Joe's Thoughts - EVO Online

These thoughts may be mildly controversial. Anyway, let's talk about EVO Online. EVO 2020 was supposed to happen this year, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, it has been cancelled in person, so they have to relegate it to online. In the online format, it will have 5 weekends of fighting game action with online tournaments for games that have good netcode. I don't want to be specific, but there are two gory games and two colorful games on the EVO Online lineup. Because this is an online format, there will be special exhibitions and upcoming content for games with lag in the original lineup, but the only difference is, Smash Ultimate and the MvC2 Invitational were taken out.

First off, let's talk about the elephant in the room, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Now, as you may know, Smash Ultimate has been cut off from the lineup because it has a terrible online experience since it has that abysmal netcode. If they input a button, they wait 3 seconds before the character make an action. That's what delay based netcode is. Honestly, I had a lot of fun playing it online. A rightful decision for them to remove it because they wouldn't want to play such a slideshow game, especially when it comes to annoying Sonic mains.

If you watch Mightykeef's video on YouTube, you'll experience the jealousy of Smash Ultimate not welcome to the EVO Online club since it isn't in the lineup because of its terrible netcode. With Smash Ultimate not in the lineup, the FGC revolution is united.

Now let's get to the part that is the reason why the four games are in the lineup of open online tournaments, rollback netcode. Rollback is a type of netcode that makes you feel that you're playing online without the delay. For example, let's take one of the fighting games that has made its debut at EVO Online after a long wait, and that's Skullgirls. So why is it that Skullgirls deserves to be part of the event? There are two reasons.

Firstly is straight up rollback netcode. Skullgirls uses a buttery smooth and good netcode to allow your character to immediately act upon a button press and it predicts the inputs rather than waiting for the signal to hit the server before your character performs.

Secondly, bringing Skullgirls to EVO Online allowed it to get the Combo Breaker 2020 patch, which contains new palettes, a cameo of SonicFox in the training stage, new intros for the remaining characters taken directly from from Skullgirls Mobile and the most exciting thing, KO screams for all characters when they get KOed in the air. Now that's the only thing I like to hear often. I heard them firsthand during Ronaldokun's Skullgalz Showdown tournament and the devs say that further gameplay updates will not be made until after EVO Online and they'll bring it to PS4 and Nintendo Switch. But the sad thing is that they couldn't bring it to Xbox One because Microsoft wouldn't keep their act together.

Thirdly, the game made its debut back in 2013 and it is finally getting the attention it deserves. It's because the lobbies in the console versions are not faithful to them in the PC version because of their lack of flexibility.

Wikipedia has a list of games with rollback/GGPO netcode and Street Fighter V is on the list, but not on the EVO Online lineup of online tournaments. And even though, if Street Fighter V now has bad netcode according to fans, then why the heck put that there? Yeah, nice knowing your responsibility.

Honestly, this was an interesting deal that putting games with delay based netcode on online tournaments like Granblue Fantasy Versus and letting the slideshow moment unfold can convince companies to implement rollback netcode to their games because it is known for predicting inputs rather than waiting for the signal to hit the server before an action no matter the stage. Nintendo, though? Nope, they don't have the resources to implement rollback netcode into Smash Ultimate.