@stukapooka I'd be happy with Acorn/Oak being a slightly different version of the Imp/Mech and take the team play away. I do like the team idea, but it doesn't work out that well. Make the Mech like it was in GW2 where it didn't regen health since's it's a machine (although it can be healed), and make Oak able to regen as one difference between them. There's no reason they can't make a 'mech' for both teams while making them different but fun and balanced in their own ways, which is a huge point of the games in the first place!
As for the Cadet, I love her the most out of the new characters, but maybe take away the station idea entirely and replace it with the ability to call down a crater maker attack from a station in orbit like calling in an airstrike or something from other games. Then we'd only have to balance the Acorn/Oak with the Imp/Mech for the transform classes. It would certainly fix some of the ways mechs feel so meh in BfN.
I do give them credit for trying something new with the team classes, and if not for how it slammed into the Imp/Mech and pushed it aside, along with the balance issues they've given us, I do like the concepts. But as you said it's hard to make work and have needed more adjustments than almost any other character in BfN. It may be best to scrap it and move on while keeping the new characters as I love them both. I was ok with the horde characters at first, but I spent coins to max them out just so I could stop playing them. They're just not that fun and feel exactly like the filler they are. Don't bring these back in a new game!
Torchwood is pretty cool, but I love the idea of the Acorn/Oak and am happy with the Giga-Torchwood being a boss without the mini version.
If they really wanted to keep Engineer as he is in BfN, I'd say to replace the speed pad as it's not that useful anyway, separate the ammo replenishment idea from the turret and let us place an ammo crate that can be shot and has limited uses before it runs out and need to be placed again to replace the speed pad, make the turret just shoot and not refill ammo, and change the primary to not be so obnoxious to play against; it's especially bad on that first point in Turning Point. But, I'd rather go back to the GW1 or GW2 engineer or maybe use aspects of several of them. I don't feel that having a drone while the Pirate also does, really hurts anything.
The PvE zones do have the same flow, this may be why Plant Town Center is the best by a wide margin and the rest were still fun, but not as good. I'd like to see reasons to go back, more robust quests, more difference between how they flow, and other new ideas to make them more long lasting to enjoy. I do love looking for the hidden things and the puzzles in BfN.
Oh and as for Citron and All-Star. I would say to make the shields less powerful, especially Citron as multiple Citrons covering each other is the worst spawn camping I've ever seen! All-Stars can do it too, but at least they can't move the shield around once deployed so you can work around that.
I forgot to watch it till just now on break and I feel Redhead did a good job on his video and I especially agree with the communication aspect.
Communication during BfN's life cycle was poor. And while I don't expect them to answer every single post and tell us every little thing, it could have been much better than it was and is now as PvZ feels out in the cold as it were and it's one of very IPs I actually care about enough to put all this effort into! I've been playing most of these games since the first game launched on Steam all those years ago. We could use some decent discussions with the PopCap team(s) about PvZ3, the possibility of a future shooter and other games, and so on.
So here is Redhead's points summed up, and my thoughts on them.
Redhead did also mention stating that the developers should sort a PvZ Heroes friend list issue which was apparently patched in the last update but actually was not. I will not particularly mention it here as it applies to PvZ Heroes.
This game could have been handled better. I really did enjoy certain aspects of the game despite them not working out that well in game. If a new shooter was made, I hope they carry some of the aspects of the game over, such as Legendary Upgrades and characters, but also keep the GW2 fans happy by giving them a game that builds on GW2. They could maybe add Wizard and even Iceberg Lettuce to that game as well, and add some features of the Phase 3 Ops that was going to be implented into the game but was not added in the end.
The Grandmaster ranks have almost no value in the game, which is very frustrating at times. While I still want to max out all my characters to Grandmaster 5, there is no real reward for levelling your characters, apart from some Coins when getting another level (which Coins in itself loses value quite quickly). I honestly thought that a few upgrades would be added for levelling up your characters through Grandmaster, which way the idea was exciting at first, but that motivation was mostly lost when I figured out that there is no real reward for doing so.
I really wish Coins and Prize Bulbs did not lose their value so quickly, in GW2, Coins have so much value as you could even have about 10 Million Coins or something, but still have plenty of things to choose from and buy, whereas in BfN, that's about the time that Coins lose most, if not all, of their value by then (unless playing on Nintendo Switch). I thought the festivals in each month would be quite different in each year for at least a few years, but the developers ended up repeating the older Prize Maps instead, which I did not really expect.
But, probably the worst thing is that we did not get enough communication. It was hard to get excited about specific stuff as it was uncertain what was planning or what was happening in game at some points.
Anyway, hopefully they make another shooter or something. 🤔
