All it took was five years post-release, four Evo appearances, and Wawa beating Nitro to win Evo 2022 after nearly four hours of continuous gameplay, but the Dragon Ball FighterZ community finally got its biggest collective victory—the promise of a rollback netcode update.
The news dropped at 2am PT, right as the top eight players for DBFZ received their placement medals, and the fighting game community (FGC) members who stayed behind to see the bracket through to the end were ready to pack up and bring Evo day two to a close. But, just before everyone left, DBFZ producer Tomoko Hiroki took the stage, bringing both bittersweet and yet incredible news to fans.
According to Hiroki, the development teams, both at Bandai Namco and Arc System Works viewed the game’s July balance patch as the final piece of content tying up loose ends and ensuring the game was “tuned to to its finest.”
She would go on to explicitly confirm they wouldn’t add additional content such as characters or balance adjustments beyond what is already in the game, though many fans in the audience started celebrating before the translator could relay the message. That is because, despite the somber end of core development, a rollback netcode will be coming in the future to hone the game’s online mode into something worthy of its dedicated community.
This is something that fans have been asking for since the game’s initial release in January 2018, as one of DBFZ’s biggest flaws was its online performance. It also became a much more prevalent topic as other ArcSys-developed games from the past started receiving rollback updates despite not having a playerbase the size of DBFZ.
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There are a few stipulations to this update, though, as it appears that Bandai is focused on pushing DBFZ forward as a lingering, premier title by launching it in the next-gen versions across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC first. An upgrade program for PS4 and Xbox One players who own the game will be provided at some point once the update is live.
Additional details about DBFZ’s rollback netcode update, along with information on things such as beta testing for the new version and other factors, will be shared at a later date.
