@Iron_Guard8Gw1 was hard due to the more frustrating mechanics that gw2 removed for actual difficulty from the enemy rather than the game itself.
Tge gardenator just doesnt feel pvzish imo gw1 has the best garden (it looks so innocent) and 2 has the best tombstone look.
Gw1 Chomper in ops was a meme (fighting the baron was especially painful due to the self heal per bite), he was better in gw2 with more health, regeneration, and chomp cannon (a very underrated ability imo) but on higher difficulties felt like imp in that he's not worthless and with a good player and team can be a massive help but their job is definitely made harder and neither of them should be stacked unless you know what you're doing or you're once again just memeing.
I'm not denying that garden warfare chomper wasn't a gimmicky character in the first place but I honestly liked playing him more than bfn chomper who just feels kind of there (especially with the emphasis now on nightcap being the assassin character), I was in huge favor of the mass voted back chomp rework where players would have to use the aim button to swallow attack or a potential buff could be to give chomper health for eating items like newspapers and outhouses as it would encourage players to attack more armored enemies with swallow attacks.
Wizard feels like torchwood and hovergoat in that they released them but never really made them attack in ops, wizard has multiplayer ai and wood/goat had team ops ai.
Special ai zombies feel like they were left out due to time as we both know bfn was made under a very short time and the special zombies felt like they were created to fight players specifically and crush ai as they could knock them back, heal from basic attacks that wiped out pots due to their slower fire rate, get onto rooftops (once again bfn lacks verticality and it really hurts the maps unlike gw1 and 2 where the high ground was only accessible by creative players and was abundant in areas) by karate zombie spinning into the air or back up dancers showing their sick moves, and their respective bosses dont feel the same without their iconic minions.
We also lost the pirate themed zombies which is a shame.
I miss the spawnables and I feel like the cooldown is unnecessary in the game and it kills the defensive strategy in ops, just remove it and actually balance the spawnables if you dont want spam of one character. I also really miss the missing spawnables like I dont care if snapdragon or laser bean was a meme I miss them and pea cannon is now just repeater (just make pea cannon shoot and reload faster than repeater as a difference to balance them).
Bitter dill feels like the plant yeti in that hes more fast and annoying than actually deadly.
The lack of bots was a straight downgrade from gw2 no debate.
The lack of unique bosses isnt helping the series in anyway.
Elite bosses are a neat concept that was sadly executed poorly as some were way too easy like disco zombie just spinning but he's invincible (imagine if you had to stop a dance section and if you failed the map would be swarmed with backup dancers. and I would prefer full on boss hunt events but I wouldn't mind seeing this return more refined in a gw3.
Sunflower queens beam melted you on crazy and why it was so important to attack her as she charged as she was defenseless in that period.
As you said constant new characters could've prevented stagnation from lack of variants but we only got 1 truly new class and 2 ai's in a whole year and only one map added to the ops playlist.
Bfn stretches and inflates its waves to try and make players feel like their involved but ut really just predictably narrows the ai into kill groups as they arrive really fast.
Evacuations made the ending in ops feel earned abd the presence of actually losing the game and team members was there.
Graveyard Ops still has the glitch of an enemy spawning out of the map and ruining the game.
Super bean ai acts like he forgot why he showed up in bfn where he was once the most dreaded boss on crazy in gw2 (a boss hunt with a chili bean was found in gw2 files.
Certain difficulties allowed certain deadlier variants to attack like toxic brainz only showing up crazy or tank commander on easy, it really varied the threat in each difficulty and the difficulty sped up the waves each class and variants would arrive on faster.
Overall if bfn can break even for another game I hope they can truly build up ops in a potential gw3 to make it the mode it deserves to be.
I would like to see most of this in phase 3. I like the added sprint button, and am indifferent about overheal. I think consumables should have their own in game currency as I hated running out in GW or having it compete with variant unlocks.
Using the defenses when and where ever would be the best.
