A World Championship and some massive changes are coming to DBFZ very, very soon.
The latest installment of the Dragon Ball FighterZ Show dropped on August 9, bringing with it a ton of news regarding the future of Arc System Works' popular fighting game. From a new World Championship to game-changing patch notes, here's a full recap of everything that went down.
The World Championship Is Back!
First up was the announcement of the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Championship. This is an online/offline hybrid competition spanning multiple regions throughout the world.
Players are invited to first test their skills in Tenkaichi Open Qualifiers. They will lead into three Regional Finals, to be held in the US, Europe, and Japan. The final event is the DBFZ World Championship, where the top 16 players will meet to determine the 2021 World Champion.
The series will kick off with the World Championship Opening Event, an exhibition showcase on August 28 and 29. This event will feature both 1v1 matches and a 5v5 France vs USA exhibition showdown. Each team has revealed two players: Team France will feature the reigning French national champion Marwan "Wawa" Berthe and Jilali “Jila” Eddaboue, while Team USA has confirmed Jon "dekillsage" Coello and Jonathan Tene.
More details about the World Championship, including match structure and registration, are expected during the Opening Event.
A Completely New Game
The second major update from the Dragon Ball FighterZ show involved a massive patch making big changes. Along with buffs and nerfs to specific characters, the patch alters a few general mechanics in meta-shifting ways.
The biggest change affects the Z Change mechanic, or the game's tag feature. The patch now allows characters to swap while performing special moves a la Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's Active Tag system. Guard Canceling also received big changes, with Air Guard Cancels no longer costing energy and a new Guard Cancel Vanish where a player can spend two bars to vanish out of a Guard Cancel.
The rest of the patch focuses on character-specific changes, with the majority of the roster receiving some impressive improvements. Adult Gohan, Broly (DBZ), Goku Black, and Frieza were among the biggest winners, while Nappa's Saibamen can now pass right through enemy energy blasts unaffected.
The new patch, while promised for a August 10 release, launched later on August 9 and is live now. The full patch notes are available in the DBFZ Show VOD above, along with exhibition matches showing off the changes.
What's missing?
Despite the World Championship and patch notes announcements, the show lacked two noticeable updates. First was a potential Season 4 of DLC, which fans speculated on despite Bandai Namco never mentioning it. Considering the amount of work done to the existing cast, the fanbase forgave the lack of new faces.
The larger issue, as expected, was no announcement regarding a change to rollback netcode. Game producer Tomoko Hiroki did address fans' desire for improved online play however, saying that it's "currently difficult for us to improve the netcode, but we would like to do our best to provide a place where everyone can have fun and fight as much as possible."
A new dawn approaches for Dragon Ball FighterZ with this new patch, and the game's trajectory once the community digs into the changes will be something to behold. For more on the FGC, check out the schedule for the second weekend of EVO 2021 Online, including competitions in Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate, Street Fighter V Champion Edition, and Tekken 7.
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