The Magic Of EVOĪt it’s core, what sets EVO apart from other esports events is that it’s about community in a lot more ways than usual: a grandma playing Marvel 3 has the exact same road to Grand Finals as Hotashi or SonicFox. These kind of problems wouldn’t matter once crossplay gets more widely adopted, which means anyone will be able to join a tournament and have a shot at grand finals- which is exactly the kind of ethos tournaments like EVO were built on to begin with. I once had my PS5 all set up to join a local tournament, only to realize partway that they’d actually set it for PC instead (luckily I double-dipped). I’m especially hyped for how this might affect tournament organizing. Cross Play naturally removes that, so you only need to worry about having a machine that can run the game well. If you heard Neco Arc was coming to the game and wanted to pick it up, your main concern would be knowing where you’re actually going to find people to do sick Neco Arc air loops on. For example, Melty Blood Type Lumina released on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PC. I shouldn’t need to explain why crossplay is a huge deal, but I will anyway: for years, knowing what the active platform for a fighting game was was a huge problem. KOF XV, one of the largest fighting games to come out this year, announced that it would be getting cross play in a future update, while Guilty Gear Strive doubled down that their previously announced crossplay update would start this summer. Part of the reason this year’s EVO was so good for the community is that we also saw more steps being taken towards the next gold standard for fighting games: cross-play. Of course, this wasn’t just rollback rant part 3. A bigger pool of players in turn means a more welcoming experience for new players, which is how you keep your game’s scene alive. It’s not a dramatization to say that rollback actually makes games playable- if more people can get matches where they’re not complaining about constant slowdowns, that creates more players. Persona in particular saw a huge uptick on PC following the update, with fans excited to, well, play their favorite games. This year’s EVO saw a huge double down on retroactively adding rollback- Persona 4 Arena Ultimax got its rollback update shadowdropped at the event, while titles like Samurai Shodown and the previously-thought impossible Dragon Ball FighterZ also announced they’d be getting it in future. This breathed new life into these games, as people were able to actually get matches in without having them turn into powerpoint presentations because of the old delay-based netcode. Guess when Persona 4 Arena Ultimax got rollbackĪt the same time, we also got the idea of retroactive rollback, due largely in part to Arc System Works’ overall adoption of the system: it started with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R, before Blazblue Centralfiction and Cross Tag Battle started getting it too. Capcom even re-released the entire Darkstalkers catalogue *and* Cyberbots, all with rollback netcode before announcing Street Fighter 6 would also feature rollback at launch. After Guilty Gear Strive delayed the game’s launch to release with rollback, it felt like everything changed. For a while, Japanese fighting games in particular were vehemently against it- only smaller indie fighting games seemed to use it like Skullgirls and Them’s Fighting Herds, as well as western fighting games like Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat. I’ll keep the technicalities brief: Rollback is a network solution that makes games play smoother across better distances. You can talk about how the Street Fighter community made do for years without it, but the truth is we’ve hit the point that new fighting games are assumed rollback-compatible until proven otherwise. Look, this might be the third time I’ve gone on about rollback netcode, but let’s be real: last year’s EVO online proved that netcode matters. While actually learning fighting games continues to be its own commitment, this year’s EVO sent a clear message- your developers know you love their games, and are working hard to make them worthy of that adoration. Subscribe to read these articles as they’re published Follow article was originally published on the GamerBraves newsletter.
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