Re: The bfn retrospective: how not to evolve a franchise

@stukapooka We agree on most things, even if not always to the same degree!

On the variants. I love them, especially for how they make changes in costumes, weapons, and such. GW would indeed have gotten boring with just 8 base characters. But, having 69 completely unique characters instead of 8 base with 61 variants of those base characters (if I recall GW's numbers properly, GW2 has over 100 total) could even be better, although harder to do as you need to make 207 abilities instead of only 24 (with some alternate abilities). Paladins adds new characters with great regularity but they have balance issues and bugs to a large degree.

I had that poll on Reddit last year or much earlier this year, asking which folks prefer and variants did win out. Part of BfN's failure to do well is obviously the lack of variants and only having 20, then 21, then 23 characters, as opposed to 69 and then I think it's 119 in GW2. I still say that if we had a decent number of unique characters that could be better than variants, but if I had to choose between 20 different characters or 119 variants, I'd go with the variants as obviously most of the veterans agree on. Had they been able to give us new characters more often, I think more people could have been won over, but variants are easier and faster to create and barring some balance issues, I do love the concept. 

Two of my least favorite changes in BfN are the capture points in TT and the Suburbination change. Of course, TT was far worse in Founders when overtime would go on forever, but I hate that the attacker can lose progress if you don't get to one of the stop points and that a single defender can stop an entire team of attackers from advancing the capture point. It was far better in GW and GW2 when you only had to have more attackers than defenders to advance it. Attackers are already at a nominal disadvantage as you have to win every single point to win, whereas the defenders only need to win once. BfN changes that up a bit but not in a good way. No more teleporter fights, no flanking battles, and so on; we only have fights right on the points, on the carts, or as the defenders fight on the way back to the next point after losing the current one. It's not as interesting, tends to play out the same every time, and the cart mechanic makes the game even campier than it can be in GW and GW2. The Suburbination change is awful and makes no sense. Why make the losing team lose more? The best games are the closest games and if one team holds 2 most/all the match you're going to see too many scores of 100-0, 100-10 and so on, as opposed to 100-70, 100-90, and so on. 

BfN does feel like they tried too hard to make it more of a 'mainstream' shooter instead of what it was and why we love GW and GW2; they have similarities to TF2 and other hero shooters, but have their own niche, and a big one at that. 10 million players is nothing to sneeze at! No idea how many are playing them now but the fact that I can get full or mostly full games of GW and GW2 on PC which is the least played platform speaks volumes. We need a GW3, but it has to be handled properly, not just to do well, but to try to get the many veterans that left to at least give it a look. The Reddit has people posting about all 3 games every day, and people are these days anyway, largely positive about all 3 (with some obvious exceptions), but GW and GW2 get the most love and there's a lot of people practically begging for a new game. They can't delay too long on the new game as people are drifting away, but they have got to get it right.

@stukapooka No doubt at all that GW2 is the most popular and for good reasons! 

GW is great but as many have said, it feels like an incomplete game and it was a budget title. An excellent game and still fun to jump into, but when you get bad match runs you can't just leave the MP portal and chill in the backyard or play private matches. You can play Ops, but it doesn't adjust for solo and I often join hosts with really bad connections or something with serious lag and get booted. This is the main reason I have over 300 hours but nowhere near as much time as GW2 or BfN.

I've not quit BfN, but I don't play it much after finally grinding to that level cap. GW's cap was a bit of a rush to get the Unicorn Chomper in GW2 as I wasn't that far off, but burned through a lot of challenge stars to get it in time. GW2's cap never felt bad to get to for me, I know some felt it was a grind but my MMO background made it a fun time, I barely used that fish! I ended up using the XP machine in BfN more than I expected, but that was largely from the sudden shut down of new stuff and my dislike of those swarm characters. Still have millions of coins to spend on nothing. I have 900ish hours in BfN, but I spent a lot of time in the free roam regions.

GW2, where I have 2800+ hours in, is still fun. I don't play it as much as my heyday when everything was shiny and new, and mostly focus on getting my quests done every 2 days, but I also make sure to check in every day and mess about a bit. While it's not perfect and I still often login as a plant in the zombie base, it's a rare game that can my attention this long and that speaks volumes. I'm usually the first person in my group to get bored and move on from a game, but I'm the only one left playing GW2 and no plans of stopping. 

I'm not surprised that most posts on Reddit and most new videos are focused on GW2. There's just so much to do and even with hackers in PC PvP lobbies, it's the most fun, and the ability to just jump across my backyard and make the other side spawn bosses, heroes, and champions and have some great fights in my own little world is a great thing and we need that GW2 feeling of 'home' back.