Forum Discussion

5 years ago

Solved

why are there streak breakers in arena

i have played enough arena to realize that once you reach the 7 wins streak and then play another round you are going to either win against a normal player or lose against a streak breaker bot, i hav...

PowerToss
5 years ago
@boomballoonflowr wrote:
@PowerToss yeah sorry i dont have any of the previous premium plants that you require to do a really high score, which sucks too but anyway stop replying if you are not going to stay on topic cuz i dont care about your strategy or whats your highest score cuz thats not what im complaining about here
Ok, real talk...are there bot in Arena? Yes, there are bots in Arena. Bots are mainly used for two reasons:
1) A replay with an "appropriate" score is not available on the server
2) Bad internet connection / Replay of other players isn't downloaded from the server
If you get 'matched' against a bot it's already determined whether you will win or lose. Most of the time you will win but there is a chance that you will lose. The bot will end up with a score slightly below or above your score.
There are players on the PvZ2 subreddit who have excess to the data files and they occasionally send me the files. Those files contain the load-out for the bots for each tournament, so I can tell whether someone was facing a bot or a replay of a regular player.
Furthermore, the match making system is set up in a way that you will be matched against low scoring opponents for the first 10 matches (with increasing scores every time you win). After you manged to win those 10 matches you'll be matched against scores that are more representative for the League you are in. Once you passed that threshold, the score of your opponents will vary but they will represent an average score of your League. If you lose a match and don't retain your streak the whole process will start again (increasing scores). This algorithm is used to keep players playing Arena. Nobody would play Arena if they just keep losing....
Some players take advantage of this just surrender their 8th match to get matched against lower scoring opponents again.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the screenshot you posted to show that you were matched against a bot is not a bot - It's a real player (I looked up the load-outs of the bots for this tournament). If you ever feel like you have been matched against a bot, feel free to post a screenshot and I can tell you if it was a bot. However, in this case you just didn't get a high enough score to complete the 7th match in your league - maybe due to penalties.

PowerToss

5 years ago

@boomballoonflowr wrote:
i apologize that i didnt express myself correctly, i called them bots because most of the ones i have faced that are not in the pics i sent, they use plants that go against buffz & bruisez penalties
...
i wanna know their loadout to see if i can spot them way easily, and i dont think i was penalized cuz i used shadow plants which have an advantage on this week arena and i didnt let any zombie get near the lawnmowers, ig i just didnt had turkey pult so i got a low score, i found a yt video pic that shows the buffz & bruises from the murkadamia boosterama tournament

No worries 😉

When I asked you about the 'penalty system' I was not talking about the buffz & bruizez. There is a penalty system in Arena that is not quite that obvious:

Zombies in Arena have different levels of difficulty (ZDL: Zombie difficulty level). When you defeat a lot of Zombie the ZDL will increase. This means the Zombie are worth more points. However, if you get a 'penalty' the ZDL will decrease which makes the next wave of Zombies be a lot weaker and you get fewer points for them.

You get a penalty when:

A Lawnmower is triggered
A Plant is eaten or killed (including special attacks: Arcade Zombies pushing machines, Troglobite Zombies pushing ice blocks, Gargantuar Prime's laser, Hamsterball rollover, Zomboss missile etc)

There are some plants that don't cause the ZDL to drop.

No penalty for Instants (Blover, Hurrikale, Cherry bomb, Jalapeno, Grapeshot, Bombegranate, Power Lily, Goldbloom, Solar tomato etc) and semi-instants (Potato Mine, Primal Potato Mine, Escape Root, Stallia, Stunion, Iceberg Lettuce, Shrinking Violet, Lava Guava, Tile Turnip etc).
Nuts and defensive plants: Wall-nut, Tall-nut, Primal Wall-nut, Infi-nut, Explode-O-Nut, Pea-nut, Chard Guard, Spring Bean, Holly Barrier, Endurian, Hot Date, Sweet Potato, Spikeweed, Spikerock
Consumables: Hypno-shroom, Garlic, Chili Bean, Shadow-shroom, Sun Bean, Imp Pear etc.
Grimrose and Shadow Peashooter swallowing Zombies

So basically you have to be REALLY careful that none of your plants gets eaten / destroyed. If one of your Dusklobbers got eaten during the match the ZDL would have decreased by two levels. There is a huge difference in score depending on how high you can keep the ZDL. You can read more about the Arena mechanics here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/9kt4y4/battlez_faq/e71jrua/

Not all the information is correct but it should give you a basic idea. Not a lot of players know about those mechanics. There are youtubers that have been playing Arena since the beginning and still don't know about the 'penalty system'. That's' the reason I asked you if you know about it 😛

I can give you a link to download the files as soon as v8.8 is out (probably in like two weeks) and reddit users upload the files. The download link for the current version doesn't work anymore. I'll send you a PM because I'd rather not post it on a public forum.

boomballoonflow

5 years ago

@PowerToss oh i didnt know about those penalties, that makes so much sense now, cuz i had some dusklobbers and murkadamian nuts eaten by sunday edition zombies but what about shadow peashooter, is he also affected by these penalties? cuz you know i couldnt kill all of the sunday edition zombies at all so i had to insta kill them by dragging them down and the shadow peashooter can only do that 3 times before disappearing if they are powered by either gloom vine or moon flower, thanks for letting me know about the zdl mechanic i had no idea that something like that was in the game, i apologize for my rudeness yesterday cuz i was pretty annoyed by the lvling system and therefore i was attacking anyone that replied to this post, which is why i recognize now that what i was doing was wrong, alright im eager to see those files

PowerToss
5 years ago
@boomballoonflowr All good, no worries. I think at some point everyone who plays this game felt like Arena is just full of bots which cause you to lose.
Shadow Peashooter dragging down Zombies won't cause a penalty. Murkadamia Nut counts as defensive plant so you won't get a penalty if it gets eaten either. In your load-out the only plants that would cause a penalty are Moonflower and Dusklobber. The ZDL can be quite dynamic. In case a plant gets eaten it will drop by two levels. If that happens again it will drop by two levels again. So for instance if one of the Sunday Edition Zombies managed to kill a Moonflower and a Dusklobber the ZDL already dropped by four levels.
The ZDL will go up again if you "are doing better" (by this I mean killing Zombies) and it will drop again when a plant that causes a penalty gets destroyed.
linuxPigPen
5 years ago
Speaking as a programmer, it's easy to say something is "bruised". That is no guarantee that the code for any particular tournament has been thoroughly tested to ensure this has been taken care of. What with just trying to get the new code to work for a completely new scenario, it is possible that testing whether or not a particular plant is actually bruised may be on the bottom of the things to check before publishing te game.
MAGICDAVESHROOM
Legend
5 years ago
@PowerToss I think Tigerol said that Peanut counts as a defensive plant so doesn't incur a penalty when munched.
🥜🥜🥜🥜
MAGICDAVESHROOM
Legend
5 years ago
@boomballoonflowr
Any complaints you have about pvz2 have probably been raised before. I have been playing for over 3 years and have complained about the level matching system on many occasions, i even started up a thread so that players could put any changes they wanted under WHAT DO WE WANT? So the devs only have read one thread to see what we would like changed and also for a showcase for new ideas. Feel free to add to it.
boomballoonflow
5 years ago
@MAGICDAVESHROOM yeah i think i didnt search enough because i searched for similar posts like mine and i didnt find anything related to this topic. i have also been playing since the game launched in my country, pirate seas wasnt even finished and there was no leveling system. but the thing is, are they actually listening? because ive seen nothing but disappointment from the community because they feel that they are being ignored and most of them hate the current state of pvz 2 and pvz related games
MAGICDAVESHROOM
Legend
5 years ago
@boomballoonflowr
They do occasionally leave xp or censor content that they feel breaks forum rules, so they do read some of our posts at least.
Unfortunately there isn't a full time pvz2 community manager (that we know about).
On reddit a dev called Haemophilus can be asked questions and does regularly publish info but i try not to bug her with trivialities because she's about the only person you can get answers from.
EA HELP CENTER are fairly useless unless you have a missing content case (i think they're an indian call center working from scripts).
boomballoonflow
5 years ago
@MAGICDAVESHROOM i thought reddit hated ea, as they have the most downvoted comment in the internet there and they constantly downvote ea team members comments https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/
MAGICDAVESHROOM
Legend
5 years ago
@boomballoonflowr
Reddit hates EA, I'm only in the pvz2 subreddit but I'm not surprised.
EA won the golden poo award award for being the worst company in America three times but we treat Haemophilus with respect because she treats us with respect.
She doesn't have to answer our questions or announce new plants or updates but she does and doesn't get abused by the subreddit.
As much as i think what EA did to Dungeon Keeper deserves flogging the devs responsible (a brilliant old pc game with a fantastic sense of humour developed by Bullfrog) when they turned it into a mobile freemium game i simple deleted it and it's micro-transactions.
If everyone stopped playing these games and deleted them EA would take the hint.
Perfume-shroom9
5 years ago
Poor opponent is probably cursing away.... xD
HenryThePear
5 years ago
@Perfume-shroom92 wrote:
Poor opponent is probably cursing away.... xD

For a moment I thought my replay was used... I erronously chose that setup after playing Penny's lol
Perfume-shroom9
5 years ago
@HenryThePear Thank god it isn't then 😛 but you are Mimi in arena so i remember 😛
boomballoonflow
5 years ago
@MAGICDAVESHROOM props to haemophilus then, its good to see that theres actually someone in ea that listens to the community. thing is, pvz 2 isnt bad at all, the campaign is fun, some days are easy and others are hard, balancing things a little, but some are extremely hard thanks to really annoying zombies like fisherman and octo zombies specially in day 28 of bwb, jurassic marsh is also really hard thanks to the countless dinosaurs that appear to screw up your setup, i remember struggling to beat day 12 and many other days because in some days zombies appear really fast in almost every lane and the dinosaurs specially ankylosauruses keep throwing them into your setup at the start of the level and modern day, god, have you ever played the expansion lvls of that world? those lvls are really a pain and some are almost impossible to win without premium plants and even some from the regular modern day are really a pain thanks to the zombies that appear from the portals and also all star zombies but aside from that the game is good if we remove the lvling system among other features which is why there are people who still play it including me (im not saying that i dont like the fast paced gameplay or the difficulty, i actually love that the campaign wasnt as slow as the first game), if ea actually listened to community we would maybe have a completely different game than the one we got
boomballoonflow
5 years ago
forgot to close the topic, my bad