Hoth needs some SERIOUS rebalancing!!!

I've been playing the beta for about a day in a half now, and the team balance on Hoth is really bad. I have never seen a single Rebel victory, and neither has anyone I've talk to about the game. I get it, rebels don't win on Hoth in the movie (Jedi Luke from RotJ is not on Hoth either), but this is a video game. It has the be fair and balanced no matter which side you play, or people are just going to quit and not play that map if they get put on the rebel side. I hope other maps don't have balance issues as bad as Hoth. DICE needs to fix this before release.

Just keep playing the next round you'll win and It's not impossible which made it feel oh so awesome when I won as rebels. The whole team cheered and said good job to one another which doesn't happen often in an online environment. It's like we changed the course of Star Wars history I think it's enjoyable the way it is.

I won once, therefore all is well.

@antikythera: What was the strategy? Just ignore all the ground units and focus shooting the walkers? It seems that they take way to much damage. I wish this game had a ticket counter.

I just won, first time. I didn't do very well personally either. I think the losing may just come from people firing on the walkers when they are not vulnerable which wastes a lot of time. Once people figure out what they are doing it may balance itself out.

is this out on ps4?

Guess what!
Betas are to do EXACTLY that.

I'd be shocked if they didn't rebalance it before release, it is pretty much universal that the win rate on the Rebel side is drastically lower than Imperials.

It's almost like it's a beta or something. Weird.

... am I the only person okay with that? I think it's cool and works well with the actual battle from the movies. I can have fun even in a losing match and it makes winning as rebels super rewarding.

Maybe it's not intentional but I would like it if it was.

Haha it won't be fixed before release come on now. Maybe the first patch afterwards. This is a demo afterall.

Really, I don't think its that hard.

Right now for the Rebels you need to save orbital bombardments for the cliff-side AT-AT. Destroying it within the first two Y-wing bombing runs is ideal. Then if you are having trouble with the last AT-AT you can just tow cable it with Airspeeders during the final bombing run.

You can't tow cable the cliff-side AT-AT because you'll just crash into the cliff.

I would say it's only hard right now because everyone is just trying/figuring it out, and the imperial side requires less coordination to win.

It's imbalanced in the sense that as the Empire, all you need to do to win is prevent the Rebels from holding the objectives, whereas as the Rebels, you have the additional objective of actually damaging the walkers (under time pressure).

I've seen a few Rebel victories. It's very doable; I think once people have played it for a bit they'll pay more attention to the objectives. Right now a lot of people seem to be running circles and saying "ermagerd Star Wars you guys!"

It doesn't need a rebalance, it just requires some intelligence to win as rebel. I've only lost 1 time as a Rebel so far, and it was my first time (Not that I'm exclusively winning the games).

All you need to do is save any Orbital Strike pickups you get for when the ATTs get Vulnerable, a single OS will nearly kill one from 100%. A group of 8 friends and myself (the max party size) managed to win as rebel in the first Vulnerability stage twice in a row just using some basic communication and effective thinking. The balance is absolutely fine.

I think the actual balancing is fine its just you need to actually get 20 people to work together and you know... do objectives. I was the only one even attempting to get into the snow speeders in the games I played.

I think it is a little unbalanced. I think I've seen maybe 25% rebel winrate in the matches I've played so far.

But I'm pretty sure the problem lies in the level design. The second part of the map is torturous as rebels against a competent empire team. They will spawncamp the hell out of that hangar and all of its exits forever. It's frustrating at times. Good luck.

That said, I don't really mind their being an inherent imbalance in the mode, as long as they continue switching the teams after every round it's not that big of a deal to me. Also, it's thematically appropriate. And since the rebels are the underdogs, it feels REAL good when you win as them. Or even take out one of the walkers on the first bombing run, which my team did once. Cheers all around.

@kadash299: it takes 8 organized dudes to beat randoms just running around and you call that balanced?

With two teams fighting it may very well be balanced but with randoms running around playing free for all for themself (like 90% of the matches) the rebels will always loose.

I've only ever seen one Rebel win and maybe 2 very close calls.

The one match we won was amazing. My first time flying a Snowspeeder and I just barely managed to take down an AT-AT with the tow cable while everyone else concentrated fire on the other one. I really think the Snowspeeders are key to victory here and once more people figure out how to use them it might even out a bit... maybe.

The rebels were away to tow cable both the walkers until I shot them down in a TIE interceptor, you Rebel Scum!

I've won twice as Rebels in forty rounds or so. As said previously people just need to be on their shit if playing as Rebels.

Actually, I think its more that people have no idea what their doing on Rebel side atm. I won a bunch of games today. Once it's announced that the AT-AT shields are down the rebels are usually just TDM like headless chickens.

I don't think it's perfectly balanced, far from it but we can't blame unbalance when the rebels don't even know what their doing. The AT-AT can soon drop if everyone dumps on them when their supposed to.

If anyone here doesn't know what to do.. activate the uplinks and def them. The progress ring isn't you capturing it, once its fills a Y-wing icon will be added to the top. Keep defending until you get 5?. Then it will announce that the Y-wings have been sent out then the shields on the AT-ATs will be down and they'll get a circular icon over them for their HP. During that time just shoot them with whatever you have. Pop your ion CD's etc. The time you have to do that is at the top shown by your remaining Y-wing icons. Near the end of the run is when the snowspeeders will be available so you get an extra chance to take them down wilth cables. They go down quite easily if everyone joins in.

This pretty much matches up with what I've seen. It's certainly doable though, and I expect it to even out as more people realise how to play the map a bit better.

I've only played a handful of games and have managed to win as Rebels. I think a lot of is down to the fact people aren't focusing on the objective/don't know what they're doing but it could be a bit better balanced for sure.

Well, it's...movie accurate, I guess?

It's like an unfair game of battlefield rush where the defenders (empire) get all the toys and the attackers (rebels) need to go through the meatgrinder to reach the mcoms (uplinks). It's possible to win as rebels if you focus on the walkers between the uplink phases, but it's definitely not balanced.

It's far too unbalanced. I've played over 30 games and I've yet to see the Rebellion win once. A few ideas on why:

• Early game AT-AT/AT-ST spawns completely lock down the Rebellion, it becomes almost impossible to maneuver to catch the transmitters
• Transmitters are based too far away from the Rebel side
• Rebels have to hold the objective for awhile before any benefit can be gained, conversely, the Empire simply needs to spend 5 seconds to deactivate and forget about it
• Turrets are the only real advantage the Rebellion has, but the Empire can freely use them too. They're also a bit too weak, and hopping in one makes you a gigantic target
• The terrain - arguably the best defense the Alliance has - is useless. ATs can freely shoot over the top of the trenches, voiding any sort of defensive advantage gained
• AT-AT feels incredibly overpowered, like a COD killstreak. I managed to rack up 15 or so kills the first time I got in one. All I had to do was run over a shiny, floating token.

I've seen most people say this is an issue with teamwork. I'm not going to disagree, I feel like people need to PTFO, but by the same token it shouldn't require almost flawless execution simply to get a win.

No, far to early to tell.

Alot of noobs are playing who have very little Battefied rush experience, you don't have all your tools unlocked it'll get much easier for randoms. Played for 6hrs last night in a group won almost every game as rebels even won a couple on the first uplink, worse part of the beta so far is the awful spawns and the party squad up system.

The longer and more often you cap uplinks the more bombers you get, the dish turret is anti veichle and does significant damage, also the A wing harpoon can take the walker down and the orbital strike does massive damage.

Hardline beta had the same issue vehicle's were op especially in hotwire but when the game released everyone had rpg's which turn the cars into mobile coffins and the rpg nerf shortly followed.

As a Rebel I won at least half of my games. I would say that its an issue with the competency of general players more than a balance issue: aka, most players are idiots and don't focus on capturing/defending points.

I seriously don't see why you'd played an objective map/match if you aren't going to help with objectives.

I am not sure how "Beta" this game is. This is more of a Demo than anything. Has the game already gone gold?

They give the rebels plenty of tools to win. Orbital strikes will fuck up an AT-AT, the anti-vehicle cannons(the ones that look like satellite dishes) do a good chunk of damage as well. Hell, just shooting the damn things with ion shots can be effective if multiple people do it. And then there's the snowspeeders, which are a huge help if other people in X-Wings would keep the TIEs from blowing it up.

If people would stop playing the game like it's team deathmatch(which isn't going to happen), the win ratio would be much more even.

Yup, i've been on a team where we literally got mowed down over and over as imperials and still won the match just because it's impossible for rebels to win lmao.

These are beta's in name only, they are glorified demo's of the final product. I"ve yet to play a game that was drastically different from the public "beta".

It's a matter of time. The beta was released yesterday, people didn't figure out what to do yet. Once that sinks in the win-rate of the rebels will get better.

that's the thing though, as an imperial there is nothing to figure out.

Hard to say really, but it seems to be at least a bit unbalanced currently. Of course, we don't know what other classes/skills/set-ups etc. are in the game, which could potentially change the dynamics a lot.

Overall people also seem to have no idea what the hell to do in the mode, there's always just dudes dumping at the AT-ATs constantly even when the fucking things are invulnerable.

Playing last night I won as the rebels about 3 or 4 times. If you can secure the outposts and just keep building the stack of Y-Wings it's pretty easy to completely destroy at least one AT-AT in the first phase and have the other maybe at half its health. Just requires folks being team and goal oriented and not trying to go for the highest K/D ratio.

While I agree that it seems unbalanced, winning as the Rebels right now feels SOOOO GOOOD

It barely matters that the game goes gold or not. The balance problem in Hoth seems to be that people think the AT-AT's have too much health. If it really is a problem then it can be fixed by lowering the hit points of the AT-AT, which could be done at any point in the life of this game.

The reason people are struggling is just because people are playing wrong. Simple as. Once people figure out that in order to win they need to fight for the objectives then you'll see the balance swing in. The problem there is you're asking people who just want to run around going "pewpewpew" to deal with objectives. There's a reason that things like DM and TDM are the most popular game modes, it's because you don't have to worry about anything other than pulling a trigger.

I can't say 100% but it felt like we were all going for the objectives and still lost every time. And by the time one AT-AT went down it was game over lol. I will try some more today.

Imperials also get all the vehicles, they have the ships, at-at's, and the walkers. I know it probably breaks the cannon but give us something, maybe call in a pack of wookie's who can tank bullets lol

The problem with the balance seems to be caused by two things at the moment. First, you need to have teammates who know what they're doing. I've seen an AT-AT drop from near full to death in like, 10 seconds, because people knew what to do. A mix of rockets, ion blasts, sniper shots, turrets, ships and orbital blasts really wreck AT-ATs, and you don't even need all of them, so long as people are coordinated. Hell, Ion blasts, turrets and rockets do decent work if everyone is focusing fire. If you have orbital blasts and a coordinated team, I'd actually say rebel victories are quite easy. But that leads me to my next point.

The second problem, is that if your entire team isn't on the ball, you've got to hope that the 2 or 3 people who are, are very, very lucky, because taking out AT-ATs in an uncoordinated team requires specific powerups, namely orbital strikes and/or speeders. If you've got teammates wasting orbital strikes on groups of infantry or AT-STs, it can be really crippling.

It's a weird situation where right now, all victories seem to be complete stomps, but the random power-up system and variable skill knowledge levels of team members make rebel victories a crapshoot. And when the victories do happen, they always happen in the final third. The first two thirds can sometimes feel largely pointless towards the overall victory. If the rebels are good, they'll win, if not, empire will take it regardless of if they're good or bad.

How do you get speeders? I haven't seen one yet

I've won a couple of times and I even took out a walker with the snowspeeder.

They need to rework the player spawn locations and especially air vehicle spawn locations for rebels.
In later parts it's super important for rebels to get air superiority (good TIE's will just slaughter anything in those trenches) which is kinda impossible because the spawn locations for the vehicles are at uplinks/out in the open, while the imperial vehicle spawns are mostly way in the back and easy to grab.

Rebel vehicle spawns on the other hand are way up at the front right next to the objectives, the first 2 X-Wings are pretty much a choice between "Get the X-Wing or let the enemy take the first objective", if the enemy spawns in quickly it's pretty easy for them to camp the X-Wing spots and prevents rebels from getting any air support.

The last 2 parts of the map suffer from really crappy spawns for rebels, they are pretty much stuck inside the base and can't really move out of it due to the HDR rendering making it impossible to look out of the structure, while the imperials outside can simply keep on shooting into the same 2 narrow hallways. They should really tone down the HDR in those places or hand out sunglasses..

Ain't helping how the last objective (and another speeder spawn) are on the far side of an open field, with the AT-AT and every imperial having an easy shoot at it. Feels like rebels should have another spawn out there, way in the back. As it is imperials have an easier and faster time reaching that last objective (1 straight trench going there), while rebels have to zig zag trough a ton of trenches to get there or risk getting shot in the open.

Turrets, should be more clearly marked when they are manned by somebody. As it is the only way to see if it's manned (and really really dangerous) is to shoot them. Too often a single imperial will jump in a turret way back of the map and just slaughter rebels from there, with nobody noticing.

Also the game ain't telling the player how important Ion Shot is as an rebel on that map. Ion Shot even applies when inside a flying vehicle and with an heavy blaster it's pretty much the only reliable way for rebels to get rid of any kind of vehicle, of which there are A LOT.

A problem that happens occasionally in Battlefield games, but feels like it happens every time at Hoth, is air superiority. Once one team establishes air superiority, it feels near impossible to contest it. The imbalance in Hoth specifically is that the Rebels still have to play fairly well once they have air superiority, where the imperials have basically already won.

It would be really nice to be able to play the exact same Hoth game mode versus NPCs, both to practice and understand how all the vehicles and mechanics work, and also just as a cool repeatable co-op thing that would have a little more depth and more co-op players than the weird 15 wave thing they're doing.

Edit: Also, as others have mentioned, the spawns are non-nonsensical. I don't understand why I spawn where I do, and at least half the time I spawn immediately in someone's line of fire or so far from the fight I have no idea where to go. Being able to pick from a couple spots on a map like Battlefield would go a long way, or even just getting to look at a map with the major objectives and your spawn point on it so you at least know which direction to run.

Apparently in the closed beta it was just as lopsided in favor of the Rebels and the walkers went down too quick. Looks like they overcompensated.

I hopped into a game late and it was weird because the rebels captured every single one of the points and then we won at the end because the AT-ATs were still alive.

Your logic's good, but unless there's some kind of reward system that HEAVILY incentivises the Rebels, there's no way random people will congregate consistently for that experience.

People online want to "win," not "have an experience." It's why there are large swaths of people who would rather drop a game or unplug their connection rather than lose.

I think my problem is that there isn't enough feedback into what is actually happening during the game. The hud doesn't show enough in my opinion.

Yeah, whilst I usually hate when games tell you everything, they really need to make it obvious what the fuck you need to do. The amount of people I've seen just stood around firing off their lasers are the at-ats when it has its shields up is ridiculous. As long as dudes do the objectives you can win fairly easily if you save orbitals for when the shields are down.

I ran into this last night, and I almost just stopped playing right then and there. I found myself spawning over and over right in the same spot along with some other people, and we were all directly in the triangulated crossfire of the enemy team. It was spawn killing like I haven't seen in years, and there was pretty much nothing I could do about it.

The balance is also completely fucked, as pretty much everyone else has been complaining about. Thankfully all these issues can be fixed.

Its a beta. We should complain - politely - about what is going wrong. But again, IT IS just a beta; and maybe they want it to be a shit fest so they see what's going wrong and right when people are dying left and right.