Free playing areas

@Iron_Guard8The backyard felt like a living world with a war going on and giddy park just doesnt achieve that. Yeah playing with others is cool but what about those of us who don't want to at certain times? Then giddy park absolutely crumbles for solo play.

Also why were ai heros only availiable during bounties and not normally? It's far more interesting than the underwhelming and annoying tv heads and wildflowers. Especially when you're alone.

I like how once the soccer game ended in the backyard the spectators would start attacking each other (not too far off from real sports).

It could only be improved by ai teams popping up to support the game. Also wheres my soccer inspired all star, popcap?

If a healer or flag carrier got near you they would stick with you through the backyard like glue so I always treated them like little buddies while questing.

The flag of power was an extremely fast way to finish vanquish quests and see all the variants in action. Really dissapointed there was nothing like it in giddy park.

Jumping into the enemy base to see how long I could last was also fun or I can just watch the weeds gang up and beat up disco zombie.

You can tell popcap really went all in with designing backyard battleground to make up for the lack of solo pve stuff (zombies were only multiplayer characters in gw1, boo) from gw1.

We should have a public domain thats like an expanded giddy park but also a solo play hub world like the backyard thats been even further expanded with larger battles and areas.

More ways to customize not just the base but outside it as well would be a great improvement to the backyard.

@stukapookaAs someone who has played many MMOs, none of them, and I mean none, have felt anywhere near as alive and interesting as the Backyard Battleground. My one friend and I used to get quests there, see how many bosses we could get to spawn, and just play around when we had a little time to kill.

Giddy Park looks nice but it's a pale shadow of the Backyard Battleground and the spawn camping issue is awful. There was a time early on when I was on Space Cadet and was fighting there with a pretty full lobby, when the station I was part of decided to go camp the plant's landing zone so I left. That kind of thing ruins the experience, even when I want an some free wheeling PvP.

As someone who quests like mad, I love the flag of power. I use it a lot! I especially like it for 'vanquish 50 plants/zombies' quests. I lost a little ground when I was focusing on BfN when it first came out, but still 5th:

My friend there at 6 hasn't played in awhile unfortunately, we were much closer back then!

When I first got GW2, the Backyard Battleground blew me away. It's so amazing that I can't heap enough praise on it! The only downsides for me are that it could be bigger and could have more customizations, only 1 epic slot was always sad as I want to use them all!

Giddy Park isn't awful, but it's just not as good or interesting and due to the way the bases are setup it all feels so detached and the AI you fight get boring in a hurry as it's just the same ones over and over. Adding the chests and mini-games helped a little, but with coins being pointless, it just isn't that great. I switched mine to private with AI a long time ago.

This is a big part of why I want to have the 2 ideas; a main hub that's your personal playground and where you express yourself, and an open PvP area where you can just mess about whenever you like but maybe don't have time for a full match.

@stukapookaI don't even enjoy using Brainium Basher, and hate how it's use so often and how it's so obnoxious. New players especially must be confused by what is even going on with this upgrade. That's one thing I don't want in the new game, or at the very least, make it less of a pain to deal with.

And yeah, I wanted more Backyard Battleground and was hoping for them to expand every time they announced more DLC! It's just that good.

The Public Battlefield and Personal Neighborhood ideas seem really great @Iron_Guard8 as they would expand on the idea of the already awesome Backyard Battleground and would also expand on the idea of Giddy Park as well. I really liked the free-roam zones in BfN as well, so if players had the option of being able to enter a number of free-roam zones at any time, players would have many places to explore and have fun in. 

The Backyard Battleground was a really fun place to explore as it is quite large, there are lots of chests to open and rewards to find, there are places where you can customise (but mostly in the team bases), you could access all of the main features from here in-game and you can even play it with other players or friends if you wish. The Backyard Battleground will never truly feel "dull", I would imagine, however unfortunately I would say Giddy Park does not feel the same way.

@TheSprinter85In regard to the free roam zones, my idea would indeed be for us to be able to visit them from our neighborhood whenever we liked. Just logon to the game, pop up in the base in your neighborhood on the last character you played, switch sides/characters if you want to, and then hop into whatever transport system they have in the game for such purpose; I'm thinking of having Penny for the Plants and the Zomboss airship for the zombies with a menu to select where to go instead of separate options like in BfN, which were neat but if they add as many zones as I would want to see, it would crowded in your neighborhood in a hurry, and have go play in your chosen zone!

I would imagine 3 zones per side at launch and more added later (maybe even for sale if the game is buy to play, as they would be fun and would more content to enjoy, but wouldn't adversely affect game balance as you can't buy power in the game, and I'm trying different ideas for the game to be sustainable for years so we keep getting new content and support). You could jump in solo, in a group with up to 4 friends, in an open group like Ops in GW and GW2 where anyone can jump in, or you could do a search for open groups looking for more in a particular zone or any for your current chosen side.

It's important that the zones have a lot to do and have reasons to go back, I'm even pondering the idea that while most stuff you unlock is at Rux with coins and buying additional copies of consumables is also at Rux, that perhaps consumables keyed to a free roam zone can only be unlocked and bought in that zone for the zone currency, but that may be too restrictive. I still want it to always be desirable to visit the zones though, so having fun, repeatable activities in the zones is a must.

I feel that the free roam zones in BfN, while initially amazing, wore off after you finished the zones and the story lines in them are just too short. I also would like them to have more active and varied spawn, instead of the fixed spawns we have in BfN. Skirmishes help, but they also feel a bit too predictable. I'd add big zone wide events, more active gnomes, having a lot more AI mob variety, more puzzles, and so on.

Basically for the free roam zones, take what we have in BfN and expand upon it. I know I sound like a broken record at times, but the free roam zones must have taken a ton of effort to make and that effort feels wasted once you finish them and only return to get some XP, we don't even need to break stuff for coins and region currency anymore. This is an area where they can look at something like Warfframe where you always have a reason to visit their instances and their version of free roam zones several times and always feel rewarded.

Questing in GW2 right now and had to get a Giga-Torchwood so after doing that (as Toxic Brainz, he's my boss hunter character for the zombies), I swapped to Rose for an arcane enigma quest and then got a picture of this:

6 bosses on this shot at once, and other AI all over the place. This is exactly what I want to see being a thing in the new game and why Giddy Park never felt as good as the Backyard Battleground!