I've been an avid Rocket League player since about a month into it's release. I can't say I'm amazingly skilled at the game, but I've definitely gotten my hours in. Because of my line of work, my budget has always been, let's say, a priority. I currently game on a 3-year old Alienware 15 that I originally got for my live music set, but nowadays I use it more for writing and gaming given the turn my career took.
With that said, I'm running an i5 4200-m @ 2.5 Ghz, 8 GB of ram, and a Geforce 750m graphics card. Now, I fully understand that these specs are nothing special, but it's certainly not a complete potato either. It's very disappointing that I can run most Rocket League maps on moderate graphics settings at 62 FPS, EXCEPT for...
Aquadome, Starbase Arc, and Wasteland.
Damnit, please Psyonix! Get these maps out of competitive. When me and my buds sit down for some ranked matches, we want to play regulation games. Look, I know none of us are making it to the World Finals anytime soon, but still if we are playing a ranked, competitive game, we expect to be playing by the same standards that those pros are. Did they happen to rotate in any of these maps during the Rocket League Finals? Absolutely not. Why? Because they have no place in competitive games!
When I queue up for a competitive match, graphics and cosmetics are the last things I'm looking for. I'm not looking to play underwater with intricate water physics in the background of my sub-par dribbles and sharks swimming above my meteocre aerial attempts. I'm not looking to be in space with lasers celebrating my lucky long shot. I'll be clear - all I'm looking for, is that 62 FPS.
Rocket League is an extremely fast-paced experience, and when my FPS drops to 40-50 on these extravagant environments, my gameplay suffers greatly. It's such a bummer to see that 'Aquadome' loading screen, and the whole crew let's out a synchronized sigh of disappointment knowing that they have a player performing at maybe 60-70% for the upcoming match.
Imagine getting to a basketball game and realizing they increased the hoop height to 15 ft. instead of 10. Getting to a football game and realizing you're playing on hard wood. These inconsistencies invalidate the results of competitive games.
My end point being, is competitive mode should be optimized to the best of the developers ability. These maps include unnecessary additions to graphics and environment that take away from the legitimacy of the competition. I totally understand and agree that these maps are awesome from a visual/developmental standpoint, but shouldn't we keep ranked matches a little more consistent? Especially with Rocket League becoming such an industry favorite in the eSports world, I think Psyonix needs to make that call to keep competitive gaming as regulation as possible.