Re: Video of 5 Ways EA and PopCap COULD Revive The PvZ Franchise.

@Iron_Guard8I feel like torchwood would've been a far better option for a heavy tank class than either oak or citron in bfn. Because its clear they want their plant z mech but can't really get it right.

Poor engineer, he feels like the guinea pig of the og 4 as his drone was taken by deadbeard given that he became the zombies official sniper class in gw2, then he became diet peashooter in gw2 but he still had his overall job in turf remaining, but now in bfn it feels like they really don't know what to do with him is he defense? Support? Demoman? Every aspect of him feels changed because they realized that without teleporters or chomper with constant burrowing and no ranged options to counter with grenades or mines he really has no hardline purpose in the game unlike the other 3 of the gw1 cast who are clearly assault, defense, and medic support respectively easy (the other 3 also got to keep a relatively same version of their abilities while all of engimeers were changed with no alternative abilities like the proximity mine). Poor guy clearly must be going through something with all that weight he put on from gw2 to bfn. He is imo a massive fish out of water with the new system and it painfully shows imo.

Pve is great until you realize every area plays out in the same format and they're disconnected from each other, not all the missions were created equal imo, and that there is no major reward for finishing these modes outside of hats (infinity time while flawed was a great surprise for players who finished pve and rewarded them with new characters).

Oak and station seem good on paper but at the same moment the team play requires players to spam multiple of the same character much like TV head and wildflower

@stukapooka I'd be happy with Acorn/Oak being a slightly different version of the Imp/Mech and take the team play away. I do like the team idea, but it doesn't work out that well. Make the Mech like it was in GW2 where it didn't regen health since's it's a machine (although it can be healed), and make Oak able to regen as one difference between them. There's no reason they can't make a 'mech' for both teams while making them different but fun and balanced in their own ways, which is a huge point of the games in the first place!

As for the Cadet, I love her the most out of the new characters, but maybe take away the station idea entirely and replace it with the ability to call down a crater maker attack from a station in orbit like calling in an airstrike or something from other games. Then we'd only have to balance the Acorn/Oak with the Imp/Mech for the transform classes. It would certainly fix some of the ways mechs feel so meh in BfN.

I do give them credit for trying something new with the team classes, and if not for how it slammed into the Imp/Mech and pushed it aside, along with the balance issues they've given us, I do like the concepts. But as you said it's hard to make work and have needed more adjustments than almost any other character in BfN. It may be best to scrap it and move on while keeping the new characters as I love them both. I was ok with the horde characters at first, but I spent coins to max them out just so I could stop playing them. They're just not that fun and feel exactly like the filler they are. Don't bring these back in a new game!

Torchwood is pretty cool, but I love the idea of the Acorn/Oak and am happy with the Giga-Torchwood being a boss without the mini version. 

If they really wanted to keep Engineer as he is in BfN, I'd say to replace the speed pad as it's not that useful anyway, separate the ammo replenishment idea from the turret and let us place an ammo crate that can be shot and has limited uses before it runs out and need to be placed again to replace the speed pad, make the turret just shoot and not refill ammo, and change the primary to not be so obnoxious to play against; it's especially bad on that first point in Turning Point. But, I'd rather go back to the GW1 or GW2 engineer or maybe use aspects of several of them. I don't feel that having a drone while the Pirate also does, really hurts anything.

The PvE zones do have the same flow, this may be why Plant Town Center is the best by a wide margin and the rest were still fun, but not as good. I'd like to see reasons to go back, more robust quests, more difference between how they flow, and other new ideas to make them more long lasting to enjoy. I do love looking for the hidden things and the puzzles in BfN.

Oh and as for Citron and All-Star. I would say to make the shields less powerful, especially Citron as multiple Citrons covering each other is the worst spawn camping I've ever seen! All-Stars can do it too, but at least they can't move the shield around once deployed so you can work around that.

@stukapooka For the Cadet, that's why I mentioned just taking the station away and give her that air strike like ability where she can call down a crater maker from orbit that does heavy damage and traces a path on the ground (not steered by the player, just an automatic line of damage) before going away to replace station inflation. I enjoy Cadet on her own just fine, and this way we could get that crater maker ability in a form similar to Butter Barrage from GW2, although instead of a big AoE, it would be a smaller AoE that would draw a line from the target point and then end after a short time.

My biggest complaint about Electric Slide and Rose for that matter, is they both have abilities that make them so annoying to fight against, and especially with the upgrade that makes them heal as well. Absolutely awful to deal with. I still find it crazy that they made Rose more annoying than she can be in GW2!

I'd be cool with teleporters coming back on TT maps. the BfN TT maps are too narrow so I can see why they were taken out, but the maps shouldn't be that narrow anyway, so fix that and make teleporters a thing again. I miss the big flank fights we had in GW and GW2, so much more fun than always being on the cart or the point.

For the PvE stuff, they reduced the types of AI mobs far too much; no back up dancers or vampire zombies as just 2 examples. They need to use a larger variety of AI enemies to spice the free roam regions up and get rid of the wildflowers and TV heads as they are annoying and actually ruin the normal dynamic of how the basic AI are supposed to work. They should also make the spawns less predictable and add more sudden events to add excitement to the regions.

@Iron_Guard8The space cadet idea is really fun and would give the zombie a variation of corns air strike without just ripping it off.

They somehow made rose even more aggravating to fight in bfn as combination of everything people hated about her seperate abilities and variants and I'm impressed.

Bfn maps are just really bad and too narrow to the point where flanking is pointless and the size of the maps doesn't benefit snipers. The sprinting sections also make you realize that no combat happens when moving from point to point unless a plant chooses to stay back and die.

Teleporters in gw1 maps helped reduce the chance of getting sniped on the way to the objective and some of them cut the travel time by almost 75%. In gw1 they were even in 2 of the final objectives as rewards for engineers who got through the bombardment from the ai artillery. Heck playing through pc on private play remastered and the defenders there in gw2 actually try to engage the enemy past the point by rushing to engage them head on.

I'm gonna say it: payload isn't fun and was a gimmicky ending minigame for a reason as it forces players to funnel on one objective for the entire game rather than think strategically and those matches always devolved into chili beans bombing the carts for team kills and this isn't tf2 where spies can disable enemy defenses being prepared for a push to help there teams, engineers can constantly move teles to help heavies reach tje front line faster, and being near the cart actually rewards attackers with health and ammo. (even worse since spawnables can push anyway).

Ive already explained why the lack of spawnables seriously hurts the game.

I forgot to watch it till just now on break and I feel Redhead did a good job on his video and I especially agree with the communication aspect.

Communication during BfN's life cycle was poor. And while I don't expect them to answer every single post and tell us every little thing, it could have been much better than it was and is now as PvZ feels out in the cold as it were and it's one of very IPs I actually care about enough to put all this effort into! I've been playing most of these games since the first game launched on Steam all those years ago. We could use some decent discussions with the PopCap team(s) about PvZ3, the possibility of a future shooter and other games, and so on. 

So here is Redhead's points summed up, and my thoughts on them.

1. Remaster of Original Plants vs Zombies. This was the first game I ever played in the Plants vs Zombies franchise, and I have not played this game for ages since I started playing PvZ Shooters and Heroes, and I still do play those respective games. I would replay the original PvZ game if there was a remaster.
2. Please Release Iceberg Lettuce. I totally agree with this. Iceberg Lettuce is basically complete, if not fully complete already from what I have seen, it just needs to be released and maybe have a final polish as well. It seems like a character I really would have enjoyed playing, and the upgrades looked awesome, meaning that I and others would have motivation to level it up quickly.
3. All Changes Were Brought Over From Nintendo Switch to Other Version of The Game. This involves all the changes made to the Nintendo Switch version of the game, such as being able to purchase Rux items for Coins and all Prize Maps always being available. I feel that most of these changes should have been made to the other Consoles, and PC of course, when it was released on Switch. I was quite surprised when these changes were not added to the current platforms.
4. Reopen the Plants vs Zombies Merch Shop. Not gonna lie, I did not know an official merch store existed. However, I knew that there was merchandise for Plants vs Zombies around the place. I do not see why it would have closed in the first place, and it seems that there was no specific reason for the closure. Reopening this merch shop would be cool as players would be able to easily buy some merchandise.
5. Better Communication With The Fan Base. This seemed like a really important point to mention, and this point seemed revelant even since the beginning of last year or something like that. I and others in the community did not really know what to expect, and we would only rarely get teasers of what would be upcoming. I would be more excited if we got more frequent communication overall. Some of my other favourite games, which I have mentioned in the past, is the opposite, where we get communication almost too often, and even a State of the Game for all platforms at the end of every month.

Redhead did also mention stating that the developers should sort a PvZ Heroes friend list issue which was apparently patched in the last update but actually was not. I will not particularly mention it here as it applies to PvZ Heroes.

This game could have been handled better. I really did enjoy certain aspects of the game despite them not working out that well in game. If a new shooter was made, I hope they carry some of the aspects of the game over, such as Legendary Upgrades and characters, but also keep the GW2 fans happy by giving them a game that builds on GW2. They could maybe add Wizard and even Iceberg Lettuce to that game as well, and add some features of the Phase 3 Ops that was going to be implented into the game but was not added in the end.

The Grandmaster ranks have almost no value in the game, which is very frustrating at times. While I still want to max out all my characters to Grandmaster 5, there is no real reward for levelling your characters, apart from some Coins when getting another level (which Coins in itself loses value quite quickly). I honestly thought that a few upgrades would be added for levelling up your characters through Grandmaster, which way the idea was exciting at first, but that motivation was mostly lost when I figured out that there is no real reward for doing so.

I really wish Coins and Prize Bulbs did not lose their value so quickly, in GW2, Coins have so much value as you could even have about 10 Million Coins or something, but still have plenty of things to choose from and buy, whereas in BfN, that's about the time that Coins lose most, if not all, of their value by then (unless playing on Nintendo Switch). I thought the festivals in each month would be quite different in each year for at least a few years, but the developers ended up repeating the older Prize Maps instead, which I did not really expect.

But, probably the worst thing is that we did not get enough communication. It was hard to get excited about specific stuff as it was uncertain what was planning or what was happening in game at some points.

Anyway, hopefully they make another shooter or something. 🤔