Spawnable discussion: weed and browncoat

I'm used to them having 24 health (thought it was 25) from tons of PvE in GW2 as I usually play on normal, and that's how it is in the backyard as I use the flag of power to get lots of quests done, so their health in BfN feels normal to me.

They flee like mad from Chompers in GW2's backyard battleground, especially when trying to use the flag to get stuff like 'vanquish 50 zombies as a Chomper' quests and the entire wave of 10 various browncoats, with a couple of coneheads and bucketheads per wave, will run away from you! 

The lack of spawnables in BfN is one of the game's shortcomings. One can argue that the basic browncoats and weeds aren't very useful anyway, as you generally see the more powerful ones summoned by players in TT and Taco Bandits anyway, but newer players or those that can't play as often use them as they don't want to waste their smaller numbers of rarer and more powerful spawnables. I would also state that not only the basic browncoats/weeds and their region specific types (like pirate browncoats for example) need to be more useful, but the spawnable suicide AI (dandelions, exploding imps for examples) do as well. 

There's quite a few ways to balance them out, make them more useful and desirable:

• My idea of giving spawnables a cost in coins based on their power would make the basic ones much cheaper, and the more powerful ones much more expensive. This also lets players buy the ones they want, so you never have too many self revives or team retries, and players like having more agency over what they purchase and use.
• If using the timer system from BfN, the basic guys can have no timer at all, or a very short one, while more powerful ones take much longer. 
• Perhaps combined with the prior two ideas or not, when you call up the basic ones, you summon more than one at a time. So you get 3 brown coats or dandelions from a dirt patch, but only 1 coffin zombie or vase weed.
• A point system per match where you can summon anything you can afford with your spawn points, and this would be reflected in their power/cost. A basic weed would be 1 point while a vase weed would be 3 or more for example.

There are likely other systems too, but these are the ones I've come up with while pondering this situation as well.

@Iron_Guard8I think the coin system would work best as it incentivies the economy the issue bfn faces but also helps the less used spawnables.

Its probably due to the ttk qnd health change but in bfn they seen to die even faster than the gw iterations and I dont think they have different health settings based on difficulty in bfn.

The lack of spawnables overall makes the multiplayer not as fun imo as you're seeing the same handful of spawnables every match and bfn prioritized armored enemies which was pretty annoying.

New mechanics in their ai could also go a long way like avoiding the draw of bean bombs if a flag zombie is near( because the flag has a brain on it).

I hope their range attacks get toned down as the spam was pretty annoying in bfn.

A true buff would probably come from how the system manages them rather than actually tweaking certain outputs.

I'll be discussing the suicide spawnables someday and they will most likely have ideas for potential buffs.

While I do not mind the timer cooldown system for summonables in Battle for Neighborville, I wish that we had the same sort of variety with summonables compared to GW and GW2. Additionally, I did not actually realise that some of the seasonal weeds and browncoats actually had more health in GW2, that is news to me.

I want to add my thoughts to these "spawnable discussions" here, so in my discussions, I will assume that we would discuss how these summonables could be implemented in a potential future shooter, but also how they perform in the current shooters and how they could be tweaked.

Anyway, to get started.

Introduction

Weeds and Browncoats are obviously the weakest and most basic summonables in the game, and they should always be. They have almost identical stats and seem to perform in mostly the same fashion to their counterpart. I generally seem to see them more often than any other summonable most of the time during a match, as they are easy to get hold of in large numbers and can be placed in large amounts.

My Thoughts

I do not understand why Battle for Neighborville should have removed the basic Weeds and Browncoats, as they were often used in the previous shooters and, with the introduced cooldown system in BfN, they could have had a no cooldown feature attached to them, similar to the Pea Cannon and Rocket Bot which also have no cooldown. 

I do not understand why Weeds seem to use their projectile seed spit attack much more often than the Browncoats use their Rock Throw attack, and the seed spit also seems to have a greater velocity as well, which means it is harder to dodge. The Weeds' and Browncoats' projectiles should work in almost identical ways to their counterparts. 

Due to their low stats, I find that the Weeds and Browncoats never particularly pose a large threat, but it can be a nuisance to deal with swarms of them and when playing in higher difficulties, or when needing to deal with other enemies alongside them.

In A Potential Future Shooter

The basic Weeds and Browncoats should be the cheapest summonables and quite easy to get in large amounts, as well as always being available, as they are the weakest summonables. They could possibly even be free to place at any time and without any cooldown, if the summon piles have their own internal cooldown. In other words, you cannot place multiple summonables using the same summon pile without having to wait a cooldown first. The only issue is that some players may do this during matches, meaning that players who want to place stronger summonables may sometimes have a harder time trying to place them. To combat this issue, perhaps players may have to wait a small cooldown before placing another summonable.

Overall

I believe that Weeds and Browncoats should have almost identical stats (and it should always stay that way). They should always be easy, convenient and cheap to obtain and place, as they are the weakest and most basic summonables in the shooters.

@TheSprinter85Seed spit appears to be weaker than rock toss but shoots out faster. Though like you say weeds almost always seem to use it more than zombies in gw2.

I'm all for @Iron_Guard8 coins system as the economy in bfn fell apart without variants, self revives, and spawnables. Alongside helping to reduce spam.

They could also hand out quests to incentivise weaker spawnables: summon 5 browncoats, summon 3 newspaper zombie, or summon 1 dancing zombie. Maybe even make a community event around christmas and Halloween to summon Zomtrees and candy cane shoot.

It sucks that bfn went the with cooldown system but left all of the best offensive spawnables with highly armored zombies yet nerfed the defensive spawnables in the ground and pea cannons just suck. They're somehow worse than gw1&2 in that their accuracy is trash, damage seems worse, and their ai is highly unresponsive unless they directly see you. Seriously why did popcap put such an emphasis on armored zombie and Overheal and not buff or at least reduce cooldowns on plants like fume shroom or bonk choy probably the worst plant in the entire game.

Outhouse should just be nerfed.

You fool you underetimated the mighty power of the jackocoat.

Nice to see ypu on these discussions btw and I hope you like the other ones I make.

@stukapooka I have not read all of your spawnable discussions as of right now, but so far they have been fun to read. I like talking about the spawnables in the shooters as I always place and make use of them where possible.

I never considered that the Seed Spit wouldn't be as powerful as the Rock Throw, they always seemed to hit similar numbers of damage. I could not say for sure though as I never paid attention to that specifically.

They should absolutely be implemented in a future shooter, and they could be free to obtain and use possibly, which gives them a unique advantage over the stronger summonables (in terms of not having to pay), but there would be an internal cooldown after a placement or with the summoning piles themselves. The quest idea will help players summon these Weeds and Browncoats more often.

Absolutely love the seasonal summonables so very glad that some have better stats (and hopefully would be implemented in a future shooter, I even wanted them to return to BfN).

I am going to check your other discussions as well!

@TheSprinter85The damage numbers for weeds seem pretty wonky as even in game it doesn't seem consistent as weeds appear to have a much faster fire rate in their attacks as they usually cleave their way through zombies in 1v1 in the backyard.

Seasonals need to return as they make the game more fun to play. Shame that bfn really cut the roster down so much.