Atlus will add recovery netcode Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. It is confirmed for PS4 and PC versions. The company and Arc System Works have chosen to improve their online performance through an implementation of the protocol, which is currently preferred for boxers playing online matches. The team notes that they are looking at the idea back in December 2021.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Producer Kazuhisa Wada made the announcement of the netcode reinstatement via a brief message, later posted by Atlus West’s Twitter account.
# P4AU Producer Wada-san has a very interesting message! 💥
Rollback Netcode comes to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax this summer for Steam and PS4! # P25th pic.twitter.com/hduHjRTmZl
– Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) February 28, 2022
In the announcement, Wada noted that the addition of the rollback won’t be immediate. When the game re-launches in March 2022, the standard netcode will remain the default. Patches for PS4 and PC to add the restore feature will be rolling out in Summer 2022.
For starters, netcode is basically a way for two networked players’ platforms to talk to each other over the internet. In fighting games, the two main forms that these strategies apply to are based on delay and backtracking. Since fighting games rely heavily on ensuring that players are synchronized and able to register their inputs correctly, different netcode styles are of high importance. Latency-based netcode is relatively simpler to implement, but is particularly poor at compensating for differences in network quality. In situations where poor connection or long distances between players causes input lag, games with lag may be worse when played online. Restore netcode, when it was introduced with Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, will replace this with a prediction-based one. It will use a system to guess player input and roll back frames when it detects desynchronization. This approach is said to provide a much smoother experience, one can mask the “latency” that inevitably affects online play.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is available on PS3, but will release for Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC on March 17, 2022. Its recovery patch will arrive in Summer of 2022 for PS4 and PC.
