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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Dropped from EVO 2020 Lineup, New Games Added to EVO Online

by Matthew Zawodniak - May 13, 2020, 9:59 pm EDT
Total comments: 6

Time for the world to see rollback netcode in action.

As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the world's largest fighting game tournament is going online, and Smash Bros. fans will have to look elsewhere for a featured spot this year.

EVO announced the details of Evo Online, a five-week event with open online tournaments for four new games and special exhibitions for the original EVO 2020 lineup—with two big exceptions.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2, a legacy game with no official method of online play, is an obvious cut. Less obvious is the removal of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, marking the first EVO without a Smash game since 2012. Though EVO did not give a reason for removing Ultimate from their lineup, eSports consultant Rod Breslau believes it's due to the poor quality of Ultimate's online netcode.

Of the four games to be featured in Evo Online, two of them are or will be available on Switch: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath and Skullgirls. Killer Instinct and Them's Fightin' Herds will also be featured. It's notable that all four games use a rollback solution for their online netcode as opposed to the controversial delay-based solution that most fighting games use. When EVO originally announced they would be running online tournaments, many fans expressed concern that every game in the EVO lineup used delay-based netcode.

Evo Online will begin on July 4th, and will have events every weekend through August 2nd.

Talkback

https://i.imgur.com/TbS6Zvj.jpg

M.K.UltraMay 14, 2020

I fully expect Nintendo to host their own Smash tournament this year. They are usually more fun for spectating anyway.

ForgottenPearlMay 14, 2020

I'm glad to see TFH in the mix!  And yeah, Smash had no business being in an online EVO with its netcode.  Good call.

MythtendoMay 14, 2020

And EVO becomes even more useless. Kinda hard to call yourself a credible fighting tournament without having the best selling fighting game of all time.

nickmitchMay 14, 2020

Quote from: Mythtendo

And EVO becomes even more useless. Kinda hard to call yourself a credible fighting tournament without having the best selling fighting game of all time.

I don't think EVO is particularly hurt from dropping Smash; it'd be a bigger risk to have it in spite of the net code issue.  The net code is not good, and having slow, laggy gameplay front and center would be an issue for both Nintendo and EVO.

OedoMay 14, 2020

Quote from: Mythtendo

And EVO becomes even more useless. Kinda hard to call yourself a credible fighting tournament without having the best selling fighting game of all time.

Kind of hard to call yourself a credible fighting game tournament when everything is online.

This isn't a real EVO, and the format they've chosen shows it. As noted in the NWR article, they're not doing tournaments for the main lineup and are instead doing invitationals, and it's not a coincidence that the four games that do have open tournaments all use rollback netcode (and they'll still likely be less than an ideal experience).

The netcode in Smash Ultimate is so bad that top players are already swearing off online tournaments after having poor experiences with the other big online tournaments that were organized over the last few weeks, so it's not like EVO would have an easy time getting together a roster for an Smash Ultimate invitational even if they wanted to. Blame Nintendo for not caring about their online experience.

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