Battle for Neighborville: A reflection on it's death.
Been a while. I haven't touched the PVZ shooters in like 2 years, and have only started playing them again since last month. In this time I've changed some of my stances on things I've talked about in this thread.
Do I still believe that BFN had a lot of potential? Yes. Do I still think the community was way too harsh on it? For sure. But... I admit I was a little too biased towards BFN.
So, what have I changed my mind on?
The upgrade system as a replacement for variants, for one. I still think it's a neat system, and it's obviously very interesting, but... it's still a flawed system. Some upgrades feel dang-near essential to use, some are worthless, others are just... mediocre. GW1's upgrades are RNG-dependent and once you get them, that's it, you have them forever, there's no strategy or customization there. I'm gonna be honest, actual garbage system, easily the worst of the 3. BFN's upgrades are either so useful you basically NEED to use them or just mid. GW2 has a good upgrade system, but I do think that locking the more interesting upgrades behind character levels is a bit lame. It doesn't feel "rewarding" it just turns me away from wanting to try out new variants knowing I need to grind before I can get the proper fun stuff.
The sprint system is another thing I hate now.
Man. I was REALLY adamant about justifying the sprint system before, huh? I honestly don't know why I tried to justify this. Removing teleporters in favour of sprinting was dumb. WOW does it water down the gameplay. With sprinting, every class moves at the same speed, so playing a slower class means nothing outside of active combat. Every class can now reposition at the same speed, and each class can kind of just appear out of nowhere. Defenders that have just respawned after a point was captured have so little time to set up or get to defensive positions before the attackers show up. It REALLY contributes to the whole "The fight takes place exclusively on/immediately around the objective issue" that BFN suffers from (To be honest this kind of an issue all 3 games suffer from but in GW1 and 2 It was somewhat mild and not overwhelmingly bad like in BFN)
The new classes are kind of lame.
Who the HELL cares about electric slide or snapdragon. Wow, crowd control classes. We totally don't have other classes with CC abilities already. Acorn and space cadet? "Here's 2 classes that require you to intentionally stack 4 of them for optimal power". Amazing, wow, requiring 4 players to all jump to the same class just to not suck. Or worse, the swarm classes. Ah yes, playable versions of SUMMONABLE MINIONS. They were only fun in the special mode because EVERYONE was a swarmer, so the abilities worked and it was chaos at all times. Who the hell is going to pick them in normal gameplay?? Oh, what about Nightcap and 80's action hero? I GENUINELY FORGOT THEY EXISTED UNTIL I BOOTED UP THE GAME A DAY AGO TO CHECK.
I do think the game was fundamentally flawed in a lot of ways. And I agree that some of those issues couldn't be fixed. But BFN still did a lot right. The art style is way more faithful to the mainline style, the giant explorable maps were fun, the built-in communication system for people with no mics, the animations are just more fun (art style mentioned again!!!), etc. Not to mention the lack of god-awful ice variants (Words cannot describe how much i hate ice variants, ah yes, the variant type that locks people in place and prevents them from playing the game, wow.)
And of course, the biggest thing of all: The devs genuinely listening to feedback. This is the real part that stings so much. God, i wish more people gave real actual feedback. If GW3 ever does happen, I HIGHLY doubt they'll be as open to feedback as the BFN devs were, and that's gonna suck.
BFN was weird, it was fundamentally flawed... but I still gotta admit that it does hurt that it died so fast, I do wish the community had given it a better chance than they actually did.
