Games that use delay-based netcode, when played by the best players, become something else — something not nearly as competitive or fair.

Dragon Ball FighterZ fans have finally gathered the seven Dragon Balls to make their wishes come true, as Bandai Namco announced that rollback netcode is coming to the popular fighting game.

The old industry standard for this was delay-based netcode. Delay-based netcode works by delaying the frames of inputs by the same amount so that they can theoretically occur at the same time.

Crossplay and rollback netcode explained For years, fighting game fans called for games to implement crossplay and swap out delay-based netcode for rollback netcode.

Delay-based netcode gets the job done in the vast majority of games, but for one-on-one multiplayer games in which lightning-fast reflexes are needed, rollback netcode is the gold standard.

Something that should be known about rollback netcode in fighting games is that its not a cure-all for online play. If implemented improperly, it can be just as janky as the delay-based netcode we ...

2XKO will have server-based rollback netcode Project lead Tom Cannon seems confident that Wi-Fi won't be as much of a factor in the quality of 2XKO's matches.

If you are not familiar with delay-based netcode and rollback netcode, and how it is featured in fighting games, Ars Tehcnica has a wonderful article that explains the difference between the two.

When basic delay-based netcode doesn’t receive information on what one player is doing, the game comes to a standstill as it waits for everyone to catch up.

The system then "rolls back" to the correct state based on the actual button inputs. It allows for a much smoother experience compared to delay-based netcode, which can cause latency issues and lag.

For those not in the know, studio Arc System Works has usually used delay-based netcode for its games, which is quite unpopular within certain communities as it more often than not makes online ...