Rocket League is an incredibly simple and historically unchanging game—you can drive, boost, and jump. That’s basically all you need. Though I’ve never heard of a new game mechanic being added, I somehow hear about new techniques being discovered all the time. They’re posted all over the internet and there’s a highly positive culture around it. I think the creators at Psyonix have ingrained a few mechanics that encouraged this joy of innovating technical skills.
The most salient mechanic is the training range. Psyonix has armed their players with a lot more customizations and features than other games (like Overwatch). You can completely control the position and motion of the ball and your car, pinning actions to easy keyboard shortcuts. The result is a seamless method of essentially “grinding” tricks. This is how people started air dribbling, and eventually discovered the flip reset. They provide lots of training exercises to test your skills and improve your skills quickly. It feels like the game is working with you to make you better.
Another mechanic that makes players so willing to improve the technical scene is a friendly competition between teammates. In duos, you can see how many “points” every player has (calculation from goals, assists, saves, etc.). This competition can grow toxic sometimes if the points are very disproportionate, but for my friends and I, we feel pushed to improve our own skills and feel very inclined to give advice to teammates. This is because I can see their score getting better as we coordinate better, or I can feel a friendly competition to get my score as high as theirs. This oftentimes demands learning more skills like dribbling or pinch shots.
