Rocket League has cross-platform parties now
Rocket League patch 1.58 brings Season 9 to a close, adds a new mutator, and introduces crossplay parties.
Rocket League Season 10 has begun. Today's update delivers competitive players their Season 9 rewards—some nice wheels for most—and gives everyone's rank a "soft reset." Win half of your placement matches and you'll be plopped somewhere near your old rank to start the new season.
More importantly, Patch 1.58 adds cross-platform parties, completing the final step in bringing PS4, Xbox, Switch, and PC players together—we'll no longer just matchmake with Psynetters, we can now play with them on purpose. Wild stuff.
I haven't tested it, but it works pretty simply. The update assigns every player a RocketID, which is a username followed by four numbers. You can find and change your RocketID in the new friends list, which is opened via the icon at the lower right side of the main menu. You don't need a RocketID to continue playing with Steam friends (that works like it always has), but if you have friends who play on other platforms, you can add them using their IDs to party up.
Also in this update, the Curveball mutator lets you bend it like someone who bends it well—can't think of a good example—by adding a curve to the ball's trajectory based on spin. The alternate modes have also been added to free play, so we can finally practice with a puck without having to run a modified exhibition match.
On the technical side, two new "input buffer" settings are meant to help compensate for lag:
- STS (Sim Time Scaling) - This allows the game server to instruct your client to very subtly speed up or slow down in order to maintain a smooth input stream.
- CSTS (Continuous Sim Time Scaling) - A more aggressive version of STS that uses a continuous feedback loop to determine game speed.
If those features don't help with connectivity issues, you can leave the input buffer option set to 'Legacy,' which is the default and changes nothing.
There are several smaller changes, too, as well as bug fixes. See the full list in the patch notes, and good luck in your Season 10 placement matches.
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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.