After a couple of months of beta testing, rollback netcode (aka GGPO) has finally been rolled out to Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R on Steam. The latest update also adds welcome new features like player rooms, replay support, and new training mode shortcuts.
Rollback netcode is a way of helping to smooth over the lag issues that can arise with high latency between players. Timing and muscle memory is crucial to playing fighting games, so even a small amount of input delay can be disruptive. Ars Technica has a great, detailed explanation of what rollback netcode is, but in short, it’s a way of managing lag by having the game predict the other players’ inputs when there’s delay, then “roll back” that prediction and update the game state with the actual inputs if there’s any discrepancy. It can’t magically fix a terrible connection, but its much better at handling middle-of-the-road connections than delay-based netcode.
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R‘s implementation of rollback netcode lets you set the input delay to between 0 and 4 frames, and will recommend a setting for each match depending on the connection quality. It also displays ping and jitter information on screen during an online game.
The latest update also adds player rooms for up to six players, a replay gallery accessible from the main menu with replays automatically saved after each match, and new training mode shortcuts to reset to corners and swap sides with the training dummy. There’s also “many more minor bug fixes, Quality of Life improvements and tweaks.”
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R is the latest revision of Guilty Gear XX, a game that first came out in 2002 and has seen a number of revisions in the years since that add new characters, features, and balance changes. Though Guilty Gear Xrd is the more prominent game on the competition circuit (and probably among more casual fans, too), Accent Core Plus R has always had its dedicated fanbase, and it’s seen a bit of a resurgence in popularity since its Steam release. The addition of rollback netcode—something Xrd still lacks—will only help matters.
