With more and more details for the future of Rocket League item accumulation coming to light, we are starting to create a more complete picture of the future trading landscape. One thing is for sure: This is a necessary change that had to be made as more and more games are turning away from the ‘loot-crate’ model. Epic Games, who recently acquired Rocket League, for example, knows all too well the issues that can stem from the previous gambling-esque model. So, for the purpose of discussion, I’ll be focusing on the intracommunity aspects of the upcoming change: Will item diversity take a hit? Will the lack of trade-ins deter players from revealing their blueprints? How will the trading community as a whole be affected? How will the Rocket League Youtube community adapt? What will be the effect on the Rocket-Pass reward system?

With the current loot-crate system, the diversity of items is almost overwhelming. There are 13 different crates currently in circulation, in addition to 5 different holiday-event crates, as well as 4 ‘retired’ crates that still may sit in some inventories and the various ‘golden’ options such as the Golden Pumpkin. This surplus of crates has come with unique item opportunities, albeit with some minor overlap between them. Most people end up getting items they weren’t aiming to obtain, but trade-ups kept their interest. There is a portion of the community that is entirely focused on trading and item accumulation; aiming to collect various items in every available color to achieve a ‘full-set’. This largely controlled prices for items that are not the popular mainstays; The Titanium White Zomba’s, White Draco’s, or Black Market Decals are few of the popular items that come to mind and have preceded to hold their value. Will players be seeing black and white only item usage with Black Market Decals also dominating the market? It is hard to conceive people looking to spend credits on the basic underappreciated decal or even FSL’s; Time will tell.

Live crate openings have been popularized by the streaming community and by well-known YouTubers like JonSandman. Crate openings were a draw for hundreds of thousands of viewers and the content creators of the community have put their own creative adaptations of these ‘openings’. After the recent release of updated information on blueprints, it seems the YouTubers and content creators can breathe a temporary sigh of relief: the suspense of these openings appears to be safely intact, but ONLY for the crates that you already own, which will become ‘unrevealed blueprints’. Now that the reveals have an entire item database to pull from, it could result in some even bigger surprises and epic content for the duration of their crate inventory. However, since the unrevealed blueprints will be untradeable, it seems the popularized crate openings have their days numbered. There are still many questions to be answered in this area: Are all blueprints created equal in terms of cost to ‘build’? Could certified Titanium White Draco’s possibly cost the same as those ‘beloved’ FGSP wheels?

As it currently stands, players who purchased the Rocket-Pass for a given season are periodically rewarded unique items in addition to a crate key every 10 levels. With the implementation of blueprints, and therefore removal of keys, certain vocal members of the online community have voiced concern for what will replace it. A strong incentive for purchasing the Rocket Pass has been the possibility of being rewarded with the amount of keys that almost equals the value for the pass itself (granted you obtain level 110 to claim all available keys). Will the equal amount of credits slide in to seamlessly replace the current system?

It will no doubt take some time for the economy to adjust, but one thing is for sure: The entire community is waiting with bated breath to see what kind of items they wake up to come the morning of the impending Crate-to-Blueprint update