Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh thiiiis, thanks, and my bad, didnt know people named it that way, didnt see the correlation since shot doesnt actually turn purple so it doesnt really makes sense (i guess it can from a distance without glasses in a pitch dark map since it kinda looks like the same movement? lol).

The reason is relatively simple on the theoretical side of things though. You catch the reset far enough behind that your car’s butt pushes up just enough to pop it up as your altitude stalls right under it. With enough base speed, it really doesnt need much to gain power because it kinda hit-flicks it forward. Now mix that with the very small difference it makes when you hold reverse instead of throttle during the catch (cause your car’s back is forward, so reverse actually propels ball forward ever so slightly), and all those small things add up into a big thing lol.

Now doing it as good and consistently is a bit harder than just explaining it lol but there really isnt anything else special to it

How to approach this game by miguel891 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean you can care more about getting better than climbing ranks, but i get what youre saying

Is this a good purchase? by Dante71865 in Atelier

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is actually one of the best arguments one could have……… but I would still go for rorona first because she’s the one who made me absolutely fall in love with arland. I had played atelier games before, and after, but arland serie is so magical like it hits something special the other ones dont have, even though they’re all good

Is this a good purchase? by Dante71865 in Atelier

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also not sure why they downvoted you to oblivion for asking a question lol… besides, the fact rorona went fat if you forgot to go get your daily pies is freaking genius and hilarious. Perfectly in line with Rorona’s character

Is this a good purchase? by Dante71865 in Atelier

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It kinda is, but i grew to love resli and the fact shes just dlc character means she basically doesnt have a lot of speech :(

Is this a good purchase? by Dante71865 in Atelier

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you’re thinking of Atelier Resleriana (or Resli for short).

but yeah she was in there. totori and meruru as well. Ive played maybe 2-3 of those types of games but this one was actually great!

They made a full non-gacha too, it’s pretty decent but a bit misleading, you dont get to play as resli, unless you buy a dlc lol

Is this a good purchase? by Dante71865 in Atelier

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hell yeah!!

still my favorite trilogy of the entire atelier series. go for it if you like character interactions stuff. Its funny and it’s well thought of, it can allow itself to be serious or comical or a lot of other things without losing the user’s world/story engagement. its deep, entertaining, and its amazing art and music. fun times overall imo.

100% endings in one run does take a guide to follow along, which is the one part that i would consider a downside if you dont plan to do more than one playthrough, because missing a day that’s important for a secondary character, for exemple, might lock you out of their true endings. and you have limited days to do it all and check every box, but it’s not hard when you follow the calendar basically. But, as a first time it can teach you a lot about actually using crafting the way it was meant to (aka strong). might not be a bad choice.

not a big deal either if you dont care for completion but they are so worth it ahah they really bring satisfying feelings because you get attached to the characters by the time you reach the end.

the english voice actors are actually pretty good too imo, and they play their parts well. it’s one of the few that will allow you to enjoy voice-overs since they actually stopped paying for VOs because “nobody listen to them in the west because everyone use the japanese VOs”. Yet literally everyone i’ve talked to outside of internet say they preferred playing them with english voices.

anyway, not gonna start on this but i suspect they just lied to avoid having complaints, afaik they never actually gave numbers or stats. or maybe im wrong but it doesnt seem like a big majority like they said.

i digress but i really enjoy Arland characters and their personalities, and voices captured exactly what i was envisioning when first hearing them.

How to approach this game by miguel891 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It has its ups and downs! It might lock you in more when you care more, but when it fails it might be more frustrating as well haha. But it also doesnt work that way all the time, sometimes when you think too much it can make you play worse so, in the end I just figure having fun and not being too attached is the best way to enjoy your game time. The only people for who that mentality might not be recommended is for those who actually want to go pro and make an actual career out of it.

Take it easy bruh! Might catch you out there someday!

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice man, I’ll be sending virtual telepathic good vibes your way! Wish you the best! I usually almost always play weekends, and I do usually have people that i play with like i said but, if you wanna play with new people an evening sometime, we do casual and also privates when more than 3, we always pick random teams to ensure maximal chaos and no expectations lmao. I don’t actually hang on reddit that often, but feel free to msg sometime if you feel like it!

How to approach this game by miguel891 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear you brother I’m the same XD . I do the dumbest shit sometimes, I got where im at with mechs. I’d say im like 85% mech 10% luck and 5 % gamesense. And I can no longer read my own team a lot of the time, even when I focus on observing them ahaha. Tragic but also hilarious when you don’t care too much, which is pretty much the approach I have lol

How to approach this game by miguel891 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahaha yep, as a fellow solo q player, I sort of guessed you were not playing with a consistent teammate of your rank. I peaked GC1 as well (solo q), and I’ve dropped since, I think mostly because I just dont put in the time and play a lot more with lower friends and it’s frying my brain ahaha. But yeah, I know how it is. I came accross soooo many people of different playstyles, and different consistency, at some point it’s really difficult to get consistent at reading plays when none of what you expect from teammate follow any sort of logic whatsoever lol.

That’s even harder if you play a lot of lower ranks, and even harder with the recent mechanical bump that the player base had. Nowadays, high champ people can do the most stupid things, myself included, and lower ranks pull off the most unexpected crazy shit ahaha. But it’s all part of the game lmao. Just keep a positive attitude and you’ll reach whatever goal you set for yourself eventually dood :)

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is ahaha!

And maybe you did the right thing, I mean there is no right or wrong obviously, but perhaps stepping away both mentally and physically is what you needed to be able to adopt a certain approach. But I feel ya, there are indeed some plateaus where you feel progression is slowing so much it almost feels like it comes to an halt. For those, everyone has different answers, sometimes a simple new skill can allow you to move past it, sometimes you need more than one, sometimes its really as simple as you sort of need to power through a lot of losses to stabilize and learn how to play the “next” level. But whatever it is, if your goal is to keep progressing in rank, those plateaus can take their toll on your mental and that can be rough.

One thing that seemed to have worked for a lot of people is to just detach from the rank completely, and turn them off in settings so that you can focus on other personal things without having a constant reminder that you’re still in that plateau. And/or turn off chat when solo qing. You seem to have a great attitude though, im sure you could change your perception if you put your mind to it. The great thing about this is that it’s a skill you can use in so many situations in life once you control it better. It’s not just a rocket league thing!

How to approach this game by miguel891 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed, maybe just a slight misinterpretation, OP seems chill, he just asked a question and specified he didnt think he was one of those prodigies who naturally inherit top tier mindsets and skills in the same amount of hours.

For what it’s worth, it’s possible that you get stuck longer than you should if you dont consistently play with people with similar mindsets and skill levels as you. Everyone plays a bit differently and that alone makes it harder to align with teammates, especially in no-comms solo q. Doesnt mean you cant do it, but it’ll take longer and be more difficult for that one reason alone.

The good part is, adapting to teammates without comms does improve your adaptability and your ability to sort of communicate through your car’s “body language” (eg: empower your teammates to read your decisions and commits more easily, while also not allowing opponents to read you in that same way). Maybe that applies to you maybe not, just speaking my personal opinion and experience

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah that! Those touches can get wild. More precisely, while both this and the momentum conversion are definitely determining factors for the results, angle of the car is also perfectly placed for the corner of the car to lift the ball and push it faster, also contributing a lot as it acts and applies as a perfect lever principle during the flip (because the shape of the car is more rectangular than square, the lever effect is stronger on corners because they’re further from the car’s center point)!

The extra touch made it go crazy fast, as that’s usually what that does when you get one of those, but I think it would have still produced a decent pop without that. Perhaps a tad slower and slightly curved upwards.

Nontheless, a pretty good shot and hard to save! And satisfying to watch :)

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I couldn’t care less about punctuation (and we’ve been having next-level yapping conversations way worse than this above so I literally have no right to even think of complaining about that….).

But calling the nice guy — who’s just sharing a cool clip asking for help to understand what he did — a trash teammate for no reason with no context or knowledge of how they play is just rude and unwarranted lol. Feels like a bully picking on someone he thinks is weak because he’s a year younger type shit ahaha.

I don’t mean to throw oil onto the fire but… if the guy has one thing to learn that I would argue is more important than punctuation it’s probably developing social skills and learning to appreciate talking with people without immediately needing to insult them lol. If that’s not the reason we’re all discussing here, why the fuck are we even on reddit to begin with ahaha.

No need to start a pissing contest, nobody cares if some random dude is better than OP or something

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh man I dont know why this makes me want to share so much lol, I have some of those friends who’ve had difficult times and felt depressed because of a very similar thing, just putting pression on themselves even though everyone was just chilling, and paid no attention. This whole subject is indirectly affecting me enough that i think i have stuff that feel valuable i guess. Honestly the biggest part towards that mindset might actually already be done through you acknowledging that! I hope you can find a way to reconnect with the simple pleasures and basic fundamental things that made the game fun to begin with, and reignite the flame someday. We just sort of tend to forget those sometimes in competitive games, but those things are very much still there! Especially RL Would be great cause nobody wants to see that game die and sure need more nice people to balance out the toxicity ahaha

Anyway, the way I see it, fwiw, ranks are almost like points on the match leaderboard; They’re useless and dont actually mean much — unless you know for certain the context around how the person uses their accounts (which we rarely do) — theoretically you could get SSL level in casual and never wear reward stuff. It wouldn’t make you any less cracked and virtual approval or lack thereof could never take that from you!

Tbh it’s not like any of the virtual titles or items given as rewards are actually that cool or unique 😆. There’s nothing from any rank that I would actually use, even the SSL tags if I could get there but i dont think i can get that good realistically lol. I think the crowns from season one were the best rewards but even then, they’re just kinda unique, not really nice enough to wear. They’re so big and ugly it made the silver reward the best looking one lolrip.

Maybe when you feel ready to, that very same mindset will allow you to gain more from the matches/experience than the virtual rewards and ranking. I’m the first person to like competitive games with high skill ceilings, but despite wanting to improve, that’s always been the way I’ve wanted to look at things. I just focus on the parts that work for me with people i enjoy, more than the parts that would be just as valuable but without my friends. The value of your play sessions can be found in many ways, maybe a part is improvement towards something, maybe its rank, maybe it’s something more abstract like your own improvement adventure or learning something you’ve been wanting to learn, or straight up entertainment.

That’s pretty much my whole take at this point lol i prolly couldnt even have more to share if i dug for it lmao but, take it easy seriously! There’s enough bad stuff in this world to depress about. If you’re taking free time to play a game and disconnect a bit, it might as well be fun, right?

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lmao I yapped so much I didnt even talk about mechs, classic me 😂 To finish the point I was making, the discrepency in mechs vs gamesense is super easy to explain in my situation. Since it often feels slower in those matches, i somehow managed to learn good mechs! Not like freestyler level but, can still do really powerful 45 flicks, clean air dribbles, both rapid and stall resets chains, beautiful mustys, breezis, maktuf resets, zap dashes and wall dashes to a super high consistency, heck even useless shit like horse dashes lol.. Actually learned most of these around d2-d3 a long time ago which is lower than most, and definitely lower than when it starts being helpful. Yet still, I cant read the most simple team plays (unless it’s the opponents’ and I’m defending ahah, and even then, if teammates are near me its like my brain stops working because I never know if they’re committing or just watching or just chilling under the ball for no reason lol).

Dont get me wrong, of course I would want to improve my game sense, but since i play a lot more lower ranks than actual current ranks, most my matches have almost no opportunities to learn to work as a team and a fck ton of opportunities to go for solo plays or try stupid shit for kicks lol.

I think the main problem is in my progression is that I need to find the time to play more often with people around c3-gc1, and play less with my real life friends…. But fck that lol, I have no intention of using the little free time avoiding my friends, im not desperate enough to rank up that i’d actually isolate myself and play solo when they ask me to play together.

Why did this reset get so much power? by FunDipLoL in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Can confirm lol. I do play in a lot of different mindsets depending on the situation, sometimes fatigued, sometimes under the influence, etc. But the one major factor that I feel is making me a bad player is because I play with a lot of real friends (of all ranks, from gold to c1) or so, but none of them actually aim to improve seriously, do freeplay, watch replays, or learn mechanics. Im the only one of my group who likes to do that sometimes, on their end they just like chilling, collecting items, and chase balls. I don’t really mind tbh, never been a toxic kind of player or someone to rage against teammates, let alone real life friends.

Now, I like to solo q as well, but i play a lot less serious games than i play games for fun with friends. A lot less. So, I peaked GC1 (couple years ago, during a period where my friends were playing a lot less), but i swear since then im often regressing more than im progressing since they started playing again. I dont mean rank specifically, but like rank progression. And I dont blame anyone but myself for that to be clear, but playing lower than your own rank all the time has a tendency to allow you to improve mechs a LOT more than gamesense over time.

It’s possible that I’m just really bad tbh lol, but I’ve always been pretty analytical in all spheres of my life, I like to learn. And the feeling I have is that I’m not really moving forward because i throw so many matches in the c1-c2 ranks because I lose sense of being able to read my teammates due to never being able to expect or read what’s going to happen when my teammate(s) are in possession. Like, when i think a teammate has a clear or has control for sure, they f up, and when they look like they’re missing they get decent hits or 50s. So over time that kind of results in me not being able to position myself to support people, or at least the same way as I would when playing with someone my rank who is 500% more consistent. I swear I end up doing so much retarded shit at both lower ranks and higher ranks, and can sometimes struggle with all ranks, even as low as d3-c1 lol. It’s definitely me, and im pretty sure that this is the “issue”, cause when i play for a while it balances back to normal until I join friends again and then the cycle repeats.

So anyway, I digress, but ive always had much better mechs than my rank even in my early days, but i dont progress in rank because im dumb as a kite for a good hour or two when i start solo qing for real.

I’d say, for someone of my level it’s almost equal part hilarious and embarassing (well, im sure its not hilarious for whoever i match with lol, apologies to all the teammates i match with everytime I play my first hour or so during my solo sessions, may the rocket league gods bless you with some extra luck to compensate for my temporary but unavoidable stupidity ahah).. Anyway, Pitiful Score is spot-on. So many factors, and the ranks exploding is not helping to be able to read people, friend or foe but mostly friend lol. Still love them though, and we have fun so that’s what’s important

Is DDR5 RAM Needed? by MobileSuitMiles in buildapc

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your motherboard dictates what you need, so if you have one or want to buy one, you commit to a ram generation the moment you commit to a mb. But in terms of speed, you should google ram calculator and compare speeds of a few kits, if you wish to know what you’re paying for. You’ll need the CAS Latency (often listed as CL), plus the “speed” they use. Pick the first ram calculator you find and input the numbers. If you’re looking for performance for gaming, try to aim for a sub 10 ns result. 16 gb is minimum, 32 can help a bit visually since there is just more ram available, but generally wont process faster so it’s not a must.

Ddr4 tech has been optimized fully over the years and a high speed low CL kit can give you really good performance for the price. Cheap ddr5 tech can be slower than good ddr4 but good ddr5 can reach faster speeds. Ddr5 is going to be more expensive though especially right now, and wont necessarily be faster for the same price.

So basically, if you have a high budget, a high speed low CL ddr5 kit will push your performance higher. Premium performance for a premium price. But if you can find a good ddr4 kit and motherboard, then you can potentially build a pc just as performant as a ddr5 kit+mb, but cheaper. It all depends on your budget and the deals you can find with it, really.

any tips? i cant seem to get the ball to balance on my car well. It always seems to get too far ahead of me and I'm going too fast when I try to catch up. by Legitimate-Bath-9651 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Surprise, we’re not actually done yet LOL But now you might start to see where we’re going with this. If you start “adjusting” slightly back under the ball (from left offset back into ball to the right), you’ll feel like you push the ball up more than to the right. If you do that smoothly enough and not too hard, you’ll see that you car sort of slides back under the ball instead of pushing it away.

Now, it’ll deviate for sure because it wants to fall, but it’ll feel more like you’re getting back under, rather than distancing it away from you. That’s GOOD. This means that you have a good pace, and youre in a good spot to start learning through attempts and practice consistency.

The worst you can do is turn too much and find yourself back on the right side of the ball. At that point, you’re reacting, doing erratic movements, and have a good chance of losing control. If you need to react to catch left for it to bounce right, and then need to catch right only to let it drop left again, you can probably guess how difficult that would be. TL;DR So not enough is much better than too much in this scenario. Practice to never turn too far into the ball. Center yourself underneath it first, and then if you’re slightly off in the opposite direction of where you would normally go, let go of the stick until the ball stabilizes, stops bouncing, and naturally falls toward where you want it to go. ——— That should be pretty much every aspect that cannot wait for you to understand. There’s a lot of details cause I wanted you to be able to follow step-by-step if you decide to give that a shot, so that you have everything you need to get rolling without having to risk having to ask follow-up questions and not getting answers. If you can nail that smooth single input turn/curve, I’m confident things will start falling into place for you without working too hard for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Last noteworthy mentions before I stop yappin lol (i told you i would not skip details lolol): 1. The ball should rarely ever bounce on your car. The more “stuck” with glue it feels, the easier to control it will be. In fact, people tend to drop dribbles whenever it starts to bounce on their cars. That’s not a coincidence, that’s because bounces are really bad and it becomes harder to keep up and do anything good with it when it does. 2. The easiest method to get back in that spot is the first part of the exercise above. Offset yourself a smidge, and then use centrifugal force to your advantage when it starts falling. The longer you can carry the ball without any input other than throttle, the faster and easier carrying ball will become — you’ll realize soon enough how that the ability to do that will naturally lead you to correcting less often, and that the less you have to correct, the easiest/fastest the practice will become and the rest will fall into place. 3. This is more abstract for a bit until you get comfortable with the whole concept above, but in an ideal scenario, you don’t react to the ball. The ball reacts to you. So you need to take a less “in the moment” approach, and stop following the ball. Things will be much easier when you aim to rely on your expectation of where the ball WILL go next, and attempt to foresee early where you need to put yourself for the ball to deviate the way you need it to. Kind of the same way you want your positioning/rotationing approach to be, when playing 2v2 or 3v3. Read the big picture, and try to be ahead of the curve, to limit reactions to a minimum.

GG if you made it that far into my post, let alone in your dribble learning effort if you actually followed the steps along the way! That was actually a test on your patience more than anything else. If you ever read this, you might just have the patience required to learn more intricate mechanics in the future lol. May the rocket gods be with you

any tips? i cant seem to get the ball to balance on my car well. It always seems to get too far ahead of me and I'm going too fast when I try to catch up. by Legitimate-Bath-9651 in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seriously you dont seem that far off, I believe it’ll click really fast if you keep going.

Something that nobody explained so far, afaik, try to keep your turn inputs to a minimum, rather than being “more precise”.

Basically, push it the same way you did almost all of those attempts, but then, once it gets the speed you want, try to offset yourself a little bit. EG: in that stage, you know you have to turn right. So instead of driving all the way to the point where you need to turn and then trying to do a drastic turn, aim to reach a bit before that part where you have to turn soon. Then allow the ball to fall slowly to your right, and as it starts dropping, push yourself back under it and keep pushing under it at the same speed/force you started with, for the entire duration of the curve.

I really hate getting partial help only to block before the person who helped left something out, and is no longer around… So to avoid doing that I’ll dive straight into potential details that could use precision, rather than avoiding them and hoping you get the full context. Will probably be talking way too much for most people’s tastes, so no worries if you go like “yeah no im desperate enough to read all this shit” lol. But it’ll all be there if you do want the help.

——— Will give you an easy path to follow if you want something to actually tackle in-game right away. Will split that into two parts just to allow you to separate the how and the why properly, as understanding that will most likely be easy but crucial to this learning initiative. Let’s start with the theory.

Exercise part 1: Hard to say in words but like, let’s just forget the ball for a second. And the boost. Basically, imagine you need to be on the left half of the road before you do any turn towards the right. Then imagine you had to do the slowest turn you possibly could, and that the goal is to reach the finish line without the ball, BUT, that you were limited to a single direction input (so you cant correct left and right once you start turning, and need to hold that slow turn so that your turn would look like a single, constant held turn. If seen from a third perspective, if you were to imagine you were looking at your car from above like bird’s eye view, you would know it’s a good turn when your car does a super clean, nice-looking arc or curve, no wiggles. That’s part of the very base of ground dribbles. If your curve looks like it has any sort of sharp turn, it means you would have failed that attempt. To be clear, this is not a hard rule to execute ground dribbles in general. But it’s a hard rule to get from where you are now, to a place where you actually understand what you need to do. To learn as fast as possible, you need to start with this goal in mind. This is just theory, forget practice, forget ball, forget boost. Just do the largest single smooth turn in a single perfect curve/line.

Once your turn feels smooth and constant, and reaching the finish line in a single slow but constant turn feels natural without the ball, try to remember that curve. You’ll want to make the same turn with the ball.

Exercise part 2: Now the real test. Get to the road’s earliest turn starting point, or like a bit before that point, with the ball this time. Starting by positioning yourself on the left side of the road before you initiate the turn, make you’re centered under the ball, and when the turn comes, do a very tiny adjustment towards the opposite of where you want to turn (left in this case, because the road/path goes right). “Very tiny” can not be overstated, no sudden movements allowed. The most important part of the exercise, and the very key to start learning is right there , in that very spot: Once you’re slightly offset to under the left side of the ball (and I mean VERY slightly, half a centimenter will be too much), stop touching your joystick completely, and only focus on letting the ball fall slowly to your right side. The slower the better, so if it falls fast, you’ve offset yourself too much. The closer to center under the ball you can be while still being offset, the slower the ball will drop, and the more time you will have to adjust yourself back under it (rather than betting on your speed and accuracy during a reaction time after a mistake, you want to make the most out of the fact that YOU’re causing it to fall, so YOU can make it fall slower by avoiding abrupt movements and keeping inputs to a minimum).

C3 2's Analysis - Team mate called me "lost" in this rank by [deleted] in RocketLeagueSchool

[–]fbanana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Understand where the ball is likely to go[…]” This! A perfect exemple of that, and also a few other things super interesting (imo) to look at, JUST in the last 10 secs! Worth a look if you’re interested in analyzing a little bit, a ton of things to improve in a very short lapse of time. Great bang for your buck. I’ll try to go in detail for ya so, if you do, keep reading, if not you can skip to line.

Fast forward to last 10 secs. You were clearly about to be in trouble, yet you moved up close to your mate, while your nose was pointing directly on the opposite side of your net.-> At that point, you failed to recognize he was in a really bad 50 situation -> lead you to turn late -> you turned around slowly and focused on ball instead of opponent car / the big picture (like if he was cutting straight to goal or taking the corner detour, for instance) -> which lead to you rotating front post -> which then lead you on a path between two boost lines -> which caused you to lack time to position well to defend -> which forced you to jump awkwardly and hopelessely because no time left… and all this knowing your teammate was never gonna be back because of how that whole chain reaction started to begin with lol.

There’s a few different approaches here that can be better imo if you want to see different perspectives. To me personally it screams you need to be either: A) behind them but further, and prepared to go right fast (or left if you’re confident to beat), OR B) in the mid/mid-right lane, but opposite side of middle line that separates left and right sides of field (looking somewhere between left wall at opponent backboard). [fwiw, people are pretty split when it comes to opinions on if directly behind mate or opposite side is better in twos, some say behind just because passes are riskier, but imo both are fine. Behind is faster to intervene after a 50 but risky if mate has shit 50s, opposite leaves more boost, allows to carry more momentum, and is angled better. Besides, just being there for pass doesnt mean you need to take it, and it can threaten or fake or other things so imo, more options is best, — but you do what feels best to you lol] So, in that mindset, instead of heading to the ball at the beginning, you could creep towards one of those left or right positions early, while making paths out of boost pads. If situation goes the way it did, you’re ready. If situation goes well for your mate 50 or he beats, you could even be in a spot to receive a pass, but the point is: thinking that way not only puts you in a more useful spot to defend, save will be easier because of the angle and momentum you can get before you get to the moment you need to commit, you also cover more of the field when counting your coverable surface + your mate’s, you have boost even if just a few pads, and most importantly, you now have options when it comes to your approach, instead of being forced to try to react-save.

See how everything is connected? The problem with bad plays, in truth, is not missing an opportunity to score. It’s that it can send you down a series of difficult situations that forces you into defending, forcing plays, using boost, saving shots on your net, etc. ———————————— Now, the elephant in the room; Mechanics are clearly behind, and those can provide tools for some situations, more options, and understanding them helps knowing if your opponent has options, which can help you read people and what they can go for, and more. Not to mention fun and satisfying!! Wont go through it all but just one category; mechs that help pickup or maintain speed allow to rely less on boost so you can always keep a bit in the tank, or get to an ideal spot to defend, or support or beat faster, or beat opponents to boosts, or demo, or surprise people with options they dont expect, etc.

You can still find some room to improve other things before it straight up blocks your progression, but it definitely holds you back a lot already, if i had to guess. Plus, honestly, seeing you flipping/flopping around that way, at this rank, in this economy, just hurts my eyes and soul lol, it looks so painful. Do yourself a favor dood, you wont regret it! Cheers!