General BfN Feedback Thread
After reinstalling the game, making my first thread in nearly half a year, & reevaluating my opinions on BfN, I can safely say that this game is still some fun to be had, though has some glaring flaw...
Forum Discussion
I'd have a ton if I listed it all, but I'll hit on the high and low points:
1-The free roam zones are both one of my favorite things in BfN, but also end up kind of pointless after you 100% them. I love the quests, hunting down the chests and gnomes, solving the puzzles, and the general themes of these places but they need more depth and reasons to return consistently to make them worth the time and effort that went into them. I touched on this in my own ideas for a sequel; always have a reason to return to these zones and the game replay value would increase exponentially.
2-The Grandmaster ranks are more obnoxious than anything else. They provide almost zero benefit and just feel like they were added to keep people on a treadmill. If you're going to add to the treadmill, I'd like to see more rewards to make it worth it.
3-I largely enjoy the new characters, except for the swarm characters who I hope do not return in a new shooter. I've been pondering variants for them for a while now, and we've mentioned that before. I do wish we had gotten at least the Iceberg Lettuce, but I really wanted that Berry Brigade.
4-To your point 2, @Fork_x_Spoon I feel that GW2 had this issue with turrets too; too many turret characters. In GW1 we had the Peashooter's Gatling and the Sunflower's sun beam. In GW2 they added the Pirate's cannon rodeo and after taking the drones away from the engineer, they gave him the big bolt blaster. I'd like to see less AoE's and turret modes in a new game.
5-I honestly love all 3 games' visual style and they all have varying degrees of realism over different aspects. I generally don't like gritty realistic games either. This is why the PvZ shooters are my favorites and close behind them are Paladins and TF2 for my multiplayer shooters. BfN generally looks great, and some of the costumes are excellent.
6-The HUD is both better and worse than the prior games. For example, I love having a visual indicator about your overheat status and being able to visually tell how much of a % of your magazine you have left with a similar ring on the ammo indicator, but as @stukapooka has also pointed out, I wish the name of my main weapon at the least, appeared on the HUD.
7-Lobbies in the next game need to be better balanced than the current 3. Rank plates are not automatically better players but it is an indicator of general awareness of how the game works. If the next game has crossplay across platforms (and it should, it needs it), that would help a lot. Jumping into the portal in GW2 and being on a team with 3 other max ranks while the enemy team has none is not ideal.
8-Giddy Park isn't bad and I love the way they change appearance based on the current prize map, but it's just not as fun or interesting as the Backyard Battleground. The zombie base is too 'clean' (it should be much like it is in GW2 or Zomboss Estate from GW1), you can be spawn camped too easily with the current design, the AI are too limited (no bosses, no turrets, only wildflowers and TV Heads is a shame), and it's all divided up so it comes very disconnected.
9-Wildflowers and TV Heads (the AIs especially), are super annoying with their attacks that throw you around and ruin the normal melee focus of the Mass AI like in GW and GW2, making some bots/pots that are already limited due to range, like the Bonk Choy and Boxer Bot, even less useful than they already were. They should be removed for the next game and more interesting but generally melee-focused AI mobs should be added (ex: Pirate zombies of various types).
10-The economy is a major problem. One can argue about the packs in GW2 where you can buy the legendary characters being bad (and I'm not a fan of these to be sure), but the way outfits cost a ton of rainbow stars and they only trickle in unless you buy them (as I did), coins feeling like no reward after you have the reward-o-tron emptied, and regional currencies becoming pointless, all add up to a mess that made a lot of people unhappy, myself included, even if I put up with it.
11-The idea of monthly prize maps where you can get free stuff just for playing are a great idea, even if they weren't implemented well. They may want to use a more generic map in future and remove certain things (like poop emotes), so they can make them more easily and not repeat them like we have now, but the idea of 'play and get stuff' with no real restrictions is a good one.
12-Being able to save costumes and upgrades as separate builds is one of my favorite things in BfN. It was something I asked for in GW2 for years. 3 per character isn't enough, but it's still a great start. I love being able to just grab a pre-saved build and jump into a game quickly like that.
13-Ops are a major letdown in BfN. The lack of themed enemies (back up dancers for the disco zombie as one example), the lackluster special wave variety, and no evac stage really made these a disappointment.
14-I actually like the timer system for summonables so you can't spam nothing but coffin zombies like you see in GW1 and 2. But, it would be nice to have more variety of summons and for defense to have at least 2 that can always be summoned, not just the one per side like we have now. This would alter the coin expenditure we have in GW1 and 2, whereas we always get something for coins, so I wouldn't mind going back to a system like that, or one where you purchase them directly as I posted elsewhere (ex: a browncoat costs 100 coins, a coffin zombie costs 1000), or keeping and expanding this summonable system.
15-Losing mixed mode was a big bummer. I understand why it was taken away, but it still stinks. With crossplay and being able to combine the 3 player pools (PC, PS, XBox), we'd be able to get that back in a new game.
16-Battle Arena is a great idea that had so many issues with implementation that it never reached its potential. I'd like to never worry about ranked modes if it's brought back, and just have it as a fun and exciting game mode though.
There's likely more, but I've already had so many here that it's enough for now.
@Iron_Guard8The timer on spawnables is a major problem in ops unfortunately as it kills strategy and if they simply buffed certain pots like bonkchoy and fume shroom or allowed pea cannons to hit them in the unprotected legs or face then coffin zombies most likely wouldn't be a problem.
The economy must be better and the prize map should never include characters or variants and should let us earn them through the pve missions or some kind of boss hunt styled raid such as defeat the spooky squash and earn a piece of computer scientist. Basically if they introduce new characters I would like to see something similar in vein to trials of gnomus but faster accessibility.
Legendaries could be changed to being gauranteed at the end of rare and super rare variants while before being mixed in.
The backyard was simply more fun and themematic then giddy park but that doesn't mean they have to abandon a PvP hub just make it better though out such as spawning out bosses and champions with reduced xp gain online to reduce spawncamping as giddy parks were awful.
Mixed modes died because it was never given the spotlight and handled poorly such as the changes to suburbination and poor carriers competing with sprinting opponents in gnome bomb.
Agreed about tv head and wildflower as ai and classes get rid of them and give us someone like gravedigger or that pineapple dinosaur plant. Hovergoat and Torchwood should also be brought back as they are better designed then most classes in the series even if changes were made for variants. BRING BACK FLAG ZOMBIE POPCAP (maybe give him the ability to make affected browncoats resist the pull of bean bombs and swarm around to protect the flag carrier as a rallying point).
Popcap should either go all in on free roam areas or a tightly action packed linear campaign don't 50/50 either.
Remove rainbow stars or make them easier to obtain like in gw2. Make prize bulbs easy to get and not stupidly grindy.
Compromise idea: give engineer a buildable gw1 turret he can upgrade like in the gw1 trailer (teleporters will be like gw2). That way he doesn't have big bolt blaster (hes not peashooter popcap stop trying to make him peashooter) or the op inducing heavy helper.
Deadbeard is trickier as I feel cannon rodeo works better for his pirate aesthetic rather than anchors away which was kinda pointless in bfn as everyone could jump stupidly high or easily get on rooftops. Maybe he could summon a swabbie imp from pvz heroes for help who would automatically run towards and disable a plants abilities for a few seconds like moto x star.
I hope they change drone airstrikes back honestly. Keep being able to ads as a drone but go back to corn style airstrikes.
They should rework bfn classes abilities as too many feel like dominating crowd control rather than trying to bypass a liability of the class or fight against certain enemies.
This isnt tf2 where two classes exist for the sole purpose of punishing overhealed classes team wiping the server, remove overheal.
Revert the snipers. Dont half and half your class based shooter snipers either have them kill in one shot or not. I'd argue everyone wants to copy tfc/tf2 sniper (widowmaker, cactus, deadbeard) without understanding why he works and helps balance his game.
