Re: Looking back at 5 years of BFN and why it failed to match Garden Warfare.
8. The battlepa- I mean prize map and a tedious grind.
So instead of adding more items to the reward o tron popcap instead chose monthly prize maps where the players would earn bulbs through normal gameplay until they could unlock items.
This sounds fine as it's not a microtransaction system but then we saw that just ONE prize bulb would cost 10,000 XP!
This is on a board where the lowest item cost is 3 bulbs. That's 30,000XP!
The fastest way to get these was pvp but remember that bfn pvp was an absolute nightmare to play at the time that could randomly give out and boot you from the game at any moment so most went to the pve regions and even still it was a grind.
Exploits like deadbeards xp pellet per shot were found but it was just tedious to do and the devs quickly patched it out.
It was so bad they eventually lowered it to 7500 xp but that was still too much and it was lowered again to 5000 we have now and yet even when you play pve over pvp you can still feel that grind.
If anything this worked against the game as players got more and more fed up with how broken the online was while trying to get bulbs and may I remind you at the time we never knew if these prize map items would ever come back again at the time or be moved into the regular loot pool like how deep rock galactic (great game btw) handles its seasons.
They introduced daily quest bulbs but only 2 and they were very specific such as vanquishing 15 players as a class which before solo play could only be done by grinding the pve regions or battle chests for offline.
Compare this to gw2 for a moment where to get stars you had specific quests yes but a lot of them were pve accessible such as vanquishing 50 zombies as sunflower which all you had to do was just go into the backyard for not even 5 minutes on easy and boom your done. Very convenient and simple.
The gw2 system ontop of giving stars also gave an xp boost for completed quest.
If this xp boost was in bfn bulbs would've been much more bareable and it would feel like players are actually accomplishing something by completing quests while rewarding them for constantly playing the game.
Also if you don't care about cosmetics and such than half of the prize maps essentially offer you nothing.
Players also ranked up so fast they burned through unlocks and popcap tried adding the grandmaster ranks to have incentive to keep playing except you get nothing from getting them.
9. Rainbow stars. GW2 vs BFN. And the implosion of ranked battle arena
Rainbow stars were eventually introduced in bfn to add another currency to let players get special costumes, taunts, and etc.
In bfn however you can slowly unlock them by completing specific tasks in the weekly mode instead of just you know, completing the game? Even if you win if you didn't complete the specific tasks than no rainbow stars for you buddy!
The stars were also pretty limited only getting 10, 20, and then 30 for completing every task. That's 60 total stars for every weekly mode.
I believe this is most likely do to rainbow stars being more monetized in bfn as they can now be purchased and the costumes all cost well into the hundreds or even thousands range compared to their functionality of just opening a chest for key/character or classic gw1 items in gw2.
Given the math to earn one bfn 1000 star costume from nothing you would need to play 17 weekly modes and earn all the stars for them. That's just cruel. You would literally unlock Torchwood and hovergoat over the 4 months faster. And that's one costume!!!
In gw2 you could also exchange stars you got for quests for rainbow stars. Yes it could be tedious but it allowed those who could not play pvp to still unlock things at their own pace. This is what I did before xbox live.
However there was another opportunity made in bfn to get rainbow stars faster: Ranked battle arena.
So Popcap made the only new mode in the game ranked now. Oh well lets see how its goi- ah poop.
Battle arena was easily one of BFN's most loved modes when the game released and why not? It was a new gamemode that genuinely shakes things up.
Being a 4v4 elimination mode where you couldn't reuse characters is actually a cool idea.
Ranked than proceeded to utterly gut this mode.
When people are playing a mode for fun the flaws aren't as noticeable for the average person but when actual rewards are on the line it can just be frustrating.
Balancing problems became very apparent as zombies had two immense advantages with space cadet and imp who at this point were practically invincible do to a mech just being a guaranteed second life and given that one player on the team could just pick them every round the zombies never ran out of the annoying buggers.
Since characters are now specialist over gw's generalists certain characters now are just downright better than others for the mode. Why would you pick rose when Citron is far better at supporting the team in this mode by blocking zombie abilities, can escape gravity grenade counters, and can actually finish people off from all ranges.
When a teammate left you are now actively in a snowball decline to the point entire matches devolved into 4v1. I got stomped in matches because my whole team just leaves after one round.
The unstable servers and bad hit detection also screwed over players or outright booted them before they won and penalized them.
Remember how superbrainz hitreg is trash well now it's being screamed in your face.
Imagine losing not because your enemy outsmarted you, played better, or had an ace in the whole ability. No you lost because your powers straight up DON'T WORK!
Imagine playing elden ring or something and you hit a boss and it recoils from the hit and yet it takes no damage and one shots you. That's what ranked battle arena and a lot of bfn was at times.
The frustrations also mounted in that while being max rank will get you rainbow stars it wont even be enough for ONE 1,000 star costume. Someone called that you needed 75 wins for max rank. What is this bs.
Oh and since everything is so unfun about this mode nobody wanted to play it so shortly afterwards it could take up to 3 minutes to find a match and even longer waiting for a full team!
It ruined a good mode. In fact when battle arena came back as a team vanquish map players loved it! It being made a weekly mode sucks since it's not available normally as it preserved its fun status by not making it so frustrating.
Could you imagine if ranked was still around with branium basher in the meta?
