Community Manager
Please, don't start on the Nerf/Balance sheet, on this one! It's not an MMO, but a fun game, meant to be enjoyed at casual players' leisure.
If the compulsive-obsessive Multiplayer/pvp peeps take issue with an in-game feature or mechanism, they can perfectly reach a consensus for avoid using it, much like "superweapons" in certain "C&C titles"; or the "limited/ban" lists in "Yugi-oh tournaments".
It's not okay for a small part of the community, ie the consolekids and the PVPmongers, to drag down everybody else, just because they lack "copium" or self-restraint, to abide by community rules; *made up ones*, at that!
Let us all enjoy the game, as it was originally intended, please. There are few things worse in the entire gaming scene, other than NERF this, NERF that, BALANCE this, RUIN that etc.
Imagine thinking that MMOs are the only genre of videogame that needs balance. If anyone lacks “copium” here it’s you, because you’re unwilling to give up the tiniest and most insignificant slice of your past to let the game reach even greater heights. The community doesn’t reach decisions lightly, there’s a lot of thought and trial and error behind every suggestion. Saying that it’s compulsory to merely want every unit to be legal in the PvP mode lacks any sort of vision or self-awareness. It ever occur to you that the original VS had nerfs and buffs for balancing reasons too? Why do you think some units have different prices than in adventure mode? Because it wouldn’t be as fun if it were 100% true to the original at the cost of the balance. Truth is, the casual side would be just as happy with a Doom price hike as the hardcores, and that’s because no one likes having to play around Doom, not even casuals. The “casuals” you mentioned who would get upset over this are completely imaginary because if they get angry at such a specific and beneficial change then they are in fact not really casuals. No one, casual or not, actually consistently plays VS mode with Doom-Shroom enabled because it becomes apparent to them so incredibly quickly that using such an overpowered unit is unfun for both sides. It makes victory feel cheap for plants and it’s a complete headache for the zombies.
So yes, I do in fact think that the PvP community knows what’s best for the PvP mode. Changing prices in VS has zero effect on the classic single player experience that fans fell in love with, which is where authenticity should actually be the highest priority like you say. VS requires a much finer comb when remastering due to being centered around two human minds strategizing against each other, and the meta evolving in a way the original developers could have never accounted for. Doom price hike in this mode is a very minor change that helps everyone. Hardcores. Casuals. The only people it doesn’t help are the sorry select few whose nostalgia goggles are so incredibly thick that they’ve ironically lost sight of the give and take between the two factions that made the original release so great in the first place. There’s nothing to be nostalgic about when it comes to tweaking a single unit who ruined the entire mode when left unchecked. This extended to random as well, it’s not something that a mere community rule can entirely account for.
Please make Doom-Shroom more expensive. Those who want it to stay too cheap are few and greatly mistaken. If you put it to a poll, the overwhelming majority of fans would be in favor of the change. Try the unit out for yourself in the mode if necessary. The zombies can never get a word in edgewise with it around. Changing this one small thing in the one mode doesn’t remove fun, it adds it.
