Heroes Versus Villains balance broken

@bongernyc This has been a LONG standing issue but IMO for a number of reasons:

1. yes, balancing is a problem but that’s partly due to how players use characters. You may see a Level 49 Chewbacca but they have a Obi Wan that’s level 400, indicating a degree of experience you can’t see.

2. Exploits. I will NOT call this cheating because it isn’t, however, nearly all of your newer YouTube videos on how to play this game advertise how to take advantage of poorly designed game mechanics. Now even new players to the game are playing with a strats that see them exploiting loopholes in broken characters.

3. IMBALANCE: This is my number one pet peeve with this game. The Devs seemingly lost their minds when structuring the heroes & villains. In a proper game every characters attributes and abilities would be balanced in a way so that any two characters could combat each other with equal likelihood of victory; the determining factor being the player and their accurate use. That is NOT how this game has evolved. Many characters are so broken and imbalanced, not just within themselves, but versus other characters that it makes the gameplay haphazard and feel more like RNG. Combine that with aspects like impact lag & input stacking and you’ve got yourself a nice heaping pile of garbage-sundae. 

The matchmaking, IMO, is probably the least impactive element here. 

I will also mention, on a side note, that I, personally; believe that there is a significant issue with player level and attribute assignment among the heroes, villains, & classes.

I did some game-testing research on this game post TROS update and found significant differences in how the characters behaved than before the update. In my play testing (examples of which were documented on this forum) I was seeing examples of characters at a lower level exhibiting attributes differently than those same characters of higher levels. This led me to question exactly how far reaching the tiered progression system worked. Rather than being given any answer a “vague” deflection was given by one of the community managers and the thread locked. 

A number of people who had read my write up prior to the thread getting locked had seen the same things and for us it wasn’t a stretch to think that this was a way for the Devs to apply a buff to newer players to prevent them from being steam rolled by veterans (as TROS movie release saw a surge of new players). 

I cannot prove that since I would need to decompile the game code to do so as as such I will not say that is a for sure element of the game and I have seen some changes to character behavior from what it was so who knows. 

however, the 3 items I listed above are real problems with the game and will always be, unfortunately. 

@VetteC5RXHey, can you give me the link to that topic you mentioned at the bottom?

About 2., I know it's really annoying when everyone is using exploits. I realized it back some few months ago when suddenly so many in HvH used the jump exploit (especially as Grievous) which really wasn't a thing in the HvH playerbase just like one week before I noticed this.

On the other hand, I guess it's just fair that the knowledge about all this is shared on youtube and not just a privilege of few tryhards who then become unstoppable.

The problem is, once someone spreads the information on youtube, they'll immediately have the attention of all tryhards who don't care the slightest how unfair this might be to unaware people, which creates this imbalance in the first place.

Then videos like these become more famous and other players who want to know how exactly the pros are doing this miraculous stuff will follow up. Fair.

But yes, this entire lightsaber mechanic that requires exploits to even create any kind of fun combat dynamic other than smashing button against someone's block all the time was really poor in the first place. On the other hand, the servers are so bad that any more in-depth mechanics would've been either completely RNG or unfair for one side if someone has just the better connection.

Even as it is right now, the tides of lightsaber combat are turned way too easily by lag or connection difference levels.

@TRlALON I’ll see if I can search for it and link it here. It was a while ago but shouldn’t have been deleted. 

Block spamming was addressed on launch. The logic the BF1 also has was present in BF2 in the beginning. You could only hold block for so long. Once a player started to block the block stam gauge started to decrease so if a player just sat on block the stam would run out and leave them vulnerable.

This was a FAR better mechanic that shouldn’t have been changed. The game now is literally just a combo of exploit and spam fest. 

@TRlALON  Here’s the link to the thread I had posted 

https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Player-Level-Handicap-Needs-to-be-Removed/td-p/8661543

@VetteC5RXThanks!

Yeah I remember that, although I had uninstalled the game quickly back then again.

I guess they removed it because attacking was free even after stamina was depleted so it was a spam fest overall too.

I know from threads that for a time they also had the counter-mechanic from BF1 included into the game for a while, which then again just made everyone block and being afraid to attack.

The problem is even if we include a system of auto-depleting block stamina again, it would mean big advantages for certain characters again as in this game the ability effects are not different than if used on soldiers and you only need to wait out like in BF1 until your opponent can't block anymore.

In BF1 this was solved in a way that e.g. Luke got only briefly stunned when affected by Vader's choke and not held into the air all the time. Same for Lando's shock mine.

Speaking about shocked, that was exactly how I felt back when I found out that e.g. Lando using shock on you means exactly just the same as for soldiers, being helpless and dieing in 2 seconds from full HP if enough firepower is used against you. Those were the times... 

@TRlALON Those would be issues if you paired having block stam with free strikes.

currently stam is combined and that’s fine to keep it that way, just install a depletion value if someone sits on block, stam begins to decrease. 

There would also need to be a balancing of player abilities. There’s no reason Hann should have 2 unblockable abilities or Luke benefits from instant cast times. Part of the point is having players properly time and plan their movements. By having stam start to erode away if someone camps it you’re going to have players starting to think more not just about blocking but also approaching and striking their opponents. 

They have it now where you can just spam block and stam doesn’t decrease unless someone attacks you ... well characters like Obi Wan become stam walls with the right cards which is garbo. 

If they started to ditch a lot of these extra & unnecessary conditional mechanics the server response would be much better. How many times are you seeing delayed reactions due to input stacking? You’ll go to do something and an input from an opponent from seconds prior gets executed from the stack and you get caught off guard with an effect out of nowhere. 

In a game like this simplicity goes a lot farther than trying to over work it. 

I join eight matches in a row today with the kill ball in effect, inexcusable ETA and dice. Back in the early 2000s dice made Battlefield 2 for PC the most balanced game I've ever me.t now they join the ranks of all those who make games easy for the eight-year-old to pick up a battle game versus seasoned veteran thirty-year-old horrible money-market grabbing peeps. Shame on you Dice and EA, for selling out to the masses make a quality game .God do I miss Counter-Strike. And before you post your rebut Triathlon, I'm just speaking the truth and you know it. For God sake, DICE. Quite making you spawn away from across the map in HvV from your teammates .that's a worse idea in a damn world and bring back Target system much better PvP

The amount of Rage quitting and team in- balance is at an all-time high right now and I play this game 6 to 8 hours a day everyday this is getting ridiculous. Support is long gone and this game is just a trash Heap right now

@draftnbyu There was a point when the game was much better but the Devs tried to over work the game and turned it into a mess.

the hallmark of poor design and poor logic is having the entire gameplay re-worked; essentially changing how the game not only feels but plays. This is something that should never happen in game development. 

So many parts of this game are haphazard. It’s clear the Devs had no real direction or attention here. The matchmaking, the imbalances, the bugs / exploits, the gameplay mechanics, all your favorites, they’re all here. 

one it got towards the end and the Devs knew the end of life was being called they still dropped the ball; rather than using that time to shore up the game and make the gameplay value better they wasted time on low quality DLC to draw new players. Not to make money as the game was deeply discounted or free by that point but to draw players to the developer / publisher; that’s what they wanted, a number spike. And they got it; by making the game spam playable they appeased new players to the game and kicked all the loyal players / customers in the teeth to do it. 

@VetteC5RXI guess this is all inherited by the long line of Battlefield games.

Something like a matchmaking didn't exist there either, so as a new player, good luck with your default M-16 or AK-74 with no further weapon or class upgrades. At least you had the option to pick up the equipment of killed players to get better stuff for a moment.

Sure, this was all not a huge problem if you were a veteran already and started over again (did that here and there) because of aim skills, but poor equipment paired with no map knowledge and usually no great aim yet for this game definitely was a disadvantage for new players.

I think they kept that philosophy that matchmaking isn't required because everyone will get better stuff and adapt sooner or later, but this is simply a different game where casual mechanics allow pros to radically sweep the floor with noobs while not getting killed once.