I have been playing the game since day 1 of b19 back in 2008 (?). I have played hundreds of matches and thousands of rounds on public servers at various times in the game's lifespan, played with and against the best players in the game so I feel like I have the experience to be able to say that v1.6 is the worst balanced version of MBII that I can remember. There are so many balance issues the game is hardly playable. I'm gonna try to keep this post as brief as possible but it's pretty much going to have to include almost every aspect of the game so strap in.
1. Saber vs gun.
I don't know there's a single person who plays this game and thinks the current saber vs gun balance is good (at least I hope there isn't). Before even getting into any details, the most important thing: fp drains. They're completely out of whack, for some guns they're a little too low (pistol 3, bowcaster, ee3), for others they are so low that there's almost no point shooting a jedi until he's actually swinging his saber at you (e11). Any jedi can strafe in front of any gunner and not lose fp fast enough to outpace passive regen. They can kill your teammate, have 20 fp, get out of IDR and regen their fp while you're continuously shooting them and there's nothing you can do about it. I was told there are some number tweaks for drains that didn't make it into the game from the beta and if that's the case I'm honestly dumbfounded how there wasn't a hotfix already (or, preferably, a year ago when everyone realized this is the situation).
Now, on to flinch vs knockback. I've made my position clear on the discord but I'll repeat it here. When I was on the beta team with M00, Hexodious and GoodOl'Ben we tried to implement a knockback mechanic on bodyshots scored within IDR and decided to scrap it, here's how things played out: if the knockback distance was too short, it wasn't punishing enough as the jedi could just try to swing again. If it was longer, the jedi would be knocked out of IDR and be allowed a free reset since the gunner could no longer drain his fp effectively. These tests resulted in the mechanic we had over the last however many versions, flinch, and I personally think it is a much better solution provided that the fp drains are in a good place. I don't understand the logic of going back to a mechanic that was scrapped in testing, but maybe there's something I'm missing here. In either case I think hotfixing the fp drains should have been a priority months ago when the new values were introduced and everyone instantly knew they were completely retarded.
2. Class balance.
I'm gonna go over some of the most recent changes but also some older ones, this is pretty much gonna include almost every class in the game and how I feel about their current states. I'm not gonna go into how each classes gun also drains too little force because that's a given and also covered above
- soldier and ET: starting off with what I think are the 2 best balanced classes in the game. These dudes should be the gold standard upon which all class design decisions are judged. Simple, high skill cap, low/medium skill floor, easy for new players to pick up but extremely deadly in the hands of a real boy gamer. Some extra flavour added with conc nades, dodge, a different gun for ETs, an amazing teamwork oriented ability in rally/assemble, fun to play and balanced. It's obviously a coincidence that neither soldier nor ET were touched in a meaningful way for at least 2-3 years.
- wookiee: on to what I think is the 2nd biggest offender after jedi, the wookiee bowcaster nerf was completely unwarranted and it ruined an extremely important dynamic of the game. Rebels are the attacking team on almost all maps. Rebels need attacking classes and that was the role the old wookiee bowcaster 2, str/hp 3 build did. You were a run & gun dead simple killing machine - immune to knockdowns, with a large hp pool and a strong gun but a huge hitbox and 0 utility to balance things out. Wookiees used to be strong, yes, but not overpowered, and more importantly they filled an important role in the reb team, being able to push, gain map control with their force-immune presence and deal massive damage at the same time. They were still very susceptible to well positioned bounty hunters, soldiers and especially ETs with t21 (which has since been nerfed for no reason as far as I remember) due to their large hitbox and slow movespeed. Perfect mix of balance, fun and team utility. Well, someone though it would be a good idea to ruin that and turn them into a gimmick class that almost has to use rage (I'm not gonna go into how stupid I think rage is because this post is gonna be too long). The current iteration, which has gained some of the rate of fire back and retained charged shot on bowcaster level 2 is still too weak and most importantly incapable of attacking imperials camping corridors which is what rebels NEED so badly. Charged shot promotes camping. Slow rate of fire promotes camping. Wookiees need to be frontline juggernauts, not sitting around a box charging up their gun. Their gun just doesn't match the rest of their kit and more importantly it doesn't match their role in the team.
- hero, bounty hunter: these 2 are together because I think the recent change to proj was very poorly thought out in the context of bounty hunters existing on the defending team. Let's compare the 2 big sniper rifles: proj and ruptor. Disruptor has always been much stronger because it's hitscan and because it's on the defending team (broadly speaking) which meant you could hold an angle and not be forced to take fights you don't want to take. Proj has slow bullets but heroes have dodge to balance it out. Well now the balance has been skewed in the imperials favour with the damage nerf for proj, now you've got a 1shot hitscan weapon vs a 2shot projectile weapon. I have around 1 billion hours on these 2 classes and personally think the perfect solution in terms of balancing them against eachother and the rest of the cast would be also nerfing disruptor's damage to something similar to current proj (2shot chest 1shot headshot) but returning the ability to hit into dodge with headshots. Now snipers wouldn't be as much of a threat to other classes unless they can score consistent headshots (near impossible in mb2 due to engine limitations) but at the same time the sniper vs sniper metagame would be balanced in a way where they can take eachother out with relative ease.
- mando, ARC: these 2 also go together for brevity but also because they suffer from similar issues. They are way too easy to kill and offer little power in return. Ever since the bullet speed increase years ago, the speed at which a mandalorian flies is just not enough. Their jetpacks need a major buff in terms of the ability to change direction to stop them being sitting ducks. I don't know what the solution is for ARCs, maybe give them max stamina and dex as baseline, but they definitely need SOMETHING to be able to compete, they've been absolute trash in 1v1 ever since I remember. I don't play them much so I don't have much to offer here but I play against them ARCs are pretty much free frags for almost every imperial class. Yes they have utility which is great and useful in some specific situations, but they're not fun to play in and of themselves because they're just so fucking weak in 1v1s.
3. Imp vs reb balance.
Yeah so if you've read through all that stuff in 2, some key concepts for rebel classes are so gimped right now that the imp vs reb balance is completely fucked. Broadly speaking rebels are the attacking team, imps are the defenders. Rebels need pushing power. They need classes that can get entry frags (used to be hero and wookiee), classes that take map control (used to be wookiee), classes that can flank (should be ARC, but how can you flank when you can't win a 1v1?). Right now they have none of those. Imperial classes are so much stronger in almost every facet of the game it feels worse than ever to play rebels. This is further exacerbated by the fact most maps are very defender biased, and I feel like that should also be taken into account when balancing the game and it really doesn't seem to be. Some of the changes made in recent updates sadly feel like they were decided on in a vacuum by some very poorly informed people and it shows in the game - look at the server list on any given day, how many people do you see that have played this game for more than a year or 2? I don't see any of the good players I used to play with and sure, you can say they just quit organically and it's probably true to some degree, but I know for a fact many people that I know don't play the game anymore because it's so poorly balanced. You may also say 'who cares about old players, we need new players!' and that is also a fair point, but if you wanna keep those new players around you need a well designed game. I really hope the dev team reads this and at least considers some of the things I say because you may or may not like it (and I know the dev team doesn't like my feedback and never did wanna listen to it) but I have more experience and game knowledge than almost anyone and so do my friends who agree with most if not all of the things in the post above. MB2 feels like it's on life support right now and it desperately needs some changes to bring the game back into its former glory.
1. Saber vs gun.
I don't know there's a single person who plays this game and thinks the current saber vs gun balance is good (at least I hope there isn't). Before even getting into any details, the most important thing: fp drains. They're completely out of whack, for some guns they're a little too low (pistol 3, bowcaster, ee3), for others they are so low that there's almost no point shooting a jedi until he's actually swinging his saber at you (e11). Any jedi can strafe in front of any gunner and not lose fp fast enough to outpace passive regen. They can kill your teammate, have 20 fp, get out of IDR and regen their fp while you're continuously shooting them and there's nothing you can do about it. I was told there are some number tweaks for drains that didn't make it into the game from the beta and if that's the case I'm honestly dumbfounded how there wasn't a hotfix already (or, preferably, a year ago when everyone realized this is the situation).
Now, on to flinch vs knockback. I've made my position clear on the discord but I'll repeat it here. When I was on the beta team with M00, Hexodious and GoodOl'Ben we tried to implement a knockback mechanic on bodyshots scored within IDR and decided to scrap it, here's how things played out: if the knockback distance was too short, it wasn't punishing enough as the jedi could just try to swing again. If it was longer, the jedi would be knocked out of IDR and be allowed a free reset since the gunner could no longer drain his fp effectively. These tests resulted in the mechanic we had over the last however many versions, flinch, and I personally think it is a much better solution provided that the fp drains are in a good place. I don't understand the logic of going back to a mechanic that was scrapped in testing, but maybe there's something I'm missing here. In either case I think hotfixing the fp drains should have been a priority months ago when the new values were introduced and everyone instantly knew they were completely retarded.
2. Class balance.
I'm gonna go over some of the most recent changes but also some older ones, this is pretty much gonna include almost every class in the game and how I feel about their current states. I'm not gonna go into how each classes gun also drains too little force because that's a given and also covered above
- soldier and ET: starting off with what I think are the 2 best balanced classes in the game. These dudes should be the gold standard upon which all class design decisions are judged. Simple, high skill cap, low/medium skill floor, easy for new players to pick up but extremely deadly in the hands of a real boy gamer. Some extra flavour added with conc nades, dodge, a different gun for ETs, an amazing teamwork oriented ability in rally/assemble, fun to play and balanced. It's obviously a coincidence that neither soldier nor ET were touched in a meaningful way for at least 2-3 years.
- wookiee: on to what I think is the 2nd biggest offender after jedi, the wookiee bowcaster nerf was completely unwarranted and it ruined an extremely important dynamic of the game. Rebels are the attacking team on almost all maps. Rebels need attacking classes and that was the role the old wookiee bowcaster 2, str/hp 3 build did. You were a run & gun dead simple killing machine - immune to knockdowns, with a large hp pool and a strong gun but a huge hitbox and 0 utility to balance things out. Wookiees used to be strong, yes, but not overpowered, and more importantly they filled an important role in the reb team, being able to push, gain map control with their force-immune presence and deal massive damage at the same time. They were still very susceptible to well positioned bounty hunters, soldiers and especially ETs with t21 (which has since been nerfed for no reason as far as I remember) due to their large hitbox and slow movespeed. Perfect mix of balance, fun and team utility. Well, someone though it would be a good idea to ruin that and turn them into a gimmick class that almost has to use rage (I'm not gonna go into how stupid I think rage is because this post is gonna be too long). The current iteration, which has gained some of the rate of fire back and retained charged shot on bowcaster level 2 is still too weak and most importantly incapable of attacking imperials camping corridors which is what rebels NEED so badly. Charged shot promotes camping. Slow rate of fire promotes camping. Wookiees need to be frontline juggernauts, not sitting around a box charging up their gun. Their gun just doesn't match the rest of their kit and more importantly it doesn't match their role in the team.
- hero, bounty hunter: these 2 are together because I think the recent change to proj was very poorly thought out in the context of bounty hunters existing on the defending team. Let's compare the 2 big sniper rifles: proj and ruptor. Disruptor has always been much stronger because it's hitscan and because it's on the defending team (broadly speaking) which meant you could hold an angle and not be forced to take fights you don't want to take. Proj has slow bullets but heroes have dodge to balance it out. Well now the balance has been skewed in the imperials favour with the damage nerf for proj, now you've got a 1shot hitscan weapon vs a 2shot projectile weapon. I have around 1 billion hours on these 2 classes and personally think the perfect solution in terms of balancing them against eachother and the rest of the cast would be also nerfing disruptor's damage to something similar to current proj (2shot chest 1shot headshot) but returning the ability to hit into dodge with headshots. Now snipers wouldn't be as much of a threat to other classes unless they can score consistent headshots (near impossible in mb2 due to engine limitations) but at the same time the sniper vs sniper metagame would be balanced in a way where they can take eachother out with relative ease.
- mando, ARC: these 2 also go together for brevity but also because they suffer from similar issues. They are way too easy to kill and offer little power in return. Ever since the bullet speed increase years ago, the speed at which a mandalorian flies is just not enough. Their jetpacks need a major buff in terms of the ability to change direction to stop them being sitting ducks. I don't know what the solution is for ARCs, maybe give them max stamina and dex as baseline, but they definitely need SOMETHING to be able to compete, they've been absolute trash in 1v1 ever since I remember. I don't play them much so I don't have much to offer here but I play against them ARCs are pretty much free frags for almost every imperial class. Yes they have utility which is great and useful in some specific situations, but they're not fun to play in and of themselves because they're just so fucking weak in 1v1s.
3. Imp vs reb balance.
Yeah so if you've read through all that stuff in 2, some key concepts for rebel classes are so gimped right now that the imp vs reb balance is completely fucked. Broadly speaking rebels are the attacking team, imps are the defenders. Rebels need pushing power. They need classes that can get entry frags (used to be hero and wookiee), classes that take map control (used to be wookiee), classes that can flank (should be ARC, but how can you flank when you can't win a 1v1?). Right now they have none of those. Imperial classes are so much stronger in almost every facet of the game it feels worse than ever to play rebels. This is further exacerbated by the fact most maps are very defender biased, and I feel like that should also be taken into account when balancing the game and it really doesn't seem to be. Some of the changes made in recent updates sadly feel like they were decided on in a vacuum by some very poorly informed people and it shows in the game - look at the server list on any given day, how many people do you see that have played this game for more than a year or 2? I don't see any of the good players I used to play with and sure, you can say they just quit organically and it's probably true to some degree, but I know for a fact many people that I know don't play the game anymore because it's so poorly balanced. You may also say 'who cares about old players, we need new players!' and that is also a fair point, but if you wanna keep those new players around you need a well designed game. I really hope the dev team reads this and at least considers some of the things I say because you may or may not like it (and I know the dev team doesn't like my feedback and never did wanna listen to it) but I have more experience and game knowledge than almost anyone and so do my friends who agree with most if not all of the things in the post above. MB2 feels like it's on life support right now and it desperately needs some changes to bring the game back into its former glory.
