Rocket League is one of those competitive titles that can be an extremely fun time because of how balanced and skill-based the game is. You have the choice to queue up solo, grab a friend and hop into standard or ranked duos, or maybe you like the challenge of queueing up with two other randoms for some trios.
No matter which game mode you decide to play in Rocket League, you are going to have to be sure that your controls are set up properly. Do you prefer a keyboard? How about a controller? These are two questions you must prioritize upon playing the game.
If you ask some friends, random players you queue up with, or even took a look at the professional games during the Rocket League Championship Series a couple of weeks ago, you will fairly quickly find out that the majority of players are using a controller.
As a controller player myself who has tried out both, it appears a little more simple to use either a Playstation or Xbox controller.
Rocket League Setting For Beginners
The default controls in Rocket League are pretty solid for beginners, so let us go ahead and familiarize ourselves with those first:
Accelerate: R2 / RT
Reverse: L2 / LT
Jump: X / A
Boost: Circle / B
Powerslide: Square / X
Air Roll: Square / X
Air Steer and Pitch: Left stick / Left stick
Ball Focus View: Triangle / Y
Rear View: R3 / Right stick
Scoreboard: L1 / LB
Voice chat: R1 / RB
The main controls that have an impact on your games are going to for sure be Boost, Powerslide, Jump, Air Roll, and Air Steer and Pitch.
Boost will have your vehicle do just what it says, turbo charges your car for a certain amount of time, based on how much boost you have to give you more speed.
Powerslide allows you to quickly alter the positioning of your vehicle on the ground by sliding left or right immediately while holding the button.
Jump will make your car jump into the air, which is especially important for those moments when the ball is in the air and you need to get to it before the opponents.
Air Roll is what allows you to move the vehicle while in the air, and Air Steer and Pitch with the left stick on controllers will give the user the ability to precisely change the positioning of the vehicle when airborne.
Another very important control is the Ball Focus View. Many beginner players might leave the camera view stuck on the ball. The reason why this is a mistake is because when you click the button again, it puts the camera directly in front of you.
So what does that do? Well when you are low on boost and need to go backwards to gain more, or wherever boost is available, being stuck on Ball View makes it far more challenging to accurately run over the boost gains. Be sure to actively switch between each view mode and you will be sure to improve your game.
The Rear View camera button might not be one that is used often, but it can also be helpful as well. Similar to how we just brought up going for boost gains, the opponents might have a full boost of their own. If you are heading towards a boost, occasionally check and hit the Rear View camera button to see if an opponent is coming in to try and take you out. If so, jump out of the way before they can demolish you so you are not forced to be out of the action for a few seconds.
Should Controls Be Changed?
The honest truth is that I would not recommend changing too many of the controls, however, there are absolutely some changes that can be made to optimize and free up buttons on your controller. For example, your right thumb is going to be responsible for Boost, Jump, Powerslide, Direct Ball Camera, and Air Roll.
That is quite a lot for one finger to do! Many times, it is possible to fat finger one of those buttons accidentally because your thumb will overlap and hit one of them.
So which fingers based on looking at the default control scheme seem to be open? Well, the Scoreboard button is L1 / LB so that leaves your left pointer finger available. The Scoreboard is not that important of a button because it is not crucial to the gameplay mechanics, so we should find a button that we will not use very often for that. I would say we can find one that the right thumb will press in order to bring up the scoreboard.
Voice chat by default is the R1 / RB button and is another button that typically might not be used. In general, in-game voice chat is not used very much and even still, players that are playing along with their buddies will most likely be in Discord or their own party chat if they are on a console. So this frees up another button that your right pointer finger can focus on.
Controller Settings To Change In Rocket League
Now that we have gone over how and why certain control changes should be made, let us go ahead and see how this looks. I would highly recommend making the following changes:
Boost: R1 / RB
Powerslide: L1 / LB
Air Roll: L1 / LB
Scoreboard: Square / X
Voice chat: Circle / B
Boost moved to R1 / RB gives your right pointer finger something to do regularly and again frees up buttons on the right side of the controller. Next, the reason why Powerslide and Air Roll should always be bound to the same button is that Powerslide only works when you are on the ground, and Air Roll only works when you are in the air.
These are switched from Circle / X to L1 / LB because as discussed earlier, your left pointer finger is available for a regularly used button and it just makes things a heck of a lot less chaotic.
The scoreboard can be switched to whatever button you can find, but for this instance, we put it as Square / X because it does not have to be pressed very often with your right thumb. The same thing goes with Voice chat being changed to Circle / B.
Controls that should be left alone:
Accelerate: R2 / RT
Reverse: L2 / LT
Jump: X / A
Air Steer and Pitch: Left stick / Left stick
Ball Focus View: Triangle / Y
Rear View: R3 / Right stick
In Summary
Rocket League has plenty of customizable features and it really comes down to what the user is comfortable with. In my opinion, it is important to space out the buttons to allow your dominant fingers to take control of buttons of importance, and I believe this control scheme successfully exemplifies that.
If some of these options do not feel right to you, experiment in the practice and testing centre so you can find out what works for you. However, I hope some of these changes and explanations will improve your gameplay so you can rank up and just have some more fun!
