Rocket League has skyrocketed in popularity as of late, and while this has led to a massive spike in players, it's also started some heated debates online. One of the most public debates has been between streamers xQc and Jynxzi, the latter of whom has started to learn Rocket League.
As he's begun to truly understand how difficult Rocket League is at the highest level, he's claimed that it has the highest skill gap of any multiplayer game. However, the always-combative xQc has vehemently refuted that opinion, stating that Overwatch has a much higher skill gap at the top level.
xQc and Jynxzi go back and forth over Rocket League's true skill gap
Over the past couple of weeks, Rocket League has seen a major resurgence in player count and viewership on Twitch and other streaming platforms. The primary reason behind this sudden boom in a decade-old game is that Jynxzi has started to play and learn the mechanics of video game car soccer.
Right away, Jynxzi learned that Rocket League features some of the hardest-to-learn mechanics in any game on the planet. Even as he was learning from professional players, like SquishyMuffinz, Jynxzi was still having a difficult time grasping the advanced mechanics in Rocket League.
As he was learning and streaming the game, Jynxzi formed several newfound opinions, one of which was that Rocket League has the highest skill gap of any game on the market. This came after Jynxzi and several other content creators were defeated in a 1v7 match against former pro Retals live on stream. He said, “Rocket League is probably undeniably the highest skill game in my entire life. I cannot name a singular video game that requires more skill than Rocket League.”
Shortly after Jynxzi made this claim, xQc came out and fully disagreed, stating that Overwatch, a game in which he was a former pro, has the highest skill gap in video games.
"Overwatch. You need to adjust in real time, while strat-eye-gizing, and communicating," xQc stated loudly on stream. "By far the most complex aiming style. It's by far the hardest."
Naturally, these comments stirred up some reactions from fans, especially those in the Rocket League community. One Rocket League caster, Stumpy, couldn't take xQc seriously when he made his comments. Stumpy tweeted that: "You’re completely ignorant and/or uninformed if you think OVERWATCH has a higher skill gap than Rocket League. It’s not even the highest skill FPS game. Put 7 amateurs against 1 pro in OW and the pro WILL lose. A RETIRED pro beat 7 amateurs in RL. It’s not even close.”
With so many FPS games on the market, like CS2, VALORANT, and even Call of Duty, it's difficult to say that Overwatch has the highest skill gap of them all. However, there's truly nothing to compare Rocket League to, and its mechanics have been making new players look foolish for years. There are some mechanics that only professional players can do in Rocket League, and the same can't really be said for a lot of other games, including Overwatch.
Of course, there are skills in Overwatch and other FPS titles that can't be translated to Rocket League either. However, Stumpy responded to xQc on Twitter/X defending this exact position: “RL is harder not only because of the non-transferable skillset but because there’s game-changing mechanics that people with 5,000 hours can’t do consistently that aren’t present in OW.” This response came after xQc tweeted that FPS titles are harder due to how long players have been training in that genre.
There's not going to be a definitive answer in the debate, but both sides certainly have decent arguments.
