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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
10 years ago

Is PVZGW2 dying?

It all started with the "Trouble in Zombopolis: Part One" update, infamous for the character tuning that came with it.

Among the changes, increased Citron and Frozen Citron's damage, and increasing the time it took for them to overheat...

Increased ammo/damage among most Corns...

Decreased Imp Mech cooldown time and increased mech life time...

Killing Turbo Twister...

Decreasing Captain Sharkbite's explosion damage, which would later be added onto by decreasing his ammo...

And decreasing Chemist's damage, which would later be nerfed further and decreased in rate of fire.

Then came "Trouble in Zombopolis: Part Two" and with it, more bad character tuning.

Increasing various Corn's ammo capacity and/or damage...

Killing a handful of Cactus variants...

Increasing Rose's ammo supply...

Decreasing the effectiveness of most All-Star's and Superhero's overheat upgrades (while at the same time, NOT handling the out of control Citrons)...

Increasing Super Brainz punch damage...

Unnecessarily decreasing the damage multiplier of Computer Scientist's Crunch Mode...

And decreasing Camo Ranger's ammo.

Granted, they did make some bad characters (like Chomp Thing) better and finally nerfed Toxic Pea, but that doesn't make up for all the other things they broke.

Thankfully, the changes made on 7-27-16 mostly fixed the disaster of "Trouble in Zombopolis: Part Two."

But some characters like Captain Sharkbite weren't so lucky. They're still in the "not so good" state of the game we have today.

And some other characters like BBQ Corn and Frozen Citron got around this update nearly unscathed.

"Trials of Gnomus" here has been probably the best update yet. It had some changes I actually liked.

Nerfed Fire Chomper's damage.

Increased Chomp Thing's regen rate and max health.

Decreased heat generated by Hockey Star and decreased his overheat duration.

Finally brought down Pylon Imp's splash damage.

Despite this, many characters remain unbalanced or too terrible to use.

And here we are now. Still dealing with the same nonsense of "Nerf this, Buff that" and it is quite unsettling.

Just look at some of the insanity we have.

Corn has 45 ammo and a rather odd hitbox (Yes, he is tall, but his body is very slender, making it hard to hit).

BBQ Corn players run rampant through most all game modes.

Citron still has 200 health, A laser that deals an absurd amount of damage and takes what seems like forever to overheat, a shield to absorb even more damage, a crazy stun ability, and can escape death via the use of ball form.

Frozen Citron freezes in about one second, and his beam doesn't overheat for about six seconds.

Rose's hitbox and abilities are still absurd, and her ammo has been drastically increased.

Chomper's Spikeweed arms instantly, rendering Superheroes that try to attack him useless, and it is quite insane to just run up to someone with Hot Rod Chomper and place one at their feet.

Toxic Chomper is still a direct downgrade from Power Chomper, and even the new, nerfed Fire Chomper.

Pea Gatling and Sunbeam damage output and resistance.

Imps are still as hard to hit as before, and Gravity Grenade is still a nearly guaranteed way to win any fight.

Imps are calling their mechs more than ever, and they last even longer than before.

The Drake Z-Mech. 'Nuff said.

Toxic Brainz struggles to activate his legendary mode in multiplayer, but when he does, he wrecks everything in his path.

Deadbeard's scattershot is more effective than the Chemist's Beaker Blaster at this point.

Arctic Trooper's Freeze to ZPG Combo.

Big Bolt Blaster and Cannon Rodeo hitboxes (You don't deal damage to the Engineer/Pirate by shooting the Blaster/Cannon).

Chemist is dead at this point.

Computer Scientist's Crunch Mode isn't even worth the additional damage very much anymore. You still vanquish most enemies in the same number of hits.

Rugby Star and Wrestling Star have basically no purpose thanks to their slow firing speed.

Elemental attacks in general (Fire deals crazy damage over time, Ice slows and freezes for several seconds, Electricity spreads from player to player, Toxic isn't worth mentioning, as Fire is so much stronger).

And let's not forget what I'm sure EVERYONE is complaining about...

The Trial Keys.

Ooh boy, I'm really getting myself into a deep, dark abyss now.

Popcap did announce the key drop rate would be increased to 75% after the first mystery portal event. Before that, I don't even know.

Within the five events, I have only managed to get TWO keys, and I've heard many others have had even worse RNG, only obtaining one key, or even NOTHING thus far.

Time and time again, we open the 50 Rainbow Star chests, only to be sent further into depression at the discovery of not a key, but something else that doesn't appeal.

I'm sure many have quit playing altogether out of frustration of the RNG.

If anything these Rainbow Star chests should give us more items, and the 50 Rainbow Star chest should reset, should the player not obtain a Trial Key.

Sure, we could just assume that Popcap is having some technical difficulties at the moment, but I believe that is NOT the case.

Instead, I think we are in this situation today not because of them, but...

The community.

Day after day, people post their opinions, angry messages, and hate comments on this very site.

I believe Popcap is having trouble deciding what to do, when they have so many comments everywhere, some suggesting "nerf this" and others saying "don't do that, do this instead."

Honestly, I think we would be better off if this had never happened. The developers would get to create their game in THEIR own, unique way, and have fun doing it, rather than getting hundreds, maybe thousands of messages each day, wanting something changed.

I believe Popcap is trying their hardest to make the community happy, but I'm sure there's one thing we can ALL agree on.

No matter what changes.

No matter how long this goes on.

No matter how many people complain.

There will never be a time where everyone is satisfied.

25 Replies

  • PurpleKudzu423's avatar
    PurpleKudzu423
    10 years ago

    Great post Superjesse124. I would say you summed things up quite well. No one will always be happy with everything and what we see across all of the forums is that people will complain to the Devs to change this or change that. While feedback is good and helps them to work out any bugs that people have, I agree that Popcap needs to resist changing a character so fast because a handful complain on a forum. I also agree on BBQ corn and citron. Love the game, but I think there are a few things still left unbalanced. But I am confident that Popcap will keep trying until they do finally achieve a great balance for all characters...at least I hope so.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    10 years ago

    Well, I can't find any players in multiplayer. Is it because nobody is playing this game anymore? I just bought this game yesterday...

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    10 years ago

    I'd love to have a developer come in and give his take.  This is no different from any game community forum.  And I don't think developer's try to indiscriminately act upon all feedback. I believe they're intelligent enough to read the feedback and be able to conclude what may make sense, what does make sense, and what makes no sense whatsoever.   Because, let's face it, every community has its degree of whingeing just to whinge.  People like to complain.  Alas, I fear it's in our nature.  Developers know this as well as anyone if not better (poor things).

  • realitysquared's avatar
    realitysquared
    10 years ago
    I'm seeing a number of assumptions that character tuning is based solely on player complaints, which I believe is an incorrect assumption. If you read the patch notes the changes often have notes attached to them which refer to data collected, which indicates to me that while player complaints can prompt an investigation they actually analyze game play data to see if any tuning is justified.

    As far as whether or not any character tuning is concerned, you will never be able to satisfy everyone because the character teams are not identical in the fashion that the teams in Battlefield or Call of Duty have identical classes and weaponry.

    While each team has rough equivilancies on each side the mix of weapons and special abilities are arranged in different mixes.

    The Citrons EMPeach is matched by the Engineers Sonic Grenade and Sonic Mines, the Peashooters Chili Bean is mirrored roughly in the All Stars Imp Punt and so on.

    Because the teams aren't perfectly mirrored you will always have players blaming the classes for their difficulties because that is easier on the ego than admitting that the opponent out played you in some fashion. That's not to say that asymmetrical teams aren't a pain to balance properly because they are difficult to keep balanced- it's just that it's also very easy to blame the classes for poor play style, better opponent tactics, and so on.

    I've finished the Trials of Gnomus, but despite that I can see that the random key rewards are ultimately unbalanced. I'm quite certain that when the idea was proposed and reviewed they must have assumed that the current 75% drop rate would equate to everyone receiving a full set of keys within 5 or 6 Mystery Portal events; because you would naturally assume that 75% means get a key 3 out of evey 4 Red Chests.

    Unfortunately most RNG systems don't actually function that way over a small sample size. I'm pretty sure that while 75% of the community as a whole received a Key during any given Event I doubt that anyone predicted that so many individual players would continue to fall into the Keyless 25% week after week.

    I don't think that the PvZGW2 community is dying, at least not on the PS4, but I do think that character balancing and tuning will continue to be a source or argument and I do think that it was a misstep for the Trials of Gnomus to rely so heavily on a pure, unfettered RNG system to allow players to advance towards the new character classes. I think this, more than anything else, will be what causes some players to walk away from the game out of sheer frustration.

    Hopefully they do acknowledge the frustration of the players being continuously denied a Key week after week as being completely valid and act to change to Key drop rate soon.
  • Scruffy_McGuffy's avatar
    Scruffy_McGuffy
    10 years ago

    Based on the frequency I find empty games in the US lobbies for a couple of game modes, yeah I'd say it's dying. Perhaps there is some validity to OP's list of balance concerns, but IMO the main reason is lack of real new content to keep it fresh. Since launch 8 months ago there has been, what... 1 new map (Zombopolis Herbal Assault, way back in March), a couple of character variants, and two new character classes which people like myself cannot access despite best efforts (1 key from 5 events). Of course players are going to drift away, and it will get worse in the next couple of months.

     

    I thought the whole point of microtransactions in PvZGW was to fund development of new content, not simply to pad the publishers profits.

    I learned recently that Infinity Mode packs can give new characters, so I spent 800K the last time and didn't get a single character part, never mind a new character to play. With drop rates like that it's discouraging. When all signs point to an insane amount of grind for little reward, many people will just leave instead.

  • linger4606's avatar
    linger4606
    10 years ago
    Let's be honest, ALL online only games die off a bit with time. No online game maintains all its player base from the beginning. You need to take into account casual players and players that dislike a game and jump ship.

    Also, you will find some modes empty because most players are participating in event in the town hall. Join a match and see how often you run into the same players.

    So, is the community dying? No. Has the player count decreased, like all online games? Yes. Is there still a community to play the game? Definitely.
  • nightshadow989's avatar
    nightshadow989
    10 years ago

    i see most of the complaints based on characters being nerfed are SOLEY put on the fact that said person is just * at the game and cant handle that someone can play a character they suck with or they just dont play well at all

    take bbq corn for example people are STILL complaining about him and the ones i see who are doing it the loudest are squeekers and what do squeekers do in almost if not all fps games? they run out into the middle of everyone and get there * pushed in then cry that they cant go postive instead of using cover being tactiful and if they are in a mode like TT they wont even stay near the base and protect it they just try a mad dash to the spawn get slaughtered then go straight to the forums reddit twitter ect and demand nerfs to who ever took advatage of there stupidity the best 

    ive seen people who like myself can use capt cannon and petrified cactus and can get 20 30 40 50 even up to 100 kills a game with them and pretty much turn the whole game around by ourselves and i bet you anything the squeekers are either calling us hackers in there chat groups or coming here to demand the characters be nerfed cause we can use someone the right way and well

    my point of the argument is this if popcap wants to buff/nerf something do it based on numbers not on complaints im sure they have a log of players killed by what and how see how many people are being killed by frozen citron and how for example how many people are playing him and how easily they are getting kills and base a nerf on that  instead of the typical forum post of "waaaaaaaaaah someone can use a class better then me nerf it!" my hopes is they are doing this already but this is popcap we are talking about so who knows they may be going purely on complaints

  • nightshadow989's avatar
    nightshadow989
    10 years ago
    @zaviusfirerave wrote:

    Well, I can't find any players in multiplayer. Is it because nobody is playing this game anymore? I just bought this game yesterday...

    when there is a community portal up the size of people playing normal multiplayer suffers greatly so thats most likely what you are seeing also the time of day also has a factor :P granted tho a huge chunck of the communty did go back to gw1 since the zombopolis update and even more during the whole hit detection bug that took MONTHS for popcap to fix

  • SonicMaster92's avatar
    SonicMaster92
    10 years ago

    The one thing I hate the most about GW2 is something I'm both very sensitive and angry about: the Always-On DRM and persistent online connection required to play games like GW2. It's something I'm against the most because Online-Only games offer no freedom when it comes to playing the game. If you have a bad internet connection, and you can't play the game, what are you going to do? People just want to play the game, but they can't because of that stupid, unnecessary restriction. This seriously damages our freedom with videogames. I should know, because I'm against that restriction dear-heartedly.

    If GW3 were ever to be made, the dev team must NOT impose the same Always-On restriction that GW1 and GW2 suffer from. If the dev team wants GW3 to be the best game ever in the trilogy, the Always-On restriction should NEVER set afoot whatsoever.

    "Say NO to the Always-On DRM"

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