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This game's been out for over five years now, and the first post of the thread was hilariously out of date now, particularly this awesome montage of some of the best goals 2015 has to offer. Things have moved on a lot since then, so we figured it might be time for a new thread, and Rocket League going free to play seemed like a good opportunity for a new start. But for the newcomers... what is Rocket League? If you've ever asked "What would it look like if rocket-powered RC cars could play football (or soccer, for some of you)" then you've just come up with Rocket League. Actually, you've just come up with the previous game made by Psyonix, which was a 2008 PS3 game with the awesome name of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars. It started development as a destruction-derby car game, but someone in testing included a ball as an idea for a minigame and the idea was so much fun they just made it into the entire game. This first game had some success, but wasn't really a hit. They rebuilt the game for a new generation, and in 2015 released Rocket League on PC and PS4. It did much better this time round, maybe because it's a good game, maybe because Sony gave it away as a free monthly game on PS+. Who can say. Over the years they went on to release it on Xbox, and the Switch (sorry Switch players, there wasn't an all-platforms post icon), and after a lot of back-and-forth on who was holding everything up they managed to make the game fully cross-platform so you could play against people on all the different systems. With the Free-to-Play release, everyone is now on the same system as everyone on each platform is associated with an Epic account. Now it's all centralised so all your items, presets, rank, stats and everything else exists on one system that can play on any available platform, so you can play alongside any of your friends on any platform. Now that we've had a quick history lesson: What we've ended up with is a fast-paced physics-driven sports-driving game with an incredibly high skill ceiling if you want to put in the time to get good at it. It starts with one simple concept: Drive car into ball, hit ball into goal, and you win if your team scores more goals than the other team. But you can do more than just drive forwards into the ball. You can jump and flip briefly after your first jump, to get more momentum and to hit the ball with more force. You can collect and use boost that allows you to go a lot faster, and can launch you through the air once you learn to control it. The fully enclosed pitch allows you to rebound the ball, drive on the walls, and even on the ceiling. Oh and if you feel like it, you can hit the players instead of the ball, and if you run into people at top speed you can even demolish them to take them off the pitch for a few seconds. There's a wide variety of techniques and tricks you can learn that combine these mechanics and quirks of the physics engine, which means there are a ton of different ways to get that ball into the goal. Eventually you can reach the level of pro esports players, who have a ridiculous level of control, and can pull off some crazy moves with alarming precision. There's also a community of freestylers, determined to score goals in only the most ridiculous ways possible. There isn't actually much overlap, because being good at the game means playing to win, and being willing to not go all-in on a wild idea. And if you're a freestyler, you're always looking for an opportunity to get that amazing goal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOSyHhDClzc (I was looking for a video that shows off how you can go from awkwardly driving and flopping around to banging in shots by learning to control the car and the ball, and also one that was mostly gameplay and not slick edited recaptured footage. This video fits, but I mostly picked it because the guy who uploaded it is called Static, and one of our lot is also called Static. Shoutout to Static. I'm 100% sure they're not the same person. Anyway.) The main game modes just change the amount of players to change the way the game is played. The Standard format is 3v3, which is where most people focus their efforts and is the gamemode that drives the vast majority of pro-level play. 2v2 is also popular, as you still have room for teamwork but without a third teammate to bail you out any mistakes can be much more fatal. 1v1 has its merits, if you can control the game and cope with the frustration of not having teammates to blame when something goes wrong. There is also 4v4, which is utter chaos and nobody plays 4v4 seriously. If you'd like something a bit different, you can also play Extra Modes, which are modified gamemodes that play differently to the main game, either more akin to other sports or as something all their own. Hoops is essentially basketball, and is a 2v2 gametype played on a special smaller arena than standard Rocket League with a giant basket for each team near where the goal would be. Snow Day turns Rocket League into a game of Hockey, with a puck that slides around the arena very quickly. Dropshot is a very different game kind-of inspired by volleyball, and in this mode you have no goal, instead you're in a hexagonal arena with a tiled floor; you have to hit the ball into the other team's side of the floor to remove these tiles and then score in the holes you've created. And finally, Rumble is Rocket League but every ten seconds you get a random powerup, such as a boot that can send other players away from you, spikes that can stick the ball to your car, or a grappling hook to send you straight to the ball. If Rumble isn't enough chaos for you, you have mutators which can be used to change the way any gamemode behaves in custom private matches. You can change things like the ball size, speed and bounciness, or replace it with a puck or a cube. You can change the strength of gravity, or up the boost strength and even allow players to boost forever. You can also change the time settings, so I'll warn you now, don't ever try to play with the "time warp" setting. It's awful. For everything else, experiment and see what you like and don't like. There are plenty of options to allow you to bend the rules a bit, make your own minigames, or just absolutely make the game unplayable. But let's say you decide to take this thing seriously. You want to actually get good. How do you even know how good you are? You play Ranked. In ranked games, you get matched up against people close to your rank, and if you win you gain some MMR (Match Making Rating) points. If you lose, you lose some points. The harder a matchup should have been, the more you get for winning and the less you lose for losing, to make unfair matches slightly less punishing. The more points you have the higher you climb, from the baseline of Bronze all the way to  There's Ranked variations of 1s, 2s and 3s, and the Extra Modes are also Ranked modes. This is because if you quit a Ranked game midway through (without forfeiting) you get a brief ban from matchmaking, so it disincentivises quitting a match just because you're upset that your team is losing by one goal. The new Tournament mode also allows you to compete in online tournaments, fighting through a bracket to earn similar rewards for succeeding against difficult opponents. You can play with friends, or queue on your own, but be aware that if you are with a friend whose rank is very different to yours, your team will be judged as near the highest rank in your team. This might be a rough time. While just playing the game and trying to win more matches is a good way to improve, there are other ways to focus on improving. Rocket League has a few built-in Training Packs that will give you a series of scenarios for you to either score or save, and players can make their own and share them using the Custom Training option. There is also Free Play, which gives you a ball, an empty arena, and the option of unlimited boost, so you can try different things to improve your skillset on your own. If you're on PC, you can also use the Steam Workshop (for now, nobody knows what Epic wants to do with this in future) to open custom maps that people have built and uploaded. The best of these can really test your abilities, such as car control in the air or on the ground, ball control, or focus on certain moves like dribbling and flicks. Some are just open areas to try things in, and others are attempts to create alternate maps which require some meddling to play alongside other people in. And there is also the Bakkesmod plugin, which can be used to do a lot of different things. And if you're looking for guidance, there are a ton of Rocket League tutorials on Youtube. Pro players, Esports team coaches, content creators, casters... A whole ton of people have had a go at telling the world how to play this game properly. Some of the best examples are SunlessKhan's expansive Why You Suck At Rocket League series, which goes over a lot of different things that players do which they really shouldn't be doing, with lots of examples and charming self-deprecation. Because it honestly helps if you admit that you're bad, rather than pretending that you're actually good and you just keep losing for inexplicable reasons. Or one I liked was JohnnyBoi's techniques for ranking up which goes over things players can do at different skill levels that can help them improve their rank. There is a wealth of advice out there if you want it. But the best advice is to just play the game, practice things, try things, and overall have fun because it's not worth being good if you hate playing the game. If you're looking for people to play with, you should join our Discord, where we've got a good amount of people who play this game. Some of them are even good at it. Some of them will never stop telling you how bad they are at it. Sometimes, these are the same people. We play some private matches at random times depending on who's available, and we have dedicated channels for looking for teammates and asking for advice. So if you want people to hang out with, practice things, talk about the game, brag about your car, show off your highlights, or whatever, join in. We also have at least one in-game Club that you can join. There is even a SomethingAwful flag in the game... I'm sure someone uses it, right?
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Sep 23, 2020 18:49
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 03:37 |
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I use the SA flag New thread hype
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Sep 23, 2020 18:53
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quote:Servers are dead. This is Rocket League!!!!!
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Sep 23, 2020 18:59
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I wish I could still get points for "Bullet Hits"
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Sep 23, 2020 19:18
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Gonna do the same thing I do in game and hit Post.
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Sep 23, 2020 19:18
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It's in the OP but it bears repeating, join the Discord.
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Sep 23, 2020 19:20
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For real, this game is insanely fun, but it's worth noting that the community can be toxic as hell and people absolutely will have a hissy fit at you at some point. There are over 500k people online right now. Last time I played there were like 200k during the evening. Looking forward to my inflated rank when all the new players get dumped into competitive 
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Sep 23, 2020 19:27
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Post ur gifs! 56k NO!! https://www.gifyourgame.com/EscapedKlutzyJabbi
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Sep 23, 2020 19:55
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They added a "Nice demo!" quick chat, which I use all the time now.
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Sep 23, 2020 20:11
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I like "Faking!" instead of any of the apology quickchats
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Sep 23, 2020 20:36
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Hopefully the influx of players will make it easier to find matches for Snow Day, the One True Mode.
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Sep 23, 2020 20:38
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Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:Hopefully the influx of players will make it easier to find matches for Snow Day, the One True Mode. Lagbot?
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Sep 23, 2020 21:57
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bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m posted:There are over 500k people online right now. Last time I played there were like 200k during the evening. Looking forward to my inflated rank when all the new players get dumped into competitive OMG! Holy cow! Sounds like it's finally my time to get back in the game and farm some easy points.
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Sep 23, 2020 22:29
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poo poo, I might get back into this again, when I get time. Switch player, here. Can I still migrate my years old Steam RL profile to my "new" account? I had a nice pixel fire boost thing that I'd love to get back. Looking forward to making some super gross looking bullshit custom vehicle. I still wish you could move the decals around, Forza-style. 
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Sep 23, 2020 22:42
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My god, how hard can it be to code basic matchmaking logic in space year 2020? Played about 10 matches and already facing players who have fantastic air control and blingy cars. I'd have thought today of all days it would be possible to find matches with other newbies.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:49
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:poo poo, I might get back into this again, when I get time. Switch player, here. Can I still migrate my years old Steam RL profile to my "new" account? I had a nice pixel fire boost thing that I'd love to get back. You link all your accounts here: https://www.rocketleague.com/activate/ Then choose which one is the "primary account" (presumably the one with the most progress). Next time you log into the game with your Switch, you should get a billion notifications about available cosmetics and whatnot.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:51
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interpunct posted:You link all your accounts here: https://www.rocketleague.com/activate/ Ah, ok, I had already done the main bit when I logged on with my Switch (so many notifications  ). I thought I might've had to boot the game up on steam to get that linked, too. Glad I was able to do it online. Thanks!
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Sep 24, 2020 00:19
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With the new season coming out I signed up for rocket pass with some random rocketbux I had lying around. Noticed a couple of the weekly objectives was to play some casual. So I did, and I met some of the new free to play players. Holy moly I kind of feel bad. I was just in there to grind out the objectives, but I was blasting them like 10+ - 0. That can't be fun. I'm only like high plat/low diamond. Then because it was casual, they'd join the game in progress, see the score, and leave. Then some other new people would join, get scored on a couple times and leave. I did have one game where it was neck and neck and I thought super fun, and the other team got up by 2 points and started trash talking hard. We're obviously closely matched so I thought it was kind of funny to get so salty about it. Getting pisspounded 4-0 or whatever sucks but I don't give a single gently caress about losing a well fought match. Anyways we scored twice in the last 10 seconds to even it up and pounded one in right at the start of overtime. Suck it random toxic casual players!
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Sep 24, 2020 01:23
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Apparently it was up to almost 800k players before the servers died earlier.
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Sep 24, 2020 01:29
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I'm gonna try the tournament starting in 3 minutes even though none of my rocketfriends are on. Can you even queue solo? Edit: i don't know if it's because I was solo but I couldn't get in. After registering I just kept getting "Call limit reached, try again later." error message, until the tourney started without me. The Fattest PI fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 01:41
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Hell yeah I linked my steam and psn accounts and now I have my animated wizard decal for the merc again too bad I haven't played for a month or two and boy does skill decay
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Sep 24, 2020 02:10
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The Fattest PI posted:I'm gonna try the tournament starting in 3 minutes even though none of my rocketfriends are on. Can you even queue solo? Yeah that tournament failed, that happened for everyone.
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Sep 24, 2020 02:46
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And yes, you can solo queue the new tournaments.
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Sep 24, 2020 04:20
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PotatoJudge posted:And yes, you can solo queue the new tournaments. Should you though? 
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Sep 24, 2020 04:23
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Excellent thread title.
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Sep 24, 2020 08:19
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JammyB posted:My god, how hard can it be to code basic matchmaking logic in space year 2020? Played about 10 matches and already facing players who have fantastic air control and blingy cars. I'd have thought today of all days it would be possible to find matches with other newbies. Yeah, I feel real bad for new players. I'm a gold-rank lifer and was getting matched up with people with "Season [whatever] Grand Champion" titles. Not fun at all. At least I know that will shake out when mmr stabilizes as the season progresses, new players probably won't and might just quit.
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Sep 25, 2020 11:49
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Yeah, pretty sure I played some placement matches against some champs. Plat III now, baby.
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Sep 25, 2020 12:52
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ChickenMedium posted:Yeah, I feel real bad for new players. I'm a gold-rank lifer and was getting matched up with people with "Season [whatever] Grand Champion" titles. Not fun at all. At least I know that will shake out when mmr stabilizes as the season progresses, new players probably won't and might just quit. Yeah your first game of rocket league should have your opponents sitting motionless as you fight the controls to hit a stationary goal into an empty net to stimulate the kind of teammates you find in gold and above
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Sep 25, 2020 12:59
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After some time with the new FTP format, here are my thoughts:
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Sep 25, 2020 14:01
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Rocket League is fun I should play it more but it feels like I'm trying to swim without knowing how lol
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Sep 25, 2020 14:20
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AttackTheMoon posted:Rocket League is fun I should play it more but it feels like I'm trying to swim without knowing how lol It's a "simple" game with a skill ceiling that is not only high, but keeps rising. The mechanics that people have developed are astounding... and the players can do stuff now at "low" levels that only the top top top pros could do a few years ago. People are doing flip resets in Gold 1s matches for crying out loud! Just play and have fun!
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Sep 25, 2020 14:31
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The Midniter posted:Why do we have to claim XP for completing challenges now? Just give me the XP after the match during which I completed it Seems like just about every mobile game has the same system. There's probably some (for the publisher) beneficial psychological effect this causes? Beats me.
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Sep 25, 2020 18:43
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Keito posted:Seems like just about every mobile game has the same system. There's probably some (for the publisher) beneficial psychological effect this causes? Beats me. Its to trigger a pavlovian response in you when you "engage" with the game. "I press buttons in this app and I get a small does of dopamine!" Sadly, it works.
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Sep 25, 2020 18:48
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Man guess I'll have to join the discord since I've been playing this again for the last couple of months. Really want to play competitive mode with someone as trash as myself.
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Sep 25, 2020 18:58
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I'm still getting the "Having problems communicating with Epic Online Services. Please try again in a few minutes" bug that everyone else was reporting when the free to play update first launched. I think there was some kind of bug trying to connect my Steam account to an Epic account when I first launched the game post-update, and now even though I made a totally separate Epic account linked only to my Steam account, I can't reset the credentials in game because the pop-up message asking you to sign in only appears once, with no way to change accounts or anything. The "Account linking" button in the options menu tells you to go to rocketleague.com/activate, which doesn't exist anymore. 
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Sep 25, 2020 23:05
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OxMan posted:Man guess I'll have to join the discord since I've been playing this again for the last couple of months. Really want to play competitive mode with someone as trash as myself. I alternate between wanting to find a team so I can actually play with a solid line up and get better with them, and then realising that I don't play and at regular enough times to achieve this.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:21
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did they say something about cutting back on items for offline accounts? my son played bot matches all the time and got all the offline collectables and after the F2P update he only has like 5 bodies, 3 wheels, 2 boosts, etc. and pretty much all of his old presets were ruined I figure it's gotta be a glitch or something, because no company would do something so stupid, right? e: I figured it out. they literally won't give you the items back unless you have a PSN account and make an Epic account to connect to it. lmao what a garbage decision and gently caress whoever was in charge of making it morallyobjected fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 08:08
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There were 1.6 million people on last night which is pretty cool
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Sep 26, 2020 09:27
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morallyobjected posted:did they say something about cutting back on items for offline accounts? my son played bot matches all the time and got all the offline collectables and after the F2P update he only has like 5 bodies, 3 wheels, 2 boosts, etc. and pretty much all of his old presets were ruined actually as an update since he didn't have a PSN account before the switch he didn't get any of the legacy items so now they're all just gone forever so gently caress Psyonix and Epic tbh
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Sep 26, 2020 17:10
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Why did they take out solo standard? I'm not whining I'm curious. I would play that when my normal teammates weren't available when I had the itch. 2v2s and 1v1s are like completely different games and I wanted to refine my game for my teammate bros, so I'd queue for solo standard. Was there just not enough interest? I admit there was a hilarious amount of toxicity. Like you get scored on in the first minute and someone starts a forfeit vote, and if it doesn't work they just sit idle for the rest of the match. I guess I can still queue for 3v3s but it'll affect my rank with my team, and i'll be up against premade teams that will probably win.
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Sep 27, 2020 00:11
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