Next Game Idea: Personal Neighborhood
As the second part of the 2 hubs, I’ll be covering the one more closely linked to GW2’s amazing Backyard Battleground; the Personal Neighborhood. Like that feature, you can leave it wide open for anyone, open it to only friends, or set it to invite only. I’d like to allow more than 4 total people here for more fun times as well, preferably a full 12v12 if possible.
When you first boot up the game, you’ll spawn here in the base of the character you last played, or if it’s your very first time playing, you choose zombie or plant and it will spawn you in that base as either a Peashooter or a Foot Soldier and then get a basic tutorial on how the game works and how this personal hub works. Once you’ve done that, you’re free to mess about how you like.
It won’t be exactly like the Backyard Battleground, but will be very similar; there will be a Rux store, either in both bases or in a central location, multiplayer and Ops portals in each base (with private match options), quest/challenge boards, a stickerbook (this must come back, I really noticed its absence in BfN), customization/character selection booths, turret spots, and so on. The biggest differences will be that A) it will be much bigger than the backyard battleground, and B) much more customizable. Note too that Rux replaces the sticker machines as you can always buy anything you have unlocked from Rux with coins.
Size: When I first played GW2 and saw the Backyard Battleground I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been on other shooters before. It feels so much more alive than any MMO I’ve ever played and despite its size, there was a lot to do and fid with exploration, and more was added over time to make this even better. When I saw all the cranes in the distance, past where we could physically go, I had expected them to expand the backyard over time and add more stuff, which alas, never came to pass. I want to rectify this in the next game. I’m thinking it will be at least twice as big as far as it’s surface footprint, but also more extensive underground areas to go too; a larger sewer, some deeper tunnels, and gnome ruins that lead to a new Gnomiverse that has multiple reasons to go there (I enjoyed it in GW2 but once you were done with the trials, it became pointless and I’d like no amount of work on the game to go to waste), some other places to visit too, like the Citron station in GW2, maybe even allow you to do stuff on your own private moon!
Some of this may be unlocked by coins and/or quests, but the main goal here is to give every player a private (or not so private if you open it up) playground they can visit whenever and have it of a decent size.
Customization: This is where a lot of players are going to want to spend their coins and time and effort to really make their personal neighborhood personal. We had those limited spots in GW2 to customize our backyards, but I want to turn this up to 11.
When you start out, your neighborhood has the 2 bases, maybe some other special buildings, but mostly generic buildings and unused locations that are covered in ‘under construction’ tape bundles. You can use it as it just fine; AI will spawn all over the map and at the bases just like in GW2, bosses will spawn when bases detect opposing players or AI, both bases have all needed functionality, the town hall and progress-o-meter will be back in some form, and any event based quests and quest givers will appear somewhere in your neighborhood even if you don’t customize it at all.
That being said, you will have a lot of options here. Not only can you place different styles of basic buildings (houses, shops, parking lots, and so on), just to spice things up, you can change the colors with a simple tool kind of like in the Spore vehicle tool. And note there will be a lot of basic building options to play with. Some buildings and paint schemes you will start with, and with the free player/basic paid player/deluxe paid player system, the more expensive tiers will start with more options, some will be unlocked from the battle pass, some from questing in free roam zones, some from Rux that are generally available or added to his inventory over time.
Even the basic buildings that are there just for decoration will have options. From basic Suburbia houses to zombie style mansions and many in between, the options will be significant and will grow over time as Rux will have everything in stock that’s ever been added to the game barring the current battle pass items (which will be added to the store once it’s complete so newer players or those that missed some/all of it, can get the things they want and not feel left out), and those rewarded for specific things like free roam zone rewards.
Some of the spots will be keyed as zombie building only, others as plant only, while a large chunk in the central area will be either so you can change it around and have one side or the other have more spots of their own. Between this and the ability to use some custom paint schemes to further personize them, even without the special buildings, you will be able to make your neighborhood distinct and reflect your personal style.
The spots will likely need to be in different sizes, small, medium, large, and epic. And I’d like at least 5 of the epics, 10 large, 20 medium, and 30 small ones. The starting buildings will be replaceable by any building of the same size that matches the location requirement (plant, zombie, any), while the under-construction spaces can have any building of their size or smaller placed in them.
But there’s a lot more too. While more expensive, you will be able to place special buildings and decorations as well.
Special building examples:
- Sports Arenas: Like the soccer field in GW2, you will be able to place these in large or epic locations and will be able to select different sports like baseball, golf, soccer, basketball and so on. Like the GW2 soccer field, you’ll be able to push a button to start an event where AI spawn to watch while you play with your friends or possibly spawned AI.
- Landmarks: These will be at least medium sized and may be restricted to large and epic or just epic. At any time, any player in your neighborhood can activate this landmark which initiates a big battle as AI of both sides rise up and battle over this landmark! Things like the Sunflower Lighthouse from Driftwood Shores, the Zomboss Statue from Zombopolis, and other special structures can be used to initiate these big fun fights.
- Flag of Power: This may be a special area that is placed in the center from the start like in GW2, but perhaps its something you can instead place manually so you have more options. In either case, it will function much like it does in GW2. Adding some changes to the formula wouldn’t hurt, but it would be something I’m sure many players would like to have as an option.
- Special spawners: While basic AI plants and zombies will spawn in their areas at all times, and the ones you unlock may also automatically spawn as well, the option to place particular spawners would also be available. They could range from extra scarecrows and tombstones that spawn ‘normal’ AI but at a higher rate to unique boss spawners, champion spawners, and so on. There could be a lot of different options here that you could use.
- Other: I’ve probably barely scratched the surface here! I imagine we’d also get special gnome buildings, maybe some temporary neighborhood only buffs, and other stuff.
Note that while it will cost coins to do so, you can paint, remove (leaving an empty under construction spot, or restoring it to the default building for the slot), or replace any building location in your neighborhood. And while, your base won’t allow you to remove key items like Rux or the game portal, you will be able to add decorations and repaint portions of them to make them as unique as you can. Personal expression is the key and it’s another way to keep coins important for the long term and to encourage players to explore and quest in the free roam zones and play other modes too.
AI Spawns: Any basic AI can spawn and as you unlock others, they can spawn too, although some like special bosses will be very specific to particular buildings. One thing to note here is that zombies spawn around zombie buildings and plants around plant buildings, while both spawn at neutral ones.
There may even be an option to turn certain unlocked AI spawns on and off when you work on your neighborhood too, it depends on how robust the system is.
Earning XP and coins in your neighborhood: XP should be normal in my opinion as leveling in this game is mostly just to earn bonus coins, bragging rights, and to customize your player bar (like the 3 current games but instead of fixed by level as to what it looks like, you can customize it a lot, at higher levels you have more options), as there is no level cap and you start with all upgrades available for every character/variant you unlock. As for coins. I’d say to leave it just like the backyard in GW2, but there could be special events and buildings that modify this.
Architect Mode: This is a special mode you enter when you’re working on building, painting, changing parameters, demolishing buildings and so on. Essentially when you enter this mode, it may be a simple control toggle or a building in each base you interact with to enter this mode. When in this mode you are ghostly and move very fast and can likely fly too, and there’s a possibility instead of being your current character, you are a ghostly Zomboss or Crazy Dave, depending on which side you were on upon entering this mode. You can’t be hurt, can’t hurt anything else, and can’t score XP or coins, but you can build, paint, remove buildings, and so on without worrying about being attacked either. When you’re done, you can just exit the mode and return to where you entered it.
Expanding your neighborhood: This may or may not be a thing. The idea here is that the outer borders of your current neighborhood are surrounded in impenetrable fencing or other obstructions, but you can spend coins (and it would likely be pricey), to purchase extra square or rectangular sections. There would have to be an upper limit to how many extra such lots you could buy if this was implemented, because there has to be some limit, but it could be yet another way to customize your neighborhood.
Under the surface and beyond: Much like the backyard battleground, there will be places to explore beneath the surface of your neighborhood; the sewers, ancient tunnels, and the doorway to the Gnomiverse are deep down below your neighborhood and will also be customizable to a degree! You’ll be able to paint things down here, change some decorations around, and likely have special underground only buildings to place!
You can also add space stations, mystic portals, and rockets to the moon to visit! The moon would have to only be a small portion of it of course, but would have low gravity and unique structures available, maybe even that worm from Moon Base Z. The other special destinations would also have unique customization options and limited space (think of the Citron’s station or Rose’s court area in GW2), to keep things from getting out of hand.
Defining Buildings: While I use the term buildings to define things in the neighborhood and things you add yourself, it will be most than just buildings of course; parking lots, cars, buses, airplanes, boats, and other things will all use the building spot system, it’s just used as simple reference term here.
Water and other terrain: I’m thinking that there will be a lake and maybe some rivers present to start with that have limits on what can be built there, but also, you can place certain things like a pirate ship or shark zombies only in the water areas. If the neighborhood ends up expandable, there be certain plots adjacent to the already existent water that have to be water based as well.
Thoughts on why this would be a nice thing to have: I have many reasons that I’ll outline below:
- I love the backyard battleground but always felt it could use a lot more of pretty much everything.
- It allows players to express themselves.
- It gives another reason to play various modes to unlock new options.
- It gives you a place to play in a relaxed or frantic style, depending on your mood and how you set it up.
- It’s another reason to earn and spend coins.
- You can easily invite friends and play all kinds of custom games or throw it wide open and go crazy. It would be great for YouTubers that want to have people over for fun videos, especially if the cap is more than 4 people.
- It has a lot of options and can easily be expanded upon by the devs as PvZ has so many fun and weird ideas for places to add to your neighborhood.
Is there more stuff we could do with it? Yes! Although some stuff here could be altered too; for example, maybe the neighborhood is divided into zones with a few different sized building slots but once a building of a particular side is placed there, you can’t place the other side’s buildings in the same zone. Maybe you have to unlock the sewers and beyond via quests or other method. My goal here is to have a place we can all call our own and give us reasons to spend time here and enjoy the game and world more than ever!
