If you could design the next PvZ shooter...

Maps and Zones

For the purpose of this discussion, maps are for PvP matches and Ops, zones are for your personal neighborhoods, free roam zones, and the special open battlefield.

Maps: I want to include all the maps from GW1 and 2 with any needed tweaks for larger characters. If we include BfN maps, the TT maps need to be adjusted so we have more exciting battles that aren't always on the points and allow for teleporters to come back as I enjoyed making them, using them, and fighting over them (even if there were times, especially in GW1, where defending them was a major pain if your team didn't help). 

That's a lot of maps; GW1 has 4 G&G (TT) maps and 8 mixed/Ops maps and GW 2 has 5 TT maps and 10 mixed/Ops maps (and that's without night time versions), while BfN has 6 TT maps and 8 mixed/Ops maps and it'd be a good idea to add more PvP/Ops maps so the game has its own character as well, but one common theme I've seen since GW2 launched is to include the old maps! Even with some changes to them, there's a lot of fondness for these maps and would help bring back a lot of the veterans. New maps could really help bring new ideas to the series on top of bringing back the favorites!

Joining matches would use either a portal like in GW2 and BfN or maybe your neighborhood transports. Either way, you won't just sit in the portal doing nothing till a match pops, you'll be able to still play around in your neighborhood or the open battlefield.

Zones: My idea is to have several of these:

Personal Neighborhood: When you log into the game, you end up here. It's the new game's version of the Backyard Battleground/Giddy Park with its own ideas. It will be larger than GW2's backyard although split into a plant section, zombie section, and in between will be a more neutral section much like the backyard. In fact if you're used to the backyard, it won't seem all that different at first.

Rux will be either somewhere in the middle like he used to be in GW2 or in both bases like later in that game or BfN now, I'm 100% open to either idea. If you're a basic or deluxe player, when you first login you'll go see him to get your bonus items. New players of any level will be able to jump in and play in their own neighborhood where both bases also have the multiplayer portal, transport to the free roam zones and the open battlefield in each base, special backyard quests and hidden stuff to find, customization booth, the stickerbook, a possible puncher/victory slab customization NPC (this may be in the booth instead as you can customize this per character and per slot), the minion NPC (since the game will have a ton of minions, to make things easier, you can select some as your favorites so they're always at the top of your interface window, making them easier to access in battle. More on this in a later post, but there may have to be some restrictions on this so you can't  just slot all heavy armored walkers for example), and the most fun part, various spots where you can add customizations.

The neighborhood will have a lot of 'under construction' spots where players can make their personal neighborhood their own using those customizations you can unlock via buying them from Rux and the free roam zones. Even without adding anything to your neighborhood, you will have battles much like in GW2, where friends can join in, bots spawn more and more as you fight and visit the opposing base, and you can just play around in your own private place while still earning XP and coins (the rare of which is up to how they want things to play out).

These neighborhood customizations will be more robust than they are in GW2. Not only will there be more spots to customize your neighborhood, but you can focus on one side more than the other and these customizations will change your neighborhood in various ways and add minigame objectives to spice up the experience. You can only place plant specific items in the plant section and the same for the zombies but either can go into the middle ground areas and this will change the appearance of that middle ground, allowing you to focus on one side of the other, or to mix and match. 

Examples of personal neighborhood customizations:

• Spawners that add specific or random AI
• Boss portals that spawn bosses
• Objectives for you, your friends, and AI to fight over
• Revisiting classic places like the boat from Port Scallywag.
• Minigame kiosks and areas (think like the boat blast and target range in GW2)
• Others-like changing your free roam/battlefield transports skins

Essentially as you play, you will have more and more options for your neighborhood and as more things are added to the game, players' own versions will vary greatly between each other. You can change these more or less at will, although not during using one for something, such as changing a target range while using it won't be possible. A lot of these may just be decorations, but the amount of variation will be huge! I'll post about more of these ideas in depth in a separate post.

Free Roam Zones: These will be similar to BfN's  but with a few changes that I think will help them be more appealing over a longer term. We'll start with at least one per side for all players that you will visit via the transports in your neighborhood. As the game goes on, more of these will be added and will provide themed customizations that can only be earned via these zones.

The free roam zones will allow you to unlock costumes and other items just like BfN, but also certain minions as well. For example, a port themed zombie area would let you unlock barrel pirates, map pirates, swabbie zombies, and ship's wheel zombies you can spawn in TT matches, possibly other matches, and at the open battlefield. A lot of these spawnables you can unlock via free roam zones largely be reskins of other basic spawnables, but some will be completely unique.

To add to this idea, and to help entice people to the free roam regions even more, we should build on what we had in BfN's zones, which were excellent but limited. I still go back to them today, but largely to get XP as I work on maxxing my level. We want these zones to be alluring for any/all players from newbies to those that are much higher rank! Besides the XP for for the prize map and leveling up your characters/account. To do this we'll have the following occur in the zones:

• Random events that pop up, like special boss attacks, locations to defend and so on. Possibly with unique rewards. The skirmishes in BfN helped but were too limited. I'd have these be more impressive and detailed.
• Holiday themed events. Like Sir Crustworthy in BfN or the bat and other such quests in GW2. These would have unique seasonal rewards based on the current holiday(s) involved.
• The ability to replay quest lines completely whenever you like. We can kind of do this in BfN, but not the initial parts. I'd have it so you can play the entire quest lines as much as you want.
• More quests in the zones. The main quests for the BfN zones were fun but very short. I'd expand them to make them far more interesting and have more time invested to complete.
• As part of the prize map, there would be free roam zone quests you could do for bonus XP, similar to Paladins battle pass challenges. Since the prize maps would be 3 months, you could complete them in a timely but not super tight schedule. Daily quests are largely irritating, and having 15 quests every 46 hours in GW2 was a bit much too.

Obviously, these free roam zones would take a lot of work, but they must already have done so in BfN but lacked replayability. I'd like to see all that work the team that make the game rewarded and also more rewarding for the players.

The game would launch with at least 1 zone per side and preferably 2. Later zones would be added and accessed via a drop down menu in the transports in your neighborhood. Extra zones would have to be bought with coins as they take so much effort and would be optional (they aren't PvP maps, PvP maps must always be accessible to all players). I'd prefer to have a ton of them and all be free but this is one way they could make money without harming PvP.

Open Battlefield: This would be accessed via your transports in your neighborhood, and you can go here automatically when waiting for a match to pop (no more sitting in the portal doing nothing). This would be a large open public zone where players can battle at any time with other players, kind of like a public Giddy Park but without stores, or other 'menu items', which are in your own neighborhood, or needing to jump into the action via those pads. There will be a plant and zombie base and some smaller points you can fight over, summon bots/pots/weeds/browncoats, and just fight for fun while waiting for a match or just whenever you like. You'd get XP and coins of course and there could be achievements for fighting here as well as special events. 

I don't want this to become a toxic space where one team mauls the other so some balance factors have to be added (spawn camping can't be a thing for example, but too, no sniping from your protected span area either), NPC bosses and such can spawn to balance stuff out if one side is doing badly and so on. Since it will be full crossplay across all platforms, I really want this to be a fun place to fight with each other and have the community become closer, rather than constant vendettas or other nastiness. It can't be 100% balanced as people leave and join at any time, but it could be a lot of fun and the appearance could reflect the current holiday/prize map or other factors. It can even change its layout over time so no one can memorize the layout!