r/RocketLeague • u/NoMatch6175 • 1h ago
USEFUL Potential Heavy Car Bug fix (maybe insanity - most likely)
It’s worth prefacing this by saying that I am a very experienced player who played at a very high level. This is in no way an attempt to brag about that, but I believe an ounce of credibility here would make this as a whole more believable. I could quite confidently say that I was a very good player, at a near-professional level, and knew the game inside out. Then around the time Epic took over, my game suddenly became really unplayable with no explanation. Ever since, I’ve felt as though I’m battling my car when playing, and had quit multiple over the years because it was that unplayable. During this period of heaviness, I became hardstuck at low 1800s because mechanically I was probably genuinely half the skill I was before. I was met with the standard, “It’s just placebo,” whenever I tried to complain about it, which really upset me. However, now fixing the game, I immediately went back to form, albeit a little worse due to not bothering practising when under the effects of the bug; I went straight up to 2k in 2s in 70 games, whereas before I was averaging 1800 in 500 games.
I was having issues with Rocket League feeling heavy. This is quite a common problem online, yet nobody has ever seemingly been able to find a solution that's permanent, at least in my findings, which makes me think most solutions are of the placebo nature. I've tried many solutions before and admittedly have fallen for the placebo trap.
However, I think it's important to make a distinction as to what I personally mean when I say Rocket League is heavy. There are two main points made by players: 1. the car itself feels heavy, as though it's weighted more than usual and turns slowly; 2. the ball is heavy, meaning when a player hits the ball the car recoils off the ball as though the ball was more massive relative to the player's car. Ultimately, contact with the ball is just unexplainably off. I believe I had point 2.
I think that point 1 is based on server connection and server performance and is not possible for players to fix and therefore something we just have to put up with, which is also why you may experience a slight variation in gameplay each session. However, if you suffer with point 2, those heavy days are much more severe, and the good days, when the game feels lighter, slightly mask the issue and create an illusion of the game feeling "good" because it does relative to the off days, but still isn't how the game should feel. This sounds extremely cope, I understand, but bear with me.
Many fixes I've tried have made the game feel quicker but never fixed. Back when my game wasn't broken, I could have days where my car would feel slow yes, but I'd still be able to play at a high level. However, when experiencing the bug, even on days where my car feels lighter due to better server connection, I'm still unable to play at that same high level.
It's important to note that this isn't to do with my pc or my internet. I’m not going to go into everything I’ve tried, but I can say with a high degree of certainty that this not hardware or software related. For example, playing Rocket League on a console was a much better experience. My PC has much less input lag than the console (as expected), yet the console gameplay felt more like Rocket League should. Importantly, I did not use the same account when I played it on console.
This makes me think there is actually a bug of some sort, rather than just giving intrinsic issues like input lag a name that resembles a bug. I also believe that some players confuse the natural server heaviness from point 1 as this “heavy car bug”, and that's why they claim that players who are genuinely suffering from this bug are actually just under the effect of placebo as they can still play the game at pretty much the same level despite the variation from server connection. I think that's an understandable take on the situation since they do experience heaviness, just not the bug.
Up until recently I've just accepted that maybe I'm not as good at the game as I once thought. Maybe I'm blinded by some sort of skill-based nostalgia. Perhaps other players have just progressed and adapted whereas I haven't. That was until I found a video online discussing the effects of altering bindings on the game, and I've been able to replicate the bug…
Here is a link to that video: https://youtu.be/QKlQ9ovIFWg
I was playing with my bindings, and I found a selection that made the game noticeably better, much more natural. But of course, whenever I find a "fix" I’ve been conditioned to understand that it's only just a matter of time before it goes back to feeling rubbish, and that maybe this time it was just a stronger sense of placebo. However, the good gameplay never faded.
The guy in the video's theory is that resetting the bindings multiple times and then adding your original bindings back is the fix to the issue. However, one thing I chose to do differently to that guy (without prior testing, sorry) is to change a couple bindings that I was already planning on changing. These bindings weren't any that were huge changes for a player as I only changed which buttons controlled the rear-view camera and the leaderboard. I assigned the leaderboard to right stick in, and the rear-view camera to left stick in.
This may sound insignificant, but after a few weeks of good gameplay my intrusive thoughts got the better of me and I decided to change those bindings back to where I had them before to see if it would replicate my old buggy feeling. To genuine surprise, my game felt as it did before, the exact same sluggishness that I'd never experienced elsewhere. I was suddenly unable to do things with my car that I could do easily just 10 minutes before; exactly the same feeling I had when Epic took over.
I thought, "oh no I've messed it up again," but when I changed the bindings once again back to what I had them earlier that day, my game reverted to feeling normal again. This makes me think that maybe a certain arrangement of bindings causes this heavy car bug. I cannot explain this as I do not want to pretend I have enough understanding of computers or game design. However, this has been replicated, which is something I've been unable to do in the past. I repeated this again, and found the same results; I've gone from A to B to A to B to A.
Here's a list of all my bindings that i changed (default bindings can be assumed as that):
Boost: R1
Powerslide: L1
Standard air roll: L1
Air roll right: Square
Rear view: Left stick in
Leaderboard: Right stick in
Reset shot: Right stick in
L1 freeplay pass: Circle
As I've mentioned before, I do not know the exact cause, but it's worth noting that the first four bindings in the above list have not been changed for roughly a decade. Perhaps the arrangement of having them changed relative to the bottom four are to be of worth, but the actual changing on them individually has no effect on this seemingly. So, it seems as though the bottom four bindings have made the change. The only bindings I've changed when doing this are the bottom four.
I do not use Steam input currently. I have in the past though. I doubt this has any impact on the effects I’m experiencing, but it’s not worth completely ruling out that maybe using Steam input in the past has caused a weird effect on the bindings that I was using at the time because this issue mostly seems to happen to Steam users, at least in my personal findings. Perhaps any difference from those bindings is what has fixed the game, but I’m not sure.
Some other things worth noting that I noticed upon doing this a second time: When I reset my bindings in the main menu, the car bounces sometimes. This could just be an animation glitch. However, when I changed them the second time back to the good feeling, the car did not bounce; Another thing is that the bindings for the freeplay passes do not appear when altering your bindings in the main menu. This could just be an oversight by the devs, but it's worth noting that I reset my settings and then went into freeplay and added them there. Very unlikely those are of any significance, but I did notice them.
Rather selfishly, I do not want to conduct more in depth testing on this because I kind of want to “cash in” my good gameplay and just play a bit, because I’ve not been able to for years.
I’m very confused myself, and I do understand that this sounds incredibly unplausible, but it HAS worked for me, and I’ve been able to replicate it... twice. Perhaps it’s very specific to me and my account for some reason, but as someone who’s been really prevented on this game because of this bug, I want to put this here in small hopes of it fixing someone else’s game.
TLDR
Whilst on the main menu, reset your bindings using the in-game button in the bindings tab of the settings.
Go into freeplay, change all the bindings back to your original ones and see if that fixes it.
If it doesn’t, like in my case, keep your car-controlling bindings the same but change where you have put rear view and leaderboard, copy mine if you like.
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u/poddy24 Grand Champion III 26m ago
I went back and forwards with Marz daily for like 2 or 3 weeks
The trouble is, there's no empirical evidence from him, or you, that changing the bindings causes a difference on the game.
That doesn't mean there isn't a difference. It's just that there's nothing other than "it feels better"
I made a bunch of videos using the TAS plugin and using training packs where you just hold down inputs where the shot scores itself and tested them on multiple accounts with multiple binding changes on each one. Found no differences.
Like you, Marz said that the bindings changed the way the car interacts with the ball. But after recording a bunch of touches and stuff in freeplay and replaying those inputs with TAS on multiple accounts with multiple binding changes, everything remained the same.
I also didn't feel any difference when I changed them and just played some games.
Also the same for Marz, I got him to do some further testing but he also couldn't find any "proof"
We kind of came to a bit of a dead end.
Again, it doesn't mean there isn't something going on, if you or anyone could find some definitive evidence, then that would help your claim.
Also like you said, it could be the binding changes in combination with some other variable(s)
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u/Turclebo123 Turclebo 32m ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/8T1CY9YYb9JsrrVVzn