Thread by @gosokkyu

just to re-emphasise what disregard for netcode can do to a fighting game: this lauded, once-hyped series revival just flopped onto the world's biggest platform without a whimper because for as fun as it is, it's impossible to play against another person store.steampowered.com/app/1342260/SA…

only the biggest & most casual games can skate by with bad netcode—anything smaller (and that's most FGs) needs to not only implement proven state-of-the-art netcode but do it /from day zero/ so that the launch audience (always the peak for FGs) actually sticks around

if you don't play FGs & wonder why this has become such a talking point recently, it's not just due to the pandemic: certain JP devs in particular have been handwaving or patronising overseas players on this issue for over a decade & if ppl don't demand progress, it never comes

it's immensely frustrating to feel like u have to drag progress out of not just a particular dev but essentially an entire industry, & while it's nice that some are finally coming around, it's not vindicating—these aren't philosophical debates, ppl just want to play the games

personally, this is most frustrating coming from SNK because they're partnered with an external western studio who's been retrofitting their old games with rollback netcode for a while—Samsho 2019 launched alongside a rollback patch for Samsho V Special & the contrast was obvious

it's not like, say, Arc System Works, who made silly excuses for-fucking-ever but made the transition to rollback when the difference became undeniable—SNK's been seeing the data first-hand for a minute, and yet they've made no progress on their internally-developed games

re: KOFXV, they did rush out a "rollback we're doing rollback ok" statement after their producer was conspicuously quiet during an online cross-dev roundtable that touched on the topic, but that seemed like an entirely reactive statement to me & idk how prepared they actually are

"rollback" is not a magic catch-all, it has to be competently executed—Street Fighter V was the first big new JP fighting game to use it & the implementation was so broken for so many years that it muddied the argument for rollback implementation elsewhere

https://twitter.com/SeafoamGaming/status/1404571813259120643

yeah it and SF30th both

again, it's specifically frustrating for the Samsho collection because SNK licenses their game to whoever's paying, so there can be multiple competing versions of the same games and none of them are optimal

https://twitter.com/robinemimimmi/status/1404574576063877120

I forgot about SFxT... it's been a while but I want to say that was rollback in the T7 sense and not full-on rollback but I'm not gonna pretend I remember much about that game

https://twitter.com/SegaUranus/status/1404575599646105600

for sure

Samsho sticks out to me because they've continued to bring it to new platforms every so often and every time it's like "oh so they've been waiting to fix it until this version was d—wait nvm it's still awful ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

https://twitter.com/photonchun/status/1404636336586256388

not to nearly the same extent, because

delay-based code works adequately in a high-density, high-infrastructure country like Japan, so there's less demand for change

a lot of JP players primarily associate rollback with SFV, which was busted for years

https://twitter.com/fspls/status/1404675058547650561

I've also heard a few JP ppl say that rollback benefits those with weaker connections more than those with stronger ones, so why should JP devs prioritise rollback when it's just going to make the experience worse for their native audience ¯\________________(ツ)________________/¯