How to start playing? | Controls Rocket League Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
The basics of Rocket League are really easy to learn and even a casual player can understand everything after merely a few minutes of playtime. Reaching a high skill level, useful in matches with other professional players and high difficulty bots, is something entirely different and requires a lot of hours spent on perfecting the basic moves and learning the more advanced maneuvers (they're covered later in the guide). Below is a list of things you should do after launching the game for the first time and during your first hours spent in Rocket League. Following these advice will help you out a lot and won't drive you away from the game after a streak of lost matches.
Your natural instinct may be telling you to go ahead and dive in the matches immediately after you've installed the game, but you shouldn't be doing that until you've familiarized yourself with all the basics and practised all of the basic moves. Your first order of business should be choosing the Training option from the main menu. Pick the Tutorial. There are two different training sessions in this mode. The Basic tutorial offers info on how to control the car, how to perform jumps and dodges, how to use the boost and how to rely on the Ball Cam. The Advanced tutorial will introduce you to a little more complex things like doing double jumps, performing side rolls and front flips and rocket flying using the car's boost. Don't worry that you won't be given a chance to fully test some of these moves, because that's what other lessons are for.
Once you've completed both tutorials you should take interest in three other training sessions found in the lower part of the screen. The Goalie training will allow you to become a goalkeeper and in this mode you score points by successfully defending the goal. The Striker training is a direct opposite of the goalie, because you're an attacker and you must score goals to earn points. The Aerial training is the most complex and difficult one, because it focuses on performing various aerial moves (like double jumps followed by a rocket flight). Try scoring a maximum number of points in the basic versions of all of those three trainings and at least a few points on their Pro levels. The highest difficulty setting for the training sessions is All-Star and you should leave it for later, because all of the lessons in it are very hard. They're reserved for skilled players wanting to improve their skills even more in performing the most difficult moves (you can go back to it once you feel like you've became a pro player yourself).
After you've completed at least some of the tutorials you can make the next step and that is to begin training the basic types of maneuvers. If you don't feel up for a bigger challenge, you can stay in the tutorial section of the menu and choose Free Play. This mode doesn't have any other cars and it also doesn't have rules or the time limit. You can stay as long as you want and test all of the moves you wanted. If you feel like you shouldn't wait any longer you can choose the Exhibition mode from the main menu (a single match). My recommendation is to start taking part in matches using 2v2 (two on two) or 3v3 (three on three) settings, because they offer the best chance to learn a lot in a short period of time. If you choose the 1v1 match you won't be able to test all of the moves and tactics (especially the ones that rely on team coordination) and a lot of the 4v4 matches tend to be chaotic because of the presence of eight cars on the field. So much chaos can be confusing and instead of learning you'll be wasting your time trying to figure out what's going on. As for the difficulty level of the bots, obviously you should start with the Rookie level. AI bots are very dumb and slow on the Rookie level. They're in fact so bad that instead on focusing only on winning you'll be able to do training in specific areas during watches, like for example only in scoring goals, only in hitting the ball properly or only in defending the goal line from (rare) shots from the opposite team. Once you have enough experience and got better at playing the game you should switch the AI bots to Pro skill level and/or go to the Season mode. This mode is more challenging, because in order to win the championship you must be consistent in your winnings.
Important - I wouldn't recommend spending too much time playing only with bots. They don't reflect exactly how most of the players behave on the field in the offensive and defensive situations and if you'll start taking certain habits you won't be acting the way you should while playing with the other gamers. A dozen or so Exhibition matches plus a complete Season should be more than enough to learn the basics of the game and to start thinking about going against other players (preferably online).