This Rocket League bot is the same rank as me

Nexto is the best Rocket League bot ever made. Its creators estimate it to be Grand Champion 2. That's the same rank as me. Today, I 1v1'd Nexto in a best of 5 to see how good it really is. Does it live up to the hype?
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This 1v1 best of 5 challenge against Nexto ended up being a lot closer than I thought. I thought I would either get dominated or I would dominate it. Turns out, it went pretty back and forth. It's crazy that at the start of this year, the best Rocket League AI was seen to be around Gold 3. But suddenly, thanks to machine learning, someone put together a Rocket League bot that has reached the skill equivalent of Grand Champion 2. I never would have thought this was possible. Now that I've seen it and played against it for myself, it is certainly the real deal. Nexto is definitely Grand Champion 2. It is no longer an insult to be called a bot because this bot is an elite Rocket League player in the top 1%.
Production music from Epidemicsound.com
Use Creator Code: WAYTON
Thanks to Epic Games and Psyonix for the creator code.
:)

[@WaytonPilkin]

Liking the video and subscribing really helps me out. Thanks!

[@itsalexthefiregamer4278]

First

[@helenagustafsson3653]

also another weaknes of this bot is playing very agressive. For example if you ave the ball in you own corner or on te backboaord. The bot will always overcommit

[@vocalsam3608]

People who uses bots are just cowards. Their system makes it difficult for us RL players to counter.

[@ninetailedkat_.2713]

I’m not 1v1ing this bot... I’m only d1...

[@Anarutofan69]

Wanna play 2s

[@Rocket_Sledge]

You lost the first game. None of this "best of 5 stuff". I was right. 😘 This does show the one downside to the bots (as training tools at least) Once you play it enough you will find weaknesses to take advantage of and at that point you're not really simulating a human vs human game environment.

[@Nullody2]

I think it has some good strengths too

[@testing-gn8vj]

@@Nullody2 It does. Sledge kinda misses the plot a bit, using the bot as a training tool is fine as long as you don't do what wayton did - which is just constantly trying to abuse the things the bot is bad at in order to barely eek out a win. If you treat it like a random you'd find in a 1s or 2s game, then it is fine as a training tool. If you just abuse the few flaws it has over and over again, then it won't be as valuable.

[@thund3r94]

Well pros do that all the time, they look at replays to find weaknesses and adapt a play style to exploit that weakness, look at furia vs endpoint (winter major when end had seiko) idk if they studied them but furia was the perfect counter to endpoint by shutting seiko down

[@bofa2627]

There’s no need to be mad lmao real 1v1 tourneys are more than one game, just make a better bot🤷🏽‍♂️

[@Rocket_Sledge]

​@@testing-gn8vj You don't even need to use replays. You are going to find the weakness just by playing. It's not that hard to figure out. If you want to purposefully ignore and not take advantage of them then you are doing just what I said, not simulating a human like experience. Add the near perfect reaction time and flick selection you have a weird mix of incredibly good + predictable opponent. Not a "plot" just my personal opinion. Fun to play for a bit, but has some downsides as a training tool was all I was pointing out. In my experience most people lose their first few games to these bots, then start regularly beating them. While if you are too low of rank you just get crushed so bad that you probably don't have time to learn much besides how not to rage.

[@httyd_comp]

Wayton should totally be a RL coach in the future. He’s the king at analyzing Rocket League

[@Celinooo0]

As something I’ve learned from FightinCowboy’s play through on Sekiro is “It’s just an AI at the end of the day, it’s all patterns people have designed, it’s never impossible just memorization” or something like that

[@notsorryimvegan]

I love seeing Wayton panic lol

[@MrEggrolls]

in the beginning of this video i saw a teaser in the gold octane, it has saul good obverse which are a tourny reward that was shown when season 7 came out so after this map was shown

[@lololorenzo1]

imagine Wayton playing for years to reach grand champion this bot just randomly 10-4 him

[@drubic.7580]

Imagine getting spammed what a save from it

[@zach6050]

I'm champ and have been using nexto 1v1s to get better since it punishes the smallest positional mistakes with those god tier dribbles and ridiculous flicks.

[@mr_quabby8515]

This happens every single time lmao, rocket sledge makes a video on something, then someone else, then Literally everyone else - the 69 years later wayton makes a video

[@bozeiky]

Did the update come out recently? I played against the nexto bot last week or so and it was supposed to be a gc1 bot i think.

[@lucysmith8913]

I'm really interested in what the code of bots would look like and how to make it different to like freestyle or something!

[@robosergTV]

its machine learning, the bot teaches itself, no human programming

[@Ray.6406]

Check out Rocket Sledge's videos about it

[@ive_y]

i bet a plat could beet nexto. not because plats are good(they arent) but because it wouldnt know how to handle such bad skills

[@Striped]

What we learned from this video: To be better than a GC2, all you have to be able to do is air dribble

[@michael04__806]

yes

[@bag474]

Truest

[@filiplukic3097]

so im better than a GC2 even tho im diamond 1?

[@python1277]

Python

[@VVANDMARMAR]

yes

[@MikeChris2]

Now we have Wayton making this thing smarter?!?! Mere mortals no longer stand a chance.

[@DerHouy]

Imagine this bot mastering Flakes directional drift changes :d

[@rhcpss4]

It only learns during its training phase. It is not actively learning against everyone it plays. If it were to learn from playing actual humans it would take an insanely long amount of time for it to just make a tiny bit of progress, instead it learns by playing copies of itself where the simulation can be sped up and repeated.

[@Thatwhiteblackkid]

Worst understanding of how the bot works confirmed lol

[@MikeChris2]

People don't understand satire. It's a compliment to Wayton's mental gameplay style not a comment on the function of machine learning.

[@MikeChris2]

@@rhcpss4 I know. It runs thousands of simulations a minute (or so) to get the equivalent of thousands of hours of play in just days. I understand how the bot works. Do you understand how jokes work? (jkjk, another joke)

[@daltonwilliams6297]

I’m interested to see if this bot will eventually become unbeatable, and if it does will pros change their strats to eventually beat it and change the entire game

[@MaxLuigiP2]

Tecko is gonna be unbeatable probably, its the next machine learning bot after nexto which came after necto

[@r0ll3dd]

I was thinking this too! Will it ever get to the point where no human is able to beat it. Period.

[@rltt379]

@@r0ll3dd don't think it will. You can still beat it through sheer luck or creativity. Even the best bot won't be able to attack or defend when boost starved and how'd it reliably defend a pinch when it tries to rush the ball? Not even a botcould reliably stop a well controlled ceiling shot or a reset. There are just too many options. It might get decent, but there's no way it would be able to become unbeatable, especially in ssl territorry. At most it might get a 20% winrate against ssl, but champion 1 could get destroyed with like an 80-90% winrate. I think anything above gc is just impossible game sense wise.

[@DestinyGamingYT]

@@rltt379 the problems you just described are exactly why it would become unbeatable. What if the bot is the one doing the pinches and boost starving? Once it’s consistent at those it’s game over Imagine it going up the celling and getting a 120kmh pinch every time You try to challenge and it just flicks it That plus being able to calculate a driving path that always goes through boost pads and we’re done

[@rltt379]

@@DestinyGamingYT it's most likely very bad at calculating 50s, so you just gotta do a good kickoff and stay close to the ball, then most of this doesn't matter.

[@naujrl]

Key difference between high ssl and gc wayton had to vod review to find out the air dribble weakness, lethamyr didn't. Nothing taken from wayton, still far better than me, it just shows the level of adaptability of those high rank players and how important it is to be able to analyze your opponents quickly.

[@rivques4516]

good point, that's really interesting to see

[@7ranscendenceRL]

was looking for this comment

[@creepysplatter9260]

Yeah, Leth was somehow able to find a way to beat them in a 1v3, it's ridiculous how good high ssl/pros are

[@MonarchOfficialRL]

They’re actually working on a new bot named “Tecko” which is supposed to be even better than Nexto. I think this current Nexto is the final form of Nexto due to the Tecko training right now. They do it over on the RLGym twitch channel where you can watch the bot make progress through different instances used to train the bots. It’s quite interesting

[@Qwty163]

I suggested the name of the bot to be Sexto and got permanently banned from the twitch chat 😂

[@Qwty163]

@@archiexl2000 I ACTUALLY DID!

[@danteloparco6708]

@@Qwty163 that should be the 6th version of Necto since six in latin is sex (like sextuple)

[@danteloparco6708]

Bro i hate you. Now im hooked on watching Tecko

[@jnevercast]

@@Qwty163 As an RLGym twitch mod, I know everything you've said. You weren't banned for Sexto, I assure you.

[@reezly360]

Wayton: "Im Gonna Beat This Bot 1st try" Wayton 2 Games Later: "Lemme just Chill And See The Replays To find Its Weaknesses" XDXDXDXDXD

[@reezly360]

OMG HE HEARTED MY COMMENTTTTTTTTT

[@Grifflicious]

Having only played the bot previous to Nexto, I can easily say the No. 1 thing these bots teach is patience. I was able to beat the first one just by baiting shots and taking my time. Less about flash and mechanics which helped me a ton in my games.

[@robinkreutz161]

For me it actually exploited my weakness positioning wise when it comes to defending dribbles and flicks. It helped me improve my defense though, ive gone from Diamond 1 in 1s to Diamond 2. I dont play 1s that often, i could be higher if i searched it more often

[@thethiny]

They should release Nexto Bronze, Nexto Silver, Nexto Gold... etc. This way you can always have versions of Nexto to train against.

[@DJAtom]

Thats briliant

[@mohammedrashidkhan2427]

U gotta have a pc too

[@thethiny]

@@mohammedrashidkhan2427 not necessarily if a private match

[@DexteruL]

Every time i watch a Nexto video , i'm rooting for him because everyone exploits the air difficulties.

[@Bweyg]

Same XD if I'm only d1 and I nearly beat the bot by spamming bumps/demos over and over again and getting close within 1 goal of winning against the bot and I felt bad, you know something went terribly wrong

[@sako2239]

Yeah I got my ass whoop by it everytime I try to go for ground plays against it.

[@pabloruedaarzoz8065]

This is getting closer and closer to what happens in chess, you don't play a computer the exact same way you play a human, they are stronger in some ways and weaker in others, you either get overwhelmed or checkmate them rather easily i feel like. This is fascinating

[@Frank-hw3fd]

Chess computers like 20 years ago yeah haha, current computers have no weaknesses exploitable by humans

[@pabloruedaarzoz8065]

@@Frank-hw3fd I was thinking about computers at your level compared to humans at your level

[@vassowned7768]

Computers at lower levels just blunder on purpose every few moves.

[@alphaxp5839]

@@Frank-hw3fdThey do have a weakness closed postions

[@atomicstorm7006]

Same as smash bros

[@PRIMEVAL543]

Nexto: Perfect shots, perfect Flicks, perfect dribbles Human: „Yh, but I can play dirty“

[@Silver_633]

And still lose ..

[@maysontye]

Wayton has helped me so much improved in rocket league keep up the good work Wayton

[@Veritas1234]

Just goes to show how fast human processing power is vs a computer. It only took two games to recalibrate the entire strategy and then completely destroy the bot. Amazing.

[@ianthehunter3532]

or he wanted to get some extra minutes on the video

[@robosergTV]

It took the human 20+ years. I wound not call that fast. A new born baby is dumb af

[@sebastianswan7975]

It was still a close match, bot only losing by one in the best of five.

[@trikmandularlgaming2026]

@@robosergTV well that bot has over 100,000 hours of rocket league experience through playing with himself. so, i would say he matured quite a bit

[@Theriople]

@@robosergTV why r u talking about a new born baby

[@qasimfawwadsart4613]

I wish this bot would be in my team when my team mate leaves in casual

[@frankdebruijn7688]

I honestly believe these bots will grow to be on the leaderboard of RL

[@compszn]

no, rlcs will just be bots.

[@ryzikx]

against tos to play bots on ranked

[@VoidLantadd]

Wayton: "Who prejumps flicks?!" Nexto: "Oh, I'm gonna teach you why."

[@thatonekid2349]

Wouldn’t be surprised if Nexto gets better to be one of the best “players” in the world

[@ratedpending]

They're starting an SSL version sooo

[@The_Xeos]

@@ratedpending it's not like they know the next version will reach SSL, it's the goal but there is no guarantee

[@ratedpending]

@@The_Xeos if the first version was diamond/champ, the second was GC, it's not a "guarantee" but i mean

[@LawlerTV]

Glad to see how it all came together. Great stuff 👍

[@hilol551]

some people are mad at jojo siwa's new haircut

[@IshaanM1331]

I am a plat and the next time someone calls me a bot. I'll be taking it as a compliment

[@NoahHoi]

why is nobody talking about their conversation they had at 0:55 lmao "that's crazy" "jimmy jam kablam boom" "that's what i'm saying"

[@JB90.]

Its crazy to think this bot is better than most people watching this vid

[@kizi774]

2054: Nexto is now equivalent to be as good as every pro player x giga chad.

[@vxrdaunt]

You know what's crazy about the human brain? I think I saw somewhere this bot has like 450,000 hours of experience in machine learning, right? It took this bot 450,000 hours to learn what it takes humans 4,000 hours to learn, and when it was doing good, it only took a human 2 games to learn how to beat it. We're like, really smart

[@Qwty163]

Well yeah, human brains have billions of neurons, nexto only has about 440k adjustable parameters. The new bot "Tecko" has about 3.4m and will likely reach ssl.

[@bananafrenzy3711]

You know it's a good day when Wayton uploads. Keep up the good work, entertaining as usual.

[@Frostycrypton]

Nexto has studied the best players in Rocket League to be able to perform and counter some of the highest-skilled moves in the game. I, however, suck at the game, and thus have a chance at beating Nexto since it won’t know what to do with me. :P

[@Fanolis]

*All I know is that KZbinrs are bad af for their rank, I am legit free to play and I am almost Gc3 right now and this bot couldn't even score 3 goals on me in any of the matches I played with it(5 matches)*

[@80xdplays88]

I just want to point out he would've lost if he didn't go and spend time analyzing literally every move for the best strategy lol. But good job stil

[@raiden1802]

Would love to see this bot continues learning, like from every game its played (especially the games against actual players)... its main issue is that it has only played itself which gives it amazing flicks and defense against flicks (its main method of attack) but not much else... if it had collective experience of playing against hundreds/ thousands of players then it would soon pick up the defensive skills to save aerial plays, and maybe go one step further and learn them itself. With this type of AI, it is almost believable that one day we may see one that is able to hold the #1 spot on a leader board.

[@Digitalsapien]

May? If you don't see that this is INEVITABLE, you need to wake up. And what happens when this technology is used to inform combat drones, rather than RL cars?

[@parthl]

i was really excited about nexto at first. i thought “i could improve really fast if i can play against a gc whenever i want” (im diamond 3) but then after playing against it for a while its become easy to win and feels less useful. its still really cool tho!

[@dormatim]

I think this bot is bad at reading air dribbles because it gets teached to play against himself. So it uses ground play the most time to shoot goals and lerns how to defend them. In the video you can see that the bot never air dribbled. it doesn‘t know how to defend them

[@PupGaming]

0:43 I'm Literally Dying From Their Dis DM LOL

[@floorsbychrisable]

One advantage of being a bot is that if you do something bad and get out of position and look foolish... it doesn't affect your next play. There is no ego

[@jayzerbeam9733]

Also pressure basically doesn't exist for them

[@Qwty163]

One thing people forget about is that if anyone plays nexto for 2 or 3 hours, nexto is basically guaranteed to win, bots don't get tired like humans do.

[@saxonpalmer7805]

The other thing about this bot is that it doesnt understand when you have an extra flip, like off of a ceiling shot or flip reset

[@ericb1538]

Next Einstien who got brain from playing rocket league XD lol

[@nerfboy2082]

U lost the challenge u lost to him on the first try so yeah as sledge said the "best of 5" thing doesn't matter.

[@Terry_]

What I find interesting is how the bot is INSANE at dribbles and becuase its a machine learning bot for some reason it decided along the way that dribbles were the way to go. So if another iteration of nexto is made, similar to what they did with necto, then for whatever reason that one might teach itself to be insane at air dribbles I think that would be really cool to see.

[@sucksharvey9696]

Isn’t weird a you can say a gc2 has to try hard on a bot (as a Rocket league player)

[@mathienorlin2792]

Can we just talk about the DMs betweeen wayton and rocket sledge?xD

[@masonseminario7435]

Challenge: you can only score with ground plays

[@Qwty163]

I'm ssl and I can confirm, it's NEARLY impossible.

[@ericb1538]

Challenge Mustard 1v1 with your brain power

[@Ryan-FN]

I wish I could be as good as that bot

[@Syfis]

mos a dom kullid

[@sucksharvey9696]

The thing is u shouldn’t be in Gc2 maybe low ssl

[@zgamer1234]

I like how wayton is still regularly uploading even if his views are gradually descending. Unlike the other utubers for rl like musty and sunless who are not regularly uploading, what keeps me watching wayton is just his commitment. Also nice vid

[@abirgangal]

Play the piano at the back of ur setup.😏😏

[@PocoLoco7474]

They gotta make it say what a save! After every goal

[@reezly360]

That is the worst part about it that if you lose everyone's gonna be like "Bro You Just lost to a literal BOT you're so badd" but if you beat it everyone's also gonna be like " Bro You just beat a bot it isn't even that big of a deal" LIKE WHAT AM I SUPOSED TO DO?!

[@SceurdiaStudios]

You're not supposed to play RL?

[@moothechicken8904]

“He’s botting.”

[@Toksick7]

I love how he tried to disrespect the bot multiple times by using the pronoun"it"

[@lewz_r]

Wayton: “Dribbles Don’t Work” The Next Play: Goes for a dribble

[@alanjukic6743]

I was actually rooting for Nexto :/

[@CatAviation]

u should get a pro to play nexto

[@inspectelement7818]

as soon as I watched this I was ready for the score to be like 4-7 BUT THATS HECKA WRONG THIS BOT IS CRAZY edit: I'm talking about the 1st round

[@CRUSZN.]

Any tips btw?

[@ilmmall]

Im gonna say, the W for the first series was for Nexto, you dont pause mid-series to analize your opponent, so it could be said there was basically 2 series... lost the 1st one won the 2nd one

[@tankata2]

IF THE BOT IS GC, isnt it against the rules play ranked with BOT, wouldnt it be essentially cheating?

[@BowOneFire]

Wayton you can get tons of free goals on nexto if you do musty's speedflip kickoff on the diagonal kickoff. It doesn't have to be that good either

[@SantaNxtDoor]

PASSION > MONEY + AER"SHIT"ALS

[@TimbavatiLion]

So Nexto needs to either a) learn to defend air dribbles, or b) stop giving the enemy so much free space

[@compszn]

*better recoveries

[@ordencorgii]

or both ofc

[@shadowyzephyr]

the next version will learn to defend them if it learns to do them, so thats plausible. I doubt it will stop giving space, though. The reason people don't give you free space in ones is firstly to capitalize on any mistakes you make when you're under pressure, and bots are methodical, consistent, and don't crumble under pressure, so they won't make the same kinds of mistakes. Secondly, because people are better at setting up plays the more time they have to think, it makes sense to challenge sometimes so that they have to be able to make a play at any time, and quicker. That doesn't apply to bots, since they don't even know what happened before the current frame.

[@Defagcinrocketleague]

My friend: Wow! How did you get like that? Me: Every time Wayton says oh my gosh while playing Nexto… Me: …I do 1 push-up. My friend: Jesus Christ

[@Bobssssd]

Could nexto be the next big training bot

[@HopyMC]

The reason this bot can never become any higher then Grand Champion is because Defense is everything. The bot trying to even learn how to defend is nearly impossible. Every player is different on offense in their own way and the bot reads every touch you get on the ball. So if you were to go for a tripple flip reset it wouldn't know how to shadow that like a real player or get into a good enough position because it's a computer not a real person who knows how to get setup for a tripple reset defense. Same with breezies, mustys, 90 degree flicks, fakes, ariels and much more.

[@amfx.]

If the bot is able to improve it's aerial game, it could genuinely be an SSL level bot.

[@Himatan10]

a tip on nextos dribbles: if you shadow long enough for the bot to be on the goal line it flicks into the crossbar almost every time

[@BrunoEditz]

Im a New subscriber😃😃😃

[@Sh4dowQ8]

Rocket sledge rn:gotta make a ssl bot Musty be like :fu(% out of here boi Again rocket sledge:makes a lethemyr bot Lethemyr be like:bruh

[@cptnbangatron2221]

Bro I gotta say I never felt truly threatened by AI, but between Nexto and ChatGPT I feel like in 10 to 15 years our human skills will be completely overshadowed by AI. They're already so goddamn strong at what they do, and getting better at it SO FRIGGIN FAST! Scary stuff.

[@ArmedHaddock420]

Hi Wayton love you content keep up what your doing!

[@spzrkles]

*We go to game 5 on Champion’s Field* I can imagine a pro caster saying the exact same words but for this Bo5 for Wayton

[@spzrkles]

*We go to game 5 on Champion’s Field* I can imagine a pro caster saying the exact same words but for this Bo5 for Wayton

[@uwaa5768]

I think the main advantage bots have over humans is that it can actually throttle perfectly according to the turn it will make, it has 100% control of how and when to hit the ball

[@CadenRL]

Im like rly confused why ppl have a hard time with nexto im c1 in 1s I think my braindead playstyle is jus to much for it lol

[@williamdowling7718]

I don't understand the part of this video where you watched your replay, devised a new strategy and just stuck to that new strategy.....? Like.. this doesn't make any sense.. how did you not just immediately fall right back into the bad habits that caused you to lose the first 2 games? My extensive experimentation shows that this is impossible. Obviously a fake vid guys.

[@CoolBusterr]

When you find a bot weakness then your done all you have to do is to exploit that weakness and win. Its not able to do anything about it because its fixedly programmed in other words it can only do what it's programmed to do.

[@neipo]

usually that would be true. They made this w/ reinforcement learning but it def can't learn on the fly. Takes thousands and thousands of games

[@CoolBusterr]

@@neipo So this bot has Ai?

[@neipo]

@@CoolBusterr yes, necto is the github

[@ZUnknownFox]

as far as a grounded player goes, aka basically no air mechanics Nexto is pretty un beat able, with air mechanics nexto is like an all star level bot.

[@EBB47]

its all fun and games now... until it becomes self aware and skynet goes online.

[@dhruvverma2000]

Humans learn faster then a bot 🤦‍♂️. Cause we can analyse and change our play style to counter a playstyle. And that bot cannot do that. Its simple 😂. If the bot can learn stuff while in the game then its a different story altogether 🤔. But great vid. I never knew that rocket league bots can be so good

[@jamesartz]

Thing is, considering it's self learning, these weaknesses you found are no longer going to be weaknesses very soon as it will learn how to counter-act these.

[@CrankyBuddha]

The beauty/downside of machine learning is that these weaknesses will evolve out and you'll have to find whole new ways to exploit the AI, until eventually its 3000mmr and khalid can't beat it in a 1v1

[@GHASTLYOwP]

This video came on as i was 1v1 nexto. I lost 4-11 but im happy with myself because I'm diamond and I know nexto is crazy

[@dorol6375]

This seems like what chess bots were around the middle to late 1980s. I suspect that in a couple years, they'll be better than RLCS players.

[@theholyoneflagbearer6980]

Nexto out here seething with your air dribbles. This bot abuse is why robots will turn on us in the future they’ll make people watch this just before executing them! Future motto will be “way to go Wayton” watch

[@xuhax3156]

How can I set this bot up?

[@ArubaSailing]

Ok Ok. Tesla AI FSD is a BUY BUY BUY. IMO. We Humans are outdated.

[@clod1977]

There was a BIG gap of difference between the second and third game, I don't believe for a single second he played these games in a row. He just showed the last 3 he one. No doubt, come clean.

[@nintenbochan2679]

Can you add a link to Nexto if it's a public build already? I don't have good wifi at the moment because of where I'm working from and I wanna try to keep my skill level up and need a good opponent to do so.