Evo 2022 just ended this morning, and as a UK resident, he stayed up late to watch the entire game until about 30 minutes before work, which was exhausting. I’m not talking about runtime, I’m talking about back-to-back announcements from multiple fighting game developers over the weekend.You’ll be happy to know that a large part of it revolves around implementing rollback network code.
For those unaware, rolling back network code has been a hot topic for the past few years (though it’s arguably heated up for over a decade), reaching its flashpoint during the global COVID-19 lockdown. While before a plethora of games struggled to match opponents online without lag, dropped frames, or teleportation, we’ve now seen a huge selection of games from the past and the future with this improved networking code moving forward.
While the new characters seem more exciting to the average player, and haven’t been held back by the announcement of rad’s new roster additions this weekend, in my book, seeing existing games with entrenched communities acquire them Needed support is even more important through an online overhaul.
We’ve seen games with rollback patches announced to receive a new wave of hype.former Evo champion Sonicfox has announced their intention to return to the gamenoting that the announcement has “A new era of dbfz and player base was born“.
During the announcement, the largely non-Japanese-speaking crowd erupted in cheers at the mention of the rollback, while the rest eagerly waited for a translator to confirm the announcement. Once confirmed, cheers erupted from the live attendees, as shown below.
While that’s all well and good for Dragon Ball Fighterz, a game that had a thriving community even before this announcement and is still full of competition, adding a rollback is a big plus for a game that’s troubling during COVID It is indeed a miracle. Samurai Showdown is the prime example here. The game, destined to have a lackluster player count as a side effect of no more in-person play, is likely to see its first game next year as developers decide to accept a rollback (and possibly a costly redesign of the network code) respawn on the ground) instead of death.
If there’s one negative effect of all these rollback announcements, it’s that the impact of other announcements that don’t contain their headers is reduced. Granblue Fantasy Vs – a terrific fighter in its own right with some great improvements in accessibility – is getting its own online community tournament league…no netcode improvements. Popularity has dropped due to the difficulty of playing the game online, and the announcement tweet, which had more than 1,600 replies, was almost entirely filled with disappointed faces. You have to click the link below and see it for yourself to believe it, it feels endless.
still craving more #GBVS Action after Evo? 👀
We’ve got you covered – Introduction #GBVSLeague, the upcoming online tournament series! https://t.co/0vryYpI4nu
— Cygames (@Cygames_EN) August 7, 2022
But it’s hard to feel overly sympathetic here, except for those community league operators who have nothing to do with the game rollback (Sorry Mike Ross). As more and more games move toward proper online functionality, the reason to invest a lot of time or money decreases significantly.
So yeah, I’m glad we got so many rollback messages on this Evo. Spending weeks convincing your friends in town to buy Street Fighter 4 just to make the days of online being a sack are getting further and further behind us.
If you’re not like me and only care about character reveal, check out our article on Bridget’s reveal trailer for Guilty Gear Strive, and Juri and Kimberly’s announcement for Street Fighter 6!