I saw the first video and as I posted there, I want a new game for sure, but this is too little to go on, and then it got removed anyway. I do hope that all the attention means we are getting a new shooter in future!
Here is Zeroxfusionz's take on whether more PvZ Shooters will come out or not:
His take makes sense but big companies like EA will move people around without much rhyme or reason, or have people work outside their expertise. I mean look at Anthem; a shooter made by a team known for their RPGs was a very odd choice to put it mildly.
BfN obviously didn't do well, but both GW games obviously did. They may be wanting to let BfN fade before working on a new game, or they may have a different team working on a new shooter already (which would be faster than BfN took if they build on GW2 as the core engine already works well, whereas when they made BfN they had to start at zero), they may have different groups getting other stuff done first and then they're going to make a new shooter, or it may indeed be the end for the shooters, but I have no desire to see that last one.
Like many have said before, just giving us a GW3 that is GW2 with more stuff (and fixing its issues like the detonation characters and some lingering bugs) would be fine with me. I'd be one for a PvZ version of Warframe with more MP PvP focus mixed with the PvE stuff. This is my favorite franchise for gaming and we need a new shooter!
@Iron_Guard8 Using GW2 as the foundation just wouldn't make sense. BfN's design is way closer to style of the PvZ franchise. They should reuse all of the models from BfN and add damage drop-off to make the hardcore players focused on it happy. The more casual crowd will always prefer BfN's sytle over GW's art style. I know many people who never player the Gw games because the art style felt wrong. They told me it neither looked as joyful as the original PvZ, nor did it have a consistent realistic art style. Some characters look realistic and others look like weird clay models.
They have refined BfN's core mechanics so much, they just need to add damage drop-off to make the self proclaimed "fans" who only trashed BfN happy.
I know my comment sounds stupid, but I felt like I needed to say it. There are so many 13-16 and 20-30 old males wo just insulted everyone who liked BfN.
BfN's design is more appealing to the mainstream, but it was never noticed by most target audiences because it had no marketing at all.
So the only people who knew about it were the people who played the GW series. And that wasn't good. The franchise has a child friendly style, and the audience of gw was mainly made of 20-30 year old guys. They made BfN's look and feel more reflective of the for all ages and appropriate for younger players target group, which the gw fans didn't like. Sure, there were many who rightfully pointed out the flaws, but most trashed BfN from the beginning without ever having played it. Even now I see gw fans scream NightCap and Oak are op when that hasn't been the case for what, 10-11 months now?
As for variants: I see many people say they were the thing that made the gw games unique. I disagree with that, but can understand some of the arguments. I think they could combine the upgrade system and the variants into a "build your own variant" system. You could chose a base damage type for every character:
I might make a post explaining my ideas for a sequel in more detail later 🙂
As far as the foundation, while I meant more of the core engine functionality of GW2, the looks could work too, but I was focused on function and game play. BfN's look is off as the cars, trucks, and vans look borderline realistic, but the characters look more cartoony, you can look at the more cartoony vehicle style of the cars and such in the GW and GW2 games to compare. How anyone can say GW's art style is wrong is baffling as it certainly looks like PvZ and PvZ2, and if you look at the summoned AIs, they don't change much between the 3 games (the ones that persist through all 3 games anyway). Honestly, I'm fine with the way all 3 games look so as far as art style, I'll be cool with any of them. I also don't believe any of us know what the more causal crowd thinks without actual data, and tons of kids played the GW games as was easy to notice when GW launched and everyone's mic was always stuck on till patched. BfN's Rose is the only character whose look I feel should be changed, I like the rest. Oh, and change the pickle boss's constant salt spit attack if it returns to a new game as that thing is beyond annoying.
I'm a 50 year old guy who likes all 3 games, GW2 is my favorite for many reasons, but BfN could have been my favorite with some key fixes.When I started playing it, I felt it could have surpassed GW2 for me, but it never lived up to that. BfN is so shiny and beautiful but after the initial 'wow' factor it becomes almost boring to play, especially now that I have all characters at least Grandmaster 1 rank. I can go back and play the GW games and even though I have everything, it's still great fun and the matches are unpredictable even against bots, which lacks in BfN. I have more time in BfN than GW, although a lot more in GW2.
When BfN launched and got a lot of hate, I was open and supportive as I remember encountering a lot of the exact same thing at GW2's launch. I still don't hate the game, but I see why a lot of the veterans do, even if I don't fully agree. I was playing earlier and even with the aim assist off and using a mouse, the aiming is still not working 100%, whereas in both GW games, TF2, and Paladins, it's fine with the same setup. Neither GW game is perfect, but BfN has never fixed this to any satisfaction.
Damage dropoff is crucial to these games and normally having a character that doesn't have any is considered a special ability. It's one thing they may have overdone to balance Citrons in GW2 as they used to out-snipe Cacti for awhile, but it's such an important factor that BfN needed and should have had from day one. I've never even noticed the drag dropoff that may or may not have been added to BfN.
NightCap hasn't felt OP me in a long time. Oak/Acorn and Cadet/Station are rough to balance and right now, being a treetop Acorn is not a great idea, they take full AoE damage so are super easy to take out. That really needed to be fixed after they removed their armor. As far as who is asking for nerfs for them, I can't say who is a GW fan or a BfN fan unless it's obvious. Splash Damage was a huge GW2 fan and left BfN awhile ago and he was never happy with Nightcap being nerfed as one example.
As for variants, I'd be fine with none or with more diverse upgrades to recreate them, if we also got more new characters in BfN. We only got the Wizard (the swarm characters are obvious filler), and that's a shame. There are so many brand new characters they could grab just from the other PvZ games instead of relying on variants but the variants have been popular since GW 1 (although some are seriously unbalanced). In fact, I was hoping that the upgrades in BfN would surpass what we got. Too many are not very good, or very limited, others are almost required, which is a bad place to be in.
Maybe if they had promoted the game better and the game wasn't plagued with so many issues it would have lasted longer. I was looking forward to Berry Brigade more than anything but we may never know how fun it actually would have been. We never even got a single community challenge! It's rather sad really, but a lot of it was baked in when they only made 4 videos for it, launched it before it was ready, and the other problems that drove a lot of folks away, including those that obviously wanted to hang around as most of the really angry folks left pretty early. I hope the future is brighter than things are right now.
The only thing we really know is that most people of the BfN team have moved to other projects.
As seen in thevideo, Justin Wiebe is working on something else. Shaun Laker is now working on Apex legends, alongside a few other former BfN devs. Some are working for other companies now (I have only seen 2 BfN devs who are not working for BfN anymore state that publicly)
What remains of the BfN team appears to be working on the new skate game.
So if a new PvZ shooter is being made, it would have to be made in 2-3 years, after skate is finished, or a new team would have to work on it.
I highly doubt EA has any intentions of making another PvZ shooter.
I fear we will have to wait for like 10 years for a studio to revive this beloved franchise, like Motive is doing with Skate now.
Why couldn't the PvZ community do what the Skate community did?
Skate seems like such a niche thing, BUT: The members of the community "commented this into life". This is what was said during the reveal teaser. I whish the PvZ community would stop dividing itself and start spamming every EA post everywhere with "We want a new PvZ shooter", just like the skate community did.
Another thing we have to consider:
Timing.
The new consoles are around the corner. The best thing to do would be updating BfN again. if EA committed to it and marketed it heavily, it could have success. There aren't many next gen games at launch. A boat load of indie devs had their games become successes when the switch launched, because there were so few competing games. Making a sequel would take a long time, so updating BfN would make more sense, especially considering they have content for months sleeping in the files.
They should:
I know this won't happen, they asked for feedback on the cancellation and apparently decided it wasn't enough. Especially the whole "no cross play" situation is bad. It appears to be a lot of work to add it. I just think BfN need to be updated for the franchise not to die. I know PopCap Seattle said they are still committed to milking it, uhh I mean releasing new PvZ experiences, but think about it: There is no PvZ game with active content support. They said they would announce something soon (probably the RPG), but no mainline PvZ is in sight. PvZ 3 is being reimagined and that will take some time, PvZ 2 is only seeing new plants added and Penny's Pursuit has many bugs. The game hasn't gotten a new world since 2016. Around that time, concept art for PvZ 3 was leaked. So what were they up to in all those years?
