The good, the bad, and the just plain ugly of bosshunt

good:

- There are some younger players out there that did catch on.  Early when the Boss Hunt first comes out you'll have the most incoherent players.  The last time this one came out in 2016 it was my first Boss Hunt and yes, my very first game I tried shooting the Squash the entire game to no avail...we failed and I was like, no way.

- Players aren't afraid to be Scientists.  I used to get this a lot, players rushing to chose the most powerful character and low and behold you've got no Scientists (although usually I'd switch to Scientist...Toxic Brains is where I belong though...I've perfected him to an art with Boss Hunts

- Overall this Boss Hunt was very successful and fun...my right trigger hand is sore from consent use of my Xbox controller (ha).  The variety of characters that I've been able to win with as well as other player character choices were quite interesting.  My third Boss Hunt completed on Thursday I was able to win Hard with two Imps, a Scientist and me being Toxic Brains.  Those Imps really kicked butt.  Yesterday me (rank 5455) and an experienced Scientist was able to get two newbies their first Boss Hunt hat and they were Engineers...they held there own though.

- I was able to get over 100 vanquishes most games, last night I topped out over 200 ending with 245...I think today I'll try for 300 but in order to do so the game needs to go the whole time limit.  My teammates where a big help with my plant killing sprees and I couldn't have done it without them.

bad:

- Citrons, citrons...they were, are and continue to be my biggest pain within this game.  They are every where, with the stun and the ray that shoots from out of nowhere.  Unless it is at a critical stage within the game I do not hesitate to vanquish the citrons as they are just too pesky.  Same goes for the Rose

- Players not remembering to vanquish plants.  If you don't stop to vanquish a plant here or there they just roam around looking to cause you damage...I guess this was one of the reasons I got so many plant vanquishes though.

- Champion vampire flower, although annoying, can be dealt with.  You need to be sneaky and aim only for this plant without disturbing the Squash...I know easier said than done but I didn't find this flower too annoying.

- It's hit or miss with Scientist heals...a few times they didn't have the heal beam and couldn't find their heal stations so I died.  Overall they were pretty good with the heal bomb.  I found that if you had a mid level experienced Scientist(s) and you proved your worth with vanquishes after you dropped the candy then he realized you where the better player and he made it a habit of staying near you.  When I was the Scientist this is what I did.

- The squash hanging around the anchor points was definitely an issue.  I hid behind the tombstones and didn't make a sound/move.  When there were plants around I just punched them without using projectile shooting (in case I missed and hit the squash).  Usually he went away after a while...other times we weren't so lucky...obviously the players should kill the guardian as soon as possible to avoid such situations.

- Foot Solider...every time I am in a game with a foot solider we lose...period.  I have all hats and I just play for fun as well as helping the younger players with hats/wins...but I am almost to the point where if I notice a foot solider I leave the game.

- Odd ball damage output by plants...a few times last night (early this morning, ha)...I played the basic level/easiest game Boss mode and i swear the plants were doing incredible damage.  Maybe I was getting tired with my marathon play but a few games I though we were on Hard/Crazy mode when I specifically saw that we were on easy mode.

Agree to all your excellent points!

But mostly, this one -  The squash that just will not move from the two anchor points, no matter how hard u try and tempt him to leave.

If this occurs on Hard and Crazy Mode, this is the toughest (IMO) to overcome.  You try to take cover from that thin anchor point post, or you try not to aggravate the squash by not shooting at him, or briefly leave the anchor point - observe the squash from a distance and when its safe, back to the anchor point.

All this requires coordination with the other anchor point guardian.

I just completed hard mode and we barely had any time left. 30 seconds left and squash was in Rage Mode.  I was lucky to team up with a Max rank, Toxic Hero, random player.

Last 30 seconds of the game here........  http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/JoeC2475/video/30344501

@joec2475 Well stated about the pesky Squash and nice video...I've saved a few videos to my archives so that I could later bask in my epic (and sometimes close) victories.  My only win on Crazy mode came last night and I don't think I want to try for it again...it took so much out of me (ha)...but good work!

Lots of great stuff here, all true of many games.  My team went at craaazy last night for over two hours without winning.  We just kept getting that horrible luck - camping squash, citron madness, etc.  Good thing I already got the scrumptious hat the night before.

I here that...I've spent over 10 hours of game play these days just trying to complete crazy.  You really have to watch out for your self revives too and use them a lot more wisely.  We won Crazy at the last minute, while squash enraged, me (Toxic Brains) and two other Scientists were vanquished towards the final destruction spree and only one other Toxic Brains remained with extremely little health...but he got it done just in time.  I just keep watching the video and think...how did this happen.  Will not do Crazy mode again...

good : Well, I found this boss hunt to be fun (only one I did before was the previous one - Sasquatch).

There are also a lot of crazy good random players, I've almost beat hard (boss had like 2-3% health left) with a group of random people yesterday and again today we went pretty close in craazy mode (15-20% health left).

bad : Too many kids playing this. I know it's a pretty stupid statement, but almost every kid playing this game are loud, annoying, only want to play with a certain character and only want to do one position. I can't count how many games were we had three players on top because one did not want to attack the guardian, same with the games where you see no scientists because people are favoring the Imp (lolwat seriously?).

The unbalanced squash AI... In some games the squash keept getting on the rooftop while in some case (most of the time when I was anchoring) I never saw him get up there.

The fact that a toxic brainz is NEEDED to win on hard and craazy. This is just plain bs. I was playing with some hardcore gamers yesterday and after 5-6 tries we gave up on hard because we were never able to do it, because we didn't have a toxic brainz. I get that the character is OP, but the game should not punish us for not having this one character.

The citrons and vampire sunflowers shooting you from across the board when playing with a short range scientist, super annoying. Specially when the two anchor players are both using scientists.

ugly : Waay too many clueless players. It's really taking a tall on me playing with guys who keep attacking the boss the whole game without any knowledge of what to do.

Players who sets the difficulty on hard or craazy then leave right after... Ugh, trolls.

---

joec2475 wrote:

But mostly, this one -  The squash that just will not move from the two anchor points, no matter how hard u try and tempt him to leave.

---

Just look at my uploaded screenshot. It's literally bad design. The Squash alone should not be allowed up there - or the anchor spot should give you stat changes that protect you from it.

But when you end up in crossfire from 2 bosses that time is lost and the anchor with it.

And you can't even take cover from it. Because the splash may or may not get you. So your only chance is to stay out of sight. And if that fails the chances of you losing the anchor increase tremendously. 

I could tell stories all day. The worst stories. The pain i went through the last days is unbelievable. And by that i mean people that don't even know how to shoot.

Especially the low level Imp players are causing huge problems again. When they are just standing around until they can summon their mech. Only to die soon after along with it - unrevivable.

People can't even defend the bait. I had this one individual in a game - a Z7 Imp - who decided to just camp up on the center of the roof, while the rest defended the bait.

You could think he figured it all out and took a nice elevated sniping spot. But when i had 40 vanquishes and apparently not enough Imp Punts to carry that team, we finally failed to defend the bait; and that Imp only got 3 vanquishes.

Three.

Then there are are these individuals who are not learning. Either by constantly going after the Squash or constantly leaving the anchor spot. You would think that after the 5th fail the human mind would attempt to identify the problem. But no. I've had people break the anchor 10 times by leaving the spot.

Not to forget ridiculous setups based around character leveling, instead of efficiency. Or 3 Imps, where no one considers health a problem (ragequit included).

And right when you think you know the worst of the worst players you discover this:

You place Tackle Shields to block enemies, and one of your team members immediately opens fire at them to destroy them for no apparent reason.

And i can't tell much good stuff. Now besides the rare appearance of people that just want to get this done and play with a plan in mind.

Only 1 random crazy game succeeded (2 on normal, 1 on hard). And only because i was lucky enough to get 3 high level 2000+ players. That team immediately did well. And we even had a Scallywag Imp (+my All Star, a Toxic Brains and an Astronaut).

That being said i also dominated crazy with 3 other experienced players. We literally defeated the Squash in 2 turns. Where the first rush already cost him like 60% health. But that was well organized before it happened.

In the end Popcap relies too heavily on lazy chaos. Plenty of these problems could be avoided by providing a proper matchmaking. So for example the low level players can fail with other low level randoms, while high level experienced players don't have to worry about how to carry the mess.

I like to help others. But my recent experience told me not to.

This Boss Hunt isn't that hard. It's the lack of intelligence that drags it down.

---

@realitysquared wrote:
In regards to the Squash camping the Anchor points there is something of a preventative;

Tackle Dummies placed on the stairs will completely block the Squash from coming up onto the rooftop. The Squash will not attack it cannot break it by simply bumping up against it.

Of course the other Plants can come along and destroy them but until that happens the Tackle Dummies will completely block the Squash; with the exception of once where I placed a Dummy and the Squash had some sort of fit which cause him to start leaping higher than the building tops two or three times before landing on the roof this worked every time.

---

Can confirm that placing dummies on the stairs prevents the squash from wrecking the anchors.  This is probably the most painful part of this boss hunt.  I had two epic attempts a few days ago where the Squash was making rounds on the roof for ten minutes straight.  We didn't take down the guardian once, but I was using toxic brainz.  I have found the all-star to be much more effective in this boss hunt overall.

His abilities are great and cooldown quickly for taking out hordes of weeds and chomp things which seem to be really OP in this boss hunt.