The Rocket League community collectively hates Rocket Racing. For this game mode that don't actually belong in a 3rd person battle royale game, Rocket League's trading between players had to be stopped. While the launch was popular of this new game mode, now the player base has really gone down.
I didn't try it but some were complaining about the bugs and glitches back then, maybe they fixed those now.
I did a bit of research over its current state and...whew, besides the elephant in the room that is Rocket Racing being detached from Rocket League in more ways than one [mainly how its tied to Fortnite and that trading thing you mentioned], it seems that the game hasn't getting more themed updates or tracks since a few months ago...which is actually insane to see when I now find out that it was released at the end of 2023 - so around just a year of support.
It is a shame that the game seems to be kneecapped by how it is placed inside a game that is less bound to attract what should be the target audience [people looking for an arcade racer and Rocket League players - I'd entertain try to install the game on my PC just to see if it runs well if it weren't over 60GB and most of it being to Fortnite itself which I'm not interested in] along with that detail of how there's only online racing and time attack to go with.
Can see why the game doesn't have a focus on additional single player content since it is roped with the online-only Fortnite after all...but would be great if this game [or a sequel] was made to be standalone with extra content.
The issue would likely be rentability for ol' Epic, between how I can guess RR isn't AS profitable as the other Fortnite games along with its current playerbase, along with how they have already gutted a classic IP of theirs for less [Unreal Tournament] plus how they likely wouldn't see high demand for a standalone version [paid or not], but it is easy to wonder if the game could have fared better with more care as its own title rather than being an extra game inside Fortnite.
Its funny that it reminds me of the Like a Dragon titles including previously unported arcade titles as a bonus - games that some people would gladly pay for in a standalone form or as part of a collection, but likely keep getting packaged only in those new games because the profitability for those in standalone/collection form may not be as high as just including them as part of those games...and I assume that's why Rocket Racing was glued from the get go with Fortnite at the end of the day.
But at the end of the day, it was interesting to try this game out after having heard about RR before and even thinking it had been out for more time, even if with that scuffed input delay and feeling from that little taste that it may not really have much to hook me to try it more times unless invited.
Thanks for reading and for your comment :]
Seems like you did a lot of research. I didn't know about the Like a Dragon thing.
Why me and many other Rocket League players hated that Fortnite 'mini game' is because it felt like Epic was trying its best to kill a successful franchise.
Since they decided to focus more on Rocket Racing and removed in-game trading, it made a lot of content creators and players just quit the game. Some of them came back again but still quite furious on their decisions.
Like you said, it would be a much better idea to develop it as a standalone. I don't know who in their right mind thought lets add an arcade style racing game into a battle royale? Both are completely different genre.
I guess it's money they were after only. Must have thought that even 1% of the Fortnite players can get hooked on it, it will become successful.
I heard they failed quite miserable with just a few thousands players actively playing it now much less than when it released.
Definitely the big reason I could see it was even done in the first place, or if we go before that, Epic Games buying Psyonix in the first place for their success in Rocket League - then only doing Rocket League Sideswipe + Rocket Racing ever since.
Also yeah, the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games basically had some unique ports of arcade games included from some of the first games, but if I remember well, the most notable case was when Yakuza 6, which had a version of Virtua Fighter 5 in it, got ported to PS4 and PC...when neither platform had an official standalone version of VF5FS at that point [and the remasters of Ultimate Showdown for PS4 and R.E.V.O. for PC didn't release until WAY later]. But they definitely had the biggest surprises from Like a Dragon Gaiden onwards, due to the Model 3 arcade games they brought out of nowhere when all of those games were never ported to modern platforms before.