Why giddy park didn't live up to how the backyard handle quests and interest
Giddy park is a concept where I can see what the idea was behind it but it sadly lags behind its predecessor in many ways but what exactly are they? Im gonna try and explain most of my personal opinions as to what they are and why.
Aesthetic and setting
Looking at the two reflects something that has progressively bothered me since bfn came out and thats the environment the games take place in. On the backyard the plant base is made of living trees and hedge walls with a giant tree in the middle that holds crazy daves house while sunlight shines through the sky and a giant rainbow looms overhead, even the non main base territory contains regular houses and cars with kept lawns and green grass. Behind the plant base you can see citrons ship, roses castle, and corn's farm.
The zombie base is the opposite in that the sky above is darkened and the zombie fortress has a gothic look with technology mixed in. Dead trees and artificial purple grass make up the lawns of zombie houses with trash and scrap metal lying around. Behind the zombie base is multiple barren hills with numerous scrap piles and robotic cranes.
The town hall even has a side with a metallic satelite and weapons crate while the other side has planter boxes.
Butterhawks and zombie aircraft fly out into each others airspace. A massive zombie airship even appears over the zombie base every once in a while (imagine if this was a map or a dogfighting mission ahere were allowed to freely pilot butterhawks or zombie ships).
A globe in the backyard is in a plaza divided between the two sides with a massive crack in the center while the tiles around it are in pieces on the zombie side.
The center is a battle ground with unexploded bombs and craters in it while the two forces go to war.
Going to an enemy base causes alarms to blair and the enemy force emerges at full force.
Giddy park on the other hand takes place in an amusement park where the zombie base is a factory that isnt very run down and kept well in broad daylight with regular grass growing. They do get a disco dance floor minigame so thats nice. The plants for some reason just got a piano?
The park itself does look great but it feels like an area completely untouched by conflict as you can't even attack each others bases and the only AI in the fight have to transport down there instead of simply spawning where the conflict is.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the backyard felt like a warzone between two armies that really shaped the world around it and the park doesn't really fit into that setting for the world and it feels like it could be a hub for a different game really.
Single player experience
This is where giddy park really let me down. The park was built around multiplayer and adding more online viability to a hub world isn't a bad idea as it felt like the backyard could've easily held multiple players for both teams.
However once you play offline the problems of the park become very apparent. In the backyard both sides sent out multiple AI consisting of every single enemy in the game except hypnoshrooms, karate zombies, heal zombies, backup dancers, zen sensei, baron von bats, and vampire zombies for obvious balance reasons. AI hero classes and champions of said classes also appeared and were capable of spawning pots and bots. Both ally and enemy classes would spawn to balance each other out and flag carriers would prioritise the player meaning you always a had a constant flow of enemies or allies with you.
In the park however the only AI are tv head and wildflower and its a rather small number of them and they constantly have to go to the park from base meaning outside of the park you never really see them compared to the random AI walking around the backyard.
AI hero classes can show up in giddy park but only during bounties and they are incredibly rare. If the option exists why is not being used at all.
This doesnt even simply effect gameplay as it also has economic impact.
I didn't even touch gw2 online till a free trial for xbox live with spooky squash as the event so a majority of playtime for me was wamdering the backyard. Giddy park really didn't do it for me.
Quests, stars, and economy
In gw2, quests gave stars and XP boosts for challenges like vanquishing 50 enemies as a certain class or eliminating a boss. Rhe bakcyard made this simple as you could simply jump into an enemy crowd, kamikaze the enemy base to draw out the boss you need, simply heal a browncoat in the fight for healing, or you simply farm the flag of power for those 500 vanquishes you need while healing allies.
In bfn vanquishing 15 plant heroes as imp requires you to use solo play, slowly farming in pve regions, or playing giddy park online and running into enemies. Imagine how easy warp to vanquish heroes as scientist would be if you could just activate the flag of power.
In giddy park you have an xp machine that requires coins while in gw2 you can simply farm stara and give them to a fish. Farming XP aslo increased the multiplier on gw2 so farming for the fish really increased XP gain. Stars unlike coins in bfn are still used to access enchanted gardens and rainbow stars if needed so they remain relevant unlike bfn where coins become irrelevant once all items are unlocked.
Since solo play took most of bfn's life cycle to get into the game, farming without going online was painfully slow in pve since skirmishes can be absoulutelty lopsided.
The target range in giddy park is nice but it also is rather pointless unlike the shooting range in gw2 which could give you stars.
Tldr: farming in gw2 was much faster do to how easy it was to jump right into combat scenarios to farm that you can easily manipulate into your favor and stars as a whole maintain their usefulness unlike coins or bulbs in bfn.
Random thoughts
While this is unrelated the backyard was also able to be used as multiplayer map with sections sealed off much like how gw1 taco bandits sealed off parts of the map. I really wish it was an official map as it seems players seemed to like it much like team vanquish battle arena.
Giddy park has events to give players counts through rides at the park, the backyard also randomly spawned in marigold and treasure yeti to hunt down.
The pot positions also allowed for some great tests of their capabilities (and farming the 75 vanquishes quest).
Things like flag of power and infinity time were gimmicks but thats all the more reason to expand upon rather than just toss out entirely.
Its kinda crazy how much the backyard added to gw2 and kept interest at the games early life (youtube guides for stuff like fish or snowglobes still have millions of views compared to giddy park) while giddy park quickly had its novelty worn off fairly quickly and everyone focused on the pve regions or multiplayer.
Being able to play with others is a great thing but it the same moment it feels like popcap forgot about those who would rather play by themselves or simply don't have great online capabilities, especially since solo play wasn't included at launch and is still fairly bare bones.
I hope if they ever get this franchise moving again that they can greatly improve on what the backyard created while also allowing better multiplayer functions.
