Leaked Famitsu Column Suggests Sakurai Considered Rollback Netcode For Smash Bros. Ultimate

In before lots of people bleat out their opinions instead of waiting for the column to come out and be translated.

@Folkloner I personally wish these sites would wait until the full thing's translated before reporting on it. That way we can get the full picture at once instead of knee-jerk reacting to each individual piece.

@SpectralDynamite
There will be knee-jerk reactions no matter what.

Didn't know what was meant by rollback netcode so that explanation is appreciated. My own online experience with Smash isn't too bad most of the time

Being a tech layman, I thought rollback was Asda’s price reduction scheme. Who knew!

The bad NetCode is what made me trade this in, the online experience was quite poor

Personally i have not had any issue with smash ultimate online even when using wifi

@SpectralDynamite People would do that even with the full picture.

@SpectralDynamite I agree. It's the same with the Paper Mario: The Origami King news posts. Every post seems to be about the "controversy" surrounding the battle system, and sites will cherry pick those specific interview questions / answers to lead with in their articles, because that's where you'll see more clicks, comments and engagement.

This kinda states the obvious - the idea that alternative solutions wouldn't have been considered is a bit daft. You may not agree with developer decisions sometimes, but someone like Sakurai is not stupid.

In my own experience, no fighting game is pleasant to play online, rollback netcode or not. It's just not the same and you can instantly feel that something is very wrong as opposed to local 1v1 gameplay. I could never get into any of them online, not street fighter, not Mortal Kombat.

I've got no clue what any of this means, but online is STILL a mess, so they flubbed something up

The thing about smash is that the competitive community only plays 1v1 or 2v2 with one stage layout and items turned off, and to this rollback could apply nicely, but smash is conceived to be for everyone, with items and stages that level the playing field. I can't see rollback functioning in a massive animated stage with two assistant trophies, swords, guns, a 4 players.
It's sad, but we have to come to terms with the fact that smash is less like street fighter and more like mario kart (despite it still having a better online, but it serves to make a point).

I'll wait until I see the real thing. Online is certainly a mess and not everyone has access to LAN.

Why does it seem that more and more people are complaining about online?

Did something happen to make the experience worse than it was a year ago?

I haven’t played for a while, but it was never unplayable for me.

I have a theory that there are people really struggling with lag, but then there is an
other louder group blaming the online experience to why they aren’t doing well online.

@LUIGITORNADO

A pandemic...

All tournaments are now online, and local play for lots of people is no longer an option.

@teo_o didn't a fan manage to implement it into Smash Bros Melee. Also Lethal League Blaze uses it, which is four player.

@LUIGITORNADO it's all lag. It's not frames per seconds. It's seconds per frame

I suppose rollback can't really be done due to what it entails (I've heard that it simulates another game state in the background) and I can see getting out of control due to items and multiple players.

However if the game had a dedicated 1 on 1, no items mode, pretty sure it could be done, but the limit is based on how they designed online to not be segmented like it was on Wii U.

Maybe, just maybe, Smash bros is not for online play. I mean let's face it, not all genres or gameplays NEED online play.

Everything makes sense now.
Games like MK11, Killer Instinct and even For Honor use rollback netcode, right? While other games like BlazBlue and Super Kirby Clash use delay-based netcode, that explains why everything goes slowly when connection is low.

The delays on the netcode remind of those Brawl days of low connection and lag, which is something I'm not used to. On the other hand, I'm more used to rollback "teleporting" when connection is low, though that would feel strange on a game like Smash since, well... it would look like if characters teleported anywhere. The article also has some interesting interviews there, some developers say it should be the top priority. Since Smash is delay-based, converting it to rollback would require a huge effort like how Mortal Kombat XL changed to it. Since these are big studios too, it is still possible.

This also essentially provides a reason to why Bandai Namco is still hesistant to switch to rollback for their latest games. That said, if Arc System Works will finally adopt this netcode with Guilty Gear Strive, then it should be more than possible!

I'm... now considering getting a LAN adapter for these games.

unfortunate, smash online is tas big of a mess as its ever been in. if smash ult deluxe ever gets made i hope online gets a proper go

There was actually a thread on Reddit where someone explained the requirements for rollback netcode, and why it would never work for Smash Bros games running natively on their consoles, since the resource overhead for the match instances are much higher than something like Street Fighter, to the point where simulating multiple match instances and having the rollback points ready to recall would cause slowdown or frame rate loss. As it stands, Ultimate can't keep a steady frame rate on Fountain of Dreams with two players, even if it's not normally noticeable.

This is also why the only way rollback netcode has worked for Smash Bros in today's world is because of emulators that can allocate and use much more resources on more powerful hardware in order to achieve the rollback experience, as is the case with Project Slippi for Melee. You would need Switch emulation to get to a stable, well-optimized status, and then build the framework around additional muscle the computer can provide.

TBH my online experience is actually pretty good. Sure there is a bit of input lag, but I expect that playing against someone across the country.

@SirAileron doesn't Ultimate already have a replay feature? Doesn't that mean the game is already recording players inputs/gamestate. Isn't that why when the game is patched replays are deleted. As the replays are generated by the recorded inputs. If the inputs are already being recorded, surely the overhead for implementing rollbacks is significantly reduced.

@Wargoose Having inputs recorded only covers the singular instance of the game that it can already barely handle. It would have to not only record that, but also perform a "what-if" simulation for every other input the game can go through in order to correctly roll back to the appropriate state, which is a whole separate game instance in terms of logic processing. It's like running another several matches in the background instead of just the one. With delay based netcode, the inputs are funneled into the same singular instance, and as such aren't even close to being the same performance-wise.

@DK-Fan yes but this is easily one of the best online games minus the lag.