The game feels more "meta" with absolver + like i need to use certain moves. Not only that when battling AI the game seems to allow them to break rules of combat.

Oh and if you run into a player without the mod your moves have all of he buffs of Plus but none of the removed mechanics. So essentially you have more damage and utility.

It is crazy to me that the official community endorses using a mod that is effectively cheating and splits the player base or forced players to use something. I truly wish this never existed.

I know this post was made with the intent of creating unnecessary and already felt controversy, probably made by a troll player, but I still want to respond for those few unaware new players, who find themselves reading this.

Let's start from the assumption that the devs stopped working on this game well before it was complete and balanced, that's why the PvE is incredibly short and all that's left to do after a few hours is PvP.
The vanilla game is incredibly unbalanced, after years of PvP and testing players have realized all the broken, unbalanced and even bugged tools that can be used, making PvP incredibly monotonous and exploitable with decks that are practically all identical to each other (because even the stats of the moves are unbalanced making some moves objectively better than others).
For many years all tournaments had rules created by the players themselves that banned certain moves or powers so as not to make all the players clones of themselves using all those broken tools.
The mod was made to balance these things, there are some things that are still problematic but that cannot be changed as only the devs have access to the source code, but it is still a big improvement compared to the past. The mod is what keeps the game alive since 90% of the players who play consistently use it.

Now let's move on to the misinformation, the mod is not cheating and does not work as you wrote. When you enter PvP the game chooses one of the two players as the host, and it is the host who determines the rules of the match, if the host is vanilla then BOTH players will have the vanilla rules (move stats, dodge moves and so on), if the host uses the mod then BOTH players will play with the mod rules (no dodge-moves, balanced stats and so on) so we cannot speak of cheating since both players are affected by it, it can only give disorientation and in fact it is a good thing to warn new players of the existence of the mod. I have seen many new players become passionate about the game and be happy to use the mod for PvP.
Furthermore, the mod balances the stats of all moves, not making them equal but enhancing certain aspects of one, other aspects of another, allowing for the creation of much more varied and equally effective decks. It is the vanilla game that instead tends to bring all decks (I'm talking about well-made decks) towards the same matrix since the moves that are more effective than others are a dozen and everyone, in the end, will tend to use those.

For all the new players, this is the link to the mod, where you can see all the changes it brings and decide whether to use it or not: https://www.nexusmods.com/absolver/mods/7

I am not a troll im just tired of loading into a game and it is a 50/50 of if Im playing the mod or not and the mod will not give the players in that instance a buff if they dont have the mod installed but will remove all the dodge parry and break abilities.

also how can someone have the moves of a mod they don't have installed? that means the other client is injecting into mine and that is a no no . Not to mention added moves they don't have...

You can't tell me it works that way when my Character will literally sttand there in combat stance because my client doesn't know how to compute the moves thrown at me. I will just stand there and be idle for a modded moves hit stun. I played a 3v3 with 3 people using the mod and all 3 of us could tell something was wrong as they were doing near double damage on "changed dodge moves"

Forgive me if links are not allowed therefore do not click this but instead find the post yourself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/absolver/comments/1boszeo/how_do_i_fight_people_using_absolver_or_whatever/

It seams there is discourse with whether the mod works the way you say or not ;)

The mod adds two moves to the game, and they are moves that are already in the game but not used or made available in the vanilla game, the mod has modified the stats of those moves to make them usable, the only difference that a vanilla player might notice, if he is the host, is that that move is a guardbreak so the kahlt cannot absorb it.

The only thing that a vanilla player cannot see are the new clothes and masks added by the mod because those files are part of the mod and not in the game, for this reason you might see a player naked or without a mask, it doesn't change anything for the match itself.

As already said, if the host uses the mod then even the player who doesn't have the mod will have the stats of the moves modified because the game works this way, it bases the match rules on the host's characteristics.

The mod does not speed up any moves, the only thing it does in this case is remove some jabs (10 startup frame moves) and slow down some jabs a little (it makes them go from 10f moves to 12f or 13f); so if the vanilla player has those removed jabs in his deck, he uses them as usual, if he has the modified ones he will feel them a little slower in execution.

What you have experienced seems to me more like a lag problem or players who use other mods or cheats (some players are able to speed up the moves or use the moves of the downfall bosses), but in general the mod simply makes a vanilla deck more performant so even if a vanilla player finds himself with the mod rules, apart from not being able to use the dodge of dodge-moves, it will simply work better overall.

The mod does speed moves it specifically mentioned it buffed moves that had their evades taken out with better stats. including frame data. Everyone seems to "know" everything about this mod. yet they're constantly contradicting themselves. Mod hurts game. no need to defend it.

It's clear that you lack the knowledge of game mechanics to understand how the mod works, and for this reason I find it absurd to complain about it when you don't even know the subject.

Buffed moves and speed up are not the same thing, let's start with lesson 1 of deckbuilding, how the moves of the game work: in this game each move has different stats, including: damage to hp, damage to stamina, start up frames (the "speed"), advantage on hit (how long you remain stunned after receiving the hit), advantage on guard (how long you remain stunned after blocking the hit).
The mod does not lower the start up frames of any move, in fact, it REMOVES the ones that are too "fast" (10 start up frames) and SLOWS DOWN some of the 10 start up frames ones making them 12 or 13.

What the mod works on is modifying the damage and the advantage on hit/guard in order to make all the moves valid (some will do more damage to hp, some more damage to stamina, some less damage but will stun the opponent for longer and so on) in this way each move will have its own niche in which to be used effectively.

Everyone seems to know about the mod because we have been using it for two years and it was made with a collective effort of all the players with a good knowledge of the game mechanics.

No one is forced to use it, but it is necessary for anyone who wants to play PvP competitively and it is not nice to spread misinformation about it.

I feel that I have to add that at least one of the moves added with Abs+ doesn't work properly with vanilla, since this move isn't in the original game files it doesn't display on vanilla player's side, so that is kind of an issue. It just becomes an invisible attack.

what mod? what does it do

Cheats for sure. People defending the mod need to look up the definition.

Well the game is old, people felt like the competitive viability of some of the schools and attacks were lackluster. So they made a mod to 'fix' that. It says in the mod description to "make sure you turn off encounters!" to avoid this exact thing. Obv people don't listen. Complaining about 'cheating' in a game like this is just pointless though. I'm not saying it isn't true just pointless. Because like I said earlier, game is old, people have mods. Big deal?

I fully agree, this Plus mod really hurts this fantastic game.
It only allows better use of OP decks, because in vanilla there are many more unknowns to consider during combat, so spamming effective decks from the frame point of view don't works because it requires a real ability to read your opponent.
They made for spam these OP decks without interruptions, with 10fs, dodge moves, automatic opponent tracking (as soon as you engage the opponent, all the combos that come after will always hit regardless of the actual range of that precise movement).
The creators of this mod are still the same players who have been playing meta gaming since they understood how frames work in the game.
To be competitive in the plus, you have a limited choice of combinations you can use, all the others are there to gather dust, you have to play with interruptions and tap blocks, spamming 1 effective single shot with the faint punish.
Basically whoever spams better using feints has won, and the opponent can do absolutely nothing, except lose, because if he tries to react, the meta player already expects it, and while they spam the same move, if you react you will be preceded either by an interruption or even by using the style creating a sort of autopilot with no loopholes, and if you're not an expert player, you can just sit there and watch.
Basically the aim is to prevent you in any way from having your turn to attack, this is not absolver.
It's literally a joke.

the worst thing, is that even if you don't want to play with this mod, they force you to. if you meet a player with the mod, your combat system also changes, so your deck built to play in vanilla becomes completely useless, ruining the original gaming experience. if you're new, they tell you that this mod is used to improve absolver, but that's not true, it's only used to play one way, without giving space to the creativity of a fighter.

the only creativity that the plus allows you to play, is to spam 1 move with different frequencies of feints. nothing else.