Bitter Truth: PvP Had Always Been Broken Since GW1, Beyond Hero Balancing [ Edited ]

[GammaX6]

We can all argue about Hero A countering Hero B or being better than Hero C, which probably needs a buff according to many posts. We've all seen people talking about "how to deal with Hero Z" claiming that Hero Z is actually balanced and not OP. Rest assured, I'm not here to say that any of you are wrong or right. Because, in a game like this, there are many circumstances that play a role in making a game competitive/enjoyable or not.

There are factors that I'm sure many of you had encountered before playing BFN since GW1, and they are:

1. There is almost no balance between both teams skill-wise: 
   Have you ever been to a game that went "too smoothly" or "too roughly"? with no sense of "competition" at all? There are times when you feel like you're the only one caring about the objective or doing something. And when you check the scoreboard or watch the kill feed you know for sure that there is something wrong going on. The enemy team seems to have more players of higher rank (but of course, having a higher rank doesn't always translate to better skill all the time) and better skill by seeing how many they've vanquished and achieved. Your team stands no chance against anyone. (And no, I will not blame my team in this case because I know that it's not their fault they were thrown into an unbalanced BEST match.) These sort of games, sadly, drive people away from the game and give bitter experiences.
   
   
2. People switching to the winner team further accelerates the problem:
   Some players immediately switch after the end of the current game, knowing that they will most likely win next ones. And I confess, I am part of the problem. The next game, I switch teams knowing that I will have it easier than before, refusing to fall into the same agony I suffered during the previous game. This sort of behavior further accelerates the frustrations that might occur from problem #1 or it could be a factor to why #1 even exists in the first place. (I switch because there is no balance to begin with. Staying on the same team wouldn't bring miracles.)
   
   
3. There is no control over what heroes your teammates are playing:
   This game is like "Rock-Paper-Scissors" but with more variations of course. With the enemy team having certain dominating heroes that are skillful and good, it becomes a difficult job for you to do anything about it to counter them all while having your own cool downs. And in some cases, your teammates' hero choices don't really help defending/attacking/pushing or even contributing to the game at all. The enemy team could have 2 ~ 3 healers that revive (makes it difficult to attack/defend), while your team has none.
   
   
4. Too many of the same hero can be exhausting to counter:
   This goes hand-in-hand with #3. The enemy team might have 5 of Hero A and you know how to counter that hero, but your abilities have their own cool downs. And even if you vanquished one, the other one comes from behind and finishes you. Your team are supposed to help you with that, but because of #3 (not having control over your teammates' choices), this problem becomes frustrating. Especially when you, PopCap, give certain heroes the ability to deal a massive damage with little effort. This also affects "Hero Balancing" significantly as we don't know how many players will play Hero S.
   
   
5. Bonus: All-of-sudden, an enemy player or a huge influx of players switch to certain heroes:
   This happens during overtime mostly and is a major factor to why over time is annoying. After all, the enemy's choice is correct. But due to all players having certain abilities ready, it becomes difficult to counter those all-of-sudden with your current hero. Especially since this game is asymmetric, you might not have an exact counterpart that does the same role.
   
   
6. Bonus: Certain abilities come out of nowhere, all of a sudden and just erase you:
   I won't talk about which abilities precisely in here. But there are times when something flies out of nowhere and just hit you with no/poor sound effects or indications. I'm pretty sure that many people have encountered this and wondered "How did I die all of a sudden?" "I didn't hear or see that coming.". In other games like Overwatch for example, you know for sure what's coming towards you. You know when an enemy's ultimate is being activated.
    * Some of these issues are related to latency between players and probably how this game's net code works.
   
   
7. Extra: The Net Code of this game and servers' Tick Rate factor in many frustrations:
   Ever wondered why your shots don't register at all? Or why you couldn't escape Hero C burrowing even though, on your screen, you are certain that you have avoided that? Or why Ability X, Y and Z are terrible to activate? Well, it all boils down to how PvZBFN's servers function mostly. And since this game's crown jewel mode is Turf Takeover, which is 12vs12, it just makes things even worse. At times, during chaotic scenarios, the servers may possibly get degraded and refuses to register your actions properly.
   * Disclaimer: I have no definite proof to how the servers work exactly and for that I haven't dug deep into technical terms in here. But, by playing the game and seeing the general consensus on forums, I can assume that the servers run on low Tick Rates.
   * You can watch a video about Net Code Here and read further about it in Here.

So I will go back to what I was saying before mentioning these factors. We can argue about heroes and balancing them all we want. But the truth is, everything can be countered and killed/avoided. The factors I just mentioned result in an overall poor experience that might drive people away from the game. We live in a world where there are popular games like Overwatch and Fortnite that offer smoother experiences (I'm not here to talk about which game is better or worse, I'm talking about their performances in general compared to PvZBFN's) Which translates to people having higher expectations than before. In GW1 and GW2 days, even Overwatch didn't exist at that time as we used to have "limited options" back then. Now that we are exposed to more options, it is easier for people to leave the ecosystem for other games as we all directly/indirectly start comparing games to each other. And that would hurt the game on the long run. I already hear my friends saying "I'm not sure whether I'll continue playing this game after I upgrade everything or not...". I told them "Yes you will, events will bring you back.". But I don't want the events to become a reason to come back when those players know they will face the same exact poor experiences again. People should come back because they "love" the game and "miss" it.

I haven't mentioned all that claiming that I would quit all-together. I just don't understand certain design choices in a modern world where everything had evolved to be better than before. For example, why haven't issues #1 and #2 been addressed during this game's development? They are major frustrations that give bitter taste to all players of all skill ratings. Issues #3 and #4 are difficult to solve, if you want to give people the complete freedom that is, but other games found solutions to those problems. 

Sorry for the long post,

Thank you for reading

* I know that some of these had been discussed before. I just wanted you, readers, to look at the bigger picture to why PvP is flawed and broken regardless of the heroes.

* Edit: Format.

[Gowron248]

@GammaX6 Yeah I dunno, I come from League of Legends and this is exactly why I hate normal games compared to rank play. When playing Normals in League of Legends, the rankings and skill difference are all over the place to the point where it's destroy or be destroyed, at least in ranked you get a somewhat balance game, generally.

Would be nice with this game had a MMR system, if it doesn't already. Sadly I don't know if they have enough players to do this without ruining que times.

[Iron_Guard8]

All good points. Your post is great food for thought so I want to address this as well.

1: Team skill imbalance: I never play ranked in any game, I don't need to add stress and some of these games are toxic (not PvZ so much but the others certainly can be). Public matches in any of these games can be a hot mess. When I played WoT, especially when I played higher tier tanks, you would usually either stomp or be stomped, it was rare to have a fun, balanced, close-fought match. When you get clan teams in these games and it's just you and a couple of friends or just you with a bunch of randoms, it can be a nightmare. This is one of the things I actually enjoy about this series of games, it does have some clans but they haven't ruined it unlike some other games. Unless the game uses a solid matchmaking system, it will suffer from this, and most do outside of ranked. It's been common in all the others I've played too (Overwatch, WoT, Paladins, TF2, BF:1942).

2: Switching to the winning team: I never switch teams midgame unless it's to swap to the smaller team when the sides get out of whack. I'll just leave if the match is too frustrating. Like you I may switch sides between matches, but more often than not I'll just leave and go do something else for a bit. It's a common problem here for sure, seen it all too often in both GW games and now here.

3: Teammate Heroes: This is a problem in every game like this too. Now I understand that in most modes in Overwatch these days, they now have roles you have to fill and you can't have teams of 4 D.Vas or Torbjorns with a Mercy to rez them all (those were fun to play against, let me tell you. Changing Mercy's alt and limiting heroes is certainly a good idea). Having a team of 4 Scouts and 3 Spies in TF2 was an absolute joy to be a part of (sarcasm on full here). Unless they give us limits here, and I doubt they will as people need to level characters up, I can't see this changing.

4: Too many copies of a hero: It can be very hard to counter and also very hard to do well if your own team does this with inappropriate characters. Seeing the enemy with 'death squads' of Super Brainz or Night Caps or walls of Engineers can be daunting to face, but having your team decide that 5 Captain Deadbeards is perfect for attacking objectives is almost worse. I'm really loathe to add character limits to teams but they may have to. My final point to 3 also applies here.

5: Sudden character swaps en masse: Yep. I see this in the overtime often enough. Overtime needs to stop lasting for 10 minutes in the first place. This can be really hard to deal with but is also a common thing in games like this where you can change characters in a match with no limits.

6: Suddenly vanquished: It can feel arbitrary when everything is fine and suddenly, poof! And I notice you used Overwatch and it's Ultimate tells which while it is highly polished, can still have issues like this. Ultimates have the big announcements ("Justice Rains from above!"), but you can still get flattened by Junkrat spam out of nowhere, that annoying hook combo thing Roadhog does even though you're not in his direct LoS thanks to a corner, and others. The lack of ultimate abilities is one of the things I actually like about the PvZ shooter to be honest. Paladins has them too and they can be highly obnoxious (although admittedly, also fun at times, like knocking enemies off the map with Torvald's). Some of the more extreme cases do indeed seem to relate to the game's latency/netcode as we discuss in the next point.

7: Server issues: This is most noticeable with Chompers. In GW2 I'm sure people have seen the Chomper rise out of the ground to devour a teammate, go to shoot it, and it suddenly blinks over a couple of feet so your first shots don't do anything. That was always so frustrating. Also, the fact that Chompers can eat you after you're already 20 feet in the air with a rocket leap or other ability puts a big spotlight on this problem. While I have seen this to a point in every online shooter I've played, it at least seems worse in the PvZ games than any of the others barring possibly BF:1942 and that game is significantly older than the others I've played.

Again, great post and glad you brought this all up.