Rocket League has lots of changeable settings. Beginners often find themselves lost while trying to understand and tweak some of these settings. In this post, I’ll explain all there is to know about three sub-categories of settings that I think are most important – camera, controls, and game performance.
When you start playing Rocket League, the 3 important settings to adjust are 1. Camera: Which affects what you see, 2. Controls: Which affects how you move your car 3. Gameplay & Performance: Which ensures a smooth and lag-free online gaming experience.
There are no optimum or so-called best settings in Rocket League. The best settings for you are those which make your gameplay experience comfortable and fun. The mistake that most new players make in copying the settings of pro-players.
While a lot of pro-players settings may be closer to the average common preference, it does not necessarily translate into better game performance for all players. This is why it is important to tinker and adjust the settings early on so you can find your optimum.
Camera Settings
Camera Shake
The first setting under the camera tab is camera shake which by default is turned off as it should be. I know camera shake gets a lot of flak, but I also agree that it’s a terrible, terrible setting to turn on because the jitter and the shaking can impact a player’s perception causing them to miss shots while playing the game. But keeping it off is just a personal preference. If you like it, feel free to keep it on.
Field of View
Field of view is how much of the field the player can see. So if you reduce the field of view to say 90 degrees, you will have a narrower view. And if you keep it to 110 degrees, which is the maximum, you’re going to have a wider view. Typically, players keep FOV to 110 degrees because it just shows you more of what’s going on.
As you get better in the game, you’ll want more information from moment to moment so you can make better decisions. Ideally, you want to see more of where your teammates are, where the opponents are, and more of what’s happening around the ball. So typically it is advisable to play with a higher FOV setting.
Distance
This is the setting that alters the distance between the camera and the car. Increasing this value increases the distance between the camera and your car. Decreasing the distance to the minimum setting, sort of puts the camera right on top of the car. There is no optimum here and this setting should purely be based on preference.
Height
This setting alters camera height which is the height at which the camera sits to the ground. A lot of breakout users like to play low. I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers that like to play on lower camera settings for height – for example musty. But that is just his preference.
I like the height to be a little high because I’m still learning and adjusting to meet the ball right after it has bounced. So it helps me view the white circle that the ball has on the ground when it’s in the air.
Angle
Angle is pretty straightforward. Once you tell rocket league how high (height) and how far behind (distance) you want the camera, this is the angle at which the camera sits. So when it’s at 0 the camera points straight ahead towards the dead center. The more negative the camera angle is, the lower down your camera will point.
These 3 settings: distance, height, and angle can be further tweaked and readjusted more to your liking after you have gained an initial understanding of the game and are comfortable with basic mechanics – for me, this was around the 50-60 hours gameplay mark.
Stiffness
Stiffness is something that I learned about really late. And for the first 100 hours, I played with my stiffness setting being much lower. To explain what stiffness is and what it does, imagine the camera is attached to a moving object that follows your car.
When your stiffness setting is low, this means the camera is less rigidly attached to that moving object that follows you. So in response to sudden changes in momentum, the camera takes a while to swing back into the position you want it to be.
When your stiffness is set to 1. The camera is rigidly attached to where you want it to be (distance, height). And in response to sudden changes in momentum, there is no swinging in and out or bobbing left and right.
The easiest way to explain this is to assume that having lower stiffness settings is like the camera being mounted on a spring and having higher stiffness settings is like the camera being mounted on a solid titanium pole. Now imagine how the spring and the pole will behave differently under conditions of changing momentum like sudden acceleration, sudden braking, dodging left or right, etc.
Swivel Speed
In case you are not aware, moving the right analog thumbstick on a controller helps you turn around and look at the field. The swivel speed setting decides how fast the camera pans around when you move the right analog stick. Right?
Transition Speed
When toggling in and out of ball cam, this is the speed at which the camera transitions from ball cam to car cam and vice versa.
Invert Swivel
The last setting under ‘camera’ is ‘invert swivel’. Checking “invert swivel” corrects the right analog stick swivel directions for top and bottom. While leaving it unchecked will swivel back when the right analog stick is pushed forward and swivel front when it is pulled back.
Camera Preset
Finally, I’ll quickly tell you about camera presets. Under camera presets, we have default, balanced, wide-angle, legacy, and custom. These are just preset combos of all of the settings and values which we went through. For instance, what you see in the screenshot above, the collective camera settings are my camera preset.
If a player is completely new to Rocket League they can start with something like balance preset or a wide-angle preset. The wide-angle camera preset is nearly identical to the common settings used by pro players. So if you’re keen on trying out the camera settings that pros use then you can start with the wide-angle preset and then tweak as you go.
Control Settings
View/Change Bindings
Under controls, the number one option is to view or change bindings. I’ve done an entire post on Rocket League key bindings. Under this setting, you can pretty much bind any control to any key whether you’re using a controller, or keyboard and mouse.
Every action can be bound to the keys you prefer: driving forward, backward, jumping, boosting, power sliding, air roll, rearview, scoreboard view, skipping replays, playlist selection, quick chat buttons from the D-pad, etc. Also, there are a couple of free play mechanics which were included in last year’s update like taking possession, starting dribble, passing ball, launching ball, defending shot, etc.
Steering Sensitivity
Steering sensitivity is just changing how sensitive you want your left analog stick to be when you steer the car on the ground towards the left, right, and all angles in between. High sensitivity makes the car turn more with even minute movements in the left analog stick. Generally, this too is something which is based on preference.
Aerial Sensitivity
Aerial Sensitivity is the same thing as steering sensitivity but for the movements of when the car is in the air.
Controller Deadzone
First of all, a deadzone is a setting that lets you change how responsive your analog input is going to be. Having understood that, let’s look at what controller deadzone does.
When you alter the controller deadzone, the game will only register a movement on your stick once it has moved past the deadzone that you’ve set. The lower your deadzone setting is the more responsive your analog stick will be. And the higher the dead zone setting is, the less responsive the analog stick will be.
Dodge Deadzone
The Dodge Deadzone is a setting that I think is unique to Rocket League.
The whole purpose of this setting is for the game to understand if at all you were trying to dodge in a particular direction or was it a mistake. For instance, setting the dodge deadzone to a value of .70 means that to dodge in a direction, you need to pull the analog stick at least 70% of the way or more.
A high directional dodge value reduces the chances for accidental dodges but can also cause you to not dodge in a direction when you wanted to. A low directional dodge value may increase your chances of accidental dodges but also makes it easier to pull off directional dodges.
I lowered this to 50% when I was new to the game. As I got more comfortable, I began increasing the value little by little and feel comfortable with it being at 60% for now. I find that 60-70% feels right for me for when I want to play shots such as single jumping and saving my dodge or taking air roll shots. You may want to adjust this and see what suits you.
Controller Vibration
Controller vibration is for players to be able to turn controller vibration on or off. I keep this off since I find that it interferes with precision with which I’m able to take shots. I play most video games with controller vibration off. So again, this is up to personal preference.
Vibration Intensity
Vibration intensity is a setting for players who prefer playing with controller vibration. It lets you alter the intensity of how strong or weak the controller vibrates in response to events in the game.
Ball Camera Mode
There are two options under ball camera mode – toggle and hold. When you select toggle, it lets you toggle in and out of ball cam when you press the toggle camera button.
When you select hold – this one’s a weird setting. What this does is that when you select hold, it makes you play by default in the car camera mode. And if you press the toggle camera button, which is Y on most controllers, it temporarily toggles to ball cam for the time that you hold the button. And when you let go of the button, it changes back to car cam.
Gameplay & Performance Settings
Okay, so the final category of settings in this post is gameplay and performance, which is not a specific tab in the Rocket League settings but a cocktail of settings across various tabs, which I think deserve not worthy mentions because they impact how your gaming experience is going to be.
Cross-platform Play
So the first subsection here is gameplay. In settings, under gameplay tab, you have cross-platform play. Leaving this checked enabled is going to match you up with people who may be on platforms, other than the platform that you are playing on. For example, if you are on Xbox One, you’ll be able to play games with people who are on PS4, PS5, PC, Nintendo Switch, etc. apart from the Xbox Live Network.
I think this is a good setting to turn on because it helps you find a lot more games a lot more people to play with than you would with the setting turned off.
Nameplate Scale
The next setting of importance is ‘nameplate scale’ that can be found in the interface tab. This is mainly for people that play on smaller displays like 13-inch and 15-inch laptop screens and who don’t have a widescreen gaming monitor or a large TV.
Playing well comes down to making better predictions. A lot of times when you are rotating out of play to go back, collect the big boost, and return, you need to be able to see what’s happening clearly at a distance.
Nameplate scale lets you adjust how big or small a player’s nameplate appears on the screen. And from a distance on smaller screens, this makes things easier and helps you figure out who’s doing what so you can make better decisions.
Connection Quality Indicators
This is also found under the interface tab. I would suggest keeping connection quality indicator on because it lets you know on the right side of your screen in big blinking icons when your game is suddenly experiencing lag or packet data loss.
This is crucial because if your latency is high, you can start playing a more passive role in the game since lag might affect your performance if you played actively.
Rocket League imposes penalties for abandoning games. Instead of leaving your team hanging by abandoning the game, you can sometimes choose to always rotate back to be the last man.
Stay on your side of the field and try predicting early ball movements towards your side and clear them back to keep the play on the opponents’ side. You can start supporting your team in that way even if there is lag or poor connection quality.
However, please do not continue playing games on that server because that would just make the experience for everyone else bad.
Rocket League has 5 connection quality indicators:
- Disconnected: You have been disconnected from the servers
- Server Health: When the server is experiencing issues
- Packet Loss: Data being transferred between you and the server is lost
- Latency Variance: When your ping isn’t steady
- High Latency: Commonly known as “lag,”. Usually indicated by a high ping to the server
Video Settings
Now onto settings under the video tab.
The only effect I leave turned on is “transparent goalposts”. This makes the solid structures around the goalpost and the arena walls transparent so you can see through them. This is crucial especially when you are defending in-goal for obvious reasons.
Apart from that, I like to keep all effects off. And effect intensity to low. This is just preference, but it also helps with performance.
To me it doesn’t matter if you’re playing on previous generation console or a current-generation console or on an older laptop/pc or a brand new gaming pc or if you play at 30 FPS, 60 FPS or 120 FPS.
I always recommend turning all effects off because honestly, it doesn’t make much of a difference in experience. On the contrary, it always helps with performance for older systems.
Finally, I’d like to talk about “Vertical Sync”. I play on console and I have it turned off. I do find that it makes a small but noticeable difference in input lag. But lots of people also experience screen tearing, jerkiness, and random stuttering when vertical sync is off. Note that this mainly happens on non-gaming computers i.e. those with onboard graphics.
You should try to experiment with it on your device. Turn vertical sync off and play a few games. If it doesn’t break anything leave it off for a week and see if your performance is better, worse, or the same.
Audio Settings
Everything under the Audio tab for settings is also subject to preference. I’d just like to quickly mention three settings that I have turned off (or down) for a distraction free experience. Feel free to play around with these and keep what you like.
Ambient: 0%
Crowd: 0%
Player Anthems: Off
Chat Settings
The “text chat settings” drop down lets you enable selective chat channels like team only, friends only, quick chat only, etc., or completely disable all chat.
And the “quick chat settings” lets you view/change quick chat key binds that work through the D-pad.
Arena Settings
When you search for a game, whether it’s casual or competitive, under where it shows you playlist population – good, great, etc. There are two settings one is regions and the other is arenas.
I am not sure if the arenas setting is still functional. A lot of players have been complaining that it doesn’t work. What setting arena preferences does is if you like or dislike arenas then that influences your chances of finding games in those arenas.
Region Settings
Region settings are something that I think is important to talk about.
It is advisable to select regions that are geographically closer to the region you are in or just a few degrees of latitude adjacent to your region. Because this affects your ping.
A lot of beginners like to play with all regions selected, this is not advisable because lag ruins everyone’s game experience. Also, a lot of time players from EU like to test their skills against players from North America so they play US EAST, which is ok but these games typically have pings of over 100ms.
Personally I think its ok to play with higher pings up to even 200 in casual games, but I prefer playing regions close to home for competitive play / ranked games etc.
Also selecting the recommended option here sometimes puts you in games across continents. I understand that some regions may not have as many players as other regions so lots of people play on recommended regions. If that’s the case with you, then leave it on. If not, it is better to select specific regions that you know do not cause high latency for you.
