Changes are coming to Rocket League Arenas later this year with our Autumn Update. With the arrival of Competitive Season 6 comes a new norm -- as only Standard Arenas will be playable in online matches for both Competitive and Casual matches.

More specifically, standard versions of both Wasteland and Starbase ARC will roll out with this change, while the classic, non-standard versions of these maps (now called ‘Badlands’ and ‘ARCtagon,’ respectively), will remain available for Private Matches and offline matches only. The Octagon and Underpass Lab Arenas will return to the Rocket Labs playlist as well.

Why are we changing our stance? Because in the time since Wasteland Arena first launched in late 2015, non-standard map layouts have been a hot topic of debate within the Rocket League community. We have carefully listened to your feedback over that extended period of time, and though we didn't arrive to this decision lightly, we believe it's the right one to make. Here's a quick rundown of several important factors that moved us in this direction:

• We see Rocket League as a digital sport. As such, we think standardization is important and necessary to provide a level playing field and foster consistent competition across all skill levels and events.
  
• We introduced non-standard arenas partly to provide variety for pro play, but they have not been embraced. Given the success of RLCS and Rocket League Esports in general, we no longer feel that map variety is needed or appropriate for the competitive scene.
  
• Rocket Labs showed us that only a narrow set of arena designs would be well-received by the Rocket League community. Even the designs that more closely resembled conventional Arenas (like Octagon and Starbase) have been extremely divisive. Ultimately, the alternate layouts we devised simply didn’t add enough strategically to offset the corresponding loss in predictability and muscle memory.