Next game discussion: mechanics
This is the second topic @Positronic-Rift wanted me to post, the first being communication; this time it’s mechanics. For this one, I’m open to so many ways to play that I’m mostly going to make generalizations, and hope other forum goers will add to it. Hopefully this is what you were looking for from this post!
For me personally, I just want the game to work, to feel good to play, to not feel unfair or unbalanced (although perfect balance is impossible without making things exactly the same which is boring, having things as balanced as possible is the best way to go), to reward me for my time, to entice me to keep playing rather than trying to force it, to encourage new players to jump onboard, and if the game is going to be one that is going to be live for years, add new stuff and make adjustments as needed. A lot of the things I like to see, I don’t feel are 100% required, but with close to 3000 hours between GW, GW2, and BfN, I know what I like and don’t like. With that being said, here we go!
Don’t make it feel like other shooters. A huge part of the appeal beyond it being PvZ is that GW felt like its own thing. Yes, it took obvious influence from what came before but it also did things its own way; the variants, the bots/pots and summonable zombies, the co-op Ops, and other stuff like the sticker book all combined to make it create its own niche.
GW2 mostly improved and built on that, allowing us to play zombies in Ops, adding the sublime Backyard Battleground, adding more PvE options like the quests and the trials of Gnomus, along with some other ideas, largely kept the 2nd game like the first. I know some prefer the original to GW2; with the maps and the color palette changes not to everyone’s liking but in general GW2 is the most loved of the 3 current games for very good reasons.
BfN took the series into a more mainstream direction mechanically and this disappointed a lot of people, myself included although I still like BfN. While it did keep the PvZ IP and old characters, it removed variants, plays more like OW than the GW games, and has other problems that marr it to this day, even with its more subtle improvements to the HUD and great new ideas like the free roam zones. I believe a big part of why so many were unhappy with BfN, beyond the teething issues, some of which still plague it to this day, is how it felt less like a PvZ shooter of its own and more like a more common shooter with a PvZ paint job. We lost a lot of veterans over how BfN was handled and we want them back as trying to make it more mainstream didn’t seem to work as a lot of the young adults that play these games want to go for more realistic games, high tech sci-fi stuff, and of course for characters like Widowmaker and Mercy (I won’t go into detail, but I see the appeal myself).
We don’t want the rock-paper-scissors nature of OW to spoil our PvZ shooter fun. I got sick of being forced to play characters I didn’t want to just to counter an opposing character or due to the map in OW. In GW/GW2 while some characters are better at certain maps and dealing with particular enemies, I never once felt I had to swap out. BfN doesn’t quite fall into the OW trap but it’s close and that’s likely by design. I vastly prefer the more free-wheeling nature of the GW games.
Some characters in particular feel too much like OW analogs. The engineer’s main weapon change (Junkrat), the sniper changes (Widowmaker), and more all feel like they were changed to try to grab OW players while keeping us GW veterans and considering how abruptly BfN was cut off, it didn’t work. Give us back how the GW games felt like their own animal even as they did use ideas of other shooters; shooters have been doing that since the original Doom!
Balance things but don’t remove fun. Blizzard are notorious for this (another reason I don’t play their games anymore). If in the next game we keep the new characters and variants return for example, certain things need to be changed (Toxic Brainz for example), but don’t ruin the character/variant to balance them. Try to keep things working well and under control but still fun. Rocket Ride for example can be too good with the right build where it keeps going, so change that upgrade but keep the ability as it’s one of my favorite things added to BfN.
In general, I feel you guys did keep things fun more often than not. But one also has to consider how you oppose such characters and abilities as well as playing them. Certain things are not fun to play against, even if they’re fun to use.
Make tactical intelligence useful but not too good. The spotting icons in GW2 were too much intel and made sneakier classes like Chompers harder to play. However, having a system where you can use abilities to spot enemies and mark them for your team, like butter beacon and the Wizard as a co-star are great ideas that reward you for helping your team and using your abilities. I do feel that the icons are fine in Ops and other PvE activities though. Maybe add some summonable zombies and weeds that can spot enemies like a bird watcher zombie or spy weed could go out and mark opponents to add to the depth of ways to gain this intel. It can be a really fun and exciting part of the game, and why not have it while also giving it that PvZ twist?
Healing and shielding should matter but not be too good. This is a huge problem in BfN. I know some folks don’t like the faster TTK in GW/GW2 and BfN’s did get better after some fixes, but when you add people being able to sprint away with overhealing, healing, and shields, especially Citrons, and even worse, stacked Citrons, BfN can actually become tedious to play, which is something that does not help the game at all. Healing should matter, healers should be encouraged, shields should matter and should also be encouraged to a point, but Citron being Reinhardt is not a good change at all. I feel that getting rid of overhealing would be best, but if it is kept, it should be more obvious to the enemy team, less powerful, and maybe even only be a thing if you have an upgrade to do so!
Movement, shooting, and the camera. BfN’s are off to various degrees. While many of the problems here have been improved from Founders, they still persist. Even after some fixed for example, I rocket jumped in Bfn and then loaded up GW2 and also rocket jumped as soldier (after changing form rocket leap which I always use instead for 2 uses even if less height, just for a more equal comparison), and the BfN jump is clunkier and the camera is worse. This affects other things too, such as swoop slam, drones, and the like. Normal movement is generally decent in BfN, but characters/variants should have different base speeds and different sprint speeds. In a new game, I’d prefer sprint to just be removed and give certain characters speed boosts as abilities.
A shooter needs to have good movement, shooting, and camera views, and BfN doesn’t quite get this correct. It’s much better in GW and GW2 and I never get that weird issue in the GW games that I get in BfN where I’m trying to snipe with the zoomed in view and my camera suddenly jumps for no apparent reason.
Balance the sides but avoid mirror images. To be fair, the games are largely good at this. Sometimes the balance is off across similar characters when trying to make them different (the space station vs. oak is a prime example of this), but the characters from side to side stand out from each other well, even if the balance is off; no one is going to mistake a Sunflower for a Scientist’s playstyle and abilities, even though they’re the healers for both teams. Keep this up while making the balance closer. Also, while I don’t mind the idea of putting characters into categories (support, defense, offense), it isn’t needed and makes that OW comparison all the more applicable.
This should extend to summonables too. Like @stukapooka points out elsewhere, having things distinct but fulfilling a similar function really adds to the idea that the sides are different yet have similar needs on the battlefield.
The GW games, while sharing features of other shooters, still feel unique and PopCap/EA should be proud of that. It’s not easy to pull off in such a crowded genre! BfN still has that PvZ silliness we love but it doesn’t feel as unique as the GW games; that’s something we want back in the new game.
Team characters are a great idea but should go. We’ve been over the problems between Acorn/Oak and Space Cadet/Space Station a lot, and right now being a treetop acorn is not going to go well for you most of the time while joining a station makes you powerful. I hate to remove the station but we also need to balance the Acorn/Oak to the Imp/Mech with the team removal and changing the cadet to be a normal character with an AoE beam they call down from an orbiting station while removing treetop acorns would go a long way towards getting all these characters balanced.
I prefer GW2’s HUD but BfN has some nice touches. The BfN HUD lacks the weapon names and while it means you see more of the screen with its minimal look, it doesn’t have the visual appeal I have in GW2. That being said, I love the indicators for ammo amount remaining in addition to the number (as I don’t always remember how many shots I have fully loaded, letting me know with an easy to read visual indicator is lovely), and of course the overheat status in the same fashion. It was annoying needing to guess how long I could shoot as an all-star or general supremo soldier and love these in BfN.
The gnome bomb changes in BfN are good, but the Suburbination and TT Capture point ones are not. Now back in Founders of BfN the overtime for TT was insane. That was fixed thankfully, but there are other things to talk about here. It’s also important to mention that when GW2 launched, there were serious issues with the TT capture points not registering players standing on them, and while that was fixed too, that was a bad time till it was fixed. In other words, while GW2 is my favorite, it’s not perfect either. But let’s get into the details.
Gnome bomb in BfN is improved over GW/GW2. I like how everyone will have an idea where it will spawn and you have to want to pick it up to do so. Good stuff for sure.
Suburbination though is worse as you need to hold 2 or all 3 points to score anything, which means a team with only 1 isn’t going to get anything. This is bad for 2 main reasons: it slows the game down as only one team will score at a given time and the losing team may never be able to keep up so the winning team will win by larger margins which will discourage many players from playing this mode. This should return to GW/GW2 days.
In TT, I’m not a huge fan of the payloads. At first, I didn’t mind them as I have played TF2 and OW payload maps, but to be honest, TT in the PvZ shooters just plays better without the payloads and I know some people hate the payloads altogether. For me, the bigger problem in BfN TT maps is that a single defender can block any number of attackers and it should return to the attackers move the bar if they have a majority as having one defender stop 5 attackers is very frustrating and it worked better in the GW games. Also, return the capture bars to how they are in GW/GW2 instead of having it slide back if you don’t push it far enough to reach those specific levels on the capture bar; it slows things down and can again be frustrating without helping the game play.
TT maps should be more like GW/GW2 than BfN. This is a big one as someone who focused on TT play; partly from the way the playerbase focused here on PC, and partly from it being my favorite mode. Not only do I feel that the payloads should go but that the BfN TT maps feel constrained and lack the battles of movement and flanks that we have in the GW TT maps. I can’t recall who it was that posted it awhile back, but they had shown in a map view why this was and this is why BfN TT isn’t actually bad, but suffers compared to the other games. I’d like teleporters and turrets back too if possible. Also, more than 4 points to capture would be nice, having those unique end game maps to show progress for the game like the original GW (which GW2 also lacked), and keeping the end games silly and fun would help. I feel BfN’s end games were mostly fine, but Tourist Trap island’s was rather boring. My favorite is Moon Base Z’s space balls from all the games, as it feels fun and mostly balanced for either team to win. I want these maps to feel bigger, grander, and less forced into a funnel like they are in BfN.
Damage attenuation (drop off). I will hammer this every time I can. A huge part of BfN’s PvP issue (I think it handles PvE pretty well overall), is the lack of damage drop off over range. This must be baked into the game from day one. Do that, and it will be easier to deal with other balance issues.
Upgrades. I love the BfN idea of upgrades having different values so that we can customize each character and so that stuff like extra damage has more weight than regenerating health a bit faster. I would add though, that while XP will be a thing (and a thing I’ll elaborate on further in another post), once you have a character unlocked, you will have all the upgrades for that character immediately. This is to level the playing field and leveling will be more for customizations rather than game play advantages.
Conclusion. I could go on, but this is already a long one, even for me! I look forward to feedback for sure, but I wanted to say as a summary; make it fun, make it function well, balance it as best as you can, bring back the unique feel of the GW games but also add new touches, make it fair for newbies and veterans alike, and make sure it works well from day one.
