Competitive Season 3 and Season 2 Rewards Coming Soon in Rocket League

Hey everyone! Our next update at the end of June will also mark the conclusion of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3. Of course, we’ll announce a more specific date as we get closer to launch, but in the meantime, we wanted to let you know what you can expect to see in terms of rewards based on your highest-reached competitive skill tier:

- Prospect I or higher – Season 2 Prospect Rocket Trail
- Challenger I or higher – Season 2 Challenger Rocket Trail
- Rising Star or higher – Season 2 Star Rocket Trail
- Champion or higher – Season 2 Champion Rocket Trail
- Grand Champion – “Season 2 Grand Champion” Title

NOTE: You will also receive the rewards for all skill tiers below your highest. For example, a player who reached “Rising Star” will receive the Season 2 Star, Challenger, and Prospect Rocket Trails. Enjoy these sneak preview GIFs that show them off:

PROSPECT ROCKET TRAIL.
CHALLENGER ROCKET TRAIL.
RISING STAR ROCKET TRAIL.
CHAMPION ROCKET TRAIL.

SEASON 3
With the beginning of the new Competitive Season, we have some larger changes planned that we wanted to share in advance of its launch:

SKILL WIPE
As the first year of competitive Rocket League draws to a close, it’s an ideal time for a clean slate. With this in mind, we will push a full Skill Rating wipe for all competitive playlists, while also watching how the skill curve shakes out without legacy data from previous seasons.
We recognize that a full reset will not solve all of the concerns raised during Season 2, but the wipe will give us valuable data to analyze as we move forward. For Grand Champion players in particular, we want to observe how the top ranks settle before deciding how to approach past complaints about stagnation and rank climbing.

SMURFING
We will also take steps in Season 3 to curb some of the “smurfing” issues seen in previous seasons. While it is ultimately very difficult to detect a “smurf” (a player of higher skill using an alternate account to match against lower skilled opponents) we still feel that we can make some positive improvements in this area.

First, we will be disallowing Steam “Family Sharing” accounts from queueing for Competitive playlists if they do not own a full copy of the game. While this will not prevent determined players from using “alt accounts”, it will at least make it less trivial on PC.

Second, in a subsequent update after Season 3 launches, we will place restrictions on how parties queue for Competitive play. When a party is formed, the difference in each player’s Competitive skill tier will be measured. You will be prevented from queueing as a party for any playlist in which that skill difference is too great. We currently plan to set a maximum difference of three skill tiers – roughly the size of an entire skill group (Challenger I -> Challenger Elite).

For example, if you’re a Rising Star (Tier 9), you could play with a friend in Challenger II (Tier 6), or a friend in Superstar (Tier 12), but you won’t be able to play with both at the same time — as the overall skill difference for that party would be 6 tiers.

We recognize that this may negatively impact some groups of players who want to play together in Competitive, but ultimately, we believe that it’s an important change that will appropriately preserve our competitive environment. We also think that Casual playlists are the right place for parties with such wildly-varied ratings to be, though we will continue to listen closely to your feedback as the season wears on.

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Written by Austin Phoenix

Site Moderator, Walkthrough Manager and Newshound here on TSA. Moderator, Walkthrough Supervisor and Site Help Editor over on TA.

Space Cowboy in my free time.