Yes, it is. I'm really liking it, I'm just a bit disappointed by this fast kill/die cycle. Maybe I'll get more used to it with more time spent with the game.

Must admit that I have a lot of problems with the game but not the one you mentioned. A typical score for me will be about 22-8 which I think is proportionate. The only time where I get some of the feeling you're describing is when you see a hero with 100% health and you are powerless to stop them and just die. And then you may end up spawning near them again and they kill you (put heroes on timers like the Beta!! Why did they change that!!), but that's a whole different subject.

The few things that bother me is the spawn system, there have been times where I'd spawn into a Rebel on Blast for example and got killed straight away before I could react, times where I was running for cover and then 5 Empire troops spawned in front of me and pelted me immediately and I find that is the result of a bad spawn system. I have played plenty of FPS's during my time to know a good spawn system from a bad one and BF does not have one of the best or even decent spawn system.

I find the blaster pistols to be a bit imbalanced since more folk are running around with Solo or Fett's pistols and a few with the Jawa pistol as well (especially the jawa earning people plenty of easy 1 shot kills and less deaths). There needs to be some gun balances made because in an FPS you need to balance all the guns to make them all viable, not make one gun outright better than the other in everything because that means there are less guns to use making the rest trash, Planetside 2 does a better job at making all guns side grades instead.

At least they've implemented some changes like the game start timer which allows people with slow PC's to load in at the same time along with the match starting in 25 seconds each round. Nerfing barrage was decent because too many ended up spamming that and a grenade, I think in the future like Levelcap on YT suggested that you should only be allowed to choose one grenade out of the lot for one card slot, one star card and another non grenade type card which will get people to start using other cards than simply going for all the nades. They should also either remove or buff cards like the scout pistol which so far is crap and isn't used in any battles so far.

What I would love to see is more Trooper customization, currently at rank 50 you can only buy two Empire trooper suits while the rest are just face models that are often hashes of other ones, the Empire had plenty more armour types and colours during the Galactic Empire times, I'd also love for some Force Awakens First Order armour sets too. A first person only mode would also be nice since it's not being used as much as 3rd person view allows you to peek around corners which everyone seems to go with.

Battlefront is a casual shooter for the masses. It is not meant to be like Battlefield

Heroes on timers was a terrible idea. But I do agree they need less health or something

Maybe they could suffer a bit more damage so your efforts wouldn't be for nothing.

The thing with heroes is that for one you need to feel like you are the hero, that you do insane amounts of damage but at the same time they really need to balance them so they aren't completely invincible, timers is a terrible idea because it forces you to go out in the middle of an army and die before the timer runs out, I saw that happen a lot in beta and it didn't bode well nor was it fun. The one thing that runs through my mind though when facing a hero is that I know I cannot win unless they are at 15% health or lower, rather than letting them kill me I impact grenade myself since dying to them would still count as a death on my part but if I kill myself then they are denied the kill, sure it sounds bad but I'd rather be able to kill the hero somehow or not let him kill me, to stand there and take the death isn't fun nor is it worth dying for since no one wants to die in a competitive game anyway.

Is there a hoard or zombies type game mode?

And if not, were the main battlefield games known to incorporate such a feature?

Afaik there is a form of horde mode where you or a co-op partner fend off a bunch of storm troopers wave after wave but it's pretty boring after the first few waves and becomes a repeat with time.