Re: BfN cancelled months before the official cancellation?

We need another shooter. Obviously we can't expect it soon but BfN is the first time since 2014 that I can recall that there was no shooter being worked on (as far as we can tell), and the current game is not being fully supported anymore. While I felt they cut off GW1 and GW2 a bit too quickly, BfN is the first one that was just 'yeah, it's done' like this. It's not a great place to be, that's for sure. 

Honestly, even when I've been unhappy with some of the decisions the team has made since GW1, I've always made sure to not attack the devs or anyone else, as it only makes things worse and we do NOT want a community like OW has. I know the Reddit can be a bit nasty, but it's nothing compared to some other games like this out there! So PopCa/EA, note that some of us spent a lot of money on GW1 and 2 (and some like me did spend on BfN too, just not as much and not as freely), and are willing to do so again if you give us a great, fun game and support it fully.

@TheSprinter85 As I said, I don't want to spread lies, but there is so much evidence. The job listing confirms they were working on Skate in August already. The fact that several key employees left the studio months ago, at the same time as Skate was announced and their communication stopped entirely makes it highly unlikely BfN wasn't cancelled months ago.

I wish we could have gotten a definitive statement from them, like we got from PopCap Seattle. PopCap Seattle officially stated there would be a PvZ 3 eventually and that there are more PvZ experiences to come. Even if EA doesn't plan on making another PvZ shooter and Motive Vancouver is focusing on other titles now, they should at least tell us. I'm really starting to get annoyed by all the people saying GW3 will come and all of the clickbait PvZ YouTube raising false hope.

@Iron_Guard8 I would say the subreddit is pretty toxic overall and not just a bit nasty sometimes. I remember checking it out before BfN and somewhat liking it. Then everyone there started trashing people who liked BfN. I have never seen it the other way around. As I said before, I think BfN had a much younger audience than GW2, causing there to be more players who prefer GW2 in the online community (as minors wouldn't post online much). It could also be that GW2 was just more popular, but it had a lot of marketing, which is something BfN was very much lacking. I wish the community could be more positive than negative and would stop artificially dividing itself, after all, these games are at least 80% identical.

I also do hope we will get another PvZ shooter. You are right, they have been working on them since 2012 (is what I can tell from the dev tweets)

2012-2014 GW

2014-2016 GW2

2016-2019 BfN

Justin Wiebe said that after 8+ years working on PvZ he needed a creative break, which is very understandable. I think BfN was cancelled at the time and he wasn't allowed to talk about it and so he just tweeted this, which is also true. Many would need a break after working on the same thing for 8 years. I hope that somehow, when this new PvZ shooter will be made, most of the BfN team can reunite, as I really love their creative vision for BfN (even if it was never fully realized, as we now thanks to the dataminers.)

@benn1nat0r No doubt that BfN fans on the Reddit get more nastiness directed at them than anyone else, but it's not that bad overall, and many of the posts are exactly what you and I have been saying all long; 'all 3 games are good and are PvZ shooters, so we should stop with the divisiveness and nastiness.', although a lot of those have some nasty replies. It could be better for certain, but I've had far worse encounters in other online shooters (World of Tanks was awful, so bad I turned all communication off as I could talk to friends and my clan via private voice chat, OW is terrible for this kind of thing, and even TF2 can be worse, although local server admins can make a huge difference). The admins over at the Reddit should just delete the more egregious posts so they aren't such a problem.

But even then, the Stellaris reddit is worse although subtler, there's a lot of racist overtones there so I stopped paying it much attention. It was not a pleasant experience to be sure.

So, even if it may take some time, I think we should indeed all strive to move forward as a PvZ community and keep reminding PopCap/EA that we want a new shooter that builds on the best of the current ones and also brings some new stuff too.

@Iron_Guard8 I have also been saying that we should act like the Skate community did, as it clearly worked for them, but this is somewhat different. We can't force it. The people who like Skate were frustrated after the long wait. BfN was released one year ago. The community still seems divided and such a massive fan push for a franchise has to happen on its own. We couldn't coordinate such efforts, and even if we could, it would probably give them a false indication of how big the franchise is, which would lead to EA having higher expectations again, which therefore couldn't be met again, leading to the team having few resources for the second time.

Unfortunately, I think we will have to wait a few years for something to happen, at least until all of the people who desired BfN's cancellation to realize the following: "What? They considered this to be GW3? It showed them the franchise doesn't perform well enough in general? I should have helped with constructive feedback instead of being toxic? I helped to kill the pvz shooters by actively insulting the team (which even addressed my concerns at large) and the people who liked the game?"

I know the community as a whole wasn't tis bad, but a substantial part of it was. At least we had the nice forum community as a moderated platform, where discussion was always encouraged and opinions were shared politely.

@shurikeninja Yes, the subreddit seems to gotten a bit nicer recently. I don't understand why the BfN subreddit was closed after a month and combined with the gw forums, considering the team decided not to name it GW3 and market it as something that is intentionally a bit different to the gw series. By choosing to combine the subreddits, the moderators opened the door for the larger GW Community to drown the thoughts of the (at launch) small BfN community. 

What had happened on the Reddit was the separate BfN Reddit was created and then there was a lot of back and forth about needing it distinct from GW and a poll. The poll to keep BfN on the GW subreddit won by a significant margin so the BfN was largely abandoned.

@shurikeninja & @Iron_Guard8 

Thank you for explaining the BfN reddit situation to me. I only checked it out sporadically, as I didn't really like the tone there much. Theoretically, one community for all PvZ shooters would be a great way to unite the fan base. Theoretically. Unfortunately, things seem to have gotten out of hand there quickly, which is a shame, as there appear to be many nice players interested in a normal discussion there. The negative overshadowed the positive, making the entire PvZ community look like immature, toxic fanboys. I guess the attitude of a particular PvZ YouTuber didn't help either.

With the community seemingly being more positive again, do you think we share this thread there? Maybe we could kindly ask for a new PvZ shooter together, like the Skate community did. If it can work for such a niche thing, I don't see why it couldn't work for PvZ. The only difference between PvZ and Skate is that BfN's financial underperformance is recent.