Part 8: Variants and alt abilities vs upgrades/new characters and the death of players creative strategy.
I get the upgrade system has it fans but it was never going to give former fans the diverse strategies and playstyles they once had in gw.
Lets go over the main thing upgrades lack: visible threat recognition.
When fighting say fire or ice variants in gw their bodies or weapons were on fire or encased in ice and their particle effects, sound effects, and damage/ammo count were changed.
Other variants like commando pea/mechanic allowed you to play a different style of a character while still having their ability set to use in gameplay. They once again had unique projectiles and looks to seperate them from the base characters look.
In BFN however, upgrades aren't visible at all, heck you don't even get a good description of what the player is using. Instead you have to go and memorize every single upgrade name, what they do, how much they cost, even their icon, and then you can finally try and guess which upgrades you have to contest against, and then maybe you can figure out how to counter them.
Lets look at vampiric for chomper it allows him to regain health after vanquishing a zombie but its hard to realize that a chomper is using it at first unless you recognized the upgrade symbol (which it may share with other upgrades) and see the chomper regain health which is unlikely in a firefight.
Compare this to count chompula who was bright red and visibly glowed after a swallow showing he was currently regaining health. He also had the down side of losing 25 health making him easier to kill in direct combat to make up for this new power.
Vampiric spikeweed is another one in bfn as it stays the exact same look as the regular spikeweed so its impossible to tell when a chomper is using it. Gw2 vampweed was red and dealt no damage for its healing nature so chompers had to prepare for zombies who walked into it to still be at full health and zombies now realized a healthy chomper is on the move.
The Hot rod and chomp thing upgrade have the exact same problem vampiric has in comparison to their respective variants weakness/looks
Defibrilated is another one. You dont even know a electric slide has it until they USE OUTTA FIGHT. You can be winning the fight than they bail, heal than finish you. This is bs. Compare this to fighting a charged variant. You can visually see the charge build up over time and know that a large amount of damage is soon to come your way in a firefight.
Long bomb in bfn just makes regular imp punt go slightly farther (good luck remembering the difference to know an all star has this upgrade). Compare this to gw long bomb where an all star would have to compensate for the lack of close range they traded for long range.
For reference I was playing jewel junction in gw1 and came across a particular situation: the mine building had an open window and three plants inside. I was standing on a rock outside and saw this opportunity and I was carrying long bomb and launched it in vanquishing 2 of them and allowing the 3rd to be picked off by a soldier.
Now here's a question for you all, could you even do anything relatively like that in bfn?
Now that all stars dummy shield can be walked through he loses creative placement to jump on and gain a strategic advantage.
Using upgrades to create your own variants is also a flawed argument.
Most of them are very situational and/or don't do enough. And the ones that are "game changing" force you to only use them because they take up too many slots.
A good example of this is sunflower. If you wanted to make a unique sunflower with say: Blossom, Sunslinger and something else to help out. Well too bad because you're stuck with either blossom or sunslinger with a mediocre combo. There's your "variant". Credit to reddit.
You are always going to take the best upgrades over faster regen or speed. Gw2 upgrades also share this problem. A point system to prevent players from having health, damage, and faster reload all at the same time and having the icons show up when vanquished with unique symbols like gw2's would be the best system imo.
Lets take cactus as another character who lacks variety without upgrades. In gw cactus could swap between moderate sniper (default), a heavy sniper (camo), or a non sniper close combatant (bandit cactus). This allowed you to play how you wanted while still utilizing the abilitiy kit of a character you liked. Tf2 sniper has a similar system with the machinia increasing his pure sniping ability but lacking close range capabilities while the huntsman allowed him to partcipate father up the line with his team but decreased his range and damage immensely making him less effective against overhealed heavies. Now cactus is forced to sit in the back of the map and play one way and one way only, lame.
Techniques that aided players in gw were removed in bfn: drone flying is gone, bean surfing, kick surfing, bean jumping, heal station being used as a footstool to gain a height advantage, shields and barriers used to gain a height advantage, warp distance being able to be determined by jumping, and chomper being completely hidden when not moving underground.
Why does chomper need an upgrade to not waste more power when not moving? This was a basic thing in both gws and he constantly kicks up dirt in burrow while still so an ambush is all but impossible in bfn.
I was able to save myself and a supremo in a crash course gnome bomb match by having both of us jumping on my armored heal station before a fire chomper burrowed us in open terrain. This strategy of self preservation is gone now.
A 10 chomper ambush in gw1 on suburban flat due to all of them being hidden underground waiting in ambush. This type of creative/strategic thinking is DEAD in bfn.
Scientist himself lost the dilemma of choosing between offensive capabilities and healing effectiveness. The deadlier he was the less he could help his team. His heal bomb wasn't instantaneously activated so plants had a chance to finish him off. This is non existent in bfn.
With the lack of status affects like toxic, freezing ice, and nonlethal fire; healers are made even more redundant as now they aren't needed to combat these affects since healing got rid of them in gw but since they dont exist in bfn, especially ops and with faster regeneration in bfn healers are now made irrelevant as there is no need for quick healing as you're in no danger as snapdragons afterburn can't kill you and toxic doesn't exist and ice is irrelevant. Sunflower just can't stop taking L's in bfn as scientist at least has his survivability.
Time snare is no longer a visual effect and now you just start slowing down when a rose shoots you from some corner of the map with no repercussions.
Lets not even bring variants into it for a comparison but to tf2's differing weapons instead. A spy with a kunai has only 70 health compared to the stock 125 but he gains the the health of whoever he stabbed for a total of 185. This allows the kunai to potentially be deadlier than the stock spy with Overheal but lose easily to the stock spy as even 40 damage knife hits are going to HURT when you are on 70 health allowing the stock spy to usually win.
Lets move away from the ripped gw2 varinats butchered for upgrades and look at a few others shall we? Some are class specific but you'll get the idea.
Fearless, bottomless, low life, combo, adrenaline rush, and many more. These upgrades reward players for playing aggresive and even reward them with health for jumping into conflict making healers less of a necessity as you can just bash your way to better health, ability cooldowns, and speed. You are rewarded for pushing forward when you would otherwise be punished and need a healer.
Even popcap reeled back on their decision to remove variants with the legendary upgrades which were a desperate attempt to inject life into a flat lining combat system which had gone stale quickly (there's a reason classic g&g and classic team vanquish gets boring after a few matches on gw1). This was basically an admission that the new system had failed imo. It also gave us one of the most broken characters in pvz shooters.
I could go farther for why these upgrades don't work in place of variants but I don't want to be here forever.
SOME PEOPLE THINK THIS IS AN IMPROVEMENT?!?
Part 9: Why wasn't it garden warfare 3 to begin with?
Gw1 and 2 were succesful and had a dedicated fanbase so why change the formula so drastically rather than improving on what already works? Why not use the features and maps you already have as a solid guideline for the future balancing much like how the gw1 variants were fairly balanced out in gw2 as you can only improve, why try to create a new system from scratch?
The game was even made by a majority of the same people as 1&2.
Even internally the game is called gw3. The modes besides battle arena are all garden warfares.
Shortly after gw2 released in early 2016 another hero based shooter came to shake up the genre later that year: Overwatch.
Blizzard revealed their shiny new game modeled after the grandfather of modern class/hero based shooters: team fortress classic.
Overwatch was a massive succes overnight. It was made by blizzard the company that in 2016 could do no wrong and had a long successful track record.
It launched with 21 heroes each with their own unique moveset and personalities. It was such a massive hit that many declared that it would be the next team fortress two.
Overwatch was so successful many other hero based shooters also tried to pop up and the genre became more crowded with battleborn and paladins.
However many problems quickly came: the balancing and meta was awful the characters despite their differences had a small skill ceiling and content was slow. Blizzard themselves also revealed their awful nature getting involved in multiple controveries concerning banning players over hong Kong and political pandering.
The game while not dead quickly fell of due to this and the rise of battle royale.
EA saw how much money the battle royale genre was bringing in and wanted their own slice of that pie and created apex legends which was a success.
I have no reason to believe otherwise that EA didn't want their own personal overwatch given that it made so much money.
They already had a class based shooter based on tf2 in their hands in garden warfare but a massive change towards overwatch style mechanics still called gw3 would be jarring and most likely be repulsed by the fandom. So they changed it to bfn.
Ea is a company willing to jump on the money train at all cost and even side swipe established formulas for new copycat ones after a fad.
This destroyed the gameplay as now the focus was more on a overwatch attack/defense/support roles with shields, stuns, and powerful abilities. This is a bad idea.
Overwatch was balanced with 6v6 where only 1 of each character can be chosen and only 2 from each group total. A Reinhardt style character with a shield designed to soak up damage doesnt work when there are 5 of them in a 12v12 match and he can't be focused fired by the enemy team in a tight space.
Overwatch did have Overheal and these other mechanics but it also had team wiping ultimates to break stalemates with some requiring strategic thinking unlike bfn where this power to wipe the other team resulting in painful and hard to break stalemates in bfn.
Bfn's Overheal is a pain to fight. The ttk in founders was a nightmare and Overheal lasted forever. Now it drains after a certain amount of time has passed. The modern ttk makes it a pain to fight overhealed opponents but buffing it would make playing as a non overhealed character a pain. Compare this to tf2's system where Overheal fades the moment a medic stops healing and even a 450 health heavy can easily be killed by surprise as all the weapons deal heavy close range damage, ubercharge (also counterable but more risky to attempt), and sentries exist. Bfn neither has ultimates or sentries and uber, this just makes stalemates go on longer if both teams have healers yet neither have a way to break through especially eith no fall off.
Bfn also tried to introduce team play characters but this fell apart in encouraging players to stack classes that easily obliterate any player who is trying to lone wolf an idea that both gw and tf2 try not to support but don't punish either.
For example a spy/imp are at a disadvantage figthing a heavy/citron alone but its not an impossible fight and player skill factors greatly especially with the differing weapons/variants. A plant/mercenary alone can destroy a level 3 sentry/z mech but it's easier with a team. Bfn/overwatch want the team to stick together throughout the entire match.
Bfn also makes it impossible for an imp to fight a citron/chomper 1v1 as both posses abilities and weapons that butcher the poor guy so you cannot win against certain classes when playing a class that is beneath them much like overwatch.
Another poor aspect of team play were the swarm characters that reward stacking a team full of the same character for effectiveness as the spawnables are only really usable for this buff in turf (conviently the most played game mode).
Double time is meant to help engineers team reach the frontline faster but it's abused as a quick getaway for engineer to seflishly use. Lets compare this to hovergoats speed boost in gw2, it boosted all allies around the goat allowing it to affect his allies around him EVEN IF HE USED IT SELFISHLY TO ESCAPE IT HELPED HIS TEAM AND COULDN'T BE STACKED WITH SPRINTING!
Take casting shadows as another example, it's supposed to help hide allies but it: slows enemies, sucks them in, makes them extremely vulnerable to attack. This is a better gravity grenade for nightcap than team support ability. It also doesn't blend with nightcaps other abilities which are meant to get her around the enemy lines than deal massive damage, how does a giant noticeable dome help one mushroom?
Butter beacon also only helps corn in dealing more damage while butter barrage could help his whole team by forcing enemies off an objective. Look at wizards co star it also reveals enemies but also provides armor and extra firepower while increasing the hitbox making it a better team play ability.
The aesthetic and tone of garden warfare also completely changed as now all the zombie/plant grafitti (we ate the peeple), propaganda, apocalypse signs, and statues of them in maps are now all gone and we are stuck with maps that honestly feel like they could be in splatoon and you wouldn't even notice.
Part 9 continued
The garndenator isn't really even a garden, it's mainly a machine. Turf and suburbination maps no longer have gardens and tombstones that would slowly rise out of the ground than create a stormcloud/rainbow cloud above them?
Well now they don't exist or they're an unanimated machine that changes lights with no real personality.
No almanac to tell you fun information about the characters. Even the ability descriptions were cut down!
Information on mechanics is also presented terribly to the player as the tag system is horribly explained and the animated segments demonstrating how abilities worked form gw1 and 2 are gone.
The tone also shifted from the zombies attacking the equivalent of superweapons defened by anti aircraft guns and defending invincible robots to put a small flag into space that hurts the plants how exactly? And being threatened by marshmallows from a machine that can't move.
We also lost the animated blood entirely.
Remember how I said earlier that gw walked the fine line of a cartoonish setting that was still enjoyable for everyone?
I think it also did a great job of them fighting in the remains of a human civilization that honored these plants as local heroes (the plants eat free on restaurants and the statues like in chomp town). Well throw that out because we have hot cheese and over exaggerated designs! Just play gw1 and bfn back to back and you'll see what im talking about here.
Zombie territory lacks the dead and corrupted aesthetic set up ever since zomboss estate and expanded on in gw2.
There's nothing pvz about bfn in this game besides the characters and you could make it an entirely new ip but than nobody would care about it due to the garbage marketing and development choices making it an utterably forgettable overwatch clone (gw without pvz is still a solid shooter).
The overall amount of characters is the reason I believe the map design has only gotten worse since gw1 (2 has some real bangers though). Overwatch's map design is anything but stellar due to having to be designed for so many charcters and I believe bfn suffers the same problem. Just compare driftwood shores to tourist trap island and tell me how high you get before invisble walls start interfering with you.
Once again just like animations: fans notice these things, especially returning fans.
This was a deliberate choice by EA, popcap, or who ever was in charge to try and grab new fans and keep the garden warfare fans and it failed miserably and the old fans left.
I'll let doug walker aka the nostalgia critic speak for my opinion on this one.
"Fad" is just one letter away from "fade". And that's exactly what they do. They fade away. That's why it's better to focus on being good, rather than being popular. If you can be both, great. But if you had to choose one over the other, always pick good over popular, because once the people grow out of it and move on to the next popular thing, there's nothing of substance to bring it back. And the timeless message you claim to fight so hard for becomes just another passing trend to forget about."
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Remember this is my opinion. Not all of this may be factual but rather speculation. I have no reason not to believe otherwise as alot of the evidence points to it. They even made imp's intro screen animation a reference to dva.
Part 10: The uneasy and uncertain future of plants vs zombies and popcap.
So here we are in this depressing reality.
Bfn was a total failure. Popcap vancouver died overnight and most of the dev team is gone.
The steam port couldn't even muster 1,000 all time players when the game was active and it sits at mixed reviews overall (it can't even muster a 250 player 24 hour peak). On consoles this is the lowest rated pvz game barely scrapping by at around 3 stars with a fraction of the reviews gw1 and 2 had.
The switch port however good it may be is clearly not going to revive the game at this point.
For those of us on these forums who were here from the beginning, how many people did we lose over the course of bfn?
How many fans left the series entirely due to bfn?
How many pvz youtubers actually stuck around and didn't move on to new games as its clear through krook's video that they didn't enjoy bfn compared to the gw games and that it was much worse for content and views.
For whatever flaws they may have had gw1 and 2 didn't die in less than a year with abysmal player numbers and whatever bugs they did have nothing like rapid fire for chomper existed in them to begin with!
Public opinion on popcap being a EA subsidiary for over a decade is not positive and many want popcap to also foxus on their other ips for a while. Many did not even know bfn and pvz3 existed at all!
The general opinion seems to be that they must be a pvz factory as it's their most popular franchise by far or else they will slip into irrelevancy.
Many do also not seem to enjoy the new artstyle direction of 3 and bfn (I'm one of them!).
/
Even the games cancellation was a silent leaf in the wind for those outside the fandom and most didn't enjoy it anyway.
I agree somewhat with many people who view a gw1 with 2's features being the best potential gw game.
Edit: Pvz 3 has returned in an early access beta! Now will it actually be good and ADVERTISED!!! Sunflower is alive. They even brought back the old title coloring HALLELUJAH! Liking the new artstyle.
The official twitter doesn't awnser fan questions and has left pvz 2 in a wierd state with the store in chaos while continuing to push forward with small non substantial updates.
My final thoughts as a whole on bfn?
They made a game with terrible balancing despite having a much smaller roster than even the first game, worse ai, poorly designed maps with numerous choke points and little variation, no drop off, AWFUL hit detection, copy-pasted assets (over half of the PvP is from the PVE!), poorly thought and executed features (elite bosses imo), a horrible testing team, a horrible coding team, lack of new content outside of free roam areas, little verticality in map design, removal of variants for an upgrade system which is unnoticeable most of the time, worse versions of variants, constant bugs and poorly maintained servers, a terribly implemented ranked mode that was eventually scrapped, a terrible launch state (gw2 stumbled at first but bfn fell onto a landmine face first), failure to recognize and fix pre-existing issues despite numerous mentions by the community(remember repaireville?), making things worse in general like the suburbination changes, less non turf maps than gw1(night maps tilt it even further in gw1s favor), an inability to reach out to the community, and six new classes that offer nothing new other than teamplay which was also poorly executed.
Looking back it didn’t stand a chance from the start. The devs did not have the necessary skill to pull it off. It’s some of the worst handling I’ve ever seen.
They were understaffed with most likely only 1 year at max to work on this game and then their main leads left halfway through after release.
I understand that they probably couldn’t do much if they tried, especially later due to the pandemic but it doesn’t excuse the fact that they screwed up to the point where it’s outstanding. We went from gw2 to this. I also understand that they had good content planned but having some of that o so glorious potential people kept talking about would've actually been great to see at launch where it mattered most!
Even Peter McConnell’s soundtrack in bfn is less interesting and notable than GW1 and even GW2.
Offline only on the switch is great though.
The game fell very short of what both gw games had before it.
There's probably an alternate universe out there where a gw3 that's everything we wanted exists and I want to be in it.
However since the game was most likely a financial failure EA will probably go "huh well I guess nobody likes pvz shooters anymore" and pull the plug altogether rather than admit it was simply terrible decision after terrible decision to switch from the gw format to overwatch with poor handling.
According to red head gaming popcap has released a statement that the franchise is not dead and will continue but they have not stated explicitly what this means. Will the shooters march on or is it only the tower defense portion still alive? Do they have any plans at the moment? Will development be given to a new studio/team? Even if the franchise survives I assume it will be a while before they return to triple a games as this is the first absolute failure pvz has had on consoles as a triple a game.
Bfn had a great and unique framework set out before it to build off of and it completely ditched it to become an overwatch clone in a market that became quickly oversaturated since mid 2016 with no marketing. It only had as many players at founders that it did due to many former garden warfare players being interested. Remove pvz and you have an entirely forgettable overwatch clone.
They had the pieces to make a great garden warfare 3 but holy *=&£ did they blow it. The fans are gone and the garden warfare series is most likely dead. This should've just been a full on pve spinoff like it most likely was meant to be from the beginning.
The chemist zombie's pvz bfn is dead: How and why it failed. It goes into great detail of behind the scenes information of the game (budget failing around April and much content being marked in a way to indicate that they were unsure it would ever be included) and studios slow demise.
Holy crap this was very long to make and i apologise for any grammar mistakes or repeat my points as this took weeks to make and my proofreading and autocorrect are crap. Note once again that some of these are my opinions and feel free to correct me on any misinformation and in sorry if any of these seem a little scatter brained as many new additions (pvz 3 being alive) were made while making this and new info came out. I may make more posts on some of these parts but in more detail.
Credit to all the YouTube channels and redditors and their videos/posts in this post.
