BfN's upgrade system: A diamond in the rough

@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.