With the first competitive year nearing its conclusion, Psyonix has published a blog post today revealing plans for Rocket League season 3, which is now primed to kick off late next month in place of season 2.
No word on a release date just yet, but the studio did outline some of the changes to coincide with the upcoming season, and it’ll begin with a clean slate across the board.
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.
In doing so, Psyonix is aiming to target some of the issues raised by the Rocket League community, noting that it wants to “observe how the top ranks settle before deciding how to approach past complaints about stagnation and rank climbing.”
Stagnation and rank climbing aren’t the only niggles between the crosshairs, though, with the blog post also outlining the studio’s two-pronged approach to dealing with “smurfing” — that is, a seasoned player creating a low-level account to match with players below his or her skill level.
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).
Further details are expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more. In related Rocket League news, Psyonix recently introduced the new Pillars arena.
[Source: Psyonix]
