Rocket League was by a wide margin the most addictive sports game of 2015 – don't argue – and it might be in line for the same honour in 2016, after developer Psyonix confirmed a February release date for season two and dropped a ton of new details.
The biggest change is that the confusing Rank Points – which were awarded or subtracted for single wins and losses, yet often seemed to have no correlation to your Skill Rating based on overall play – are out. Instead, Skill Rating alone is used to determine your place in 12 online divisions. These are all new. Your first ten games are unranked, from which you're placed somewhere between Prospect I at the bottom and Champion at the summit.
For clarity purposes ranked play is now known as 'Competitive Matchmaking'. Skill data is carried over from season one, but all players still need to play ten placement matches once season two gets underway. Those results, combined with the transferred data from last season, determine initial division placement. From there, promotion and relegation have also changed: "You will be promoted into a division after your skill has risen consistently to the next division up," says Psyonix. The wording is odd, but I understand it to mean that once your Skill Rating is in line with the average of those in the division above, the game bumps you up a level.
Other changes include a hard cap on the number of players in the Champion bracket, and the removal of a numeric representation of your skill or rank at the match-end screen. Now only your name and current division icon appears.
Rocket League season two will be patched into the game on PC and PS4 in February. The game is also due to land on Xbox One in the same month.
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