Re: PvZ: Battle for Neighborville - What Went Wrong? (Evaluation)

Iron_Guard8 Somebody pointed out how a lot of areas in bfn artslye were way too bright in lighting and on the character designs here's my two cents: Why do zombies have green eyes? They're dead!

Soldier is fine and the card addition on the helmet is cool.
Imp is ugly and his gw2 version looks infinetly better, same with rose.
I dont mind peashooter blue eyes but the eyebrows are a little weird and offputting.
80s and snapdragon are the best new class designs in the game.
Electric slide is just female disco zombie nothing really special.
Engineer is too fat and they removed his glorious crack, automatic downgrade.
Citron looked cooler with sunglasses and I dont like how his body is disconnected.
Wizard is fine.
All star and ccatus feel too tall and skinny and cactus had better green pigmentation in garden warfare.
Scientists teeth and tge eye gap arent fun to look at dial it down a little.
Sunflower, chomper, deadbeard, and corn look more plastic and plushylike with less detail than their old models, not bad but not great either.
Zmech looks like a scrap heap that could be sliced apart with a pizza cutter.
Acorn and cadet are fine.
Nightcap imo could look a little more like the mushrooms of the other pvz games.
Superbrainz body is fine but I wished face looked a little different.
Spawnables are fine but the coloring and shading could be a bit better on some of the plants.
The less overall detail on characters is a downside (imps lights not working, less colorful and unique projectiles and abilities, no rotor spin on all star, and etc).

Artstyle doesn't matter as much as aesthetic does to me and I hope we go back to a more gw1 style with graveyards and areas devoid of life for zombies and cheerful bright gardens for plants as bfn's zombie areas feel too clean, lively, and normal without artificial or dead grass and trees like in gw2. Though if they were ever to attempt to brink back old maps and variants the art style will most likely be more like gw or redone again.

You underestimate how many people disliked the variants removal as even popcap saw how stale the game quickly by trying to implement legendary upgrades accompanying fancy looking costumes just like variants.

The upgrade system is inherently flawed as no one would pick speedy over upgrades like hardened and rapid fire.

BA deserves a second chance but please don't add a rank system with premium currency rewards.

Being able to save cosmetic builds like bfn would be a good thing to keep.

The worldbuilding is kinda screwed as soon as you realize that none of the new characters are explained in game for their existence or why others left the conflict, unlike gw2 which gave a valid reason for why the newer classes weren't in gw1 and before you say bfn isnt gw the pve confirms its the same universe and timeline in a throwaway medal and the intro video about how they stopped the zombies at the end of gw2 with a giant glass bell dome (which we never see any evidence or remains of and really? A glass bell against zombies with misslies, giant robots, and energy weapons no wonder it failed lol) gw1&2 had some pretty good connections in the world such as the cuke going to destroy zombiss mountain which we spawn at in driftwood shores, zombot heads lying destroyed on maps leading to the zombot in zombopolis having the added numbers in its name, seeds of time revealing why the zombies crashed in cactus canyon with the concept art battle in the sky, the destroyed cage in zomburbia that the sasquatch is implied to have escaped from, the crystals the zombies are mining on the moon to power the magnet, seeing how Zomburbia was created in frontline flats and how the plants tried fighting back with laundry, and the yeti king boss hunt practically stating the zombies canonically won great white north much like how they won gw1.

Dreadwood and wierding woods are good though as a giant forest attacking you every chance it gets with its roots and absolutely demolishing and cutting off the area through its growth is a great idea they did nicely and his boss music is great.

@stukapooka I know the lack of variants upset a lot of people and I fully get why. I wasn't happy with it at first but when we heard we were getting brand new characters instead, that could have worked had they released at a decent pace, but instead we only got the wizard. I'd prefer the variants to return for a new game. I already imagine a space cadet with a short ranged flame thrower weapon and a toxic acorn/poison oak variant! Also, we need an Ice Pirate (it was a great movie), and frozen corn, which you can buy at the store right now, should be a thing!

As for the aesthetics, GW2 is my favorite, even with the purples a lot of people don't like but I'm a fan of gloomy. But again, all 3 games look very good and age well as they didn't try to go ultra-realistic thankfully. Going back to play Unreal, it's fun but the attempt at realisitic graphics back then don't age well. The PvZ shooters all look brilliant, although some folks have their preferences which is to be expected.

The upgrade system could have worked had they not made certain ones so powerful/useful while others were just not great. You really want that rapid fire foot soldier upgrade, even with the issue with it where it doesn't work smoothly. They did tweak some of them over time but they should have spent more time coming up with more palatable options and less filler. The legendary upgrades are a kind of hybrid to create the feeling of variants and had great potential, but what we got was problematic.

I never like ranked/competitive play in games in the first place. I have never played ranked in Paladins for this very reason, so we fully agree there. But BA is one of the game modes I really like, along with taco bandits from GW1 and capture the taco and soil survivors from GW2. The weekly event that gave us team vanquish in the BA map was a great time.

BfN did a great job on QoL improvements. The overheat indicator on your HUD, the ability to save builds/costumes which I had asked for GW2 since day one, and a few smaller things. Having more than 3 slots per character would be even better than what we got in BfN for the next game.

We largely agree on the maps. I want the TT maps to be more dynamic and have fights over larger areas like in GW and GW2, and bring back the teleporters and Rose/Engineer turrets (with or without the upgrade system from GW1). I also want more verticality but only as long as they don't bring back the roof top dominance of Foot Soldiers and Peashooters from GW1. 

As for world building, there's no question all 3 games are the same universe as you point out. All PvZ games are roughly in the same universe, and the shooters more than any others. I would like a new game to have a time travel component like PvZ2 does, so we could fight in Suburbia, Zomburbia, and beyond. I'd love to visit all the old maps from the GW games and new ones as well. If they tied in the shooters with maps from the various time periods we visit in PvZ2, so much the better! Imagine fighting those giant plant dinosaurs from the Dinoland point as part of the battle (as AI or maybe controlled by plant players), mech zombies, and everything in between! I would definitely get behind them tying in any new classes/variants they bring in for a new game as you ask for in your post. BfN maps would need some changes to fit a more GW style game, and I'd be behind that.

I'd love more free roam zones; in BfN I love Weirding Woods and Plants Town Center. The other 2 aren't bad, but not as enjoyable as those 2. PvZ always has had some great music and BfN is no exception. I especially love the Sir Biff music.

I'm hoping that the moderators and others read all the posts and watch that YouTube video with so many content creators discussing the games for ideas. I really want to see a new shooter that is just a great time and brings a lot of people back, while also attracting new players while learning from how things went for all 3 games.

@Iron_Guard8Yeah the fully zombie controlled areas should be like gw2 imo but if we go back in time to certain areas they should look more like zomboss estate in gw1.

I'm fine with bfn classes comimg back and even adding new classes but they will have to be reworked if variants are brought back (just make up something about how snapdragoms flames dont burn and turn electric slide into disco slide or something idk).

If the older maps allowed more classes camping rooftops wouldnt be so bad when you think about like corn and superbrainz would have relieved the campers in gw2 walnut hills by being able to fight them on the rooftops making them more hazardous to use do to their abilities such as butter barrage.

On the storymode: I always thought that pvz had great ideas that they never really used well like imagine a mission where we fight the op version of superbrainz from the comics, fought the zombot in an actual boss battle, playing AS the zombot in a mission where we destroy a plant/gnome superbase, the dinosaur stuff you mentioned, what if the gnomes had enough of the conflict and went full mann vs machine on the two groups (valid canonical reason to have them fight together) or an improved version of infinity time, a pirate seas level mission as deadbeard leading his pirate crew to plunder, a single player mission with the plot of cactus canyon where you lead your routed forces to victory (gw1 and some gw2 g&g would honestly make awesome single player missions if altered a little), or fighting on top of the two planes like in the concept art, escorting cob mortars or coconut cannons from gw1 to a safe firing position before fighting waves of zombies like the original games.

New characters, spawnables, and variants wouldn't be a huge problem with all the concept classes over the years such as grave digger or toned down concept plants/2nd design version of swat soldier (first version wouldn't be very kid friendly given that he had actual guns taped or chained to his body armor what was popcap honestly thinking with this design?).

So many potential possibilities but so little actually used or thought of, ITS INFURIATINGLY DISSAPOINTING!

BA deserves a second chance without poorly implemented rank or premium currency and it was my favorite mode in bfn before ranked.

The qol changes like you said would be nice to keep (I do wish the hud would tell us what are weapon was called though).