Rocket League was initially released in 2015 and, it had little to no issues gaining instant popularity at launch. Only one year later, rocket league got its very own esports tournament series. This tournament series was called the Rocket League Championship Series, which helped the game gain even more popularity in the esports scene.

In September 2020, the game went free to play and, the game saw a massive boost in the player count at this time. According to steam charts, rocket league saw its peek live player count in September 2020 with a total of 146,902 concurrent players.

It is no doubt that rocket league is a popular game and, its massive esports scene tells us that it is very competitive. However, the game still has its fair share of optimization issues, with the most prominent issues being network issues and lag. A simple google search would present you with thousands of people complaining about rocket league lag.

Today, we will take a deep dive into the world of rocket league lag and discuss every bit of information regarding it, ranging from what causes it to how someone can get rid of it.

What is Rocket League Lag

If you live with someone who plays rocket league or any game for that matter, you will have most likely once in your lifetime heard the raging scream consisting of one word, "LAG." If you are a gamer, you can relate to this experience. You also probably understand how frustrating it can be, especially in a competitive environment.

Lag refers to the time delay that takes the information provided by a player, in terms of a mouse movement or a keyboard stroke, to reach the game server and then back to your computer, displaying the appropriate change on your screen. Have you ever pressed "W" on your keyboard and felt a slight delay between you pressing the key and when the car started moving? That's lag.

Kickoff Lag

The most common type of lag that plagues rocket league players is kick-off lag. Players have reported ping spikes of up to 200 and even more in some cases on kick-off. It occurs despite having decent internet with an average and constant ping of around 20 - 30.

Kick-off lag causes the player to have a delayed response while trying to reach the ball and in most cases not even reaching the ball.

Rocket League Rubber Banding

Rubberbanding is one of the most frustrating types of lag. This type of lag is quite common and is not limited to rocket league. Rubberbanding refers to when your character, or in this case the car, starts jittering and jumping back to where it was a second ago. In other words, if you moved two feet in the forward direction, you will move one foot backward after every second. You can see how this could have a massive reduction in playability during a match.

What Causes Rocket League Lag

To fix lag, it is first important to figure out what is causing lag. Players can experience several types of lag and not knowing the exact reason can cause hours of head-scratching while trying to perform the same fix again and again with zero improvements.

The sources of lag can be divided into two major categories. Firstly the most common source of lag is network issues. Problems in your network can cause your ping to randomly spike and may also cause rubberbanding.

Secondly, hardware can also cause lag. For an inexperienced person, in some instances for experienced people as well, it is easy to associate input lag with a network-related problem, however input lag and stuttering are the results of low fps. For this reason that you must check if your computer meets the minimum system requirements of rocket league.

Rocket League Minimum System Requirements

These are the minimum system requirements that you need to run Rocker League:

OS: Windows 7 (64 bit) or newer.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core or better.
Memory: 4 GB RAM.
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 760 or better / AMD Radeon R7 270X or better.
DirectX: DirectX 11.
Network: Broadband Internet connection.
Storage: 20 GB Storage.
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible.

Keep in mind that these are only the minimum system requirements and you may not get above 60 FPS on these specs. It is our recommendation that you increase the ram from 4 GB to 8 GB and use a better graphics card and processer to eliminate low FPS issues.

Rocket League – Hardware Fixes

If you are facing lag despite having capable hardware, you don't need to worry. You should also not jump right to the conclusion that it must be due to a network problem. The lag may still be due to a hardware-related issue.

To diagnose this you can begin with going into the in-game graphics settings and making sure that the game did not automatically set them to a higher preset than what is recommended for your hardware. To increase your fps simply lower the settings and reduce the render scaling to 100%.

Running tons of useless applications while playing a competitive game is a bad idea. These applications will induce stress on your processor and ram and in turn, the performance of your game will suffer. To fix this simply close all unnecessary applications, don't worry you can keep using discord or TeamSpeak. Make sure to check in the task manager for unnecessary applications as well.

Rocket League – Network Fixes

After completing the hardware diagnostics and removing the probability that your hardware might be causing lag, you can move on to network-related fixes. If you are experiencing rocket league rubberbanding, it is a dead giveaway that a network problem is most likely responsible for the lag.

Fixing a network problem is not as easy as buying better-performing hardware or closing a few applications. Jumping into fixing a network-related issue can get a bit tricky. To improve your experience in rocket league and mitigate any kind of rubberbanding or ping spike we have laid down several fixes that you can try. We can't guarantee that you will be free of rubberbanding after trying either of the following fixes but they are certainly worth a try.

Ethernet Connection

Changing the network connection that connects your computer to the internet router from a wireless connection to a wired connection is the most worthwhile fix that you can do to lower ping spikes. We advise a wired connection over a wireless connection not only to players who are experiencing some kind of lag but also to players who have no lag problem whatsoever.

It's because a wired connection will always be superior to a wireless connection unless you have a gaming wireless router, which brings us on to our next fix, buying a gaming router. You should get a gaming router in case you cannot switch to a wired connection. While using a gaming router it would help if the router is as close to your computer as possible.

Rocket League Lag Fixes

Here are some of the fixes that may improve lag:

Make sure your drivers are up to date.
Repairing your PC’s registry may help.
Enable ‘Full Screen’ from the graphics settings.
Make sure that overlays such as Discord or Nvidia are disabled.
Try Re-Downloading/Reinstalling the game.
Make sure Rocket League is set to ‘High Priority’ in the task manager.
Make sure that ‘Maximum Performance’ is set in the power settings (Most effective on laptops).
For laptops try plugging in the charger for improvement in performance.
Make sure all background updates are paused.
Try upgrading to a faster internet package.
Make sure QoS is enabled (May not be available in your router).
Try enabling UPnP.
Changing the Port Forwarding and Nat settings may help.

WTFast – Connect Better, Faster

Performing all the fixes mentioned here and taking hours to diagnose the source of lag might seem like a daunting task. To avoid this, you can use a Gamer's Private Network (GPN) which works similarly to a VPN. We recommend using WTFast, because of its effectiveness in reducing lag and providing a constant ping. WTFast does this by connecting you to a connection that is best for gaming using an intelligent server network. The bottom line is if you do not want to spend all that time trying out all these fixes, WTFast might be just what you are looking for.

How to Fix Rocket League Lag