#cross play

I don’t think that means what you think it means.

But what really makes me want to cry and kiss every Larian Studios dev on the mouth is the split screen couch co-op. I can’t tell you how many games I used to play with my siblings with split screen until it suddenly went out of style for video games (ahem lazy game studios ahem), so we flat out gave up.

*Playing as Echo*

*Sees an enemy Lucio on a booping map*

*Prepares to use ult*

*Hits wrong character*

*Is now playing as Doomfist*

A good old fashioned flip flop. I dig this. Cross-play cosplay is the future of cosplay. I've said it before and I'll forever stand by that notion.

Can you guess which is which?

Hi,

Thank you for giving us the chance to hold an interview again; we are really honoured to have such opportunities from time to time, so we would like to thank Arc System Works for taking their time to help us bring more light to the world regarding their work.

*The answers came from Guilty Gear Producer Takeshi Yamanaka and GGST project director, Akira Katano.

· CASW: How many people were on the team that worked specifically on the netcode?

We had three team members working on it. Of course, staff members outside of the team were also following up to make it happen. Especially when it came to preventing processing overload.

· CASW: During the beta test period, we have seen a lot of praise due to how fluid the online matches were. Some of the players even joked about you using dark magic for it! How did the team react to all of this?

We felt during the testing phase that the game ran smoothly, but seeing that matches went well for players regardless of their environment was a real relief.

· CASW: Recently, Arc System Works implemented rollback netcode for Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R on Steam. Could you please tell us about the main differences between Guilty Gear Strive Rollback and GGXXACPR rollback?

Sorry, we cannot reveal any details, but the principle is basically the same. While GGPO was used for ACPR, we will just say we designed it ourselves for GGST.

· CASW: Will we see more past games having the GGXXACPR treatment?

Yes, we cannot say when it would happen for sure, but we are actively thinking about it.

· CASW: Do the 2D pixel online lobbies in Strive offer any functionality regarding the netcode, compared to how the lobbies were in Rev2? *Note: Although we mentioned it as 2D pixel, we are fully aware that they are 3D models.

Having 3D graphics that look like 2D elements is something we have been researching ever since GGXrd. This time, we just took on the challenge to implement customisable avatars, with changeable clothes and accessories, and predefined motions. And as far as this was our goal, I think we succeeded as we made good use of the 3D graphics to create these 2D pixel visuals.

· CASW: We have seen the 3D chibis since Guilty Gear Xrd until Granblue Fantasy Versus, why did you decided to change to this new pixel art style?

We explained the technical goal behind it, however, the main reason was that we wanted to give our users plenty of customisation. Customizing the 3D models and producing more avatars implied more costs and we faced many limitations in terms of production with our previous titles. This time, creating a simpler avatar as a base allows for us to provide a lot of customisation options. Also, we believe that with this kind of lobby avatar, we can implement action-style mini-games. Please look forward to following updates.

· AFGC: The UI design from online lobbies in other ASW games like BBCF, P4U, and Xrd is described by players as stylistic and simple, but they are centered around the player experience and whoever is in the lobby at the time. What pushed you to make the online lobbies more community-based for Strive?

We removed the ranked match feature early in the game design process. Our goal was to do our very best to centralize all of the online experience in one shared space. There were many reasons for this, but the most significant one was that we did not want a game mode to separate the more dedicated players from the more casual players. This is why this time the lobby has a different role from what it was used for in the previous titles. Up until now, ranked matches were supposed to match you against players of (more or less) your level, and instead of playing to improve your own skills, you had to continue aiming at climbing higher and higher.

This is why we designed the lobby structure as these “layers where you can actually see your opponents.”

· CASW: It seems that the lobby system has been giving some problems to the team and you have been doing some adjustments to it since the first closed beta until now in order to improve the experience. Our question is, are there plans to make more adjustments to it in the long run? Are there new features that you would like to implement?

When designing the system, our goal was for the players to be able to pick their opponents for the online matches. This worked well during our internal testing, however during the beta test, it caused significant lag with the server, making the game mostly unplayable. After that we reconsidered the direction, and taking network infrastructure into consideration, we ended up with a traditional matchmaking system.

So, due to this big change between the original concept and the content that was eventually implemented, some leftover features are difficult to use and not intuitive. We will continue working on this seriously even after the product is released, to create an environment where everyone can play more comfortably.

· AFGC: Do you see menu-based lobby systems returning in the future?

It is a possibility, but even if it happens, we would like both players that use menu-based matchmaking and lobby-based matchmaking to be able to match together. Right now there is a Quick Match mode for that purpose. We can predict from past experience that having the players divided by mode will have them scattered, especially newer players, and prevent fair rank matching from happening.

· CASW: I know that you may not be able to answer this one, but can we expect this online experience for future Arc System Works titles? For example, DNF Duel.

I believe our future titles will have the rollback architecture as default now. We are even considering implementing it in past titles. For the quality of the experience, it has to be taken case-by-case, so we cannot promise anything but all our teams always do their best.

. CASW: How do you all felt when you knew that Guilty Gear Strive was chosen as one of the main games for the EVO?

We were both happy and worried at the same time. Happy because it was holding GGST up to other prestigious titles like SFV, Tekken 7 and MK11, which is definitely an honor. Worried because, well, the game was not yet released when this was announced, so… (laughs)

· CASW: During the process, the team probably had to face many difficulties. Could you tell us what was the most difficult task or tasks when implementing rollback netcode?

Our biggest challenge was the frame drops. GGST uses very rich character models and backgrounds, and the PS4 especially had frame drops constantly ever since development started. Now from this, we implemented the rollback and the server load just went through the roof during online matches. We had to deal with fixing these continuously until the end.

· CASW: Will there be an option to add artificial delay like in +R?

It is something we will think about depending on how things turn out. For now, most players are enjoying the online matches. As time goes by after the release, however, we are expecting many more problems to come up. Generally, the growing priorities regarding development now are fixing bugs and making inconvenient features more convenient.

· CASW: We usually hear many people asking for DBFZ (and GBVS as well) to have rollback. This is a golden chance to discuss the topic, so we would like to ask you about it. Would it be possible to implement rollback on those games or would it be far too hard now that those games are already fully programmed?*Note: Once again, we know that this is up to Bandai Namco and Cygames, but we would like to know the challenges that you should have to face to make it possible.

We are not publishing either of those titles, so we have no say on the matter. But on a purely technical side, is it feasible? Yes, it is. However, it is extremely difficult to retro-fit rollback. Because the game was not designed with rollback in mind, you can never know where the program is going to start behaving unpredictably. On our side it will be necessary to repeatedly check and correct possible scenarios that might happen during the fight.

· CASW: How do you feel after seeing all of these gamers from all over the world enjoying a truly online experience in a Japanese fighting game for the first time?

We have been deeply impressed by the fact that we have now entered an era where we can actually hold a difficult project like running a competition between, let’s say, Japan and the United States on GGST. The more opponents you can find, the more exciting fighting games become. We believe that now, with the coming of this era of fully-fledged online features, serious competition between rivals from around the world is possible and this will contribute to making the fighting game genre even more exciting.

· CASW: Last but not least, the next step would be cross play so all the community could play together. In a genre like fighting games, in which the community is the cornerstone, I feel like this should be a must have going forward. Do we have more news regarding this demanded feature? Does rollback netcode make it harder to implement crossplay between different consoles or between consoles and PC?

Of course, we are always striving to accomplish this, and we are going through the verification processes for it. But there are still many practical issues like schedules and the running costs of matching servers. It will take a little more time before we can make a concrete announcement.

· Is there something that you would like to share with our readers?

We've been making you wait for a long time since the announcement at EVO in 2019, but we finally managed to release Guilty Gear -Strive-. This game is filled with many emotions from our development team. We hope you will all enjoy it for a long time.

Thank you very much for your time! We are truly looking forward to enjoy the full experience of your work when Guilty Gear Strive releases on June 11th

On the other hand, we want to say thanks to the Anime Fighting Game Community account (@AFGCNews) for wanting to participate with us in the interview (we included two of their questions)