Why are we still here?

In my case, it's because I really love PvZ. When it came out on Steam so many years ago, I saw the cartoony style, humor, and enjoyable game play and loved it ever since. I actually got a smart phone after putting it off, mostly to play PvZ2, which is ironic now as I haven't played in at least a year now, but also PvZ:Heroes too. 

When I first heard of Garden Warfare, I wasn't sure how that was going to work, but it looked great and was pretty inexpensive, so I installed Origin on my PC and picked it up, and loved it ever since. I actually didn't know about GW2 for a bit, but jumped in full bore on day one and even though it had a lot of problems at launch (and some remain to this day), it was so much fun that it's one of my most played, if not most played, video game of all time (and at my age, there's a lot of competition). 

BfN was teased for a long time but not much was known until it was suddenly in alpha and then launched into founders with little fanfare. I was busy on the GW2 forums at the time so picked it up on the first day after work, and to be honest, I thought it was going to be even better than GW2 at first, but that excitement wore off as we ran into even more problems than GW2 had, they were slow on new characters, very little marketing was to be had, and people were unhappy over the economy that makes coins almost worthless after a certain point. They cancelled new content and development, shut off mixed mode for the portal, and never fully developed Ops, leaving the game a shadow of what it could have been. I still have fun with it, but obviously a lot of people were not happy.

I'm still here because I really want a new PvZ shooter, and want the devs to know that people are still playing the games even now and are itching for a new one that is handled better than BfN was. They have a lot of work to do, to satisfy the veteran fans and make a game that is both excellent and keeps PvZ alive, and that's a tall order to fill. BfN left a lot of people unhappy and if I didn't love PvZ so much, I'd have left and not looked back, I've done that for Acti-Blizzard's many messes, I uninstalled Battlenet and haven't looked back, but PvZ is my jam and even with things being in such bad shape, I'll be around until the games are shut down or PvZ is gone for good. PvZ are the only EA games I play anymore, I've got a bunch of their old games for my Commodore 64 (Caveman Ugh-Lympics, Mail-Order Monsters, Archon, and so on), but only PvZ keeps me here right now. I play the shooters pretty much every day and want a new one that is worth buying/playing.

But they really handled this situation badly, and I'm not surprised a lot of folks are upset. So many things went wrong with BfN from the perspective of promotion, support, new content, and so on, that I'd have left as well if I didn't enjoy PvZ as much as I do.

@Iron_Guard8Well said. PvZ is the one franchise that before bfn I could say that i loved all the games even with their their flaws, but bfn? Yikes, I only stayed around out of the slim chance that maybe the game would make a turnaround one day that simply never came and just felt like an overall step down from gw2 and even some aspects of gw1 and felt like it didnt understand pvz.

While I have some hope of maybe a true gw3 one day and that pvz 3 could be good, bfn has just been an eye opener of how quickly and silently a successful franchise can fall from grace after what appeared to be a string of home runs.

Like droneicesoldier said EA are still a bunch of scumbags but once again they did give us garden warfare despite its flaws.

Though he also brings up a valid point lf how unless a sequel really wows the crowd they most likely wont come back sadly.

When things were getting rough at launch me and another input gave input on what was wrong and were very honest about it.  We had phone calls with directors and a short line of direct communication.  It wasn’t until almost a year after communication when these things were implemented on the last update.  And not even close to most of the suggestions.  However it did help tremendously.  In no way were we solely responsible for the improvements.  Not trying to toot my own horn or anything.  But the implementation was purely data input and no graphical changes except making it more aware that your upgrades were in effect.  It just really sucks that it didn’t happen sooner.  I truly believe had Gary still been a part of it we would never have been in this place to start with.

@DroneIceSoldier For me, it is because I have enjoyed all of the PvZ games that I have played. I have not played GW1, however I may give it a proper try, but I have played GW2 and BFN frequently and still do because these games are very cool. I understand the EA situation, but they have given me great and fun PvZ games to play, I can't argue with that. This includes the forum community here, as I am able to provide opinions (and make cool guides) here and no one seems to criticise. It's great here! I really want BFN to have some more support, however, like others do (especially the Ice Lettuce which I really wanted to try).

If that is not possible, however, then I would really like to see another shooter in the franchise's future, along with many others which are still hopeful as well, to make up for BFN's early downfall. I also know that many players still play GW2 and BFN on all platforms, so it is quite easy to find games. I did find that BFN had way too many microtransactions, and along with the support cancelled for the game early, is not particularly fair. But the game itself is still plenty of fun and I like many of the changes they made to BFN (GW2 is still really good as well).

If another shooter is released, I hope that the game will be less microtransaction-heavy (or pay-to-win, in other words). I am still hopeful for another shooter and the current PvZ games are still fun to play.