My current Feedback: (I'll also write a more in-depth post if I have a changed opinion!)
Positive: The levelling system.
The Levelling system is great. (NON ELEMENTAL) Zombies are the right amount of difficult, even higher level zombies! Lawn patrol level scaling is very good right now, and the Levelling in Adventure Levels is the perfect amount of challenge!
Negative: The elemental system.
The balance of the game is way off. Specifically, while the Elemental system is intended to make certain plants be beneficial in certain biomes, it is far too overtuned.
- "Biome-zombies" (Campground Zombies, Volcano Zombies, etc.) have far too much HP. This makes the "meta" center around only using Elemental Fusions in Elemental Biomes. This leaves little room for non-elemental fusions, which are most plants right now!
- How can you expect us to embrace a variety of merge plants when most merges do greatly reduced damage to Elemental Zombies?
- Example: To counter Volcano Zombies, Ice Plants should deal more damage, yes. But why is it that plants like Repeater, Pea-Nut, Lychee, Potato Mine fusions, Spikeweed fusions, etc. are now so weak?
- It's also quite unintuitive that Basic Zombies and Biome Zombies have greatly different HPs, despite having similar designs.
- You're telling me there a Conehead's HP will be 2.5x larger if it is part of a Biome?
- What I'd greatly prefer:
A Volcano Conehead should have the same HP as a Basic Conehead, and would take 1.5x the damage from Ice Plants. It would still be greatly beneficial to use Ice Plants, due to the 1.5x multiplier, but you'd at least be able to try use other plants in the level to supplement your strategy.
- Design-wise, if you want to make Biome Zombies more difficult, it'd be nice to see a basic Zombie stronger than Buckethead. Other PvZ games have "Brickheads", "Pyramid-Heads", etc.
- Plus, you'd still want to invest in Elemental Plants to counter Elemental Special Zombies, like Volcanologist, or Z-Scout Imps.
Extra Feedback: Now, the large number of Lawn Patrol levels feel more like a chore to complete than a "test your strength". Maybe 15 Levels of Lawn Patrol would be more reasonable, and more memorable?
- Chunks not being earnable through Expeditions or Lawn Patrol anymore feels terrible. Maybe Lawn Patrol Hard could give a handful of Chunks in total?
Thanks for making this post, Cath!