The Rollback Netcode Wave Reaches Dragon Ball FighterZ
Today, Bandai Namco had a very special announcement for the players of Dragon Ball FighterZ… It’s a back-end tech upgrade. Wait, usually those go understated, right? That’s the sort of upgrade you’d see announced on some “patch notes” page, alongside bugfixes and character tweaks. But if you’ve seen how fighting game players react to tech like this, the announcement is more than justified. “Rollback netcode” is coming to Dragon Ball FighterZ.
A message to the DBFZ community from Hiroki-San at #Evo2022! pic.twitter.com/R79RemTHQ9
— Bandai Namco Esports (@BNEesports) August 7, 2022
In a genre like fighting games, precision and timing is everything. A lagging match threatens both of those, and something called “Rollback betcode” aims to solve it.
There’s a certain video that always gets linked whenever someone asks what rollback netcode even is. If you’re familiar with the fighting game space, you’ll almost certainly know its contents by now. In essence, the technology is predictive, anticipating each player’s next move to ensure that slow connections don’t hinder the pace of the game. And when that prediction fails, it’s able to “roll back” a player’s status on another’s screen, bringing it closer in-line with their true position.
It’s a piece of technology that’s been slowly making its way through the fighting game sphere since release. And now, Dragon Ball FighterZ is the latest game to adopt it.
So, are you excited for this new update? If you’ve fallen away from Dragon Ball FighterZ, will this bring you back? We’d love to hear from you in the comments down below!