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SundropDot's avatar
SundropDot
6 years ago

A PvZ Shooter Should Be Made, Either Garden Warfare 3 or BFN 2

After the recent news and the lifespan of BFN, I think it is safe to assume that BFN is not coming back. There are its chances, but it is small.

I don't believe Popcap and EA should give up on the PvZ shooter series, it has proven to be very successful financially and with the community. But if they do make another game, there are some weird questions to arise.

The Main Question Is To Take What Path

There are two main paths, BFN2 or GW3, each having some concerns that could be troubling for the series.

The GW3 Path

This is the more likely choice. It is apart of a formula that has been proven to work. But they are some questions concerning content however.

Problem 1) Amount of Characters & Balance

If they take all characters from GW2, make variants for the BFN classes and original classes, and also make new classes with variants, then we are sitting well around 180 to 220 characters. Very unique and fun, but a much higher chance for an unbalanced mess. 

Problem 2) Abilities and Changes From BFN

What would happen to the new abilities in BFN? GW2 already has many abilities, and although the new ones would be nice, how would balance that out as well. How long would that take? What about the new changes such as Slobber Shot, SB's charge weapon, etc.? Would they delete those changes and revert to GW2 Chomper or would they be willing to make new primaries for all these variants

Problem 3) Team-Up, Sprinting, Etc

Would GW3 include sprinting or differing speeds? What about team-up and passenger kits for Acorn and Space Cadet, how much would they change? The sheer amount of changes and decisions for character unique abilities such as Wizard with Co-Star would make people wonder if both primaries would be changed or just one.

GW3 is a much safer option, but it also brings many weird questions to balance and amount of content. Although the more the merrier, would it be too much for some people or the devs?

The BFN2 Path

This is the less likely choice, they are more problems and a lot of work to do. I would like to see it done and wonder how it would go, but I doubt it will happen.

Problem 1) Reputation. The name alone would discourage players without certain marketing tactics which BFN has not shown to do at all.

Problem 2) Upgrade System. Would we enhance it, or leave it the same? It lacks with changing gameplay all that much so player might be bored fast.

Problem 3) Characters. Will we have a lot more characters or would it be very lacking? Will they give us a roadmap to have characters to release by certain times and maps as well?

Problem 4) Community Communication. Although this could go for both, it is way worse with BFN as we have no idea what is really happening unlike other games such as Rainbow with a whole year roadmap. We have very little to almost none, so how would we deal with certain things in the game. 

Problem 5) Bugs. BFN has way too many bugs in its foundation it seems and many times more bugs appear with every patch. How will this be dealt with?

Overall

The future of this series is unknown and very vague, but hopefully we can get BFN to live longer or another PvZ shooter to redeem this franchise. I love this series a lot and I don't want it to die. I don't think mobile games would be the way to go for the long-term, but I hope that they are trying to make an amazing PvZ shooter game and are buying time with these other games. Don't get me wrong, these mobile games could also be a lot of fun, I just don't want the series to cut itself loose of the shooter genre. 

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  • benn1nat0r's avatar
    benn1nat0r
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago

    And just as I say it, my Acorn Avatar has disappeared again. I have been told the are some general Avatar issues for EA staff and a very small amount of "normal" forum members. So don't wonder if my Avatar looks a bit weird sometimes, other times it correctly displays as an Acorn.

    Edit: Now it's back again when I say it disappeared.

  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago

    @agqwpe663oe6Would they even risk changing the formula again when it absolutely failed with bfn and looks like it killed the franchise?

  • shurikeninja's avatar
    shurikeninja
    6 years ago
    @stukapooka Battle Arena honestly depends on the amount of players. As in, if they worked hard on it and made it work properly with good matchmaking, and BFN had a lot of players playing it, I think they'd keep it in. But it they go the GW route, Arena won't return yeah. I honestly wouldn't want to play Battle Arena in Garden Warfare 2, that doesn't sound very fun at all.

    Also if they remove sprinting then the game should movement-oriented because of the abilities and that's how you get around in Turf. I wouldn't want base-speed to be high, doesn't sound fun, I'm picturing Overwatch esports lol.

    But yeah to answer OP's question. I don't think this is the last PvZ shooter. I think they're going to come back in a few years. It will probably incorporate GW and BFN mechanics and ideas. Hopefully they don't go with innovation for the sake of it and do something that the majority of the playerbase will enjoy.
  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago
    @shurikeninja Yeah looking back most of the gw abilities helped with mobility such as rocket leap, jackhammer, warp, tackle, burrow, hyper, stacking walnuts, and super jumps out of combat to move around faster combined with the teleporter system which made combat more fluid in the map.
  • agqwpe663oe6's avatar
    agqwpe663oe6
    6 years ago
    @stukapooka Its still just an assumption, but you're kinda right. PVZ3 did the same thing as BFN and change the formula a lot such as no sunflowers and reworking plant food its god awful.
  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago

    @agqwpe663oe6Yep pvz 3 is most likely going to bomb since its been in soft launch hell for a while and has like a dozen currencies.

  • Iron_Guard8's avatar
    Iron_Guard8
    Legend
    6 years ago
    @ToastedSarnie wrote:
    @SundropDotWhat BFN did best (imho) was the PvE regions & for me at least, the PvP fell short of the GWs. (No offence intended to those who think otherwise)

    I think the GWs worked better as a multiplayer shooters & of the two, I enjoyed GW2 more because of the additions of the Backyard, Trials of Gnomus, Herbal Assault, Community Challenges and an increase in characters & variants that I know some found tedious to max, but I think added to the longevity of the game.
    Maxing lots of different characters to me was far more interesting & rewarding than having fewer characters with more levels.

    I could actually see an expanded BFN doing well as a single-player & co-op title, with purely PvE game modes, free-roam areas with quests & or perhaps even a story-mode using themes from the different games....as a plant having adventures leading to try & defeat the zombies with the Tactical Cuke, or as a zombie battling to get Zombot launched. Adventures into the Gnomiverse, perhaps 🤷‍♀️

    Whatever people's private opinions or preferences, I truly hope we've not seen the last installment in the franchise 😔

    I pretty much 100% agree here. I love the free roam regions, and a large chunk of my time in BfN has been spent there. They need to add reasons to go back to them, maybe expand them a bit, add some special events, and so on, to attract more people to return to them, but I had an absolute blast playing through them the first time.

    GW2 for me is the best PvP experience of all 3 games (barring the hacker problem), and the backyard battleground is so much better than Giddy Park turned out to be. I actually find the grind in BfN to be worse than either GW or GW2 as once you get past Master, there's no reason to level up anymore, the coins are a pittance and you don't need them anymore, no more upgrades are unlocked, so it feels just like a treadmill for the sake of it being a treadmill.

    I'd love to see a GW3 where it largely returns to the core GW2 gameplay, with the GW1 maps back (and modified as needed), an expanded backyard battleground, BfN's free roam regions, a lot of support for the game for an extended period of time, don't over monetize it like BfN has been, make Ops more exciting and customizable again, bring back sticker packs and the sticker book, add new characters (or slightly re-tooled BfN characters as I do like them), bring back variants (and either remove or rebalance those annoying detonation characters), and make sure the core functions of the game aren't as broken as they are in BfN.

    Regardless, I fully agree, we need a new PvZ shooter down the road. One can only play so much R6 Siege and I uninstalled OW a long time ago as it too is heavily over-monetized.

    Oh, and no more poop emotes please. I don't even want the prize maps back really. They were full of too much fluff that we largely ignored. BfN was the first of the games that I would play every month and then almost completely stop once I finished the prize map and got 50 bulbs built up. Even after getting max level and filling up my sticker books in GW1 and 2 I kept playing and getting coins to but consumables and just have a good time. Not that I haven't had a good time in BfN, but it's never felt as good to play as the GW games and I didn't want to 'waste' any prize bulbs by getting XP after maxing out.

    They wanted to try a new tack with BfN and it didn't work out that well. Had the core engine and functions played well from day one, a lot of people would have stayed even with some of the things they complained about, but the fact that even today there are so many lingering issues that harm how the combat works, and this is the thing that must be right in a game like this, we lost a lot of people that loved the first two games and haven't attracted enough of the other shooter players they were trying to attract to expand it.

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