PvZ: Battle for Neighborville - What Went Wrong? (Evaluation)

@CompleatBeetthere's a book that could be written about about things that went wrong with bfn but I'll try and bring it down to a few key areas from my perspective.

1. The Formula: changing from garden warfare to an overwatch style was already going to be a deadly gambit (which didn't payoff in the end as we all see) and trying to blend newer mechanics with the game modes of garden warfare just doesn't work as shown with gnome bomb and turf alongside confusing fans who are unsure if the gane is a continuation of a spinoff with how much is taken over from gw. Removing variants was a death blow as no upgrades were going to replace the amount of variety they provided by changing how characters played, and we can see even popcap realized this with the introduction of legendary upgrades and their costumes (also if new characters and not variants were meant to be used then there was no reason to ever exclude torchwood and hovergoat from the game imo).

Maps, sprinting and broken spawns: the bfn maps are small and claustrophobic with little vertical options for attack or flanking unlike gw1&2 and sprinting had broken the flow of the game, "oh but they need sprinting because there's no teleporters", this is a flawed argument when you realize the spawn system puts you right outside of the enemy base and walking in takes less than 10 seconds and most of the areas you sprint in are basically filler where no combat happens in the first place (peachy district is a great example of this) alongside all classes moving at the same speed in sprint negating the need to pick smaller characters for faster movement speed or tank classes moving slower (imagine if the tf2 heavy and scout could move at the same speed, it would break the game and it does here).

The spawns are garbage on most maps as you now spawn too close to the enemy team and they can shoot into your spawn and supress you with no cover to take (payload maps are the worst offenders of the new overwatch style spawn areas) normal turf is a bit better where spawns are pushed back and classes can take cover (driftwood shores, main street, and zombopolis usually had good starting attacking and defending spawn distamces with cover and kill zones so the enemy could not get free kills on spawning enemy teams). Non turf maps became a nightmare with sprinting breaking the spawns on maps where teams could safely spawn in without being harassed and was why the team limit was reduced to 8v8 because 12v12 team vanquish is ridiculous and popcap knew it.

The new class design doesn't work: Scientist is the golden child when it comes to this being able to heal his team, himself, and easily escape from or get closer to oppenents with no delay to annihilate his opponents (it got worse with steam blaster) while in garden warfare he had to sacrifice damage for healing capability and vice versa.

Engineer is another example by being able to hit opponents he cant even see with high damage (just play one match of turning point and see how easily this is abused. He can stun his opponents for an advantage in a fight, have an aimbot ally that constantly reload for his and his team, and a speed boost that makes it even easier to run away from battle with sprinting.

Chomper a melee class can snipe better than snipers enough said.

Tv head and wildflower: why do these two have a melee attack almost as damaging as chompers? Oh boy, classes that get stronger when you stack them in class-team based shooter how could this possibly go wrong?

Superbrainz: his shield does not work at blocking damage, why does turbo twister exist, and why did popcap think giving him a short range flying first would help him in gnome bomb where he is undoubtedly the worst carrier in the gamemode.

Imp:besides looking like he got hit by truck imp also got hit by the nerf truck in bfn as gravity grenade is easily escapeable and small and impkata needs to ramp up damage over time with a clear indicator of how far away a plant will need to be to be safe. Zmech looks like garbage and plays like it to as popcap had to add sprinting for how bad this thing is in damage and the fact that imo doesnt even die when its destroyed means a plant can nearly be killed, win, and then be killed by a full health imp.

Rose: able to goatify opponents through walls with little resistance and thorn apart charges with time so you dont even need to play support to reap the benefits of its damage.

All star: a huge shield that is easily focused and destroyed quickly from the inside alongside buggy abilities.

Citron: discount reinhart with a gun and stun.

Corn: relies heavily on butter beacon to deal decent damage.

Wizard:homing attacks with high damage, wall hacks with little effort required, and a highly precise weapon.

Snapdragon: blue blazes kills from a country away, flames dont kill for whatever reason, and ability to attack from range and up close (electric slides electricity can kill, why not fire)?

Acorn and space cadet: hey imp why do you and z mech even exist again when these two are practically better in every way?

80s action hero: press trigger 3 times then pray your ability doesn't bug out and delete your enemy as basically a superior deadbeard or just press Y and nuke the area for no real downside.

I'm tired of typing so next section.

PVE half in the bag: gonna be honest some good ideas but the replayablity suffers and some of the missions and bosses aren't really that memorable from a gameplay standpoint with a repetitbe format for all 4 times through and the worldbuilding just feels disconnected and random (dreadwoods cool though).

The advertising: releasing and advertising a game on the same day with no hype or buildup "WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!"-popcap/ea probably.

Game modes: no new modes except battle arena and the mechanics feel worse such as sprinting killing gnome bomb and the way bases are defended in turf is abusable and encourages invisible nightcaps. Ops is a shell of itself and is way too easy. Weekly modes werent unique on the level of boss hunt, CVD, capture the taco, and some didnt even work when they were released.

Bugs, glitches, unfinished animations, and technical errors galore: even upon moving camera angles things in bfn would dissapear and reappear even on the characters designs (superbrainz cape, peashooters leaf, slides boot jet flames, and etc.) Reload animations were garbage in bfn as imp never properly reloaded, all stars rotors don't spin, corn didnt eject husks, engineer doesn't remove his clip and just smacks his gun, soldier is broing and generic, cadets robot wouldn't spin, sunflower wouldn't look up, and oaks sap reap ruins his reload animations and dont work properly. 

Ive fallen through the maps at time.

Sound design is really badly synced with delays or audio not fitting the animations (scientists pain grunts on dance taunts).

The future: the game isnt likely coming back as the steam port massively underperformed and the game overall sold poorly.

BfN is an oddball among the 3 PvZ shooters. It has some additions that I really like, stuff I'm ok with, and stuff that just didn't go over well. Obviously a lot of what you like or don't like is subjective, but there's things they've done that really hurt the game. I'll mostly go over what went wrong here first.

For example, some people hate the way BfN looks and some like it a lot. I overall like the look of all 3 games but I'm not a fan of Rose's look in BfN (I agree with Zero when he points out she looks like a tulip rather than a Rose). The graphics of the games have definitely changed from game to game but the largest change was from GW2 to BfN. I can deal with the next shooter looking like any of the current games, but not everyone feels that way.

It launched in poor shape and too suddenly with almost zero fanfare and has had little promotion. Near launch they did sponsor some YouTubers, but not for long. Combine that with the lack of videos for the game, especially compared to GW and GW2, and even people that love the GW games didn't know BfN even existed! The apparent idea of the game; keeping the long time loyal fans while trying to attract other shooter fans to the new game wasn't planned out very well and obviously hasn't been much of a success based on how future content got cut one year after launch with no sequel in sight.

Adding the grandmaster levels feel like they just wanted to keep people playing with little/no reward beyond ticking up your levels. Getting to master on characters feels great, just like in GW2, as you get more upgrade options but the GM ranks are just dull and disappointing. The swarm characters honestly feel like they were just added for the same reason. Initially, I enjoyed the swarm characters more than I expected but that wore off and I hope we don't get such characters in a new shooter.

While many of us are ok without variants, the expectation of more completely new characters to compensate was a letdown as we only got the wizard. I really like the wizard and the other new characters added to BfN, barring the swarm characters anyway, but they needed to give us more characters more quickly to keep interest high. 

Some of the changes to the various game modes was good, like the gnome bomb changes where you can see where it's spawning and don't have to pick it up automatically, but some were not so hot. For instance, in Suburbination, giving only the team that has 2 or 3 control points any points as opposed to how it used to be (where holding any number of control points gives at least some points), makes the matches more heavily skewed against the weaker team. Yes, the weaker team would still lose, but it would at least score some points. The TT maps feel too narrow and the fights are often directly on the point instead of around the point as well as on and I prefer the GW/GW2 method of only needing more attackers than defenders to advance the control point's progress, rather than any number of defenders halting progress.

The legendary upgrades are a great idea but the steam blaster and especially that brainium basher, are far too good compared to the plant's upgrades of Shogun Shield and thorn apart. Fun fact: I actually really dislike using brainium basher and only use it rarely and then only in PvE. It feels so awkward to use for me.

The game's FOMO feeling, which is now largely gone as everything is now on repeat, turned a lot of people off. I also recall the justifiable outrage over the Feastivus pack being for sale when so much of the game was still a mess. The game's coins being mostly useless after a certain point really dampers enthusiasm for the game as coin rewards, and of course region currency rewards, don't feel like actual rewards anymore.

I checked the Steam charts and it peaked at 857, currently around 400 players a day. I play via Origin so this isn't all the players that play on PC, but it's not a great cross-section for a multiplayer focused title. 

Some of the characters that were annoying were made more annoying (Rose for example), healing is too powerful in BfN, and sprinting has been problematic. I also still find the lack of damage attenuation (drop off) a major problem for the game and feels strange when jumping from other shooters to BfN.

The free roam zones are a bit too much like each other and lack reasons to go back once you 100% them, but I still enjoy them and the world building they add to the game. They show a lot of love and care towards them and I wish we had more of them and more quests and other reasons to go back to them. Imagine having reasons to go back like such zones in Warframe! We'd be having a lot more to do in them beyond the main stuff. Some of those quests were absolutely brilliant though. I love escorting Washy!

All 3 games still have bugs that plague them, so one can't only point out BfN's bugs, but for those that are already unhappy with other aspects of BfN, the bugs it has stick in the mind more than in games they enjoy more.

A lot of the game's problems stem from how unfinished a lot of the game is/feels like; no Iceberg Lettuce or other characters added barring the wizard (and the forgettable swarm characters), an upgrade system that has a fantastic idea to balance them with each other via costs but so many are 'must have' that it makes other choices worse, lack of stuff to do once done with the prize maps, the free roam zones, and the pie quests, the problems that plagued BA, Ops being lackluster and never getting phase 3, and so on. 

I'll be straight up honest here, when BfN first launched and I was focused on the free roam zones, I loved this game and felt that it may actual topple GW2 as my favorite PvZ shooter, I was having that much fun with it. But, as I moved into PvP more, emptied the reward-o-tron, and found prize maps full of stuff I wasn't interested in/can't do much with (like victory slabs and punchers), and my friends grew bored and stopped playing, my own interest waned and I started playing more GW2 again. I still play all 3 games, but GW2 has returned to my focus, relegating BfN to 2nd place as I level up slowly, and GW in 3rd place as it lacks the options for a mix of PvE/PvP that GW2 and BfN have.

All 3 games have things I like and dislike. I'm never going to bash anyone for having a favorite that's different from mine (GW2 is my favorite of the series), but BfN was handled badly and it could have been so much more than we got. Here's hoping that the next game learns the lessons of the previous games and being something we can all enjoy some time in the near future. And yes, I want a new game and plan to get it unless they don't learn these lessons.

Iron_Guard8 Somebody pointed out how a lot of areas in bfn artslye were way too bright in lighting and on the character designs here's my two cents: Why do zombies have green eyes? They're dead!

Soldier is fine and the card addition on the helmet is cool.
Imp is ugly and his gw2 version looks infinetly better, same with rose.
I dont mind peashooter blue eyes but the eyebrows are a little weird and offputting.
80s and snapdragon are the best new class designs in the game.
Electric slide is just female disco zombie nothing really special.
Engineer is too fat and they removed his glorious crack, automatic downgrade.
Citron looked cooler with sunglasses and I dont like how his body is disconnected.
Wizard is fine.
All star and ccatus feel too tall and skinny and cactus had better green pigmentation in garden warfare.
Scientists teeth and tge eye gap arent fun to look at dial it down a little.
Sunflower, chomper, deadbeard, and corn look more plastic and plushylike with less detail than their old models, not bad but not great either.
Zmech looks like a scrap heap that could be sliced apart with a pizza cutter.
Acorn and cadet are fine.
Nightcap imo could look a little more like the mushrooms of the other pvz games.
Superbrainz body is fine but I wished face looked a little different.
Spawnables are fine but the coloring and shading could be a bit better on some of the plants.
The less overall detail on characters is a downside (imps lights not working, less colorful and unique projectiles and abilities, no rotor spin on all star, and etc).

Artstyle doesn't matter as much as aesthetic does to me and I hope we go back to a more gw1 style with graveyards and areas devoid of life for zombies and cheerful bright gardens for plants as bfn's zombie areas feel too clean, lively, and normal without artificial or dead grass and trees like in gw2. Though if they were ever to attempt to brink back old maps and variants the art style will most likely be more like gw or redone again.

You underestimate how many people disliked the variants removal as even popcap saw how stale the game quickly by trying to implement legendary upgrades accompanying fancy looking costumes just like variants.

The upgrade system is inherently flawed as no one would pick speedy over upgrades like hardened and rapid fire.

BA deserves a second chance but please don't add a rank system with premium currency rewards.

Being able to save cosmetic builds like bfn would be a good thing to keep.

The worldbuilding is kinda screwed as soon as you realize that none of the new characters are explained in game for their existence or why others left the conflict, unlike gw2 which gave a valid reason for why the newer classes weren't in gw1 and before you say bfn isnt gw the pve confirms its the same universe and timeline in a throwaway medal and the intro video about how they stopped the zombies at the end of gw2 with a giant glass bell dome (which we never see any evidence or remains of and really? A glass bell against zombies with misslies, giant robots, and energy weapons no wonder it failed lol) gw1&2 had some pretty good connections in the world such as the cuke going to destroy zombiss mountain which we spawn at in driftwood shores, zombot heads lying destroyed on maps leading to the zombot in zombopolis having the added numbers in its name, seeds of time revealing why the zombies crashed in cactus canyon with the concept art battle in the sky, the destroyed cage in zomburbia that the sasquatch is implied to have escaped from, the crystals the zombies are mining on the moon to power the magnet, seeing how Zomburbia was created in frontline flats and how the plants tried fighting back with laundry, and the yeti king boss hunt practically stating the zombies canonically won great white north much like how they won gw1.

Dreadwood and wierding woods are good though as a giant forest attacking you every chance it gets with its roots and absolutely demolishing and cutting off the area through its growth is a great idea they did nicely and his boss music is great.

@stukapooka I know the lack of variants upset a lot of people and I fully get why. I wasn't happy with it at first but when we heard we were getting brand new characters instead, that could have worked had they released at a decent pace, but instead we only got the wizard. I'd prefer the variants to return for a new game. I already imagine a space cadet with a short ranged flame thrower weapon and a toxic acorn/poison oak variant! Also, we need an Ice Pirate (it was a great movie), and frozen corn, which you can buy at the store right now, should be a thing!

As for the aesthetics, GW2 is my favorite, even with the purples a lot of people don't like but I'm a fan of gloomy. But again, all 3 games look very good and age well as they didn't try to go ultra-realistic thankfully. Going back to play Unreal, it's fun but the attempt at realisitic graphics back then don't age well. The PvZ shooters all look brilliant, although some folks have their preferences which is to be expected.

The upgrade system could have worked had they not made certain ones so powerful/useful while others were just not great. You really want that rapid fire foot soldier upgrade, even with the issue with it where it doesn't work smoothly. They did tweak some of them over time but they should have spent more time coming up with more palatable options and less filler. The legendary upgrades are a kind of hybrid to create the feeling of variants and had great potential, but what we got was problematic.

I never like ranked/competitive play in games in the first place. I have never played ranked in Paladins for this very reason, so we fully agree there. But BA is one of the game modes I really like, along with taco bandits from GW1 and capture the taco and soil survivors from GW2. The weekly event that gave us team vanquish in the BA map was a great time.

BfN did a great job on QoL improvements. The overheat indicator on your HUD, the ability to save builds/costumes which I had asked for GW2 since day one, and a few smaller things. Having more than 3 slots per character would be even better than what we got in BfN for the next game.

We largely agree on the maps. I want the TT maps to be more dynamic and have fights over larger areas like in GW and GW2, and bring back the teleporters and Rose/Engineer turrets (with or without the upgrade system from GW1). I also want more verticality but only as long as they don't bring back the roof top dominance of Foot Soldiers and Peashooters from GW1. 

As for world building, there's no question all 3 games are the same universe as you point out. All PvZ games are roughly in the same universe, and the shooters more than any others. I would like a new game to have a time travel component like PvZ2 does, so we could fight in Suburbia, Zomburbia, and beyond. I'd love to visit all the old maps from the GW games and new ones as well. If they tied in the shooters with maps from the various time periods we visit in PvZ2, so much the better! Imagine fighting those giant plant dinosaurs from the Dinoland point as part of the battle (as AI or maybe controlled by plant players), mech zombies, and everything in between! I would definitely get behind them tying in any new classes/variants they bring in for a new game as you ask for in your post. BfN maps would need some changes to fit a more GW style game, and I'd be behind that.

I'd love more free roam zones; in BfN I love Weirding Woods and Plants Town Center. The other 2 aren't bad, but not as enjoyable as those 2. PvZ always has had some great music and BfN is no exception. I especially love the Sir Biff music.

I'm hoping that the moderators and others read all the posts and watch that YouTube video with so many content creators discussing the games for ideas. I really want to see a new shooter that is just a great time and brings a lot of people back, while also attracting new players while learning from how things went for all 3 games.

@Iron_Guard8Yeah the fully zombie controlled areas should be like gw2 imo but if we go back in time to certain areas they should look more like zomboss estate in gw1.

I'm fine with bfn classes comimg back and even adding new classes but they will have to be reworked if variants are brought back (just make up something about how snapdragoms flames dont burn and turn electric slide into disco slide or something idk).

If the older maps allowed more classes camping rooftops wouldnt be so bad when you think about like corn and superbrainz would have relieved the campers in gw2 walnut hills by being able to fight them on the rooftops making them more hazardous to use do to their abilities such as butter barrage.

On the storymode: I always thought that pvz had great ideas that they never really used well like imagine a mission where we fight the op version of superbrainz from the comics, fought the zombot in an actual boss battle, playing AS the zombot in a mission where we destroy a plant/gnome superbase, the dinosaur stuff you mentioned, what if the gnomes had enough of the conflict and went full mann vs machine on the two groups (valid canonical reason to have them fight together) or an improved version of infinity time, a pirate seas level mission as deadbeard leading his pirate crew to plunder, a single player mission with the plot of cactus canyon where you lead your routed forces to victory (gw1 and some gw2 g&g would honestly make awesome single player missions if altered a little), or fighting on top of the two planes like in the concept art, escorting cob mortars or coconut cannons from gw1 to a safe firing position before fighting waves of zombies like the original games.

New characters, spawnables, and variants wouldn't be a huge problem with all the concept classes over the years such as grave digger or toned down concept plants/2nd design version of swat soldier (first version wouldn't be very kid friendly given that he had actual guns taped or chained to his body armor what was popcap honestly thinking with this design?).

So many potential possibilities but so little actually used or thought of, ITS INFURIATINGLY DISSAPOINTING!

BA deserves a second chance without poorly implemented rank or premium currency and it was my favorite mode in bfn before ranked.

The qol changes like you said would be nice to keep (I do wish the hud would tell us what are weapon was called though).