Central Hubs for PvZ Shooters
One thing we’ve discussed before, but that needs to be brought up again as some of our earlier discussions on the matter, is the central hub a new game would use; the place you go when you first log into the game and your home base for playing the game in the way(s) you like.
GW: I’ll only mention the original GW for completeness, since it just had a standard menu. It worked perfectly well but it wasn’t anything too interesting, although it did at least have the stickerbook!
GW2: One of the reasons GW2 is my favorite of the 3 games is that is has the Backyard Battleground. I must sound like a broken record by now, but when I fist jumped into the game on launch day, and after completing that entry story as a Sunflower (which was a great introduction by the way, wish we could replay it, although for a time some of us did when it wasn’t keeping our save data! Thankfully that got fixed), the arrival at the Backyard Battleground was stunning. Instead of your typical multiplayer game lobby, we got an active ecosystem with hidden Easter eggs, quests, mini-games, and of course our bases with the portals to play various types of matches and Ops, as well as our quest boards, Infinity Time, and so much more once new stuff was added and we gathered the golden gnomes, snow globes, and the trials of Gnomus.
The fact that GW2 has a variety of continuously spawning AI, although a bit uneven as while you get flag and heal weeds, you never see heal zombies spawning as an example, bosses, champions and heroes, the AI will place pots/bots (and you can too), up to 4 players can join in on either side, and it can be a kind of playground when you just want to mess about, or when we used to watch the progress-o-meter for the community challenges and of course still go deep under the sewers to the Gnomiverse to get the trials done and just marvel at how cool it all looks, just makes it one of the best things I’ve ever seen in any game ever! The fact that me, the one who has so many games with less than an hour played has over 3k here, speaks to why I love this so much. My only real negatives are that it’s too small, not enough places to put our decorations (especially that we only get the single legendary one, which has been the Megaflower from Driftwood Shores for me since I got it many years ago now), and that once you hit cap , you don’t really care about all the XP you get messing about anymore. Those negatives are absolutely outshined by the positives. I will always commend the dev team on how fantastic the Backyard Battleground is: *chef’s kiss*. I mean just look at this single shot from a recent trip into the backyard battleground:
BfN: One can say that the free roam regions should also be considered as an extension of Giddy Park, and I’d not say you’re wrong, but although those regions are one of my favorite things about BfN, Giddy Park taken on its ow, is a major letdown after the grandeur of the Backyard Battleground. It’s not terrible, but after what we had, it makes what we got so much worse. The positives are the way the scenery changes for each prize map/season as these look really nice, the shooting ranges are a nice touch, a few Easter Eggs to find and puzzle to solve, and I like the disco game for the zombies, and while it’s less rewarding, the plant piano with its semi-secret button to make it sound silly are all good stuff. I also like how you have different ways to get to the free roam zones.
Unfortunately, the positives are short and the negatives long. Giddy park lacks AI variety with only the Wildflowers and TV Heads that spawn, barring events like the bounties that pop up, and after the variety of GW2, it’s a massive let down; no bosses, no variety in the horde AI, no pots/bots, and only for the bounty event, and that lucky gnome event, do we get anything else. One can argue that players add to that variety, but after the early days of doing so, many players retreated to the private versions thanks to rampant spawn camping and no real reason to fight there as the bases are separate so there’s no real sense of a large battle like we had in GW2, and people exploiting the game’s many issues that allows them to do stuff like sniping from their base makes it a lackluster experience at best. Making Giddy Park open like the default setting could work, but it’s been problematic from day one of Founders, and that’s a shame as while the zombie base looks too normal, it is a good looking area and the potential to be so much more, like BfN in general, is right there, just out of reach.
My proposal for GW3: I’ve done this before, but it’s buried and moved around after the forums got consolidated and moved around. I say Garden Warfare 3 since a return to the games’ roots would be the best course of action, but it could be called something else (Garden Warfare Regrown or something works too, I don’t think BfN2 would go over all that well, with a few exceptions). My idea is to have 2 hubs; the Personal Neighborhood and the Public Battlefield.
The Personal Neighborhood is largely just a reimagining of the Backyard Battleground; but larger, more AI spawn, and you have a lot more options for customizing it. It also has access to the free roam regions like BfN, although there will likely be just one vehicle per side and you pick which region to go to from a menu. It might be expandable or simple large to begin with. One place players can spend a lot of coins on the game, if so inclined, is on customizing this personal slice of Suburbia/Zomburbia. You can earn new buildings, paint jobs, minigames, and other stuff to make your personal neighborhood personal. Open it up to the public, leave it solo only, or invite some friends and have battles, mess around, and just chill to your heart’s content. Make it mostly plant focused, mostly zombie focused (both bases will always be present), leave it balanced (the default), toss in more neutral buildings, explore under the surface to find out what the gnomes are doing, take a trip to the moon, and so on. This is also how players get to the Gnomiverse that I discussed before, which is a kind of ‘end game’ that has a mix of PvE and PvP activities, something like Infinity Time, but you can use your normal characters and there will be more to do. Rux’s shop, which is where we can buy all kinds of stuff is located at both bases, just like in GW2 and BfN.
For the more PvP oriented, we have the Public Battlefield which is similar to Giddy Park’s central area, but larger, has objectives, changes its layout on a semi-regular basis (monthly or quarterly most likely), has lots of AI, players can contribute stuff like pots and bots, and you can jump in and out at almost any time (can’t leave while in combat for example). These will be population balanced as closely as possible, with extra AI spawning for the team that may be down in players (this will likely fluctuate a lot though). Rux, and the portals for other modes will be present at both bases, just like in your personal neighborhood and between how bases are set up and AI spawned to guard the main bases, spawn camping will be impossible or at least extremely difficult, and players inside the base will have some kind of restriction so they can’t snipe from spawn with impunity. Seasonal themes may be present, and battles will rage all the time. It will only be down for maintenance and when swapping them around for the next one. These maps will be regular style PvZ locations based on suburbia and zomburbia, with maybe a few wrinkles here and there, maybe some kind of anniversary invasion of a gnome location for a time and/or other possible gnome mysteries will be here for the two sides to fight over while the gnomes fight both sides.
My objective with these 2 hubs was to give players options and to keep interest high. You will login to your personal neighborhood, but can ignore it if you are a pure PvP player and swap to the battleground instead (note: it could be an option to first logon to the battlefield, but the starting default would be the personal neighborhood, swapping between them would be easy to do). Most players I know like a mix, and sometimes you want a chiller experience, so can just hang out in your base in your neighborhood solo, while the AI mess about outside the safety of your walls, but you can jump to other modes whenever you like!
