People, the game lags even with 4 players in a raid and you only have to take into account AI movement.
Now you try and transfer that movement, hit box, and everything to another character and you think it's going to be better somehow?
The most powerful characters in PvP are those with large aoe attacks that can hit outside of dodge range as well as characters with spammable movement/invincibility.
This means characters like Karok, Hurk, and xgun Kai are simply ridiculous in PvP.
If you're playing something else then you better pray.
You can literally be a screen and a half away from a xgun Kai but his Hollow Shot will still damage you.
You can literally attack a Hurk all day but he'll just block frame through all of your damage.
It's stupid, it's a waste of time, and the saddest part is that there are people out there who think PvP is worth something and they play it a lot with their Hurk/Kai thinking they are good at the PvP mode or something when in fact they're just playing a character that is better able to use it.
You don't ever hear a Vella or Delia saying PvP mode is the greatest. It's always some Hurk or some xgun Kai thinking PvP mode is really good.
Why? Because from their point of view it is good, they do damage and get kills all the time and they don't die as often because they can spam their defense move. Their attacks hit a large area and will hit players through the lag even when the other player is dodging half a screen away.
If you're playing sword Vella you have nothing. Cross cut doesn't work, your attacks are really slow by comparison and hit only a really small area, your dodge is not as spammable and doesn't give invincibility the same way Kai's roll or Hurk's impenetrable does. So you literally suck at it.
You can spend all your time as sword Lann playing PvP and you'll still lose to some xgun Kai rolling back and forth firing Hollow Shot into random areas as the lag just drops damage onto you while you do nothing to him.
If you don't believe me you can hook up two computers right next to one another.
Go PvP with both of those computers. Set up a camera, dodge on computer A and watch when the dodge is shown to happen on computer B.
You are not fighting another player when you play PvP. You are literally chasing and attacking some random ghost image and it is never where they are or doing what they are actually doing. Because of this, large aoe attacks that will buffer through the lag and spammable invincibility moves are OP.
It's simply not a viable code to be competitively playing PvP on. Morever, the balance of the characters themselves precludes any kind of meaningful gameplay with respect to player skill.
I used to make posts in here and it was always some player like xgun Kai or some Hurk claiming PvP was really good and was really competitive.
At that time I had a really well equipped xgun Kai and Hurk myself. I always requested that if they thought they were good at PvP they can play on a sword Vella, we can normalize the the equipment, and then I'll play xgun Kai and we can PvP. Because I don't even play PvP a lot but I'm 100% sure I could've killed them just by spamming dodge and Hollow Shot at a sword Vella while she has to beg lag to do damage to me.
The chasing ghosts and shadows thing is already apparent in normal PvP gameplay. Sometimes you'll hit a person but no damage will register. Why? Because on their screen when your attack went in they were in invincibility and/or were nowhere near you. So again, things like Hurk that can spam impenetrable around and not ever really be hit, or xgun Kai that can spam dodge around and hit a huge area with Hollow Shot, they are op. Or hopping Evie. etcetc.
Like... I can't comprehend the stupidity of PvP, and it's so sad that some people think it's a good game mode.