Why I feel that BfN did not match GW2's success

Alright, we've been talking about this for awhile and with BfN no longer receiving new content and many of us deeply concerned over the future of one of the few IPs I legitimately care about, I felt I should post this. I want to note that again, while I don't hate BfN like some obviously do, and feel it did indeed improve on a few things, it has obviously not done all that well. This is the first PvZ shooter that has been put to pasture and we have no news, leaks, or other information about a new game coming. This is not a good place to be.

1. It was not well received by a large chunk of the GW community and didn't attract enough new players: this one is fairly obvious. We've lost a lot of veterans over the year that the game was active and live. We lost Asabaida, Pandareno, Splash Damage, Jet, and many more. Considering that the obvious goal of BfN was to retain that large, reliable pool of long time PvZ shooter players and adding more by making some aspects more mainstream and a bit too much like OW in many ways, this was a massive blow to that idea. Instead of gaining a larger audience, it actually shrunk it. I've actually discussed this with Pandareno back on the GW2 forums and one of their reasons they didn't like BfN was that it's too much like OW but functionally less polished, so they felt there was no reason to play BfN in such a light.
2. It lacked promotion: 4 videos in that year. That's it. All 4 are good, no doubt, but GW2 had more than that before it even launched! Originally with the live from Neighborville streams, we had some direct links and discussions but they fell off early and Covid obviously didn't help. There are people that still play both GW games that barely know BfN is a thing! If anyone should know about a PvZ shooter, it's the series' already existing fans! 
3. The free roam regions are great, once: It must take a ton of work to make these zones; testing the puzzles, making interesting locations, seeding the AI, planning the quests, and so on. And they are a ton of fun, but only the first time through. After that, I only went back to help people get stuff done and to grind bulb XP. When we had the contest last November to get those pies for the Acorn, it gave us a temporary reason to go back and I liked that, but it wasn't enough! If a new game has these zones, and it hope it does, we need more reasons to go back to them. I've never played Destiny but I have played Warframe and even if it can get a bit repetitive, we had reasons to go back to zones like these. This would have really helped the game if they were similar in that regard.
4. Core engine issues: I point this out a lot, but that's because this one of the things that affects everything else and is one of the key reasons the game got cut so quickly. It has been improved but it was awful at launch. Aiming is still off, and it can be easily seen not only between the GW games and BfN, but also by playing games like Paladins you can tell that BfN's aiming is just not tuned correctly, and then there's that weird zoomed scope issue as a sniper where you make a normal minor adjustment and you end up with your cursor 90 degrees off where you were! Add to this the hit registration issue (which does exist in GW2, you will see damage numbers in that game and not cause any or not cause the whole amount, but it's far less common), the sluggish movement of imp punt and rocket jumping, no damage drop off, and other things that make it less fun to play have been a large part of why many veterans left.
5. Economy: This is the 2nd major issue that drove a lot away and frustrate many of us that remain. Adding that Feastivus pack when the game was mechanically flawed was a bad idea, but it's more than that. While the base price of the game wasn't bad, it didn't mesh well with the new microtransaction system and the Rux store which obviously did not go over well. Add to that the fact that once you are done with the reward-o-tron, unless you want to use the XP machine, coins are useless and the region currency becomes useless too which shows some wasted opportunities. It's another reason that returning to the free roam regions loses its appeal; why bother to get more tacos, marshmallows, or sheriff badges once you've got the costumes and such? Imagine if instead of being forced to spend real money to get so much stuff from Rux (and charging rainbow stars for victory slabs, punchers, and such was a bad idea), you could collect various resources from the free roam zones to make costume pieces, bots/pots, and other summonables! That's what games like Warframe do, and it could have worked here.
6. New content came slowly and general lack of it: We did get 3 new maps and the overall map count is decent (I'm including Funderdome for non TT maps, but not the free roam regions, Backyard Battleground, or Giddy park); GW1 has 4 G&G (TT) maps and 8 other maps, GW2 has 5 TT maps (+ Wall-Nut Hills but only in a limited fashion) and 10 other maps, BfN has 6 TT and 8 other maps. 2 of the TT and 1 of the other maps came after launch, but we also only got 1 new character before the swarm characters were added and we should have at least gotten 1 other plant to balance things. We also never had any community challenges, no special portal events like boss hunts or cats vs. dinos (admittedly cats and dinos has never been that popular), nothing like Infinity Time (again, not that well received but not terrible), no new consumables (which we sorely need, there's just not enough of them to choose from in BfN), never got the 3rd phase of Ops, and so on. The prize maps were a mixed bag, and not much of an incentive beyond specific things like legendary upgrades. While I wasn't against no variants as I felt it allowed for more variety in the base characters in the game and should be easier to balance, it also meant that instead of 110 or so characters to play, we have a total of 23. That's just not enough and is likely why they added the GM ranks to keep people playing.
7. It tried to copy rather than innovate: GW2 launched in Feb 2016 and did well, it was high on the sales charts and has high player retention. However, a few months after it launched OW came out and it was a juggernaut at first, despite its terrible business model and Blizzard's inability to balance anything. OW is no longer that big, but seeing some of the changes in BfN, it seems obvious that they felt that they could emulate that game's success and keep the PvZ aesthetic and humor; in their hope of making a financial machine by keeping the loyal GW players and attracting those that liked OW style mechanics. I'm guessing that some of these changes were made part way through development which is why some things are just not working right, even to this day. GW and GW2 felt fresh and an exciting take on MP shooters, but BfN didn't share that same feeling.
8. Serious technical issues: Beyond the core engine problems, many people couldn't even run the game early on and gave up. Even as recent as a couple weeks ago, a friend that did play some was still getting a black screen that he had to use task manager to shut the game down when leaving the game. Add to this lag that many experience, the problems with BA matches working well, people exploiting glitches in Giddy park, and so on, it makes the game look bad and it drove a lot of people away.

Again, GW1 and 2 are not perfect, and both had their own issues, but they just worked out better, played better, had less onerous business models, and obviously went over better with the fanbase. There are other possible reasons, for example, many complain about the TT matches in BfN and how they lack maneuver and teleporters, but I didn't want to include that as a core reason, but may be another reason the game faltered and lost support so quickly.