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EA_Lanna
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6 years ago

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville - Founder's Patch Notes

Hello Founding Neighbors!

It’s been a fun ride recently with all our Founding Neighbors (those who purchased the Founder’s Edition, that is), and we’re in the fifth week of dropping content during the Founders program -- so don’t forget to keep playing! While the Founder’s Edition is now unavailable for those who haven’t yet picked it up, launch is right around the corner on October 18! Before the wackiest plant-on-zombie conflict blooms everywhere, though, we wanted to take a few moments to say thanks and detail all that we’ve unveiled, tweaked, and twisted with the latest update. And, we want to give a giant thanks to all who took part as a Founding Neighbor – your help and support not only drives us but helps us into making Battle for Neighborville! Now let’s dig into the details.

Key New Features Turned On – Now Available for Founding Neighbors

  • Enabled Town Center Zombie Region
  • Added 4v4 Battle Arena game mode
  • Started the Lawn of Doom Festival and Prize Map
  • Enabled Daily, Weekly, and Character challenges

Full Patch Notes

Characters

  • Added friend or foe outline to better communicate enemies to players – togglable in settings.
  • Added Signature Sound to burrowing Chompers to alert nearby zombies to their presence – players will now have a more audible cue for when being chased by a burrowed Chomper
  • Improved Chomper run/landing animation to reduce stretching
  • Added bullet drag to allow faster speeds from projectile launch and slow down projectiles as they get to max range
  • Improved sprinting audio to amplify footsteps
  • Added audio to Sonic Swarm when tracking towards characters
  • Fixed some characters having invisible weapons
  • Fixed missing impact audio sounds for several weapons and abilities
  • Fixed missing hit escalation sounds when shooting with Rose/Space Cadet
  • Fixed double Goatify abilities being present when using Goatify with Rose
  • Created vfx to highlight Sunflower/Peashooter when in more powerful rooted state so they can’t hide in shadows
  • Added setting to tune Cactus/Captain Deadbeard ADS Scope sensitivity

Character Tuning

  • Night Cap
    • Spore Strike:
      • Slowed down over distance/decelerates
    • Shadow Sneak:
      • Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Shadow Sneak
      • Refresh time lengthened to reduce escape capabilities
    • Fung Fu:
      • Flask VFX added when activating for better visual tell
      • Total damage reduced to be more of a finisher
      • Reduced Fung Fu radius
      • Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Fung Fu
  • Kernel Corn
    • Cob Busters:
      • Increased rate of fire
      • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
    • Butter Beacon:
      • Increase throw distance for better usability
    • Husk Hop:
      • Increased launch distance to improve movement capability
  • Oak and Acorn 
    • Super Sap Trap:
      • Increased detonate time to improve visual tell 
    • Invoke Oak:
      • Increased channeling time
      • Stopped health regeneration while channeling
    • Treeject:
      • Reduced launch height so Acorn doesn’t get easily lost 
      • Involved Oak goes on refresh timer, so Acorn form is not used purely for health regeneration
  • Soldier
    • Z-1 Assault Blaster:
      • Increased rate of fire and damage
      • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
    • Super Stink Cloud:
      • Increased throw distance for better coverage and better sight line blocking
    • Rocket Jump:
      • Improved responsiveness of Rocket Jump
  • All-Star
    • Football Canon:
      • Increased damage
      • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
    • Imp Punt:
      • Reduced fuse to allow more precise usage
  • Other Changes:
    • Character ability adjustments to improve responsiveness, including:
      • Rose Arcane Enigma – cut off some animation to speed up ability activation
      • Kernel Corn – Shuck Shot delay removed
      • Peashooter – Removed delay exiting Pea Gatling
      • Snap Dragon – Improved Blue Blazes ability (improved speed / tracking)
      • Citron – Improved EMPeach Trajectory and speed
      • Electric Slide – Improved detonation audio for improved feedback
      • Scientist – Improvements to weapon animations for activating heal mode

UI Changes

  • Added Character Class info to reward pop up for better context of who reward is for 
  • Added ability to skip reward presentation for Reward-o-tron-rewards to speed things up 
  • Added improvements to the Reward Images for customization items 
  • Fixed issues where incorrect expression was being displayed
  • Fixed issue with expressions ellipses appearing over player head and unable to clear it 
  • Fixed some issues with equipping upgrades 

Modes

  • Improved audio awareness of when objectives being captured in Gnome Bomb/Suburbination
  • Increased Multiplayer Mode Coin Rate to be more in line with Free Roam earn rate
  • Ops:
    • Complete retuning of ops waves and pacing
    • Shortened time it takes to complete each wave
    • Fixed some issues with AI navigation
    • Added Elite Boss Waves
  • Turf Takeover:
    • Objective Time Tuning
    • Tweaked Spawn Positions
    • Minigame tuning

Free Roam Region

  • Collected Gnome Race gnomes now show up as ghosted once completed
  • Adjusted difficulty in several quests, gnome challenges, and hunts
  • Improved compass navigation in a few oddball areas 
  • Chest reward pop ups now prioritized over reward level up to reduce sight blocking rewards in event player also levels up  
  • Fixed some exploits in Regions relating to using key items in split screen
  • Fixed some issues with medal awarding
  • Fixed some NIS issues
  • Adjusted XP earn rate in Battle Chest events 
  • Improved VFX for mouseflies for improved readability
  • Tuned down the difficulty on some of the harder Battlechest Challenges

Stability Improvements

  • Made improvements to split screen stability
  • Made Netcode improvements – reducing the bandwidth AI was taking in Free roam regions
  • Made general improvements to online connectivity

PC

  • Added support for toggleable Anti Aliasing in Settings
  • Added HDR support, allowing players to enable/disable in Settings
  • Added video settings for cloth as well as volumetrics 

17 Replies

  • Corn’s Shuck Shot is still far too slow, rendering him useless in pvp.

    Super Brains is still incredibly overpowered.

    Allstar shield health? I emptied on it with corn and had to reload 2x just to break it. His Imp Punt is useless unless you get a direct hit. Imp punt needs improved radius of damage. 

    These are are just a few characters I played before disappointment set it. There is still a general lag to button response when it actually acknowledges the action. Overall the game still has an incredible clumsy feeling to it. Time to start addressing actual play issues and stop adding schwag that is only crating more unresponsive lag issues. 

  • @3DJRDMy reply has seemingly been removed for some reason. Not sure if it was for being off topic or something else, but since this is related to balance.. and its the patch notes I think its on topic. I will now rewrite it like a total loser as I do want to back up what I said. EDIT: Looks like my orginal has returned, but I think I'll stick with this one.

    The reason I want engineer nerfed is because he is ridiculously unfun to fight in his current state. The engineers primary weapon does an extreme amount of damage and is incredibly easy to use. You don't even have to try that much when aiming as your bullets will just bounce. If by "no longer explode on impact" you mean he no longer does splash damage, he doesn't really even need it, does he? Like I said, his weapon is already incredibly forgiving to use. I understand he can't shoot on the jack hammer, but he doesn't even need to as his turret can do that for him. His turret is also insane right now, and always will be incredibly unfun to fight as it is an auto aiming ai, its not human, it won't react like one. It will instantly catch out stealth night caps, or any character really. The buff it provides is very unfair, as it just makes his already powerful weapon even more powerful and forgiving. It should probably only buff his team, not him. It makes the engineer a very.... spammy character.

    I have to disagree with him being weaker in 1 v 1s than he was in the first two games. In fact, I think he is as powerful as he's ever been in 1 v 1s. He has a 5 second long stun to completely disable a plant, its kind of sad to watch happen actually.

    Engineer is by far one of my least favorite classes to fight currently because of the auto aiming ai, incredibly powerful/forgiving primary, and... the 5 second long stun. He's currently labeled as support, just like the Rose and Sunflower. Something has gone horribly wrong if the engineer in his current state is supposed to be playing the same role as the Rose. ):


  • @3DJRD wrote:

    @EA_Lanna wrote:
    • Made improvements to split screen stability

    I hope this means Split-Screen plays smoothly now on Xbox One. It has been virtually unplayable.


    It continues to be unplayable.

    Just some examples of the issues:

    • frame rate is low and very unstable
    • rate of fire is affected
    • abilities fail to come out
    • randomly get stuck, jump up, and/or sink temporarily into map.
    • at least one cool down slows to a crawl
  • Now I just had a reply vanquished. What is going on?


  • @3DJRD wrote:

    @3DJRD wrote:

    @EA_Lanna wrote:
    • Made improvements to split screen stability

    I hope this means Split-Screen plays smoothly now on Xbox One. It has been virtually unplayable.


    It continues to be unplayable.

    Just some examples of the issues:

    • frame rate is low and very unstable
    • rate of fire is affected
    • abilities fail to come out
    • randomly get stuck, jump up, and/or sink temporarily into map.
    • at least one cool down slows to a crawl

    Same, and i'm on PC lol... guess this issue is on their servers idk. But this game tries to MURDER my CPU, it maxes it out frequently, i wasn't having any of these issues until i went into PvP for the first time to get challenges done. I was content with PvE for the meantime but the challenges roped me into a nightmare lol. Horrible stuttering issues and it looks like my FPS dips down to 10-15 though it displays at 55-60. Input LAAAAAG on my abilities. Iv'e had to push the key to use abilities 5-7 times before they worked. If i jump, i skip almost the entire animation and i'm back on the ground. I take damage and don't know it until i'm dead. People pop in and out of frame... oh and yeah my abilities sometimes totally lockup and refuse to be usable until i die and respawn. 

    Popcap i hope you fix this absolute MESS before the 18th. You're not going to sell PC copies with this kind of performance problems. This is early access levels of BAD, BAD, BADDDDD! 

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