Great points as always! 👍
In a potential new shooter, I would love to see the new characters from BfN to be in the game again. The new characters were actually quite fun to play, and still are actually, but some characters (Ice Lettuce and there might be others we did not know about) never made it into the game and I would have really liked to try them. Since Ice Lettuce specifically was fully developed (or was really close to it) but was never implemented, it would be cool for players to be able to finally play her. Adding variants to some of these new characters might be difficult, for example, Electric Slide or Snapdragon, but perhaps, making those characters an elemental variant and changing the default character as you suggested was a good idea. Variants were a significant part of GW and GW2 and that is a large part of what players enjoyed about those games and what made the PvZ shooter games unique across the shooter genre. Removing variants in BfN is something I got used to, but would like to see them return.
Not gonna lie here, I did not mind the sprinting in BfN, but there are few things I want to say to that. Firstly, I would be completely fine with the removal of sprinting in a future shooter, because it made the game somewhat more unfair, such as tanky characters being as fast as smaller but weaker characters (which is actually quite annoying). Secondly, I did not like how every character moved at the same speed, I actually liked the speed differences in GW2. Some characters did have abilities that did make them faster or that gave them a burst of speed, but that is fine because they require the use of abilities and that is part of their character design. Although, if sprinting was removed in a future shooter (it should to be honest), there should be a speed upgrade available for every character that would grant a decent speed boost, but it would be fairly costly to equip.
Damage drop-off is actually something I really liked in GW2, as I do prefer attacking enemies at closer ranges and not attacking across the map, unless a sniper of course. Being shot down by random spam across the map is very annoying. The damage drop-off also made the game feel more balanced as players were required to engage at close ranges in order to effectively deal damage. However, some characters, such as Snipers and melee characters, should not have damage drop-off because of the way that these character classes are actually designed. Most of the other characters would probably need it. When BfN released, it was very surprising to see that there was no damage drop-off in game, and that it was never added in the future updates despite the community wanting it for so long. This should be in a future shooter from the very start of its release.
I would really like to see at least most of the character upgrades return, especially the legendary upgrades, as well as adding some more regular and legendary upgrades to the game. However, all of the current legendary upgrades and some of the regular upgrades would need balancing, because the legendary upgrades were either too underpowered or too overpowered in BfN. They did replace variants in BfN though, so I suppose that there would be a lower chance for them to be added if variants were in a new shooter instead, as it could be a bit of work to implement both. That said however, they already have the current variants from GW2 and the current upgrades from BfN. If the upgrade system was reimplemented and variants still did not return, I feel there should be a much wider variety of upgrades to choose from, including some that would basically transform characters into character variants.
I did not mind the swarm characters that much in BfN, however it does seem that were introduced as "filler characters" as others have said. That said, the swarm characters had interesting abilities and teamwork skills, so I feel that if they are handled correctly, they could be implemented. Soon after the game's release, balancing should be done appropriately with the appropriate characters. This would involve buffing or nerfing characters as necessary, fixing bugs and exploits that can be done with characters and not unnecessarily buffing or nerfing a character either if it is not needed. BfN made some quite good balancing changes, but also some very questionable and unnecessary ones, I mean Grody Goop was already powerful, so why does it need to do so much more damage all of a sudden? The balancing would also involve making upgrades cost less or more as necessary, or be made more or less powerful (or both).
In Conclusion
In a potential future shooter, it would be really cool to see the new characters that debuted in BfN, and even the ones that never got to see the light of day (such as Iceberg Lettuce) to finally be playable. Variants (from GW and GW2) and character upgrades (from BfN) are both really cool, having both in a future shooter would actually be really cool, but doing that might be really hard to achieve as all that would be a lot to implement. Having no damage drop-off in BfN was annoying, as it was something the community really wanted in the game, but it never got introduced, so hopefully this would be rectified in a new shooter. Having characters with varied speeds and without sprinting would overall be better in the PvZ shooters, or it can make gameplay quite unfair. If we saw these changes in a new shooter, the game will end up turning out really well, especially if balance is maintained.
That's all now! 🙂
