Found myself back with plants vs zombie 1

I agree with @LittleSeamus.  Spot on.

GW1 was my go to game if i had 30 mins or more spare and wanted to play a shooting game.  I could play G&G for hours at a time if i had nothing in the real world to do 🙂

Sadly GW2 is not going to take it's place as it just isn't fun, unless you find racing to unload your special abilities before you die fun.

personally i am gutted as i really wanted this game to be better than GW1.  In every way but one is it better and the one way it isn't is the most important and that is Turn Takeover or G&G as it was in GW1 was FUN and in GW2 it isn't.

@leebbuk I think the point people are trying to make here is that unless the developers plan to tone things down and change some of the design that has lead to so much chaos, the second game is never going to be quite as much fun as the first was to play. Yes, people may get more used to it over time, but getting used to it won't necessarily solve the problems mentioned here.

I am highly sceptical that all we need is time to get used to it. For this game to be really great I think it needs some major tweaking.

The most obvious things I think they need to do to improve the game are:

• Tone down the frequency of enemy location icons
• Tone down the particle effects that often obscure your view
• Find some way to make characters stand out better from the environment and make it easier to tell the plants and zombies apart without having to rely on character icons all over the screen
• Improve the sound to give more consistent feedback about what you are doing (Are my hits landing? I don't know, because I can't always see the numbers. Am I healing? etc...)
• Rework some of the animations. The citron death animation, for example, needs some work. He looks like he is jumping when he dies. Until he starts to fall over you aren't sure he is even dead and end up wasting several shots. Regarding the spike weed, maybe for gameplay reasons they don't want people being flipped upside down, or maybe it just didn't work well with the height of some of the new characters, but it needs to be indicated better that someone is trapped in a spike weed. When someone is frozen, for example, you don't have to look at their feet to know it because the whole character changes color. When someone is gooped you can see them covered with goop. When someone is caught in a spike weed you don't know what is going on until you look down.
• Balance needs to be worked on, but obviously that is something they will continually be looking at, so I am not worried about that

There are probably other things that could be done to make the gameplay better, but these are the things that come to mind right away. It is alright for this game to be different than the first. In fact I think everyone expects it to be different enough to feel worthwhile. Personally, though, I don't want it to be so different from the first game gameplay wise that it loses what I loved about the first one.

Can anyone else think of some concrete examples of things that need tweaking to make this game as good as the first one while still allowing it to have a character of its own?

you pretty much covered the only real issues I had fleet. as the other things (dirtied lore from my earlier post) I feel are more so pet peeves. There is one thing I feel you missed though.

I feel turf take over needs to have it's character load outs refined. In the mixed modes I don't have so many issues as the game types are even starts. However turf takeover needs a very thought out attackers vs defenders load out. I feel the magic in GW1 was that the plants were at there core defenders, and the zombies are attackers/suppression. Game play was very delaying the inevitable. Or that you can't stop the zombies. you just need to delay them until the timer runs out. However most of the matches in GW2 are too much in the middle, or even in the attackers spawn. and that's not healthy.

The pea shooter only really worked in close. mid if you were skilled. the sunflower was good for pegging and slowing. And the cactus doing as much damage before they get close and counter all star. With the chomper being very CC. which is why I don't mind the chompers CC but despise the roses.

I feel for turf takeover to work they will need to limit what you can play as. the defenders cannot have assault. (no corn or soldier respectively) and the attackers cannot have melee. admittedly though this is just me. I'm sure they can make it work... I hope.... 

As you said I really want GW2 to blow GW1 out of the water. GW2 has a lot of things I love. They really did add everything I wanted from the first. (offline, split screen, a zombie Ops) however they added more than we asked for. I was hoping for a Metroid Prime 1 to Metroid Prime 2 kind of sequel. not a rethinking of the core (Halo 3 to Reach to 4 to 5). I would be devastated if GW2 had everything I wanted, but the first had better game play.

Also on a side note when they said offline play I was hoping they meant you don't need a internet connection kind of offline. That's something I'm a little crossed on if I'm honest.