Having been regularly beaten by good teams I see this sort of positioning all the time in Rocket League:
What is happening is that A and B are playing their side, but keeping their speed very high by rotating around and grabbing the middle field boosts or the corner boosts. If B goes down the wing then A moves into the middle for the shot on goal. B also goes for the corner boost which A cuts in to the middle.
C is always playing as the ‘sweeper’, and reacting to the play. If they see B going up the wing and A moving in then they move up to the 3/4 mark, expecting a juicy rebound for a long shot. If they see possession is lost then the rotate back and grab a corner boost or at least cover an angle.
Constant movement, nearly always in circles. Boost is life!
I cannot agree with this enough! Rarely should you be all huddled around the ball. The person closest is fielding the ball, everyone else is either making sure they are ready to receive a pass or covering the back field to ensure a breakaway from the opposing team will be short lived.
Are players rotating between the A, B, and C coverage areas? Or are those teams perhaps using a more structured team layout, where each player is covering a specific area?
Sticking to specific parts of the pitch only works if you’re actually good at that role. If you don’t have a goalie who can consistently stop the ball, only having 1 person there isn’t going to work.
It’s a bad diagram in a way, because I’m showing what it looks like with possession. Without possession then it’s just more that only one car ‘presses’ the opponent on the ball while the other drops back to mark a ‘zone’, as in ‘get back quick!’.
Essentially though it’s more a strategy of ‘zones’ and not slowing down - as the rotation lends itself for grabbing boosts all the time.
I think at the beginning it seems best to have the person most comfortable with ‘I can quick-up boost to make saves and like to make long shots’ being ‘C’ all the time (goalie)'. In the teams that play a lot and get comfortable with it, the assignments are pretty interchangeable - you’ll see the ‘A’ (left wing) at the bottom of his rotation circle become ‘C’ (goalie) just because ‘C’ is at the top of their circle and is attempting a push or shot.
Although post-vacation I seem to have fallen off the horse hard enough to de-rank down and be useless, the main stark differences I remember between being ‘Gold III’ versus ‘Platinum 1’ were two things:
The teams played strictly zonal, without possession always one pressing on their ‘side’ of the pitch with the others behind the ball - with possession following the A/B/C pattern.
First to the ball in that ‘Silver Guy Can’t Jump’ way that the vertical up with boost (and 2nd jump button press) means that any hanging crosses or mid-field bounces means that the second to the ball loses. Nearly all goals that aren’t fast crosses are scored by who jumps first and highest. Apex wins.
I mean we actually do a lot of it already. In the casual games we play people are rotating naturally. It was more as in to reply to @adlabs6 that not to ever slow down and ‘be the pacman’ with those power boosts.
We all mainly play an ok ground game, but it’s the air game that takes the practice and is the skill progression ceiling now.
Thanks fearless, those are some of what I was wondering about.
Being pacman has, a few times, seemed to payoff when I can see the enemy is starved of boost, and I’m deliberately grabbing all I see. I can tell they can’t pull off a harder hit, sometimes. Which seems so very positive.
The breakdown has been, IMO, that at these greater speeds, I’m less good at making solid ball contact. So I’m actually doing less to help the team. At least until I adjust my aiming and ball tracking to the higher speed, maybe?
When facing enemy teams at Silver 2 and 3 levels, I am still consistently seeing all 3 opponents bunched together right under the ball. Or else 2 bunched together, and 1 just parked in the goal and never moving. Either is quite vulnerable when the ball gets bounced across field to a waiting friendly teammate to make a shot.
Staggering to see that kind of play, which really seems like the joked about “kids soccer team” tactics. Often in such games, I’ve got to sit and wait for the enemy players to get through struggling for ball control among themselves (they are worst when the ball is slow, and dribbling around with weak hits).
And yet, still we lose to these players more than I’d expect. Perhaps it’s that while as individuals, these players have skills that can surprise and be a real threat. It’s just that they don’t display as much team oriented coordination, which makes them seem like less threat when watching their moves.
I see this sort of positioning all the time in Rocket League:
