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Iron_Guard8's avatar
Iron_Guard8
Legend
4 years ago

BfN's upgrade system: A diamond in the rough

All three of the PvZ shooters use an upgrade system, and none are perfect.

GW upgrades are random from packs and you either have them or you don’t, there’s no choice there. It works, but it’s not particularly exciting and some variants, most notably the Super Commando zombie with all their upgrades, were quite nasty. Even today they plague the meta of the original PvZ shooter.

GW2’s open up as you level up, letting you choose any 3 from those you’ve unlocked, starting with simple stuff like faster health regen, but eventually you get quite a few to choose from, although most people tend to find the best ones and focus on those with only a little variety based on each variant’s abilities and personal preference. It’s a far more engaging system than GW’s but many of the upgrades are only used early on and then quickly replaced as far better options become available.

BfN’s system also has you unlocking upgrades as you level up much like GW2, but also has the 7 point system where upgrades are given a value based on how powerful they are, and you start with several basic upgrades available. In theory this is a great system as it means that powerful upgrades like cocoon can be made to cost more than minor ones like refreshing revive. In practice, it’s not as good as it could have been.

A lot of games have similar ideas; SWTOR, WoW, the Diablo games, the Torchlight series, and many, many more. A common issue among all of them is getting things balanced out; there is almost always a website or 2 out there where someone has parsed out the best option for each set of choices for maximum effectiveness. BfN’s idea of giving lesser upgrades a lower cost and more powerful ones a greater cost is one way to try to further balance the idea. Had they ironed out a few of the remaining issues, it could have been amazing. And these issues are:

  • Some upgrades are ‘must haves’ even with higher cost. The prime example of this is rapid fire for foot soldiers. Some characters have to choose between a couple of very powerful abilities (like cocoon or blossom for Sunflower as you can’t have both on the same build due to cost changes), but there are several abilities that feel like you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t take them.
  • Legendary upgrades are mixed. I like the idea of these as they essentially create variants but they’re so out of whack as far as the zombies have 2 very powerful abilities, and plants have 2 that are alright but nothing to write home about. I rarely see thorn apart Roses or Shogun corns, but you’ll see Brainium Bashers and Steam Blasters all over, even after Steam Blaster was made less powerful than it used to be.
  • The icons need to be more distinctive. Too many upgrades share the same icon so you don’t get that much information from looking at your own build screen or from your opponent’s vanquish screen when they take you out. Making these stand out more obviously would have gone a long way towards rapid visual identification.
  • More variety and less boring upgrades. A lot of upgrades feel like they were tossed in there just to have more of an appearance of choice. Some of the more boring ones are still useful, but a lot of them feel like they are only there to fill up a build where the more expensive, flashier options dominate the total upgrade points used. Making more basic but varied upgrades, as many are repeated for so many characters, would also add a little more variety into the mix as well.
  • Many upgrades feel shoehorned in and lack visual representation. Think of stuff like ‘Dolphin Blasting’ for the scientist. There is no dolphin involved and it doesn’t provide any visual or audio cues as to there being any difference. It’s obviously a callback to the Marine Biologist in name, but it’s lack of any changes to the character or weapon makes it less engaging than it could have been.

Like a lot of aspects of BfN; there are some good ideas with its upgrade system, but it just wasn’t fully developed. While I would prefer the next shooter to be closer to a GW3 than a BfN2, a more fully fleshed out version of BfN’s upgrade system would be a great thing to have.

2 Replies

  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    4 years ago

    @Iron_Guard8My ideal upgrade system would be gw2's with the icons of what you're enemies using showing up on death but gw2 icons because they are more descriptive in appearance. The point system will stay but be used for the gw2 upgrades like damage and health costing 5 points that way a solider can't run health, damage, and ammo all at the same. An issue that plagues gw2 multiplayer when your in a lobby with high ranks.

    Gw1 just gave you the upgrades and forced you to take them but at least they gave the weapons a visual distinction something bfn fails hard at. Though i did enjoy how gw1 had descriptions for them like power chomper being slightly below lightning speed.

    My main issue with the bfn upgrade system is that its just variants but bad.

    I mentioned this in my retrospective but take hot rod for chomper again. In gw he was a specifically colored chomper that made motor noises, had less health, increased speed, and a visual effect/sound design the moment he ate someone to show that his power had been activated. In bfn however you can never tell when a chomper has this as it lacks all of what I just listed and doesn't have the weakness of lower health yet faster base speed that was used to balance chomper.

    Rapid fire is another offender as sky trooper was visually distinct, had a different sound design, and had unique projectile coloring from stock. You could tell right away that his gimmick was a faster fire rate but he also had less ammo than stock so he had to make sure he was aiming better or he would lose out on damage.

    Hardened is just an armored variant but with none of the downsides or designs that made it interesting in the first place.

    Even alt abilities like vampiric spikeweed got shafted as now its just regular spikeweed but it heals but with literally no difference in visual appearance or sound design.

    Many upgrades were also extremely bland like speedy in game where you can SPRINT or more health after so many deaths which no one but a newbie would carry.

    Some upgrades also reward you too much for just diving into the enemy team as they reward you with health (remember when sunflower and scientist actually mattered?)

    Legendaries were a poor excuse to try and reintroduce variants and it ended in disaster while also skewing the balance towards zombie supremacy.

    To me it really just comes off as a lazy way to do the variants without putting in any actual effort to design the character in terms of appearance, elemental powers, sound design, and animations.

  • TheSprinter85's avatar
    TheSprinter85
    Hero
    4 years ago

    I feel that the upgrade system in Battle for Neighborville are one of the better aspects of the game, as it gave much more variety with upgrade choices. From my knowledge, GW had 3 upgrades per character and they needed to be unlocked from random packs, and once obtained they would be permanently equipped, so no choice there, rather when you would benefit from each upgrade is the question. GW2 had more choices for sure, although they may not have that much of an impact and they were generally the same sort of upgrades on every character, except for some changes on specific characters. 

    Battle for Neighborville has much more upgrades to choose from which have more varying costs, and this was quite a significant overhaul to the upgrade system. I really enjoy the variety that the upgrade system provides, there are lots of upgrades to choose from, but you need to determine whether you think it is worth using or not because of the cost, but you get to choose from which ones you wish to use based on your playstyle. It was quite clear that some upgrades were basically pointless to use, where some others were nearly a must use upgrade because of just how good or cheap they were.

    In the final update, though, I noticed that most of the upgrades were changed in at least one way for balancing purposes, which means that the weaker upgrades are generally at least usable now. The legendary upgrades did not get much balancing or changes, but at least I can use Shogun-Guard which is so fun using it from my experience without "being OP". I do like having the choices of upgrades and having balance changes means there is more to explore. I have not tried out all of the upgrades (after the final balancing patch or even some I have not used yet at all) to this day. 

    I would like to see an upgrade system like this in a future shooter, and it would hopefully be expanded further. 😇

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