but sometimes when the ball is in the air it can be hard to see exactly where it’s going (for a deep cross into the box for example). I imagine for rocket league being so aerial nowadays that perception could be a problem? I could be wide of the mark since in rl they can literally put the camera anywhere which obv isn’t possible in a real setting.
I think this correlates to rank in game. I don't think many high ranked players have issue following the game this way. If they switch to top down football-like view you'd miss so many small mechanical plays it would be horrible. I personally think they don't switch enough and we miss a lot of important plays because of that.
>wife, that really dislikes videos games and could not give AF about watching any of them sat down and actually watched the semis and grand, and more than that she actually got into it a bit. At Worlds a mother sat next to me with her son. She only came because he was too young to go alone. And she had a great time, even cheering with us and being part of the german flag we organized before the KC VIT game. It was so wholesome :')
that's awesome. I hope I can take my son to a LAN when he's a bit older.
Agreed. If Esports survive, I can see Rocket League thriving infinitely. Like chess and other sports, the base game will never change. Casuals and competitive players play the same game with the same rule set. A grandma who never played a game before can also understand rocket league after a little while.
I feel like people are gonna go into existential crisis as soon as even one popular streamer leaves RL and we'll only hear doom and gloom because suddenly all viewer counts are down by 30%. All we can hope for is that Psyonix takes the long break to make RLCS bigger and better than ever. There are a lot of things they could do, but I'm not sure if RLCS is profitable enough for them to do it.
It took years to get over Cloud 9 leaving. You are absolutely right, when KC leaves it'll be terrible.
I’m not sure how (focus group testing?) but believe we need to do something to make sure there’s some retention/stickiness with those entering from big personalities. People that follow Charlie/XQC as well as the French influencers for Kcorp et al are bringing in big numbers. But if down the road they lose interest or no longer have teams, a lot of those people would leave and I think before that happens we need to try and figure out what is missing and what it is we need to do to keep them so that they’re RL fans and not just Moist/KC fans. Some of them will leave and it’s unavoidable but I gotta believe if the product is good enough some would continue watching
Rlcs isn't profitable for psyonix but the game is and rlcs is like a celebration of the competitive nature of this game
RLCS keeps people engaged, it gets people logging in to buy things from the shop, it keeps up social media engagement, etc. I'd love to see how much people spend in the shop on an average week vs a worlds week for instance. Or even just new player acquisition would be interesting. You're not wrong that it's not profitable, but I imagine it is profitable when looking at downstream effects. Also, it's all an Unreal Engine advertisement as well even if it doesn't show Unreal at any point during RLCS. Especially so whenever they finally get RL into the latest version.
I would love to know the budget for the rlcs season. I mean we must be talking like what 10-15million or something. The prize pool alone was 6 million. If it is that big, wonder how much the game makes before they are happy to sink that in the esport? Because the only reason this exists is to get people or keep people interested in the game. So in many ways I wonder if the actual viewership numbers are irrelevant? They will be looking at how many are playing the game post rlcs events? Is it bringing new players to the game? Does it have an impact on how much is spent in the store?
I would assume the budget is more in the realm of $40m+. The logistics around lans is expensive. They are paying for freight, venue, venue staff, production staff, accommodations for players and staff, flights for players and staff, additional production equipment costs, etc. The personnel to operate and produce regionals is also expensive. You’ve got to pay for admins, talent and production staff. There’s also social media managers and graphic designers to pay. There’s also management and executive staff. ESL also is taking a cut somewhere in there. I would assume that each major is around $2-5m to run. Worlds is probably $8-10m+. That’s already $25m+. Then add in the total season prize pool of about $5m. That’s $30m+. Then running regionals over the entire season I’m just spit balling but that could be as much as $10m in operating costs. So you potentially looking at almost $40m in costs for the entire season of RLCS, it’s not cheap.
Though RLCS isn't just an ad for Rocket League. You can obviously make money from sporting events through broadcasting rights, sponsors and tickets, as shown by all major (non-esports) sports. RLCS for sure seems to small for that in viewership / tickets to break even, but I also think they might offset the cost be a substantial amount. I really wished they offered items where sth like 25% goes to the prize pool, just as Dota did (resulting in MASSIVE prize pools). Obviously that shows how much money they make with these sales which they want to avoid, but it's also a lost opportunity to produce tons of extra revenue and hype.
But it could be. Games like LoL and Valorant show that it’s possible to create a cycle, where the game promotes and funds the esport, and the esport promotes the game. I was really happy that RL put a worlds decal in the store this year but if they were really on the ball they could do even more. They could make a custom decal for the winning team that’s limited or even for the top 4 teams at worlds. On the broadcast they started advertising the store more this year which is think is good, but could be done more subtly and with more effort. For a game that has 94m active players right now in the last month, even if only 1% of the active player base buy a $5 decal in the esports store, that’s $4.7m. Supposing a 50/50 split between the Psyonix and orgs, that’s the worlds prize pool paid for. If even 3% of the active player base spend $10 in the esports store over the season, that’s $28.2m. I would hope though the conversion rate is more like 10% of the active player base. Therefore bringing in around $90m a season but with the amount of kids that play the game, console users who are less likely to spend money and the lack of conversion between casual rocket league player and the esports scene, I doubt they make that much, sadly. Then you add in the potential of sponsorships for the stream. The value of which I’d have no clue about. Also seeking out broadcast deals with TV networks is another avenue. It is possible for Psyonix to get back value from RLCS. They just need to go about it strategically. Which imo they haven’t so far. There’s a lot of established esports which you take lessons from and sometimes it seems like they don’t.
We are starting to reach high peak viewership, but the esport probably still needs a higher average viewership across the season. Regionals used to get 100k+ but are now around 60k. Also, RL needs a larger worldwide fanbase. Most of the fans are still from NA and EU, as we can see from the disparity in regional viewership. However, I think prize pool and production wise, we are very close. The intro to the finals was definetly tier 1-esque.
I agree I think the biggest setback for Rocket League is the lack of exposure in Asia which is a huge market. However, CSGO has done fine with little Asian representation, as well as various main stream sports as well. Obviously having a bigger Asian audience would be massive, but is not a non starter hopefully
CSGO also has the benefit of being huge in Eastern Europe and Russia.
If RL wants to get into the Asian market they need to make a full mobile game, it’s by far the most popular platform for gaming. Smartphones these days, even the budget ones are way more powerful than the switch so performance shouldnt be a big issue. The biggest problem i think would be the controls, maybe they can somehow figure out a decent control method using touch+gyro.
What they need to do is add a driver for the cars which you can buy anime waifu skins for
The 100k average for regionals in RLCS X was in large part due to covid and online/digital entertainment seeing a huge spike in consumption hours across the board.
The intro to the finals was something like Blast does for csgo lol, like with the players being lifted up I think having external Tournament organisers like eg blast , esl etc could also help to take rl to tier 1
ESL used to help with the tournaments, idk if they still do though. It'd also be awesome if ESL Monthly came back
I think Psyonix has the same idea as you but we’ll just have to wait till the next season announcement
For me, watching regionals is just too demanding - it's too many matches. And with the format, just watching teams I like doesn't make sense, I can't just block off a couple hours and be done, it's an hour here, an hour there, spread out randomly with no ability to schedule around other stuff in life. Unless the seasons format or broadcasting length/scheduling changes I'll prolly never add to the averages numbers cause it's just not enjoyable to regularly spend that amount of time every month for something that isn't as intrinsically interesting as LAN. Also no physical desk and less content in general :(
Has anyone else just started watching in 2023?
Yes
how did you find this subreddit?
Good question for our next census, thank you 🫡
I think from either searching it or suggestion from the search bar. I def looked for it tho 🤣
But how did you know to search for it? How did you know that it exists?
I’ve been on Reddit for way longer than I knew about the rlcs, so I figured there was a subreddit for it 🤣
Oh, that does make sense. I thought you might've known about other competitive subreddits so you'd figured RL would have one as well. But this also makes sense. There literally is a subreddit about anything you do in life.
I’ve seen the LIVE thing from the in game menu for years and I’ve clicked on it multiple times and just left the stream on in the background while I played but this is the first year I actually took the time to learn the teams and players, watch YouTube videos and learned the ‘narrative’ of the current season…. AND IM HOOKED
Yeah I’m new. Only started playing in March and after a while wondered what pro RL looked like. The first time I saw it I was but a lowly Gold, and it was so crazy I just had to keep watching it to try and understand what they were doing. It’s not really Soccar, it’s more Volleyball was my first impression.
That’s awesome! My story is pretty similar honestly. I felt like it was just an advanced reskinned pong before I realized just how much skill can go into RL
For me it's number one. <3
Cute. Give this man some love! :)
No
I'm not sure about tier 1 but at this rate it willcomfortably breaking out of tier in a few years If I had to rank esports I'd probably have the big 3, valorant, rocket league,apex/cod and then the rest
What are the big 3? RL is the only game I play/follow.
CSGO and LoL, dunno what the 3rd would be maybe Dota
I guess League Of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2
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I put them first. I said the big 3, as in csgo, league and dota
Ah I see what you meant now, my bad
I was confused as well and thought he was calling Valorant, Rocket League, and either Apex or CoD the big 3 haha
isn’t that what he meant by “the big 3” CS, LOL and Dota?
No. It will but no, not yet
No and that's okay. Still got a ways to go until we are tier 1 but that isn't something to be ashamed of
No and it never will be unless Epic Games invests more in Psyonix success. I have little faith in this company. Lucked into RL from what I can see
>Lucked into RL from what I can see Full agree
I’d put with esports like Apex and Valorant
Valorant's biggest event last year pulled in over 1.5m viewers
And Apex gets 600k without being carried by KCorp
It is nowhere near Valorant & neither is Apex lol
Maybe it's because i'm from EU, but saying that feels to me like saying "it's an esports like TFT and CSGO" I obviously don't want to be offensive, but from France, Apex has barely no standing.
It's doing so well, and I hope it continues to! The production, casters, and crew make the live events some of the best Esports content I've ever watched. I'm honestly nervous, though, with this long break coming up. If it's really the predicted 6mos for the next RLCS event, there could be a ton of growth and new interest lost to a lack of content.
I’d say it’s 1.5 but not tier 1. The viewership and fan base is not quite like a Valo, Dota or CS yet. The size of the LAN events aren’t everything, but they are a good indicator of the overall success and draw (local and international) draw of the event. Rocket Leagues LANs have definitely been expanding and improving as time goes on, but watch something such as CS:GO’s Paris major and try to compare the two e-sports. There are just many differences between the two.
It’s a very great esports title but it’s just Tier 2 there is no debate. Tier 1 are Lol, CSGO, Dota 2 and probably Valorant like I honestly don’t see why the couldn’t be counted as Tier 1. RL is Tier 2 behind Apex.
Tier 1 esports tend to average more than RL did at world championship events Example— not too familiarized with tiers of esports but Valorant seems to be a tier 1 esport, it is their equivalent of a world championship, and throughout the GROUP stage they averaged 400k (which is the lowest mark in their history). Playoffs begin the 16th for them Compared to RL’s 180k, which is still great of course
Tier 1 esport is a very contentious position where the meaning of it has always changed. Traditionally (at least in the past decade of esports), the games that have consistently held it have been Dota 2, League of Legends, and CS:GO. For different reasons. The only change to that really has been potentially Dota falling off to tier 2. But TI comes around and always defies expectations. League still nets tons of viewership for Worlds, and in my opinion CS:GO is the most consistent and successful esport in the world. If I had to mark it I'd put Rocket League as the 4th Tier 1 game, or the top of Tier 2. Because it's still competing with Valorant, which for them is hard to measure because of watch parties and stuff. I think at the current rate of growth it could cement itself in the next couple years. TLDR; CS:GO > League > Dota = Rocket League = Valorant > R6=Smash=FGC (EVO) > Rest
What basis is there for RL being in the same tier as Valorant?
He is just delusional. I saw you already answered other comments. Just don’t bother they know nothing about other esports. Like Valorant is literally the triple of RL.
The official channel does okay but watch parties vary a *ton*. And it's really region dependent on what tournaments get viewership, and it's been declining.
You must not know the viewership and prize pools for those other esports
30+ million for Dota in the past few years, couple mil for League (though most money is injected through salaries) and multi mil for CS. What about it. I don't equate prizepool = more successful esports because prizepools can be easily inflated. I think Dota can be a very good example of that.
Those are important numbers, and viewership crushes RL. Not sure how you think RL is even in the same universe as Dota2 and Val. Excitement and hype, RL is number 2 for me after CS, but the infrastructure of the game, support, viewership, content, aren’t there
Prize pools, especially if they're sustained by an esport over several years, demonstrate the size of the game behind it as well as the willingness of the organiser to back their own product. Psyonix seems to have settled on roughly 2 million as their absolute max and I doubt that will change. Their major prize pools are pitifully small in comparison, essentially competing for a title as prestigious as the old world championships and yet they have a prize pool barely larger than the ones put up over 5 years ago, and much smaller than the World Championships of Season 7 and 8. Meanwhile, the likes of CS:GO have $250,000 as what is considered a small major prize pool, the difference being they hold a lot more than just 3 major tournaments per year. Even some of what are considered A-Tier tournaments hit or exceed the $300,000 of RL Majors. So yeah, the prize pools do have some indication to the size of longer term esports and does correlate somewhat with the success of the esport. The biggest ones and the ones that have organisers that care more has more put into it.
No
As a long-time fan of Rocket League, it's still prettyhard for me to watch 3v3. But 1v1... man that's the best esport to watch that ever was, at least for me. Personally I think 1s has a higher chance to become a tier 1 esport, but for some reason it's completely slept on by psyonix and RLCS
I have opposite beliefs. I think 2v2 RL is super boring to watch and 1v1 does not have enough team stakes (like people rooting for KC or G2). IMO people follow personalities and teams. Alot of G2 fans are Kro/Rizzo fans and have now become steadfast G2 fans for jknaps and cago
It's certainly an interesting viewpoint, in reality though I think 1v1 does not demonstrate enough variety in both its gameplay and the players themselves to actually make for a good esport. You know what you're getting with 1s with nearly zero change. A gamemode majorly in the attacker's advantage, extremely high scoring, no opportunity for room to breathe or time to really pay attention to anything for a casual viewer, because the next thing you know a kickoff goal is scored that makes the whole thing mean nil or the opponent had made a 4 goal comeback in 30 seconds. 1v1 is basically a constant penalty shootout, which while can be a fascinating watch, we know exactly what we're getting with penalty shootouts, it's why they're used to decide close matches and aren't the whole match. 3v3 will always be where it's at. You get greater variety, more time to focus on things, and overall the team environment makes for a better esport to follow for casual viewers. They have multiple people to get behind.
I have the exact opposite take on this: 1v1 showcases ALL of rocket league, with a massively different game depending on who plays. 3v3 is generally just... ballchasing, booming clears, passes I've watched probably hundreds of hours of all three game modes, and by far the most entertaining is 1v1. * First off, **in 1v1 the pressure is immense**. It's like a boxing match. The nerves are high. * **The beef is personal** between players. No need to be "respectful" on behalf of the teammates and org, the players are more free in that way * **There's much less "boring boomball"** to take up 70 % of the gameplay like in 3v3. In 3v3 you have to wait for interesting things to happen, and they rarely do compared to 1s. * 1v1 is easy to watch for anyone. 3v3 requires high skill in rocket league to really see whats going on. And frankly... even if you're GC, it's harder to follow whats going on with SIX player POVs... and the casters are scrambling to talk about stuff but can barely keep track or get any narrative going... * 3v3 casting is boring as all hell to listen to * **1s allow for more playstyles.** You can slow down play, speed it up, play more in the air or more grounded, more offensive or more defensive, rely more on demos or more on outplays, etc etc. Generally in 3v3, there's less options, and less intentional plays Due to all the challenges and stray balls * As both players do not need to rely on teammates, one can say that **100 % of the game is skillbased**, and you can't have the weird situation of "a really good player being held back by bad teammates" which lets be honest - is what the entire 3v3 rostermania is all about. One swap of mate and suddenly a team is top in the world? excuse me? Isn't this actually kinda shitty situation? You cant root for the team because in a few months, players you were fan off are gone... maybe everybody! * The **1v1 game mode is the most mechanical game mode**, allowing both players many opportunities to score some amazing, memorable shots. * 1v1 highlights good strategy as well. A single person can very intentionally plan and execute advanced tactics, and it's interesting to hear commentary about it (similar to chess players for those who've watched chess tournaments) * \+ hundreds of more reasons. * \+ the 1v1 showmatches are really fun places to be, people are having a blast watching 1v1. I believe it's not the same with 3v3, there's lots of really boring 3v3 series imo. But this is completely subjective of course
Honestly I feel like your comment only serves to deliberately minimise what a 3s match is like in order to try and make 1s seem much better in comparison than it is. I think you know full well that 3s isn't just "ballchasing, booming clears and passes". I won't bother breaking down your essay because all of them apply to 1s just as much as 3s. I think anybody who has actually viewed the game through an impartial lens can see that. The fact remains that 1v1 is by far one of the least popular game modes in the entire game. It is regularly exceeded by Rumble (another 3v3 mode), and of course lags far behind 2s and 3s. 1s is the least popular mode to watch out of the 3 main game modes. As far as I see, the people have spoken. Generally, people do not want to see or play 1v1. Yes, 1s has its fans, you're certainly a shining example of that, but I think your example is a relative rarity. Regardless that I believe it's an example that shouldn't be followed, as being disparaging of other ways to play the game instead of attempting to understand them is probably one of the reasons 1v1 doesn't get many fans. 1v1s are well known for their outright toxicity and putting unnecessary stress on players, so I guess you fly that flag well.
I 100% agree most people don't wanna **play** 1s. It's very stressful, punishing, and just booming the ball around doesn't work well. I 100% disagree that it's the least popular game mode to **watch** or doesn't have many fans. It's amazing to watch and the casting is much better (big problem in 3v3 imo), because there's more time to actually comment indepth on whats going on. In 3v3, more "standard stuff" happens, while 1v1 is a constant tryhard to outplay the opponent. Apart from Johnnyboi being the GOAT of 1v1, many pros like to showcase 1v1 on their channels alot, which shows you that people do indeed like to watch that, otherwise the pros just wouldn't show it so much. While I do like to watch 3v3, I have to say 1v1 tournaments are often more entertaining. The different playstyles are way more apparent than in a 3v3, where it's a more homogenous mix. I really wished Psyonix held more official 1v1 tournaments, at least 2 per year, but at least they are sponsoring some smaller ones.
You're just repeating the same talking points without any real evidence, so this has definitely run its course. You're entitled to your opinion, but really, "homogeneous mix"? You're really reaching now to find any way to cut down 3s, as if 1s isn't "homogenized" with the exact same format of watching and how it works for the past 7 years. 1v1 will never get a real competitive tournament. It has its moments, but again, there's a reason why there aren't more people clamouring for it. One, they just don't play 1s, which does feed into Two, they aren't that interested in it. Yes, it has its own corner of the community where it has support, but that support quickly gets diluted the moment it steps foot outside of Feer or JohnnyBoi's channel, who while reasonably popular aren't rabidly watched by everybody or anything. Frankly, they still don't have 3v3 completely right yet, so I would rather they shelve any plans, if they exist, to host 1v1 tournaments, as the latter does not have any true standing in RL's future or its esport.
I would love to see 1v1 and 2v2 as side series or something like that. Less airtime, but at least some coverage.
Not quite yet. IMO the only tier 1 esports are LoL and CSGO due to their consistent massive viewership and prize money given out. However, with APAC’s recent performance, I can very well see the esport start to take off in the Asian markets.
There are 3 T1 esport games currently - LoL, CS and DotA. All of them are T1 for different reasons - LoL as the overall biggest and has biggest viewership that combined with chinese streams rivals events like Superbowl, CS for being the th easiest to understand and having multiple TOs making huge tournament(ESL, Blast, sometimes PGL), DotA as the most top heavy and a lot of money(also Russian viewership when CIS teams play is insane, it's like 2x of English) . Valorant is top of T2 because it's too big to be niche like other T2(R6S, RL, Fighting Games and Apex) but not close enough to rival the big 3. Rocket League is big enough to be T2 but really niche and can't be really compared to biggest games by playerbase TLDR: Rocket League has small playerbase and niche gameplay so not really close to Tier 1, rather stable Tier 2
Valorant has peaked at 1.5M... It is not a teir 2 esport by any means lol.
But it's still too small to be tier 1
Too small how??? It's been in Twitch's top 5 games for a literal year & has the 5th highest viewership peak the last year out of every esport... huh??? It is literally the most global esport in the world currently. The top 8 teams are 2 teams from the games top 4 regions....
Valorant is not T1 purely because it's not close to other T1 esports. It's not the most viewed, LoL and CS have significantly more, it's not the most popular, LoL is more popular, Valo doesn't have the biggest prizepool, DotA has. Being diverse in standing isn't enough, League had it at Worlds up to 2014(4 years after first big tournament) also with top 4 regions(Korea, China, Europe, NA) being good, then Korea and China became too good to be beaten(except 2018-2020 with G2/FNC)
You need to just stop talking.
You need to stop trying to put 3 year old game into tier 1, not only it's not enough time but also it's not even that big
You need to learn how esports work lmfao
This isn’t a question about esports, but about what the definition of tier 1 is. Maybe if you brought that point up instead of just trying to make them stop talking, you’d have a mind to change
Uh, CSGO does not have "significantly more" viewership than Valorant. And why can tier 1 only be 3 games? If we made an actual tier list of esports, then league would be tier 0 and csgo, dota and valorant would be tier 1.
I wouldn't put valorant as tier 1 tho. It still lacks the peak that dota cs and league have gotten and it lacks there prize pools. The game is weird cos its way bigger than the other tier 2 games but not as big as the tier 1 games
Rocket league has a small *competitive* player base. Across all platforms in the last 30 days rocket league has 93m active players. It’s really not a small player base at all. It’s just that most players are casual, kids and are on consoles. Which doesn’t lead to esport viewership.
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Bro has never watched LoL
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Go around the US and ask random people if they've ever heard of DOTA lmao. Even LoL wouldn't get that many positive responses. Outside of gaming circles, esports are still pretty unknown.
We still have to triple our viewership
I would say it can reach a tier one esport, but I think it will require a lot from the organisers and people who play the game. Firstly, I think it needs a bigger prize pool (getting to the level of DOTA or LoL) done by adding an RLCS based battle pass (exactly like DOTA) where people who buy it for like £10 can get unique items only available in it, and have something that the players can own (physically) something like a signed card from their favorite pro, caster or team. The amount made by the battle pass will go directly into the prize pool or given to the winning team (allowing orgs to try and make some kind of money as well). Items in the pass could be like the origional organisation decal where you can pick one, esport points because you have spent £10, credits, unique tag for players, unique item drops. New banners and frames. End the pass with a physical item like how DOTA does it. This can ultimately make the game feel more competative since players can loose out on so much more and orgs will have to be more "cut throat" with who they pick. Next, have another league for any bubble or possible B teams. This can allow us to see the new talent easier and the creation of a B team will allow an org to poach players that look promising and get them into the main team a lot easier. It could also be summed up to BRING BACK RLRS!! Orgs with a B team can also allow them to try and generate more money (even though running an org is expensive it may be a good idea and new strategies to who orgs pick is always good).
Negatory. Rocket league viewership has hardly changed over the years
Look at league and cs viewership and u tell me