My random thoughts and issues with a compettive pvz shooter and modes
My problems
1. The classes themselves
Class categories are not the same despite some base parallels. Sunflower and Scientist are both healers but completely play the game differently.
Sunflower heals individuals very fast while scientist can heal entire groups much slower.
Sunflower has much better range while if scientist gets close the fight is practically over. His mobility allows him to simply traverse a difficult environment much better and reach dying teammates much faster. The variants also complicate this as scientist can gain even deadlier close range capabilities, splash, and long range automatic fire power. Sunflower can gain a faster fire rate, gain heal as fast as she can deal damage, and produce aoe clouds that deals damage over time but these all come with downsides.
Healers are also the only class that can remove status effects like afterburn or toxic. In Bfn fire is the only lingering status effect for zombies yet it strangely doesn't vanquish you if you don't take normal damage alongside it. In Bfn they even provide overheal so any team without one is it a massive disadvantage.
Look at superbrainz and chomper. Both are close range melee fighters yet chomper has a one hit kill attack and the traps to snare his opponents in his range yet superbrainz attacks much faster and has much better mobility on top of having very slight range capabilities in gw2 for when an opponent is just out of his reach unless chomper gives up his goop for the cannon or uses variants.
In Bfn chomper now has a stupidly good long range projectile while superbrainz has a midrange charged fist that screws over anyone trying to get close to him.
This is vastly different to other shooters like say overwatch where the only difference between two reinhardts is skill or combat evolved where the only difference between two is color and weapons unlike the two distinct teams of pvz.
2. Limited variety
If a pursuit of competitve is desired can we atleast get more variety of modes?
Battle arena is the only official competitve mode and it only had two maps its entire run.
The gameplay loop was always the same as well: Vanquish the enemy team or wait then out and capture the point. Best of 7 rounds wins. Previously chosen class will now become unavailable.
This is a mode that gets stale extremely fast. Every match will play out in a similar style; either eliminate the enemy team or capture mid when time runs out.
Players can't join after a match is started if a team has a member. Luckily AI backfill was later added.
Mode was eventually scrapped into a weekly event because of how dead the player ount was after rank was implemented.
Even players on this forum described it as "just pick the most broken characters in the same map and kill each other over and over and over again".
The modes rewards were also very lackluster as it was just more stars for cosmetics.
Compare this to soil survivors in gw2.
The goal of the mode is to have one team vanquish all the members of the other team. When a player is vanquished, they cannot be revived creating greater incentive on healing and staying alive since auto regen has also been deactivated, and the player playing must wait until one team is wiped out. Only six players per team.
The plants/zombies must win best of 5 rounds.
A blueish barrier surronds the map called the space time continuum which closes in every 30 seconds.
It will continue shrinking until all players are vanquished and if a player stays outside of the force field for too long, they will take major damage, and eventually be vanquished. This helps prevent teams camping one side of the map for half the match.
AI classes will also take up empty spots to balance out the teams.
Is on every non turf map but time park which makes sense.
Losing team still gets rainbow stars which leads to less toxicity.
Blocking out a class after they are used is not a bad idea but the repetitive, stale, and toxic environment lead to battle arenas stagnation and death.
All the competitve modes are team vanquish style elimination modes.
This is awfully limiting for the range of modes gw provides such as gnome bomb, turf takeover, and Suburbination.
However this also leads to our next problem.
3. Team composition and THE META
Every competitve mode in games of all genres suffer from balance issues that lead to certain weapons or characters being much better than others in certain situations that can negatively impact modes.
I know i mentioned bringing in more gameplay variety to a ranked mode if they are so adamant about it but this would suffer from the meta.
Take turf for instance. Certain classes, variants, or upgrades are much better at attacking, defending, or traversing around the map.
Deadbeard, cactus, chomper, and all star are amazing at defending in both gw and bfn but are generally not good at traversing the map quickly and certain variants and upgrades are even more entrenched into defending like camo cactus.
However, they are not good classes for attacking as being able to traverse terrain leads to the peashooter and soldier meta that dominated gw1. Corn and superbrainz also joined this attacking team strategy in gw2 as they were much better at quickly traversing the map than other classes.
Teleporters also would be a hassle as their rng placement could decide entire games unless engineers were allowed to finally choose the position.
I imagine all spawnables would be regulated to the powerhouses to try and breakthrough/hold the line or they would be removed overall.
Gnome bomb would grind to a defensive halt once a team grabbed the gnome which is already a problem of the mode and carriers would be decided by those who can actually move and defend themselves.
Now if we were to be entirely serious about a competitve setting this would lead to the best characters, upgrades, or variants being spammed.
Upgrades that prioritise damage, cooldowns, and faster fire rates would be king. Any slide worth their salt would absolutelty run outta fight alongside soldiers running rapid fire. Support classes would definetly run hard target.
Other games also have their prefered metas like tf2 medics always running the ubersaw because the upside dwarfs the downside and no other melee weapon is as good to the point you're team will most likely give you flack for not carrying it and since medic himself is so powerful only one is allowed in a team.
To understand the meta of tf2 in comparison to my point, the most popular competitve mode is 5cp since control of the map can quickly snowball either way. However attacking is favored over defending because if you're defending you are not pushing forward and gaining ground which casues classes like engineer, heavy, and sniper to see little play while classes like scout and soldier are utilized well. Yet once you get to modes like payload the problems of certain classes and item become apparent, look at the sniper who is bad on offense but so crushingly effective at stopping cart pushes and when he is backed up by an engineer and protected by their sentry and restocked by a dispenser he is untouchable and while the usual counter is a spy, the razorback obliterates him as it saves sniper from backstabs and while spy could usually just gun him down it's impossible when the snipers team and sentry are protecting him while sniper kills threats to the sentry apart from uber which the rest of the team can counter with good prep.
Tf2's capture the flag also suffers the issue of a scout or spy sneaking past the enemy offense to grab their intelligence which then forces them to go back and defend their base and drop the offensive.
Tf2 youtuber uncle dane explains the flaws of ctf well.
If certain characters, items, and techs are too effective I could imagine bans even being put in effect.
4. Miscellaneous issues
The balance in all 3 games has never been great and while it isnt so much of a concern in a more casual setting balance will absoulutelty brought up and criticized beacyse people will realize its not their fault for losing and simply that their opponent is abusing a broken character, think of brawl meta knight who was so broken that the entire competitve scene literally revolved around who could best counter mk if he wasn't already banned.
Hit detection would also be issue as players would feel cheated knowing they lost an encounter they otherwise would have one, especially if its a one shot ability. Once again in a casual mode this is still an issue but in competitve it is more prevalent since people are once again going to feel cheated in a mode where actual rewards are on the line.
Even spawnables suffer this issue in bfn as the defensive spawnables projectiles don't register so if ranked turf became a thing I can see this being an issue as defending teams would automatically be weakened.
Toxicity is definetly a factor that will sadly always show up and if think that competitve envirnoments sadly get so much of this behavior due to the frustration of the game mechanics and the inconsistent matchmaking and for a series that usually has fans of all ages I really don't think that is healthy (you really just couldn't resist adding the poop emote could you popcap).
This post is kinda random and disjointed but I guess if I had to say anything conclusive its that I would rather have them focus on more maps and modes than trying to implement a competitve mode that will fall apart and i really dont think it belongs in a series like this.
