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Iron_Guard8's avatar
Iron_Guard8
Legend
6 years ago

Late July thoughts

Time for another post on the game from old Iron_Guard!

I want to start this by again stating that I enjoy BfN and like the dev team a lot. If I come off negative at times it's my nature (not only is that glass half-empty, whatever is in there is probably toxic), and because even if you like something, you should be willing to address its flaws! 

Firstly, I'm glad to see the new balance changes and fixes in the new patch. There's more work to do but overall this is a decent patch and am especially happy to see the changes to grody goop and steam blaster. A couple changes feel odd (2 dashes for Acorn is the biggest head scratcher for me), but it's more good than bad.

Private matches are great to see. I used them a lot in GW2, especially for quests in gnome bomb, suburbination, and so on as those modes weren't that populated. The AI plays differently than players do in several ways, so not as fun as PvP matches, but also more relaxing at the same time. It begs the question about how PvP quests will be handled however, as some are specifically only advanced by vanquishing other players as opposed to AI. I'm not sure that removing mixed mode from the normal portal is good idea though.

I see that Wildflower and TV Head Zombies are going to be part of a new 'swarm' character category. I'm not as excited for these as I am for other classes we've heard of, and plants still need a new character to match the wizard. That being said, I'm certainly going to try them out and see how they play. 

But as always, I need to bring up the most glaring issues I feel we still have:

  • We need more communication with the devs. It's been so quiet most of the time, especially lately, that even with the Covid-19 crisis, it's almost eerie. What's going on with the future of the game? We all have so many questions!
  • The economy is still one of the game's largest problems. When will coins be truly useful again? What about regional currencies? Putting more items in the reward-o-tron and less in the Rux store would make a lot of the community happier, especially those that can't justify buying more rainbow stars.
  • Ops phase 3. It sounds like there's a lot coming for Ops, and that's great, but we're still stuck with the current Ops that just don't match the fun they were in GW2 (they weren't as fun in GW1 as pots were vanquished too easily and some of the challenges were a mess). The elite bosses help but there's so much missing; between the lack of themed AI for the bosses (backup dancers for disco zombie as an example), the missing evacuations, and them just being as fun or as challenging as they were before, they need some work. The lack of communication I mentioned first is a part of this. Even a simple;'Ops phase 3 is coming in mid 2021, here are some things to look forward to...' would be a huge help here.
  • New swarm classes. I'm going to play them of course as I'm sure most are, and I'm not saying they're bad but the wizard set the bar pretty high and after hearing about those other characters, and especially Berry Brigade and Iceberg Lettuce, the swarm characters don't have the same appeal. The plants really need a new fully fleshed out character to give the teams more balance, at least in number of characters we can play. They obviously take a lot of time and effort to make (new models, rigging, animation, textures, and so on), but they're so worth it when done right, and wizard is an excellent addition to the zombie team so looking forward to more.
  • Damage attenuation for range (drop off) would help with the state of the game to a large degree. Most games like this have it for a reason and making everyone a pseudo-sniper just isn't working out. 

To sum it up; I enjoy BfN and want to see it do well as always, but there are these various things that just don't make a lot of sense from a player perspective, and it's having a deleterious effect on the game's reception and player retention. No game is perfect, that's for sure, but BfN could be a lot better and I'd love to see it meet the huge potential we've talked about for months.

12 Replies

  • Iron_Guard8's avatar
    Iron_Guard8
    Legend
    6 years ago

    I had to add to my original post, but I think a large part of why many of us feel disillusioned with BfN is that both GW1 and 2 got a lot of buzz for a long time, lots of videos, dev chatter, updates both large and small, and so on. BfN sometimes feels like it's forgotten or neglected. Now both GW1 and 2 did eventually hit this situation too, but not for a long time. I remember when the trials of gnomus were added to GW2, the legends of the lawn update in GW1 and so on. 

    We can't expect the live chats for obvious reasons, but there just aren't that many videos on the game from the official channel and it feels very weird after so many GW2 videos. I still go back and watch some of those old videos like trouble in Zombopolis and such as they're fun and at the time of their release, added some hype. We haven't had that for BfN since the Wizard video back in February! When combined with the lack of communication, no word on Ops phase 3, and nothing on some of the new characters we really want to see, it all feels starkly, ominously silent. 

  • GutmanSca's avatar
    GutmanSca
    6 years ago

    Not only this, but there is more:

    • Imp and Z Mech are terrible characters right now, with the removal of his aiming tech and Mech imortality just made him again the worst character in the game by far, they both need buffs, or reworked in some way. Here are my and my cousin's buff ideas for buffs for both of them: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Make-Imp-Great-Again-a-list-of-Imp-amp-Z-Mech-changes/m-p/9179649#M21303
    • Sprinting is still annoying and makes this game more boring and mechanically broken. This needs limitations.
    • Private play should be WAY bigger right now, making full lobbies would be soooo much better than the random matchmaking we have now.

    I might be wrong, but i think there is much more problems than only this we both mentioned. We need more good updates like this one.

  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago

    @Iron_Guard8Private play carries the update for me and it's good overall but as I pointed out in other posts its flaws are evident and need to be fixed (no ai buddies in ops, no spawnable usage, wierd ai design, ps plus and gold issues) Imp is just straight up unfun to play and the mech needs a serious buff and while his immortality call is gone he still dosent die when it goes down and he's very buggy, acorn dashes just feel wierd and other classes still need to be looked at.

    While I will still try to get and play these new "swarm" classes they dont seem very interesting and introducing a new class category dosen't seem good for balance.

    Overall the update feels good but I still cant play this game in long drawn out spans like gw1/2 and still have multiple problems with bfn.

    Also removing mixed modes is Popcap shooting themselves in the foot and they deserve what backlash they are soon to get.

  • Fork_x_Spoon's avatar
    Fork_x_Spoon
    6 years ago
    They have an entire franchise dedicated to stretching the limits of job occupations and greenery but the best they came up with is a wildflower and a dead guy with a TV stuck to their head based on AI minions. I know they wanted you to experience the pain of only dealing five damage a shot, but c'mon.
    Also, the economy. I have this solution where stuff from either Rux, special offers, or prize maps can be sold for region-specific currency. Obviously, they'd be very expensive to compensate those who got it the hard way, but it'll be an option for those who want to spend their tacos, marshmallows and sheriff badges.
  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago
    @Fork_x_Spoon And it turns out they may or may not be around forever and they only get stronger the more you spam ai so telling if a tv head or wildflower is a player or ai is gonna get difficult real quick.
  • Gormey's avatar
    Gormey
    6 years ago
    @Iron_Guard8 Getting rid of mixed mode on pc was a no brainer, I never see anyone in there although like someone else mentioned they could throw vanquish confirmed in with team vanquish and I'd be happy...that being said team vanquish on NA East tonight was pretty dead (four human players at most all night) so removing that game type does nothing to increase players for team vanquish.

    Not sure what they could do to boost player volume besides cross play at this point. 1 year is coming up soon so my guess is EA support will go downhill quickly so my only hope is they have things reasonably balanced before they orphan it like GW1 and GW2, which while people still play they are both riddled with unbalanced chars and unpunished cheating.
  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago
    @Gormey I hope they do implement cross play but it could lead to a huge amount of bugs in trying to install it across multiple systems that already have plenty of bugs and with the up and down rollercoaster cycle updates/balancing of bfn and its lack of marketing, Popcap would be lucky to make a profit or just to break even at this point and it won't help them with the amount of fan goodwill consequences and I'm afraid for the future of the series with pvz 3 being an absolute clustertruck that we're about to go the route of other studios EA ran into the ground and murdered.
  • GohanV1233's avatar
    GohanV1233
    6 years ago
    @Iron_Guard8 Look rather they’re spawnables or not the more characters added to the roster the better and who knows if they’re going to be great additions to the game. Aside from gw2 this is the first time we can play as minions which is dope so for me as long as popcap makes each individual minion unique then I say keep adding them and as for actual new characters hopefully they’re using this time to polish them for a future release and I hope they start releasing them in pairs like these to spawnables.
  • Pheesley's avatar
    Pheesley
    6 years ago
    @Iron_Guard8 They still haven't added damage dropoff, a very easy and simple way of balancing characters, which is very disappointing. Considering the changes, Imp is still the worst. Chomper can still snipe. Shogun Gaurd and Corn in general is pretty weak. I don't think Acorn Team up will be as good as space cadet team up, but it is better I guess. Overall, still a pretty unbalanced game, but at least Steam Blaster got nerfed. Steam Blaster may even be balanced now. Very excited for the swarm classes. Might bring some much needed fun and humor to the game.
  • stukapooka's avatar
    stukapooka
    Legend
    6 years ago
    @Pheesley Oak feels like he will never be as good as station, I mean one of stations abilities practically counters out an oak squad in a few seconds and the lack of fall off makes some characters feel pointless to play.

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