The Oh So Depressing Tale of BFN and the FOMO!

@brady3176 I agree with on pretty much everything (with a few minor quibbles). I don't find your post cry-babyish at all, it needed to be said and reinforced by the community.

I did every quest in GW2 every time they came up and due to a bug, sometimes they would suddenly reset and I'd do them again. Last I looked I was 2nd in overall quests on PC with my friend that used to play with me a lot 3rd and someone I don't know was first. I may have fallen down that list by now as I haven't been doing them much since BfN came out, but it's still a lot of quests. Some of them were awful or weirdly unbalanced per side (plants needing 4 special Ops waves vs. zombies needing 5 is a prime example), some required private matches to get them done (like gnome bombs and vanquish confirmed), and some did indeed make you play oddly to get them done (like assist master), but indeed overall they were better than the challenges in BfN. 

The BfN challenges are a mix and some are absolutely fine, such as 'complete an ops as a support class', while others are much worse, the current weekly challenge system is both obnoxious and unrewarding and as @ToastedSarnie  posted, often counter-productive. By all means encourage people to play and to play different roles and both sides but when it's forced, like some of the weekly challenges are, it makes people just not want to play the weekly mode or in some cases, at all, which is exactly the opposite of what we want. The character challenges are generally ok taken on an individual basis but with every week we have a choice of 1 of 4 characters which means there's going to be a lot of people playing the same character so they will be team swapping just to get them done, or in my case, playing the free roam zone challenges instead, but both of these options have a negative effect on the PvP focus of the game! And again that's the exact opposite of what we want.

And while I agree that the way prize maps work, and battle passes in other games that are similar, are designed to keep you playing everyday, I don't find them as onerous as they were thanks to the reduction to 5k per bulb. It would likely be even better if all the challenges were the more enjoyable ones like I mentioned earlier though. Only having 2 a day and 1 reroll a day just feels lacking and can leave you stuck with some of the more obnoxious challenges. I also feel 1 bulb each is rather lackluster when there's only 2 per day and in GW2 we had 15 quests every 46 hours and could hang on to old ones to boot.

Most of the ideas behind the BfN changes aren't the problem, it's how they've been implemented and how many issues the game has. Variants were cool but some were broken (detonation characters for example), and having entirely brand new characters instead of just painting an old one orange or purple and giving them a different hat is just a more appealing idea. The free roam zones are great fun, the idea that Giddy Park can be private or public, putting boss hunts into Ops so you don't waste 1/2 hour, the fact I haven't encountered someone playing as a boss or summoning them in PvP, etc. are all good ideas but between the lag issues, the PC problems, the aim and other control conundrums, the fact that team switch is still a thing, the FOMO feeling we are plagued with, the fact that all these currencies are obsolete for many of us already, and other issues, really make the game feel rushed and incomplete.

I too don't think ill of the dev team and loathe to sound like I'm attacking them. I like this dev team a lot; Justin, Shaun, Rob, and the others all are great fun and I love the PvZ franchise and the shooters especially. I've been a fan of FPS games (I know these games are 3rd person shooters but they're the only 3rd person ones I play) since we used to get 20 copies of the shareware versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom a week, and the attractive, silly, and fun art style, worldbuilding, and general feel of the series makes it my go to MP shooter and GW2 and BfN let me play solo a lot more than GW1 did. Despite the fact that if everything was working properly and the real money store wasn't the way it is BfN could be the best game in the series yet, it's hamstrung by the myriad of problems that plague it. It simply feels like it was released too soon and it feels very beta-like at this time. 

I can't speak for anyone else but I kept playing the 2 GW games, and especially GW2 that Origin states I have almost 2400 hours in, because of the IP, the feel of how it plays, and barring the cheaters, the overall decent community. There was also the idea of filling that sticker book which I was finally able to do earlier this year but that's rare for me as I generally am the first person in our gaming group ti get bored and move on (which is why my Steam library is so huge), but GW2 in particular kept me playing every day even if only for short bursts. If BfN was in a better place with its core functions and the store was less FOMO, I can see the same for this game, maybe even more hours to be sure, especially if we get brand new characters and more free roam zones.

The idea of a game being a live service or shutting down and being unable to play it once purchased is alien to me even if it's grown more common in recent years. We used to go buy cartridges, floppy disks, and then CD and DVD ROMs, all of which that I still own I can play today (some PC games require finagling to get to work). I've played sub-based MMOs which is a similar idea to games as a service, but some of them like City of Heroes have shut down so losing a world where you hang out and can play with friends at any time can be quite the blow. I've always been pleased that we can still play GW1 and 2 even though the support for them is much less than it once was. I also know that the idea of having people keep pouring money into a game is a big part of this idea and I'm sure it happened often in GW1 and 2. The difference is that I never once felt I had to spend money on those games, I just loved them so much that I didn't mind dropping some cash to show that love. If you make loyal fans feel forced to spend, they won't remain loyal or fans for long. In other words, make a great, fun game that we want to see last a long time and no one is going to resent giving the game money; make it feel required and resentment will overcome FOMO and the community will become too small to sustain it.