[Discussion] Looking back on 8 years of GW2. Happy birthday

Ah gw2. Now 8 years old with gw1 being 10.

It's so weird isnt it that a sequel to a out of nowhere 3rd person shooter to a tower defense game could go on to become many peoples favorite in the franchise and still be talked about now isnt it

1. What a sequel should be and buildup to 2.

So gw2 came out quickly after gw1 with some pretty good marketing but what did it actually build on?

Some of the most well regarded sequels of all time are simply games that build upon and add to what already worked without changing much such as left for dead 2 or portal 2. Sometimes people just want more of what works and devs realize they shouldnt fix what isnt broken or had ideas they didnt put in the first entry for fear of failure.

Gw1 was a great game but it had a few shortcomings.

-Zombies unplayable outside of pvp modes.

-Plants and zombies were purely designed around their defensive/offensive natures which worked in G&G and taco bandits but clearly fell short in other gamemodes imo.

-No true singleplayer activities.

-No multiplayer matches with AI teams. Honestly if gw1 had this I would have three times the amount of playtime on ps3 than i do now.

-Ranking up quests were ridiculous at times such as shooting down several scientists with cactus airstrikes in a single session when you may never even see them in game.

Gw2 however when it was being made promised a new focus on a singleplayer experience alongside more things and this included:

-Solo play and private play matches with AI teams. Ops also got solo ops to play with AI teammates.

-Zombies got an ops mode and new bot defender companions.

-Plants now got to go on the offensive with herbal assualt and weeds.

-Single player "campaign" missions relating to the factions. We also got a new gamemode at the end of this.

-A hub world.

I feel like these things are taken for granted nowadays but I remember loving all these additions so much as somebody who didnt have xbox live until after spooky squash released (played it thanks to a trial) and didnt always perform well online in gw1 as well of being nervous about being wiped by pro players i greatly appreciatted being able to set the game to easy to wipe bots for easy xp and sometimes just turn them off to freely explore the map.

The backyard also allowed really fun nonsense by charging the enemy base and causing absolute chaos in the enemy base and summoning the bosses to duke it out.

-Ranking up tied to an xp system that could be increased by completing quests that were more reasonable than gw1's

-Brand new maps featuring much more dynamic weather systems and gameplay elements like the low gravity, portals, zombot roaming, sandstorms, and more. Gw1 maps while great were rather stagnant in the stage gimmick department outside of the trains in jewel junction. Most likely to run better on older consoles.

-The half health system was redesigned to allow characters to fully regen health slowly and healers now revived characters at 100% health. I know some didnt like this change but i feel it helps the game flow better for the most part. Could you imagine the pain of playing an imp at half hp for most of the game after a sunflower sneezed in your general direction?

- 3 character specific upgrades were changed to several general upgrades unlocked by ranking up. We lost the funny little descriptions of gw1 but they overall offer more variety and you can choose not to use them if you don't want to.

-several quality of life changes.

Some things did baffle me with gw2 not carrying over such as

Boss mode: it existed in certain builds at one point but I guess they decided to scrap it and from what i've seen of ps4/xbox1 gw1 it wasnt all that popular and nobody really seems to miss it.

Taco bandits: Not added as a base mode. I guess the different focus on offensive plants and defensive zombies scrapped it? Oh well we got capture the taco out of it though.

Ops survival mode: In gw1 splitscreen you had the option to keep playing until wiped out. Shame gw2 didnt have this as playing to survive as long as you could would've been interesting as you move to champion robo soldiers attacking during cone airstrikes and bosses.

Flag of power technically has this but having it in an officail mode where your damage isnt buffed and xp nerfed would be nice.

I guess infinity time was to make up for this but still would've been cool.

-ice pea, yeti imp, vampire zombie, pirate zombies, back up dancer, fire pea, repeater, and laser bean were all not brought back as spawnables. However most of them still exist in the game to some degree. I guess they took them out so both teams spawnables would be more even.

One thing I think gw2 does right that nobody really discusses is that the variants are a bit more interesting and complex. They were fine in gw1 but rather one note outside of rare circumstances like if a peashooter shot fire than he was just the "fire" peashooter.

Gw2 however often blended certain aspects such as iron citron being both an armored variant and a legendary, Cozmic brainz being the charge class yet he can also keep opponents from reviving, electro pea is an electric and deto character, flameface is piercing ontop of fire damage, and so on.

Its just a little more depth to a rather straightforward system.

I think gw2 also avoided the meta of soldier/peashooter conquered high ground by introducing more characters that could actively reach higher areas preventing the two from being as prevalent as they were in gw1 as they were countered out by corn, SB, imp, and citron.

You could also port over your unlocked gw1 variants before release. Cool.

2. The updates

I remember the absolute hype behind  gw2's updates as they added so much to the game and ultimately pushed it to heights gw1 could never reach.

-The Graveyard Variety Pack: Added Team vanquish map Aqua center which for the un informed was a gw1 fan favorite called garden center (first dlc for gw1 ironically enough) brought back under gw2's zombie aesthetic.

The pack also included a nightime great white north map and several balancing changes like nerfing the nightmare that was beta rose.

-Trouble in Zombopolis: This is the gw2 dlc I remember the most of when it dropped and why not? Its great!

It gave us the fan favorite gw2 herbal assualt map Zombopolis and two new variants in Toxic Citron and Breakfast Brainz.

Leaderboards for the boat blast minigame as well.

Introduced the Progress-O-Meter in the Backyard Battleground, which allows the player to keep track of how the community is doing in the community challenges, and obtain rewards based on how much the player has completed the challenges.

Included the delivery missions for chompers pizza and zomburger where you played a minigame where you ran to checkpoints as a chomper with a jetpack or a goat with a delivery cap. You even got a new badge for completting all of them.

-The Trials of Gnomus

This is an amazing update as it gave us more on the infinity time's gnomiverse.

We got the mystery portal which introduced an entirely new currency in rainbow stars which unlocked rewards like all of the original classes gw1 taunts now in gw2.

We also got to play entirely new gamemodes to multiplayer which would be added to over time but I believe it started with boss hunt.

The trials were all single player experiences but it gave us a totally shocking reward at the end: TWO WHOLE NEW CLASSES TO THE GAME! This was huge! I remember pvz youtube content exploding with buzz about these two. We now had an additional member to both teams who fulfilled a role that seemed missing before.

Torchwood gave the plants a true unrelenting tank and Hover goat gave the zombies a true support class.

-The Frontline Fighters: This dlc gave us 4 new variants in Nec rose, commando corn, captain squawk, and Scallywag imp.

Gave us online split screen too.

An original and new team vanquish map in Frontline flats which once again seems to be a favorite in the community.

-Lawn of doom and Feastivius

Customizations and spawnables.

The fact all of this came out in the same year is fun.

2017 isnt that good however as it is all mainly festive stuff that lowered item prices and gave discounts on the game.

If we go off the wiki this is the last year cvd was seen and thats sad.

2018 More content updates YIPPEE!

Rux gets bling abilities.

Capture the Taco: A new capture the flag styled gamemode in the Mystery Portal, 4 new crazy settings, and three full customization items each for Torchwood and Hover-Goat 3000.

Overall though not an eventful year outside of december with ctt.

2019.

-Soil survivors: A new gamemode which involves player duking it out in an elimination team vanquish match with the map slowing getting smaller similar to a battle royale but for a team v team mode.

A fun suprise was also revealed to the community Wall-nut hills was coming to Gw2 and soon to be added.

Oh boy a new map? AND it's a GW1 MAP!

Oh this gonna be cool to get to finally see a non changed gw1 map in 2 oh boy i can't wait to play as super..... wait a minute?

Whelp as it turns out the map will have neither the gw2 classes since they apparently get stuck in places. Oh okay I guess that's fair its from a different tim- OH WHAT THE CR-

We got NO solo/private play support for the map. That means no exploring the map by yourself and no matches with AI bots. Why didnt they just make it gw1 bots only. Players even suggested this to them at the time. I was there, i know.

No new classes and no bots. Ya know what? At this point i'm just gonna go play the gw1 version of the map as Atleast there electro pea isnt 70-0ing the map. Kind of wish we just got an original map ar this point since it would allow the other classes to still step in.

However on the positive wall-nut hills brought a brand new community challenge where you had to vanquish 500 real players. The reward for this though was a new variant called twilight chomper. He's a blue unicorn chomper however he has a slower but more powerful bite rate, has a new ability called twilight warp that in one push sends him warping a far greater distance than regular warps, and has only got 150 health.

When the challenge was over you can no longer unlock him, however he still exists in the game as you may still purchase him.

I remember getting sick and skipping school for the day to grind this guy on wall-nut hills. Good times, good times.

-Tale of the taco dlc: Bfn was announced and this was the gw2 sendoff party as it brought a series of weekly Community Challenges along with Super Mix Mode events with new Crazy Settings to the Townhall, for a period lasting from July 16th to September 2nd. The update also makes minor changes to Soil Survivors, by adding AI to balance out uneven teams.

So we added AI to soil survivors but we didnt bother putting in the solo/private play options? I wonder.....

You know I swear I remember boss hunts being pulled and replaced with other modes that year despite being upcoming? Anyone else?

2020

It was announced in Early January of 2020 that gw2's support would be officially over.

Hero Showcases and Community Challenges are retired, and the Mystery Portal is now open only once a month, on the first Tuesday of each month, lasting for two weeks. Rux is also now available for 2 weeks at a time before refreshing

Well it was a fun ride but as long as the portal has a sensible monthly rotation it should be fin-.

What happened?! You think the community at large would've been fine with this if the portal rotation didnt absolutelty suck in everyway possible.

It essentially deletes several achievements from the game and even worse we lost some consumables in the legendary spawnables.

Now lets just get to the real kicker. With the modern rotation we no longer have cats vs dinos, soil survivors, boss hunts.

If we count online multiplayer modes where anyone can join than ops, turf, team vanquish, gnome bomb, suburbination, vanquished confirmed, and capture the taco added in than thats 3 out of 10 actual gamemodes missing from the game. That's almost a 3rd of the game.

And the real kicker of it all is that as members on these posts have brought forth that there was going to be a private play option for boss hunts! We got AI in soil survivors yet we can't add that in either.

Capture the taco survived yet funnily enough it was the only mode not taken into bfn as both soil and hunts had mechanics taken. I guess the guy who saved it for the portal was found and told to stop making fun things?

Modders have not only brought these modes back through mods but added AI to them yet popcap couldnt even bother to just put them on a decent portal rotation.

FINISHED GAME MY FOOT!

Look I swear this isnt a fix the mystery portal rant in disguise ok?.

Full history here:

https://plantsvszombies.fandom.com/wiki/Plants_vs._Zombies:_Garden_Warfare_2/Update_histor

3. Gw2's aesthetic.

I gonna be completetly honest and say gw1's aesthetic overall wins me over more on plants as gw2's does have some good spots with the backyard and frontline flats but some feel more random at times with things like gwn and seeds of time.

Gw2 maps take after pvz 2's setting of different time periods and technology.

Overall I find gw1 maps better designed and vertically free as well but gw2's maps are overall more memorable and interesting to me. Time park isnt designed well but i remember it more than some of the beach maps of gw1.

However gw2's focus isnt on the plants as the zombies are the stars of the show in this game.

While they had a presense in gw1 with graveyards and secret labs for spawnpoints they never really had a dedicated map outside of zomboss manor.

Yet in gw2 they got a massive lift with more futhristic gothic decor spanning numerous maps from zomburbia to the moon.

Alot of their tech in gw2 is also more futuristic such as the z mechs, robo soldiers, saucer imps, and more.

I know some werent a fan of the neon purple aesthetic of the zombies in this game but i think it over all helps gw2 stand out from gw1.

Frankly i kind of wish the game solely focused on their takeover instead of combining with the different time period maps at times.

Outside of the two factions we also got an entirely new setting in the gnomieverse which imo doesnt get enough appreciation.

They really did a good job with making it feel otherworldly with pieces of land floating in the void as giant mushrooms and crystals line the walls and water with a bizarre substance  in it flows by.

In the cats vs dinos mode a special map was made for the game utilizing the gnomish aesthetic called gnomiverse XL which had a center port of a weird portal machine drawing in differebt objects through space time like houses and a giant squid?

The submarine does float by in gameplay btw.

Exploration of the map:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dnwnfnn94OQ&si=_sfPrrJJFBSiMVA

Private play remastered add on gameplay for cvd demonstrated by Mr JT:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TLJ_z6HkrOE&si=NmeHT8VhxjRZSSh

By the way it works on pc so QUICK DOWNLOAD THE MODS FOR THE ACHIEVEMENTS!

4. Charm and details

I couldnt do this section justice no matter how many pics I took.

Gw1 will get its own section so only gw2 stuff for now.

Crazy dave and Zomboss were given animated 3d models for announcements and Zomboss really shines here. He was a lot more reserved in gw1 in tone but in 2 his animations and voice give a lot of love to him such as his eyes spinning around in his head when gets excited or how he's almost crying when the zombies are losing or screaming in terror and fright when a powerful enemy appears. Honestly this is probably my favorite zomboss in the series.

The maps in gw2 have a lot of little details put in them that makes them stand out like the seeds of time info board showing why the zombies crashed in cactus canyon or the golf course you can shoot golf balls around on lunar landing and see the distance they travel. Its not something that was necesary but it was just fun to learn.

I like how you can see zombie propoganda posters lying around their territories saying things like boss is watching or the robot eyes watching you from the houses and mailboxes.

If you pay enough attention to posters or ads on buildings you can see things like pole vaulter zombie from pvz 1 offering gym memberships or jalapeno's anger management class.

Some do come from gw1 but given thats a direct sequel with even some shared locations i don't mind this.

The moon facts on moon base z.

The gw2 classes all being given valid reasons why they weren't in gw1 in their almanac entries.

Zoologist mind controls his animals.

Much more.

5. Build up to release, reception, and the aftermath of bfn.

When gw2 was announced it pulled off something suprising. It topped youtube gaming trends at number 1 in its beta. It hadnt even fully released. Funnily pvz 3 is in the top 10 mobile games right now even though its only in a few countries and hasnt fully released.

I really wish we had more official numbers because it would be fun to see the amount of sales and players back then.

Gw2 overall was positively recieved and even now it has a 97% positive review rating on google and the game consistently won around 8/10 and 4/5 scores from reviewers both critics and fans alike.

Even now gw2 is still talked about fondly and you can actually see it edited in to modern youtube videos not even talking pvz. It's definetly the pvz community's favorite for the shooter spinoffs.

"Wow gw2 is beloved and did well to improve on gw1 i cant wait to see how the sequel improves on i- Oh... Wait, that's right".

So Bfn was released and well, lets just say a rift was formed in the gw community.

This rift only got worse in 2020 with the announcement of the mystery portal change. Even now many players speculate they did this to not only funnel more dev time to bfn but make the portal less of a draw so players would move to bfn as most had just gone back to gw2 at that time and i get it.

If it was in anyway true than it backfired big time as when gw2 released on steam it dwarfed bfn's player average a few times over and is the shooter still talked about by the gw community

People can call bfn a spin off all they like but that doesnt take away from the fact that 80% of the game uses gw2's mechanics, modes, characters, models, and more. Thats gotta sting for gw fans as it now feels like the things they cared for were just tossed aside.

Ops lacks variety, depth, and difficulty, a lot of spawnables were just deleted from the game or hardly have a use such as breaker bot. In turf he's built to counter only ONE very specific enemy compared to the four he countered in gw2 pvp!

I've seen many say bfn had potential but in reality doesnt a gw2 sequel also have the potential to add onto and arguably perfect a working system? Why throw away a system that's yet to really been run through in favor of something that doesnt do enough for former fans or newer fans?

With the news of popcap vancouver shutting down a while back and the series being on the decline i really don't see a gw3 coming soon or at all tbh.

I really wish they would just fix the portal rotation as that could at least keep interest in the game going for a while but for now it just looks like we're stuck to the downward loop pvz especially the shooters has been in since late 2019.

Gw2 is still a fun game and it does a lot of things right on its own and expanded on gw1's already working formula however the removal of content in the games later days have hurt it in a very specific way.

It's like meeting an old friend who you still hang out with but their hairs now receeded and their 20 pounds overweight. You still like the guy but his issues are pretty clear.

The only way I could see the game really being picked up again by people is reintroducing those now no longer used modes they would draw new and veteran players alike. Former pvz youtubers give off the feeling that they want yo come back to the series and make content for them but just don't really have anything to talk about.

Shame to see that are requests have been denied twice as the idea of the modes coming back really rekindled the fire of discussion on this forum and gave us the largest posts on them. The fact that the original change the mystery portal post somehow managed to explode 2 weeks after it originally released is insanely lucky and it has now over 800 replies and climbing still since Novemeber is the most i've ever seen a topic get on here and they're even more posts with smaller but still numerous replies.

I feel like if they continue to go nowhere the forums are gonna dry up again the same way they did after bfn got canned.

Gw1 is next and in apologize for spelling mistakes or random thoughts spilling out and making this hard to read.

Heres a list of old posts to go more in depth on some subjects i discussed for context

Map height:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Plants-vs-Zombies-Games/Map-height-A-comparison/m-p/12218148#M14219