Plants make too much money when they lose in G&G.
I see I got your attention, good... *READ BEFORE POSTING OR YOU COULD LOOK FOOLISH*
The frequent claims of Zombies are unfair in G&G was getting on my nerves so I decided to test actual gameplay and find out the truth.
For this test I played as Basic Ability Peashooter to represent the Plants and Basic Ability Foot Soldier to represent the Zombies. All matches had to be played from the beginning, so no mid match numbers were recorded. For consistency I personally played all test matches, made sure I planted 0 potted plants and summoned 0 zombies. Finally, I was not allowed on anti-teleporter duty since it would affect my overall vanquishes as plants and would significantly hinder zombies. (With no equivalent task to perform as a zombie) I took 10 samples of the following scenarios; Perfect plant victory, Perfect plant loss, Perfect Zombie victory and Perfect zombie loss. All attampts were made on WallNut Hills due to the other maps being removed. (Which I feel is good since most believe that map to most favor zombies.)
The following are the averages of the 10 matches for each scenario. *Your results may vary based on player skill*
Plants Victory - Score: 4707 CPM:826 Time: 5:45
Plants Loss - Score:5895 CPM:504 Time:11:38
Zombies Victory - Score: 12044 CPM: 1051 Time:12:18
Zombies Loss - Score: 1493 CPM:262 Time: 5:45
*Something to note, all CPM was taken from the In game counter. However, I also used a timer during matches. These two sources did not match up, what I discovered is the game removes time while vanquished from the CPM calculation. IE at 17 times Vanquished and about 8 seconds per revive I would have a discrepency of 2:16. Point being the match time for perfect plant victory is under the 7 minutes of the match.
Of course the next thing I'm going to see is OMG zombies have 1051 and plants only get 826, Thats 225! Allow me to clear that up for you. Its no secret that zombies get 500 per captured point instead of the 250 plants do this is reflected in the overall CPM, taking the difference of 1750 (3500-1750) and averaging over the playtime is 142 coins. It should also be no secret that zombies earn 10 coins for 3 seconds capturing the point (Out of a possible 30 per point) and 100 for a successful capture. In total allowing 1200 points on Wall Nut Hills. Again, dividing by playtime offers a maximum of 97 coins, though considering it is near impossible to get every coin for capture it would be reasonable to expect between 70 and 90% or 68-87 coins. When we add both together we get 210-232, wow look at that, almost the exact difference between values!
But... but, thats still more. NO FAIR! Well, you are right it is more, but then again zombies shouldnt be getting a perfect win every match should they? In fact if they won and lost 50% of the time Plants would earn 665 and Zombies would earn 656. This is because unlike the zombies who get 0 bonus for a loss, plants get 3500 just for playing and therefore adding to their score. In short plants have a lower variation between win and lose, and zombies have a greater variation (Sort of a high risk high reward scenario). In either case were the game functioning as intended the average take home would be near identical for both teams.
BUT ITS NOT BALANCED! I was waiting for this one, That is not the coins fault is it? Plant payout and zombie payout doesn't determine who wins and loses. Also, adding coins to plants to "Visually balance" the games wouldn't solve the problem since then plants would be getting spammed with players. But, since I'm on the topic and I played dozens of matches to get this info I'll share some thoughts. First, zombies do not get perfect wins nearly as often as people complain they do, in fact 32 matches were thrown out of my plant loss/zombie victory data because zombies were stopped short of the mansion. (Thats more than I ultimately collected) I did notice one very significant advantage that zombies had and that is the summonable zombies. In a perfect match zombies and plants are even but zombies have help, they can call in reenforcements greatly helping their efforts. One match in particular featured 4 plants vs 2 zombies (I was a plant) The zombies ultimately got to the mansion, and why? While the engineer made teleporters and attacked via drone, the all star would summon barrels, coffin and out house zombies. 5-6 would swarm the base and as we dealt with them the all star would pick us off, and the engineer would show up fight, get vanquished and reset his drone. Even when we outnumbered them 2:1 they still managed to get a near perfect victory in 18 minutes. Basically, summoned zombies taking the point is cheap. As for players quitting and leaving teams unbalanced, that is because most are kids (and some adults) who don't understand the concept of averages or balance. All they understand is which number is bigger. Again, adding coins would only favor plants, reversing, not fixing the problem.
Speaking of balance, one more bit of info to leave on. To compare payouts of G&G and TV I did a 10 match test for that as well. Same characters for consistency, win bonus and 1st strike were removed from the data for consistency. (Look at it like this, it only gets better when you win)
Plants - Score: 2910 CPM: 692 Time: 4:17
Zombies - Score:2924 CPM: 586 Time: 5:13
Total - Score: 2917 CPM: 639 Time: 4:45
What does this mean? TV and G&G have nearly the same CPM so, if you want consistant coins without fear of team unbalance, play TV. On top of which, with exception of a 500 score bonus both teams earn the same overall bonus and have equal opportunity for coins. (No graveyard bonus, capture or teleporter bonuses)
In summary:
Plants G&G CPM:665
Zombies G&G CPM:656
Both Teams TV CPM:639
As for the title... If plants get a bigger losing bonus, then zombies need to get one as well. Plants get 504 when they lose but, zombies only get 262. But, if you've been reading you'll know that isn't really an issue.
Edit: Spelling and Grammar (Lots of text, missed a few things, still may be some left)
