All Rocket League players will know that one of the best places to improve at the game is to jump into Freeplay and hit the ball around. Just like in real sports, being able to practice for hours on end, building up that muscle memory, and testing mechanics out that would normally be too risky to try out in a ranked match is only really possible when you’re in ‘practice mode’. Aka: Freeplay.
Well, after years of Freeplay not being edited (all you get is an empty arena and a ball) Psyonix have announced that a new update to the mode is here.
The concept is still very similar – you still just get an empty arena and a ball. But now you can manipulate what the ball does without needing to do that with your car.
Here are the new tools in Freeplay, introduced in the Rocket League v2.06 patch:
- Take Possession: Places the ball in front of your car
- Start Dribble: Places the ball on the hood of your car
- Pass Ball: Sends the ball towards your car
- Launch Ball: Behaves similarly to tip-off in Hoops
- Defend Shot: Shoots the ball towards the closest goal
Full details on the Rocket League website:
For all the PC players who have been able to benefit from the BakkesMod for years now might not find these changes as revolutionary, but what we do know for certain is that millions of console players will now have new tools to train with.
The hope is that this will be the first of many updates that come to the ‘training’ mode.
Here is one idea – imagine being able to load any match replay file and ‘play’ from any moment. You would be able to test your skills with other cars to see if you could have saved a certain shot or scored the 0-second goal you missed. Forget about freeplay then, this would be game-changing because everyone would be able to play the jstn ‘This is Rocket League’ moment and see if they could also score it.
You get the idea – freeplay as a concept is great. But the more tools we have the better we can become at this game. It would give our coaches many more opportunities to help students as well as provide plenty of content opportunities for creators.
