Zomboss Down Patch Notes

We’re very excited to announce the release of the Zomboss Down Pack for PvZ Garden Warfare. Zomboss Down features a brand new Gardens & Graveyards map “Cactus Canyon”, where Zombies have crash landed in the desert and need to fight their way to a local golf course and destroy a secret Plant facility located under the 18th hole. 8 new characters have also been added as well as hundreds of new CRAAAZY customization items to collect! In addition, this pack also contains hundreds of tuning/balance changes, and bug fixes. We hope you enjoy it! 

Justin Wiebe, Creative Director

Twitter:  @JA_Wiebe

New Features:

- Added new map Cactus Canyon (Gardens & Graveyards) – w/ cool Golf Bomb minigame at the end.

- New card pack added to sticker shop “Zomboss Down” – This is the only place to collect the new Zomboss Down characters and customization.

- 8 new playable characters to collect.

- 200+ new customization items added.

- 3 new consumable plants (Bamboo Shoot, Fire Peashooter, and Ice Peashooter).

- Now able to view party member locations during gameplay via a different colored Gamertag being shown over their character.

- Added 10 new achievements.

- Character level cap increased from 20 to 30, with new star challenges to complete.

- Players can now communicate with all other players in End of Round Screens

- Added a ‘Mute All’ button to leaderboard on Xbox One – This function appears when you enter the leaderboard and highlight another user. 

Scoring/Coin Changes:

- Gardens & Graveyards scoring has been overhauled:

·         Plants can now earn almost as many coins as Zombies in G&G sessions that go the distance.

·         Plants stand to earn the most coins if they stop the Zombies in the 1st few bases (especially if they get a perfect win by not allowing the zombies to capture the 1st garden).

·         Zombies stand to earn the most coins if they progress through to the end of the map and beat the final challenge.

·         Most scoring takes place as each base is captured vs. all awarded at the end of the session.

- Gnome Bomb Coin payouts increased across the board.

- Added Solo and 2-player bonus coins payout to Garden Ops.

- Increased coin payout amounts based on difficulty played in Garden Ops (Craaazy Difficulty is now worth the effort).

- Added new support scoring:

·         Engineer Zombie now earns coins for each Plant vanquished by their Zombot Turrets.

·         Plants can earn a Garden Defend Assist by standing in the capture circle and vanquishing Zombies.

·         Zombies can now earn Garden Capture Assist by vanquishing plants that are standing in the capture circle.

·         Assist awarded for freezing an enemy who is then vanquished.

·         Assist awarded to Chompers if a zombie gets vanquished while in their Spikeweed’s grasp.

·         Assist awarded to Chompers if they goop a Zombie who is then vanquished.

·         Chompers earn coins for destroying zombie shields (Newspaper, Coffin, Screen Door, Outhouse, Barrel, Treasure Map, etc.).

·         Cacti and All-Stars can earn a cover assist by having their Tallnuts and Shields used by teammates to protect themselves while vanquishing enemies.

·         Sunflowers now earn assists for any enemies vanquished by their active Healbeam target.

·         Soldiers now earn assists for any teammates who vanquish Plants inside their smoke clouds.

·         Engineers now earn assists for stunning Plants and having their teammates vanquish them.

·         Scientists now earn a bonus for vanquishing a target by sticking a sticky grenade on them.

·         All-Stars earn Suppression assists for shooting at or near targets who are then vanquished.

·         All-Stars now earn a bonus for vanquishing more than 1 target with a single Sprint Tackle.

- You now get coins for destroying Zombot Turrets – Payout scales based on which turret level is destroyed.

- Entire team now gets coins whenever an enemy boss is shot down.

- Destroying any Bossmode item yields coins (i.e. Coconut Spotting Station).

- Using abilities in Bossmode now awards coins.

- Entire Zombie team now gets points for destroying Tallnut Cannons, Corn Launchers and Flax Cannons.

- Destroying tombstones in Garden Ops now yields a coin bonus.

Map Changes:

- There were a few sections where Zombies were having a hard time capturing the garden early in the game due to severe chokepoints:

·         Added new flanking route to 1st section of Driftwood Shores G&G Map – Zombies can now flank to the left and attack garden more easily.

·         Added new flanking route to 2nd section of Main Street G&G map – Zombies can now flank to the right around the buildings and attack the garden more easily.

- Fixes for a few spots in Driftwood Shores, Shakbite Shores and Port Scallywag where players could get stuck underwater and not be able to respawn.

- Fixes across all maps to reduce areas where players could potentially get stuck in world geo.

- Added more pots to final mansion objective in Wall-nut Hills, and removed the Zombie grave dirt spawners to better balance out the objective.

- Fix for an area in Sharkbite Shores that Zombie AI couldn’t reach.

Tuning/Balance Changes:

- Fixed an exploit where characters could use abilities such as Energy Warp and Jackhammer and also carry the bomb in Gnome Bomb.

- Toned down ragdoll explosion when vanquished by a primary weapon.

- Fixed hit “X” indicator sometimes appearing when not actually damaging a target.

- Added better vfx indication of a Chili Bean being deployed so Zombies can better notice their impending doom and try to escape.

- The Scientist’s Energy Warp ability can no longer pass through players/objects (Tallnuts etc).

- The Scientist’s Energy Warp can no longer enter the mansion in Wall-nut Hills.

- Fix for spamming the Sunflower’s Solar Flare beam where the beam would appear but no damage would be dealt.

- Scientist Heal Bomb wouldn’t heal AI zombies, and well… now it does!

- Fix for Engineer not taking damage from Nugget Mines when riding his Jackhammer.

- Sunflower’s Dark flower ability has had slight damage reduction.

- Engineers on Jackhammers can now run into Cactus Drones and destroy them…. Why not right?

- Stunning a Cactus with Sonic Grenades or Mines will now properly pull them out of drone control.

- You can now stick the Sticky Explody Ball to a drone on either team…

- Engineer drones can now set off Potato Mines if it flies near them.

- The Sunflower’s Heal Beam now cancels after 4 minutes of use.

- Spikeweeds are now properly removed after snaring a Zombie and releasing them.

- Fix for the Retro Pea Gatling ability not ending if player tapped shoot instead of holding it.

- The Scientist’s Mega Heal Bomb was too light-weight, and has been given a little more mass.

- The Sprint Burrow ability made targeting players difficult due to its speed. This has been tuned to require less accuracy.

- Chemists are now able to properly damage the Mega Flower.

- Chompers are now stunned longer than other characters when hit with a Sonic Grenade or Mine.

Fixes/Improvements:

- Optimizations added to reduce latency.

- General stability fixes.

- Fixed an issue where a player could spawn as a character on one team but still be considered on the other team, thus allowing them to team kill.

- Scaled Gamertag and damage number size on Xbox One to make them more legible.

- Fix for Zombot Turrets magically appearing when bases are captured in G&G.

- Fixed occasional loss of UI if spawn menu was up when Garden was captured in G&G.

- More improvements to the “Hold B” interact button when reviving players.

- Fixed some corrupted textures on Imps in Garden Ops.

- Fix for Spawned Zombies sometimes not moving.

- Fixed some incorrect text for Scientist Challenge at level 13 should have been “Plant the bomb” not “Pick up the bomb”.

- Fixed some incorrect text for Scientist Challenge at level 15 should have been “Plant the bomb” not “Vanquish the bomb carrier”.

- Fixed Peashooter Level 14 challenge where it incorrectly stated to “Vanquish 2 Players” when it should have been “Vanquish 2 Foot Soldiers”.

- Fixed Engineer Level 13 challenge that incorrectly states “Vanquish 5 Players” when it should read “Vanquish 5 Chompers”.

- Fixed incorrect text for Chomper Level 13 which states “Vanquish 5 All-Stars in a session” but should just read “Vanquish 5 All-Stars”.

- Fixed Chomper Level 7 challenge where players had to “Goop a Zombie and immediately vanquish them”, but it didn’t work on AI.

- Fix for bug where occasionally Engineer Turrets, potted plants and Dark Flower would not take any actions or attack.

- Removed the word “nil” from the challenges that clearly should never be set to “nil” because what’s the challenge in that?

- Sometimes when players level up or used skip challenge stars right as the session ended it wouldn’t carry forward – this has been resolved.

- Several star challenges didn’t work with the alternate abilities and now do!

- Fixed up many of the Sunflower hats so that more of them could be used in conjunction with accessories.

- AI will no longer move when taunting so they don’t appear to slide around.

- A Zombie arm no longer appears in Chomper’s mouth when unsuccessfully chomping a Zombie.

- Improvements to better sync up positions and animations when Chomper is chompin’ a target.

- Can now no longer get stuck inside houses in Driftwood Shores.

- Fixed up some graphical weirdness where sunbeam had flickering texture when fired at short distances.

- Cleaned up Gargantuar jumping animations .

- Fixed some geo issues on Garlic Drone - could see through it in a few animations.

- Fixed Tallnut issue where the models would swap only a few feet in front of the player.

- Spikeweed will now properly play their retract animation.

- General cleanup for some AI zombie animations that made the zombies appear like they were sliding when being shot.

- Fix for Gamertags sometimes appearing as “?” in leaderboard.

- Fix for Rocket Drone beam not playing hit vfx when shooting most surfaces.

- Proper icons now appear for pirate AI in Bossmode.

- Gnome Carrier in Gnome Bomb Mode will now always show Gnome icon even when gooped/stunned, etc.

- Can no longer get warped if entering a teleporter while simultaneously getting chomped by a Chomper.

- Removed purple splash effect from green super sticky goop.

- Fixed bug where consumables didn’t always appear properly if the player quit from a match and quickly entered sticker book.

- Added proper match objectives for Gnome Bomb mode when displayed in Smartglass.

- Bossmode player will now see end of game sequence instead of black screen at end of Gnome Bomb session.

- Fixed issue where Plant team would not see vfx for Teleporter or get the proper audio.

- Fix for entering Teleporter while in Scientist Energy Ball that would cause a map wide laser show (sounds cooler than it was).

- Fix for Bossmode stats being incorrectly added to other playable characters.

- Fix for players not seeing the end of game video if they get vanquished right before the last Gnome Bomb explodes.

- Tombstone text for getting vanquished by Fire Chomper was not appearing properly for weapon name.

- Beam weapons now properly leave decals on walls.

- Some characters were not properly showing their reload animations to other clients.

- Outhouse Zombies no longer enter an unresponsive state if saved from a Chomper’s burrow attack.