Dragon Ball FighterZ “ruined” by disastrous rollback netcode update

Dragon Ball FighterZ players have been asking for rollback netcode for years, which was finally confirmed in 2022. However, it appears that rollback wasn’t worth the wait for DBFZ fans.

At one point, Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s rollback netcode was nothing more than a meme. Players gave up hope that it’d ever happen in the years following the game’s release, only for rollback to be revealed at EVO 2022.

Its projected release date wasn’t locked in at the time, and release dates that came after that announcement were continually pushed back until fans finally got rollback almost 2 years after the initial announcement – and more than six whole years after DBFZ’s initial release.

After all that time, however, rollback netcode appears to be completely breaking the game despite how long it took to develop.

Dragon Ball FighterZ rollback update kills spectator mode

To clarify, the actual gameplay for either fighter in the rollback netcode update appears to be fine. The problem lies in the game’s spectator mode.

When a player users a super move, it freezes their player model on the screen in a fixed pose. And this can be replicated over and over again to plaster the screen with player models.

And, while that may not seem to be a huge issue on the surface considering it’s just spectator mode, a large part of the reason why the community wanted this update so badly was to keep the competitive scene alive. Now, running online tournaments for this game requires you to either force players to play with a worse connection, or to not spectate the tournament at all.

At least players are having fun with just how many ways you can mess with the way characters freeze and t-pose on the screen, but it makes the game impossible to watch.

It isn’t like this bug where characters stick around a bit longer than intended is a difficult to replicate bug, either. This happens every time someone uses a super move.

“What have they done? They’ve ruined it.” streamer Tyrant lamented.

What’s more, people playing the rollback netcode update have claimed that their DLC characters didn’t carry over on their account when upgrading from the PS4/Xbox One version to the PS5/Xbox Series version with the new update.

There are several claims of this, ranging from people missing one character to people missing all of their DLC. For just the character DLC alone, all of the fighters are worth $80 USD total. Having to buy all of that again is something long time players understandably don’t want to do.

Between these two widespread issues, Dragon Ball FighterZ players are livid at how what could be the game’s last big update was handled.