Rocket League Season 24 turns every grudge into an Honor Duel

Rocket League's next season arrives on 23 September at 9 AM PT, and Psyonix has spent the headline feature on holding grudges. Season 24 introduces the Honor Duel: challenge the player who just annoyed you to a 1v1 in the same mode, and the pair of you drop straight into it when the current match ends. Everyone else in the lobby gets to watch.

Three duplicates in, one Black Market item out

The housekeeping changes are arguably the better news. The Black Market Trade-In lets you swap three duplicate Black Market items for one, and the item you get back is guaranteed to be either brand new or a painted version you have not collected yet. The end-of-match podium now spotlights the match MVP and plays their goal explosion in the empty net behind the team. The scoreboard becomes configurable, with four trackable stats per mode, and a new Free Look camera frees the camera from the ball so you can point it wherever you like, on mouse and keyboard or on a controller if you opt in.

Mouse and keyboard players also get modernised default bindings with extra settings to tweak. Finish in the Top 100 of the 3v3, 2v2 or 1v1 ranked leaderboards and you earn one of five exclusive Titles, from S24 3V3 TOP 100 up to the number one spot.

Persona 5 comes to the pitch on 25 September

Season 24 runs three limited time events, two of them from day one. Run it Up runs from 23 September to 9 December with 14 challenges feeding the Nova Collection, including the Ronin GXT car body, the Laser-Light goal explosion and the InfoSec boost. Bullet Ball, from 23 September to 6 October, turns the arena into a last-car-standing duel against a homing ball you can parry with a forward dodge, freeze with a precisely timed backflip, or redirect by grabbing whoever is in front of you.

Then the crossover: Persona 5 takes over from 25 September to 12 October with Phantom Thieves challenge rewards, including the Trickstar wheels, Morgana's Token boost and trail, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts universal decal, a Persona 5 Royale Octane decal, the TAKE YOUR HEART player title and Joker and Morgana cosmetics. The Mona Car Bundle lands in the shop for anyone who wants the whole aesthetic, and a repeatable 20,000 XP reward rounds the event out.

The Season 24 Rocket Pass headlines three new car bodies: the Volkswagen Golf GTI Edition 50 on the Octane hitbox, the Dominus GT 76 on the Dominus hitbox and the Pareto 5S on the Breakout hitbox. Eight creators are competing in Rocket Rivalry, with the standings decided by Honor Duel wins before a showmatch in London, and long-time caster herculyse gets the free Professional Yapper player title.

Our opinion

Honor Duels are the sort of feature that looks like a joke and behaves like a retention mechanic: the fastest way to keep an angry player in the game is to let them have the grudge back. The quiet wins are elsewhere. A trade-in that cannot return a duplicate you already own is the first duplicate system in years that respects the inventory it is built on, and Free Look is a genuine gift to the people who make Rocket League worth watching on a stream. The Persona 5 event will sell the season on its own, but 23 September is the date that actually changes how the game plays.