Not trying to be offensive, but it seems like.... the Calibur community just doesn't play other games.
Frame skip and duplicated frames are normal in nearly any fighting game that has an online component from the PC to the original Xbox to SCV. Anyone that is actually surprised that this happens or that feels *qualified* to claim it's terrible coding..... has a severe fundamental misunderstanding.
Here's the really simple bits in a child friendly analogy:
You are playing a game of catch with your buddy. You are both casually tossing the ball back and forth and not trying to do any sort of fancy fastball throws or special throws that alter the course of the ball. To you and your buddy, it appears that the ball is moving nearly the same speed regardless of which one of you throws it. Of course, when measured, there are obvious speed differences between the speeds that the ball flies. These differences appear not only between the speeds that you and your buddy throw the ball, but also at the speeds that you throw the ball consecutively. If we were to record this match and relied on the ball being thrown at the exact same speed we could insert duplicate frames (or remove frames) of the film where the ball moved faster or slower than usual.
This is how the magic of the internet works with multiplayer games, streaming audio and video, etc.
Not all games are created equal and not all techniques are appropriate for all games. Some games lend themselves to good online play (BlazBlue with it's 5F input buffer) and some games do not (Guilty Gear and 1F jumps run through a NAOMI emulator). It is not simply about trying to compare two titles and claiming "good" or "bad" code when the engines are so drastically different. I'm going to use the example of BlazBlue again - not only is there a nice, fat 5F window but there is also a trick they can use to assume the next input since most of the combos are very static. SCV, on the other hand, does not have this rigid combo system and most characters don't even have lengthy combos. In BlazBlue's case, they could actually code against a list of expected moves to fill in at any latency during high execution combos while SCV..... is screwed.
Edit and PS - Does no one remember the boat level on the PS3 version of SCIV? The exact same thing happened that the OP describes when compared to the Xbox - and that was local play.
