No solo ops, really! Let's just talk about ops in general.
This game mode was absolutely OBLITERATED in bfn! We have less maps than gw1 to play it on, less positions to put the base, less pots, weaker pots, enemy variety is worse than gw1, boss variety has been cut down and there are few new ones that aren't from boss hunt, elite bosses are weak, death is meaningless since you just revive so your team feels no pressure in trying to revive you in time as you slowly go down one by one, the lack of elements like ice or toxic and the addition of upgrades means that healers are even more irrelevant as they dont have to act fast to save their team from being frozen or poisoned, its pathetically easy, ai seems worse, tv heads/wildflowers exist, no sense of emergency from the lack of an evacuation phase, and the pacing of the waves has been ruined.
The map design has also gotten much worse in bfn and there is no high ground verticality for the player or enemy classes like foot soldier to take advantage of in ops like crash course, sharkbite shores, or lunar landing. Invisble walls ewwww.
In short they simplified it, made it easy. So easy that nobody finds it fun anymore. People are just gonna play the older ops. Not only because they remember them, but because they're worth remembering in the first place.
Turf takeover. Only 4 points per map which is the lowest we have ever seen and the map design is rather poor with little vertical positions to use and a low amount of flank routes to take.
On consoles and pc it is the only mode on 12v12 in game therefore awarding the most xp so players will play them over ops or mixed modes.
A lot of the maps reuse concepts from gw1 such as preserve pastures being cactus canyon all over again or peachy district being walnut hills.
Defending/attacking is a nightmare due to the cramped nature of the points which require just 1 defender to completely stall the enemy team which is a step back from the gw system of needing more attackers than defenders on a smaller area.
Overtime doesn't end immediately after attackers are off the point which allows attackers to keep stalling by throwing bodies into the point to stall the game.
The progress bar is now decided by 1/3 intervals that go down if not completely captured.
Payload sections have the same problems cactus canyon and seeds of time had in spades with bombing the payload with everything a team has.
Bot ai gives up at the final objective so good luck solo players!
Defenders can almost never retake a point once forced out due to the narrow entryways back to the point.
The lack of teleporters has all but killed map pacing and flow as the sprint sections will be skipped if you die and walking to the next point from the last usually only takes 15 seconds after the first point and defenders are hardly ever given a good position to defend the base farther up the map like in gw1 and 2.
Depriving zombies of teles in gw1&2 left them at a major disadvantage as they now had to cross open terrain to the objective losing valuable time and being picked off by snipers. It was also a constant struggle to keep the teleporters up as they could be destroyed by defenders. This extra layer of combat strategy has been removed.
Spawn camping has now become an entirely new problem do to the awful overwatch style spawns that can be shot in and out of. Turning point is the worst culprit.
Furthermore, the sprint sections are nothing more than glorified set pieces as no combat happens in them and a defender staying back is guaranteed to get steamrolled in a heartbeat. They serve no purpose to the map. Sprinting feels like a feature that is only in the game due to pve having a large travel distance, not because the ttk and map flow is appropriately adjusted to it.
The finales are also horribly unbalanced like loggy acres or boring like tourist trap island.
The switch version reduced the mode down to 8v8 from being the only mode in bfn with 12v12 still.
Gnome bomb. Being able to see where the gnome will spawn is a good change but lets go over the negatives.
Part 6 continued
Sprinting absolutely DESTROYS the bomb carrier as he is unable to use abilities or sprint while having an icon that reveals his position to the entire enemy team. Loggy acres finale shares the same problem.
Stock super brainz is the worst carrier as he loses his shield and has no long ranged defensive options.
Camping your points has become far too effective and leads to no one attacking resulting in drawn out stalemates.
Suburbination. Look how they massacred my boy.
To start scoring a team now needs two points. This has destroyed suburbination.
I played a gw1 match recently where it was 2v3 at 63 points zombies to 21 plants. I was on plants with an agent pea as fire chomper. Despite this massive gap in both players and points the agent pea with my help was able to go from a zombie suburbination hold to plants going to suburbination at 83 zombies to 66 plants points on a 3v4 now. We were able to hold and flip the game and narrowly win at 100 to 96 when the zombies flipped back 2 points from us. It was unbelievably close and intense.
This is impossible in bfn. Due to the score now needing 2 points a winning team is just going to keep winning and the losing team can do NOTHING to turn the tide even with holding 1 point.
Vanquish confirmed. Its team vanquish but drawn out longer.
All of these also suffer the terrible spawns on bfn maps and the slower pace of 8v8 even despite sprint.
No wonder these modes had no players and were pulled. THEY WERE POORLY DESIGNED. I find more suburbination players in ps3 gw1 in 2021 than I did in bfn during its early months.
Before these maps were pulled popcap flooded lobbies with bots to combat the dying player base but even this was not enough to save mixed modes and battle arena and both were pulled due to lack of players.
The bots were also criticised for cheating at the game with their abilities and having ungodly aimbot in a game with no fall off.
Even if you like bfn you have to realize that gw1 and 2 were never at a low enough player count that they needed bots to keep the game limping on IN THEIR FIRST YEAR! This was the confirmation of the bleeding playercount in bfn as before many, especially pc players, were complaining about the lack of players.
Now I'm not against bots filling in player spots until they're taken as it allows a game to march at full speed but bfn introduced them to hide dead lobbies and with how bad yet op the bots in bfn are just leads to a bad experience.
Giddy park is not a good alternative from backyard battleground, especially for solo players. It lacks depth in its combat system against the ai and the spawns are horrendous being easy to camp. I spent most of my early gw2 time fighting the ai in the backyard or in solo play due to a lack of Xbox live and I still enjoyed it. Until solo play came to bfn this was impossible.
