Since Rocket League went free to play in 2020, millions of players have entered the game. The concurrent player count for Rocket League can easily reach over half a million players. However, the game is still not perfect. There are tons of reports on the internet of people dealing with issues like lag and high ping.

If you are having trouble with lag in Rocket League, then you are at the right place. Here we will be taking a look at all the things that cause lag in Rocket League and the solutions that can potentially fix it.

What Is Lag?

Imagine that you press "W" on your keyboard to move your car forward in Rocket League, but the car doesn't start moving until a second or two after pressing the button. Or let's say that you just hit another car, but it doesn't move away or react the exact moment you banged into it. Both of these are examples of delay, which is called lag in the world of gaming.

Why Is Lag Bad?

Lag is a bad thing in Rocket League because of two main reasons. First of all, it is super annoying. If you try to steer your car left or right, but the car responds a second or two after pressing the button, this delay will start to irritate you. If the lag is really high, let's say four seconds, then the game won't even be playable.

Secondly, these delays may cause you to lose a lot more matches. Just imagine that you are just about to make a left turn, boost your car, and push the ball straight into the goal, but because your car turned a second or two after pressing the button, you missed the ball and lost the round.

Types of Lag in Rocket League

There are two types of lag that you might be facing in Rocket League. The first type is hardware lag, and the main cause of it usually has something to do with a hardware issue that is causing your framerate to drop. Secondly, we have network lag, which arises due to problems in the network connection between your computer and the game server.

Common Causes For Hardware Lag And Their Fixes

Here are some of the most common issues that may be causing hardware lag and the potential solutions for them. These solutions are carefully selected to provide the highest probability of success.

Old Hardware

If you are trying to run Rocket League on a computer that does not meet the recommended system requirements for Rocket League, then you will definitely face framerate drops and hardware lag or input lag.

Rocket League Recommended System Requirements:

CPU: 3.0 GHz Quad-core
RAM: 8 GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 470
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space

If your computer does not meet these requirements, then the best thing that you can do is upgrade your hardware.

Really High Graphics Settings

If your computer does meet the system requirements for Rocket League, this does not mean that you can run Rocket League on ultra graphics settings and 4k resolution. Super high settings may also cause input lag.

To fix this, make sure that your graphics settings are set on medium or low, and the resolution is not higher than 1080p. If you lower the resolution down to 720p, you might just be able to run the game on older laptops.

Unnecessary Background Applications

So you are running on the lowest settings possible, your computer meets the system requirements of Rocket League, and still, Rocket League is Lagging. Well, it may be because you are putting tons of unnecessary load on your computer by running background applications, which doesn't leave many resources of your computer to be allocated to the game. Always make sure that no unnecessary background applications are running while you are playing Rocket League.

Common Causes For Network Lag And Their Fixes

Here are some of the most common issues related to the network that might be causing Rocket League lag. However, network lag can be a bit tricky to diagnose and can be even harder to fix.

Selecting The Wrong Server Region

One of the most common reasons that gamers face network lag while playing Rocket League is that they either accidentally select the wrong server region or the game automatically selects the wrong server region. By wrong server region, we mean a server region further away from your location than the other server regions you could have connected to.

An example of being connected to the wrong server region is if you live in the United States and have selected the European region in Rocket League. Since a European server will be far from you than a North American server, you will experience higher ping, which will cause lag.

The simple fix for wrong server region selection is to select the server region in Rocket League that is the closest to your geographical location. For example, if you live in the United States, you should choose the North American server region.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to select or change the server region in Rocket League.

Step 1: Launch the game.
Step 2: Click on the "Play" button.
Step 3: Select the game mode that you want to play.
Step 4: When asked to select standard, doubles, or duel, click on the "Regions" button in the upper-right section of the screen.
Step 5: Select the region you live in or the one that is closest to your geographical location.

However, sometimes, even if you select the correct region, your ping does not get fixed. This happens because of bad routing. Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about bad routing besides switching your ISP. Or you can try the final fix we have for you in this article.

Wifi Instability

Wireless connections are inherently unstable. They are not at all recommended for playing online video games. So if you are using experience lag in Rocket League, it might be because of the Wifi connection. The simple fix for this is to get rid of the wireless connection and use an ethernet cable to connect your computer to the internet router.

Background Downloads

Another major cause of network lag in Rocket League is too many background downloads using up all the bandwidth. This gets even worse if you don't have a lot of bandwidth, to begin with. To fix this issue, make sure that nothing is being downloaded in the background while you are playing Rocket League.

Bandwidth Congestion

Just like background applications eat up all your bandwidth, tons of users connected on the same internet connection will have the same effect. If more than 5 users are using the same internet connection you use for playing Rocket League, then those users might be eating up all the bandwidth without even knowing about it.

There are several things you can do in this situation. Firstly, the best solution is getting a separate internet connection that only connects to your computer, plus maybe your mobile phone. If that's not an option, you can try increasing your bandwidth so that there is enough bandwidth for everyone.

WTFast - The One Stop Solution For Rocket League Lagging

You can see that there are tons of issues that may cause lag. Also, if you have bad routing, you can do essentially nothing about it. However, there is one solution that can fix all network issues and even bad routing with the press of a button. The one-stop solution for all kinds of network issues is WTFast. For lag-free Rocket League, try WTFast today.

Why Is My Rocket League Lagging

What Is Lag?

Why Is Lag Bad?

Types of Lag in Rocket League