My apologies but I have to disagree.
Plants vs Zombies might be a goofy sort of silly game which has fun being ridiculous but that doesn't mean that every aspect of every difficulty level needs to be determined by it's prepubescent demographic. If that were true "Crazy" difficulty level for Garden and Graveyard Ops wouldn't exist.
Boss Hunt was obviously designed to be a complex cooperative team play mode and trying to successfully survive it when set to Crazy difficulty is intended to be tough and only the most skilled players are going to get the special prize item associated with that tier of play and if an 8-12 year old simply can't survive at that level of play then they have my sincerest sympathies but at the end of the day it's an optional game mode which has no effect at all on the overall game and Players who simply cannot rise to the challenge can simply ignore the Portal for the 4 days of the month when Boss Hunt is active.
The same can be said about the Trials- there is no requirement that you finish the Trials and it doesn't effect your overall game experience if you don't or can't. Not getting the Torchwood or Hover Goat 3000 is not a game breaking issue unless you're an obsessive completionist, in which case not having every single character and every single one of roughly 8000 ever-expanding customization items eats away at your soul anyway.
My point is that I personally enjoyed the Trials and continue to enjoy each Boss Hunt precisely because they feature an extreme level of difficulty which is a nice juxtaposition against the rather vanilla, "everybody gets a trophy" nature of the rest of the game where every player who puts in enough time and effort can eventually get every character, finish every quest, and earn every item just by showing up.
Having two areas, completely optional areas, which demand that you be more than average and rise to a demanding challenge is not a bad thing. I enjoy my Unicorn Chomper because I worked hard to get him; I can look at the Scrumptious hats that I've earned from Boss Hunts and know that my team and I truly earned those with skill, communication and a lot of time and effort and when I play my Torchwood or Hover Goat 3000 I know that I literally had my skills as a Player tested before I was allowed to use them.
If you want to boost the younger, less skilled players with cheat codes and "God Modes" during single player then that's fine- nobody is going to begrudge that because it's private play but such things need to stay out of the areas which are intended to be difficult and require above average play otherwise you might as well just remove "Hard" and "Crazy" difficulty altogether and insert a "Beginner" and "Easy" mode instead.
I'm still standing by my original post. Agree or disagree, I still want the dev team to take this into strong consideration. Isn't that right, @EA_Andy?
ps4 team balance is sooooo bad
Hmm, i'm with Reality on this one because i don't really see any positives in simplifying a game purely on the grounds of accommodating lesser skilled players. It's quite sad that today's gamers would much prefer to have things presented to them on a plate as opposed blood, sweat and toiling something in order to gain that overwhelming sense of satisfaction in being able to say they've achieved a goal that few have matched.
I sat for almost 6 hours trying to nail a 29.15s lap at Atlanta (NASCAR heat evolution) to gain the final 'elite' ranking and a 20g achievement for a 1000 gamerscore. It was hard beyond belief but in investing the time and effort not only did I beat the time, I completely mastered tuning the car, mastered racing in simulation mode and improved my overall track skills. If that particular challenge would have been somewhat easier (I lost count of the times I wished it was) then there would have been zero benefits in it's completion.
Moments like that are what gaming should be all about.....
There is a simply point why different rulesets in different games will hurt the playerbase: they split the community. Even if its just a mindset.
Having two different rules will not only confuse the players, it will also add complexity where it is not needed. All the different game modes and their difficulties already require different playstyles to be effective. So if someone does have problems dealing with enemies as a 100 HP character, they can switch to easy difficulty (where enemies deal less damage).
Not to forget that there are characters that are easier to play specifically for casuals.
What we need instead is actual balancing, based on the experience of players with knowledge about the game. And balance that is applied differently to each version of the game.
Popcaps main problem seems to be that they simply don't have enough funds to pay professional players for feedback that is not simply an opinion, but actual experience that is written down in a contract. And that being said; it should not be easy to find players to hire for a rather unknown game with a focus on humor and colors.
Instead they listen to the crowd on twitter and fool around with things that went wrong multiple times (which actually drove mid-core/harcore gamers away).
What Popcap should do instead is play their own damn game (and not just the console version), give players more reasons to not play 6 Imps - or whatever the meta is right now - in one team (quests are a step in the right direction but more effective solutions are needed), give players more reasons to experience the whole game - and not just one team/class (quests again, but ineffective) and find effective ways to keep people playing through whole matches (the shorter timer at the end of each round came again from complaints that did not help at all).
I think the best change that came from feedback so far (in a world where Popcap actually balanced the game), is the placing of the Mixed Mode closer to the center of the mode selection screen. That actually had an impact on players. It could even be the main mode presented right at the center. Because Mixed Mode gives a much better impression of how the game works with all the different classes.
So here are a couple Quests Popcap could add to the board that simply make me laugh:
😉 ...
Because in the end it's the players that play the game wrong/abuse the mechanics. And while Popcap has to find a balance for that, the players need reasons to adjust their behavior.
