If you could design the next PvZ shooter...

Business model: I’m starting here as one of the pillars of a successful game. One of the key failings of BfN is its poor business model. This is especially evident back in December 2019 when they released the Feastivus pack while the game was still having serious problems for so many players. I myself did get that pack but I fully agree with those that did not and were angered by its existence when so much was still wrong.

The new game would either be free to play with ways to spend money to show support for the game without having players feel forced or exploit the infamous ‘FOMO’, or it’d have a sticker price and ways to spend additional money if you liked, but again would never try to force players into feeling like they must buy more to compete or enjoy the game.

While I normally don’t like free to play games much, as they often end up costing more than normal priced games, it may help get people back to play that have left and may be leery of spending more money without seeing how the game plays, and would encourage a lot of people to at least try it as they’d not have to spend money on an initial investment. So, while I’d be open to a price to get the game like all 3 current PvZ shooters, making it F2P could really help bring back, retain, and expand the playerbase.

Crossplay across all platforms is almost mandatory in this day and age. Obviously they have to make sure to deal with hackers, cheaters, and glitch exploiters which has cursed the games, especially GW2 on PC, but it works in Paladins, Rocket Arena, and other games, and it would be a huge help to keeping modes other than TT with full lobbies. I consider this part of the business model as it affects how people will perceive its value and long-term viability.

Assuming a free to play model, I’d say we’d have a return of something like the prize map but with a free and paid track similar to Paladins and Rocket Arena so that free players don’t feel completely left out, but players can spend on the paid track to get more rewards. The tracks need items that are not perceived as useless as the punchers and victory slabs are in BfN (note: I always championed the idea that if we could use more than 1 slab and a max of 2 punchers total, these would be much more rewarding). These prize maps would last a few months, likely 3, instead of a single one too, so the devs have time to set them up, folks would have more time to unlock things, and it would match the seasons in other games that use a similar model.

So where does this leave sticker packs/capsules? I have a couple ideas for that. One-remove the sticker packs/capsules entirely and have everything unlocked via the prize map/battle pass, with older items available for coins from Rux, along with whatever special items he may sell (more on coins in my in-game economy post later), you would still have a sticker book to track items, a key thing that BfN lacked that the two GW games had. Two-sticker packs remain similar to GW1 and 2 but some of them are available in the prize map as well as for coins. The packs would be ‘regenerated’ with each new prize map; adding new items every 3 months or so along with the new prize maps. In this second case, Rux would sell specific items for coins from the packs as well as his own unique stock.

There would be just coins for the main currency here, special currencies like stars and rainbow stars will still exist just like in all 3 current games in some form or other, but I’ll cover that in the in-game economy post I’m making later.

My goal here is to make it so we don’t have the serious problems BfN’s economy has suffered from; resentment (of FOMO, and other things), the prize map being full of fluff and only a few desired items, and coins and regional currencies becoming largely useless after a point.

Regardless of what business model the game uses, it MUST never be pay to win and players must feel like they want to spend money instead of feeling forced to do so.

Edit: As coins will be the main currency in the new game, it will largely be earned by playing the game as in all 3 games now, but can also be purchased in 'coin packs' like in both GW games.