Plants make too much money when they lose in G&G.

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@awkrewen wrote:

It is a nice amount of research in this post and while I do not disagree with anything in particular you have said I do find that I have several issues with the conclusions you have drawn from that information. I also find that I have some issue with the CPM results. For Zombies Win, Zombies Loss, and Plants win your level of play is very similar and all have around the same CPM results when bonuses are excluded. Your Plants loss CPM differs and since that supports the stance you are taking I have some issue with that.

Now onto your results. I agree that a perfect victory by that plants is better than a complete loss. I also agree that a percect victory by the zombies is better than a perfect loss. I do not think you will find anyone who disagrees with that. If you think that is the complaint from people in regards to Gardens and Graveyards you have missed the point. You also have conviently left out the information that would have demostrated why the coins awarded is flawed. You have shown why the coin totals for the zombie perfect win, Zombie complete loss, plant perfect win, and plant complete loss are right.

Those are not the only results however. The other six options do not have the same completion bonus or perfect result options. For the zombies in every case it is better to capture another garden.  Capturing one garden is better for the zombies than capturing no gardens. Likewise capturing two gardens is better for the zombies than capturing one. This continues on this pattern for the zombies.

Unfortunately the same is not true for the plants. For the plants it is better to have the zombies capture all seven gardens than only capture some of the gardens. The completion bonus is to large to only apply when the zombies capture all seven gardens. If the game was to be balanced it should have been a 2000 coin participation bonus that was given no matter how may gardens were captured. I also would like to see the gardens defended bonus changed from 250 to 500 for balance if that was changed. 

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First of all thank you so much for taking the time to read what I posted. Given the rest of the comments I got, I really appreciate it.

To address your concerns,

Note the following

Plant Victory: 4707 - 3750 (2000 perfect, 1750 defend) is average 957 earned coins

Zombie loss: 2917 - no bonus just 1493 earned

Plant loss: 5895 - the 3500 completion bonus is average 2395

Finally Zombie victory: 12044 - 9000 (3500 completion, 3500 capture, 2000 perfect) is 3044

In both case zombies overall had an average higher score of about 600 the reason I feel is likely the capture bonus +10/100 for victory scenarios or more likely a decrepency in ability to play foot soldier vs peashooter. The second scenario being unlikely since Team Vanquish results were nearly identical. What is curious is regardless of if I played 6 minutes or 12 the values stayed equally apart.

To address the selection, I did account for the discrepency in end game capture/defend bonus (3500 v. 1750) this I discovered had a lower impact since zombie wins took nearly twice as long as plant wins thus balancing the CPM. Basically, 3500/12 = 1750/6. I did leave out the middle 5 points due to the size of data required. I chose to focus on best/worst case scenarios. I acknowledge that as a flaw, I had to make choices since just the 40 scenarios took over 20 hours of playtime. (Not even including Team Vanquish) Moreover, the isolation of Wall Nut Hills was only temperary, had the other maps been out of circulation another week I might have been able to get more data. (Playing about 6 matches to record 2 wont be happening with any reasonable speed)

On the topic of the middle areas, do consider that once the perfect win bonus of 2000 is removed from the equation both plants and zombies recieve a lower overall payout. (Partly why I focused on end points) With one point captured zombies earn 500 and the plants 1500. Two points is 1000 to 1250. 4 and 5 should favor zombies as by that point in the match they are winning. Which leaves point 3, which once captured does favor zombies even though they control less than half the map. In this case Zombies 1500 and Plants 1000 player ability aside this is the only point to wrongfully favor zombies.The catch is to add 250 to all gardens changes the victory payout. If you add the proposed 250 per point (Which honestly is not unreasonable from a value stance) that adds 1750 to the average I got making 6457 which divided by playtime is 1185 (vs 826), gently beating the zombies 1051. The problem I then have is that plants get a bonus for defeat and zombies go home with nothing. Ideally, in a well balanced game perfect victories should occur for each team equally 50% plants and 50% zombies. which is why I averaged win and loss. For this new scenario the plants average is 844 vs. 656 a much larger difference than currently. On top of which if gardens payed out equally to both teams, plants would also have a coin advantage at 2/5 points midpoints.

The overall point I am getting at is the unbalance is an issue with team balance and gameplay, not in coins. The better the balance the more likely both best and worst case scenarios will occur equally. What I want to explain is coins are not what is out of balance, and further if an alteration is made it very likely will create a new disbalance only this time in the opposite manner. If plants can be assured that most of the time they will make more coins out of a match, and over time definatly will, wouldn't most coin seeking players just migrate to the plants side?

Again, thank you for taking the time to actually point out flaws in my argument rather than outright shutting it down.