Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

by Iron_Guard8
Reply

Original Post

Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

★★★★★ Expert

While I work on the XP ideas, I wanted to talk about how to move the BfN characters into a more GW-like environment with the idea of balancing things, and opening up room for variants of these characters. Some are much easier to do than others.

 

As always, these are my ideas and thoughts. I’m not claiming I know everything, but I like to think about these games a lot and want to help make the next game be the best ever. I welcome feedback and your ideas as well.

 

Important notes:

 

  • Sprinting is removed with base speed increased to compensate with speeds being different for each character/variant as a further balance factor.
  • Damage attenuation (drop off) will be a crucial part of the game for balance. Characters designed for mid and close range combat will have high damage attenuation (meaning it drops off rapidly at range), while others will have less.
  • Characters will need to be balanced as needed.
  • Swarm characters are removed.
  • Legendary upgrades are removed or reworked as needed.
  • Team play characters are changed to normal ones as the teamplay idea just didn’t work out, despite how much I love the idea and appreciate them trying new things.
  • Upgrades will be changed or even removed as needed.
  • Glitches that allow attacks of any character/variant to fire too fast or other issues would be fixed if possible, not sure how to handle those turbo controllers for this environment.

Zombies:

 

Electric Slide:

  • Change base character to ‘Disco Queen’. Electric slide will be the electric variant.
  • Since Disco is up close and personal, so would this character. Her attacks would attenuate greatly at long range, so she’d not be as much of a sniper unlike she is in BfN, and I would change her abilities to reflect her being more of a short to mid-range character with decent speed. Her main focus would be to get in, cause some damage, and get out if things go sour as she isn’t a brawler like Super Brainz with her lower health, or she can push it, kick in her new ‘Funky Grooves’ ability and try to cause a lot of damage in a hurry before skating out of danger with ‘Keep on Steppin’’.
  • Base character’s main attack will be funky lasers, Electric Slide will keep her boogie bolts.
  • Her default speed would be above average.
  • Change disco tornado to be a disco ball that fires lasers all around it before despawning. The effect would be similar but pure disco and not reliant on electricity, call it ‘Disco Fever’.
  • Funky Bouncer is very situational. Replace it with ‘Keep on Steppin’’ giving her a short burst of high speed with her rocket skates. May have more than 1 charge, wouldn’t be too long to recharge. (Note: I don’t hate Funky Bouncer but it’s borderline useless most of the time and instant death in others, when it works properly).
  • Outta Fight is essentially the scientist’s energy warp alternate ability. If it’s kept, get rid of the defibrillated or at least take the healing component out of it as this is the worst part of fighting them; being able to be immune to damage and heal to full while being almost vanquished. Alternatively to fit her new concept of a rapid moving attacker, replace it with ‘Funky grooves’ where you get a temporary attack and reload speed increase, would have a long cooldown.

Space Cadet:

  • Station inflation is changed to ‘Crater Maker’ where the cadet calls down a big laser from an orbiting Zomboss station that creates a target point the same diameter as the weapon on the station in BfN but then it moves as the station traces a random line that may or may not zig-zag. Would only last for a couple seconds with a long cooldown. Can be called only fairly close to the cadet. Long/very long cooldown.
  • No other major changes are needed barring balance adjustments and adding variants.
  • Speed would be close to average, whether just straight up average, slightly above, or slightly below.
  • I’d not keep the auto-aim on her laser, I don’t feel she needs it to be honest.
  • She’d keep her double jump and hovering.
  • The camera for gravity smash would be improved and the ability’s movement would be smoother.
  • I envision the character as one that fights to defend objectives and focuses on mid and long range battles. Her range attenuation would be low to reflect this but her point blank damage alpha wouldn’t be that big barring using her Big Bang Beam. She’s more of a sustained damage character but would be able to harass opponents that are keeping their distance as her damage won’t drop off that much with range. Her special weapons can be nasty up close when she needs them, but both have build ups/obvious visual effects that can be avoided.

80s Action Hero:

  • I envision this character as ‘sniper lite’ and would make some tweaks to the character but I don’t feel he needs massive changes to work in a more GW style environment. His basic kit would be easy to keep as a main character and to add variants.
  • His bow blaster would do less damage when not at full pull. Currently, t’s often better to spam the low level shots than to charge up the big one right now. I would significantly cut his bow blasters less than full pull damage, maybe even in half, although for actual values it would have to be tested first.
  • He could hold the full pull bow blaster indefinitely instead of being forced to shoot after a time.
  • His damage attenuation would be very low as a kind of pocket sniper. He wouldn’t lose much damage over range at all.
  • His health would drop to 125. As a mainly long ranged character, he doesn’t need 150 health.
  • Healing would not remove his tag effects as it ruins his kit and takes work to build up the tags.
  • Can’t miss-ile would have its serious issues with not tracking the tags correctly, not firing the correct number of missiles, and other issues fixed. Once these were all done, we could better evaluate how much damage the ability can do and adjust as needed.
  • He would be slower than average on base speed.
  • Rocket Ride wouldn’t need to be changed much as it makes you vulnerable up there, but you wouldn’t be able to fly it around like you can in BfN right now (upgrade or no). Keep the theme songs and maybe add some though!
  • Dynamite Dodge would have the camera improved and the motion smoother.

Wizard:

  • I quite like how Wizard works. I know some wanted him to turn plants into sheep like in PvZ2, but I don’t feel that’s required, although will add it as a possible replacement for co-star.
  • Main weapon fire modes wouldn’t need big changes. I’d say his normal (non-charged) attack would have low to medium damage drop off, and the charged ball wouldn’t need any or very little.
  • Speed would be average or near to it.
  • Spell Disaster may need a damage nerf. I’ve not had too much problem with wizards and this ability, but others have. Adjust it as needed.
  • Zee-lixir hasn’t been a huge issue either, but again, adjust as needed.
  • Co-star is actually pretty fun and only once encountered a player that didn’t want it when they ran into the corner and sat there until I left their head. Seems silly when you get the vision bonus and lots of XP, but whatever. So as a possible alternate ability; ‘Hocus Zocus’, fires a magic ball with a small AoE that temporarily turns plants into sheep. In sheep mode they can’t attack (goats can charge but sheep don’t really have that option), but take less damage thanks to the wool (10% armor), and can float jump.
  • Wizard is kind of like Rose in that he is a kind of mixed bag of tricks. Zee-lixir is nice but timing it can be rough. His low health means he can’t stick around long in a tough fight. I feel he is indeed a supporting character.

Plants:

 

NightCap:

  • I envision her as light and quick; sneak in, take out a key target, and get out. She is far too fragile to brawl and even cloaked in invisibility I’ve accidentally vanquished them when trying to take out other plants! Most stealth characters in these games are either very difficult to play well but rewarding, or not very good. I’m opting for the difficult but rewarding to play option here.
  • I personally feel she was overnerfed in BfN. Still playable and can be fun, but I’d like to see her be more like an assassin and less like a suicide bomb.
  • With damage attenuation, her spore strike can lose that brick wall where it stops doing damage. I’d keep her attenuation high but her damage up close high too, she’d do very low damage at long range, but she’d be deadly up close.
  • She’d be very fast and keep her double jump.
  • Fung Fu would not be an AoE, instead it would be a very powerful, single target attack. I feel the main issue with Fung Fu was it did a ton of damage over an area and you could wipe out swathes of zombies with it, but it being powerful against one zombie fits the assassin idea better, is balanced better, and makes her less annoying to anyone other than her one target. It would have her attacking that target much like Fung Fu acts like now, but only that one target takes damage, with the possibility of adding an upgrade where nearby zombies take some secondary damage.
  • Casting Shadows would lose its gravity grenade effect, but would still hide plants, make it hard for zombies to see, and so on. Maybe increase its size or duration to compensate for this change.
  • Shadow Sneak would largely function as now, with the possibility of making it last longer or have additional charges. We don’t want to copy/paste the Spy in TF2’s default stealth style, but she needs to be able to sneak around more with Fung Fu being single target focused.
  • Her health would remain 75.
  • The idea here is for her to sneak around, find an isolated or engaged target, soften them up with some quick spore strikes, get close for Fung Fu, take the target out, and then sneak away again. Usually in BfN right now she jumps in and Fung Fu’s a bunch of zombies, doing a lot of damage but being taken out as well, or staying at max spore strike range and spamming it as it lacks attenuation within its range but does zero out of this range. She’s in an odd place right now.

Acorn/Oak:

  • With team play gone, becomes the plant’s counterpart to the Imp/Mech.
  • The Oak regens health unlike what the mech should do as the tree is alive and the mech isn’t. But the Oak won’t explode either, instead the Acorn has greater control over its escape flight when it ejects. The idea here is equal but different, as it fits the game series well and we want to keep going with that. The Imp’s explosive escape will be nerfed from BfN’s level of course, as it’s AoE is just too large!
  • Variants would be like the range of mechs in GW2; some would be simpler than others like a Poison Oak toxic variant.
  • Because treetop riders are gone, no need for a flat top, so evergreen and palm tree variants can stand out from the basic Oak.
  • Acorn would be fast, the Oak slow (lumbering you might say XD).
  • Shell shot would lose damage or at the least attenuate quickly. A character this small should not be able to cause so much damage at long range.
  • Sap Trap and Super Sap Trap would cause damage properly, would still give you that jump boost, and would require some time to detonate. This makes it easier to destroy before it can be used but it has trap in the name so I feel it wasn’t designed to be a direct bomb attack, but instead used around corners and as a surprise, kind of like potato mines, and we all just use it as an extra attack instead.
  • Like the GW2 mechs different trees will feature different abilities to further differentiate them from each other.
  • May have to change from Acorn to ‘Nut’ as other trees use different nuts, but that’s just nomenclature.
  • Acorn Dash may or may not keep its second charge. This is up for a balancing check.
  • Hardened will be removed. Acorn will keep its 75 health.

Snapdragon:

  • As a base class with fire, this one is harder to separate out the abilities for a base class and a fire variant, so I’m thinking we could have the base class be the fire variant as well.
  • Swoop slam would have a damage nerf, would have smoother motion, and an improved camera.
  • Blazing trail would be altered for other variants as needed-the Cold Snapdragon would use an Icy Trail for example. This would require altering the actual ability, its damage, effects, and the ability button name and graphic to match for each variant. It would be fixed to avoid the common issue of it not working properly when used.
  • Blue Blazes implies a fire attack, so like blazing trail, would need some adjustment for each variant, but the basic function would be the same. The damage and/or tracking needs to be nerfed.
  • Flame blower and flare ball would be changed as needed for variants, but that’s fairly normal from past games as well, unlike abilities changing. Flame blower being a close up attack needs no attenuation, flare ball might need some to keep this character in check at longer ranges. Flare ball could even be removed entirely if need be, although I don’t think that’s needed if other damage values are adjusted well.
  • Would retain its floaty movement and jumps, speed would be average or slightly below.
  • I’m fine with its 175 health for the character and its assault role. The damage nerfs should help keep it in line.
  • Variants having 2 different abilities as well as their main attacks mean they’d need some additional effort to make. Hopefully this isn’t too difficult to manage as unlike Electric Slide, it’s more difficult for me to separate such things from the character.
  • I envision Snapdragon as an assault character. It gets in close and stays there, causing a lot of damage, but isn’t very good at longer ranges.

Iceberg Lettuce:

  • While not fully realized I feel we can talk about her anyway. Like Snapdragon, I can’t easily separate her ice from her identity so the base character will also be the ice variant.
  • Her icy shield would be of different materials for variants- a fire or toxic version may be less sturdy but damage nearby zombies as well.
  • The freeze-slide move would again be largely based on the element involved, non-element variants may do other effects like drop explosive grapeshot or something like that.
  • Snowball is a fairly basic ability, giving her a simple, extra damage attack. This again would have to be keyed to the type of variant, but workable with extra effort.
  • She looks to be fairly slow.
  • 200 health from what I saw may work for a slower, defensive class.
Message 1 of 7 (449 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

[ Edited ]
★★★★★ Expert

@Iron_Guard8If torchwood isn't in the next game maybe a fire acorn variant could transform into him for a mech.

Ice snapdragon shouldnt be that hard for design since he's in pvz 2.

Maybe this disco slide could send out a disco ball that forces all plants to dance in its aoe like the lights in zombopolis to support her team.

Fire being snapdragon's base form is a good move but I dont feel like his abilities have to change for every variant as they would take a lot of time. His afterburn should now be lethal to incentivise staying away from him.

Snapdragon as a pot should also return.

Rocket ride could be a bomb the area ability on a long cool down.

Regardless of abilities, 80s needs to be less effective as a sniper and more of a mid range attacker that can attack with missiles.

Bfn mech was just stupid in how good it was unlike gw2 with its explosion and imps survival factor by not hoing down on its death. full revert of the mech to gw2 standards imo.

Nightcap is easy to find in bfn because she leaves puffs of smoke while walking making her far too easy to track and eliminate, she doesn't need to be a copy of the spy but she could definitely take a few lessons from him to be more effective.

Wouldn't mind the upgrade system being toned down as some were far too effective in bfn or were a must for certain characters so returning to a simpler health, reload, damage, overheat, and regen system but with the point system of bfn and not the regular 3 cap limit to work with variants returning would be best.

Would like to see these characters reworked for a new game but if they were scrapped for more workable characters I would completely understand.

Message 2 of 7 (435 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

★★★★★ Expert

@stukapooka as always, thanks for the feedback.

 

I definitely want the snapdragon potted plant back, in fact all the summonables from all 3 games would be available, and more besides.

 

A Fire Oak as a variant would be much like Torchwood I'm sure.

 

The forced dancing could work for the Electric Slide but players may really hate that she can summon that instead of the automatic ones from Zombopolis though, as it would give her control and could be really difficult to deal with for the plants. Great idea as we've seen it before and it fits, but a little worried about how good it would be, especially on capture points.

 

Afterburn should indeed be lethal, thanks for pointing that out. Nerfing his other abilities, especially swoop slam, should make that a more viable option. As for the abilities, not against leaving them as is, but having the cold Snapdragon leave a fire trail feels weird. I'd not be upset if they did that though. Cold Snapdragon was a favorite in PvZ2.

 

I love the current Rocket Ride as is when you don't abuse the upgrade that makes it keep going and you can drive it around. Part of the balancing of the ability was that you can easily be taken out as you're stuck in the air and plants can get away from you as it takes a little time for the rockets to all fire.

 

I'd be fine with them changing 80s from a sniper to more of mid-ranged character. That would see him getting some damage attenuation increase of course so he'd be less effective at long range.

 

BfN mech is so odd, the best use of it is to drive it into the plants and self-destruct. I'm 100% on board with making the mech back to GW2 standards.

 

I believe Nightcap's puffs are so the invisibility isn't perfect. They're hard to see in a fight as you've got other things to worry about most of the time, but you can still deal with her if you're observant. The TF2 spy can disguise themselves too, so while I would make her more similar to the TF2 spy as far as being an assassin, she would still be distinct.

 

The upgrade system of 7 points in BfN is great but I agree that too many are too good or not very good at all. They'd have to work on them in detail before a new game, and some variants would have different upgrades from the base character too.

Message 3 of 7 (427 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

★★★★★ Expert
@Iron_Guard8 Kinda like how fire/toxic. variants got fire/toxic damage upgrade buffs? That could work on the seven point system.

The dancing disco ball thing would definitely have to be thought out more, maybe make it destructible and not instant upon being activated so it isnt a win button for slide or it could be a spider like ai that tracks down the closest player or weed that can be shot down.

Would love to see a return of every pot from gw1 again especially the fire pea cannon and laser bean.

Maybe 80s could get some kind of rocket launcher style weapon that better reflects his action hero ness.
Message 4 of 7 (416 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

[ Edited ]
Champion

Great points as always! Thumbs up

 

In a potential new shooter, I would love to see the new characters from BfN to be in the game again. The new characters were actually quite fun to play, and still are actually, but some characters (Ice Lettuce and there might be others we did not know about) never made it into the game and I would have really liked to try them. Since Ice Lettuce specifically was fully developed (or was really close to it) but was never implemented, it would be cool for players to be able to finally play her. Adding variants to some of these new characters might be difficult, for example, Electric Slide or Snapdragon, but perhaps, making those characters an elemental variant and changing the default character as you suggested was a good idea. Variants were a significant part of GW and GW2 and that is a large part of what players enjoyed about those games and what made the PvZ shooter games unique across the shooter genre. Removing variants in BfN is something I got used to, but would like to see them return.

 

Not gonna lie here, I did not mind the sprinting in BfN, but there are few things I want to say to that. Firstly, I would be completely fine with the removal of sprinting in a future shooter, because it made the game somewhat more unfair, such as tanky characters being as fast as smaller but weaker characters (which is actually quite annoying). Secondly, I did not like how every character moved at the same speed, I actually liked the speed differences in GW2. Some characters did have abilities that did make them faster or that gave them a burst of speed, but that is fine because they require the use of abilities and that is part of their character design. Although, if sprinting was removed in a future shooter (it should to be honest), there should be a speed upgrade available for every character that would grant a decent speed boost, but it would be fairly costly to equip.

 

Damage drop-off is actually something I really liked in GW2, as I do prefer attacking enemies at closer ranges and not attacking across the map, unless a sniper of course. Being shot down by random spam across the map is very annoying. The damage drop-off also made the game feel more balanced as players were required to engage at close ranges in order to effectively deal damage. However, some characters, such as Snipers and melee characters, should not have damage drop-off because of the way that these character classes are actually designed. Most of the other characters would probably need it. When BfN released, it was very surprising to see that there was no damage drop-off in game, and that it was never added in the future updates despite the community wanting it for so long. This should be in a future shooter from the very start of its release.

 

I would really like to see at least most of the character upgrades return, especially the legendary upgrades, as well as adding some more regular and legendary upgrades to the game. However, all of the current legendary upgrades and some of the regular upgrades would need balancing, because the legendary upgrades were either too underpowered or too overpowered in BfN. They did replace variants in BfN though, so I suppose that there would be a lower chance for them to be added if variants were in a new shooter instead, as it could be a bit of work to implement both. That said however, they already have the current variants from GW2 and the current upgrades from BfN. If the upgrade system was reimplemented and variants still did not return, I feel there should be a much wider variety of upgrades to choose from, including some that would basically transform characters into character variants. 

 

I did not mind the swarm characters that much in BfN, however it does seem that were introduced as "filler characters" as others have said. That said, the swarm characters had interesting abilities and teamwork skills, so I feel that if they are handled correctly, they could be implemented. Soon after the game's release, balancing should be done appropriately with the appropriate characters. This would involve buffing or nerfing characters as necessary, fixing bugs and exploits that can be done with characters and not unnecessarily buffing or nerfing a character either if it is not needed. BfN made some quite good balancing changes, but also some very questionable and unnecessary ones, I mean Grody Goop was already powerful, so why does it need to do so much more damage all of a sudden? The balancing would also involve making upgrades cost less or more as necessary, or be made more or less powerful (or both).

 

In Conclusion

In a potential future shooter, it would be really cool to see the new characters that debuted in BfN, and even the ones that never got to see the light of day (such as Iceberg Lettuce) to finally be playable. Variants (from GW and GW2) and character upgrades (from BfN) are both really cool, having both in a future shooter would actually be really cool, but doing that might be really hard to achieve as all that would be a lot to implement. Having no damage drop-off in BfN was annoying, as it was something the community really wanted in the game, but it never got introduced, so hopefully this would be rectified in a new shooter. Having characters with varied speeds and without sprinting would overall be better in the PvZ shooters, or it can make gameplay quite unfair. If we saw these changes in a new shooter, the game will end up turning out really well, especially if balance is maintained.

 

That's all now! Standard smile

Message 5 of 7 (385 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

★ Pro

Zombies:

 

Electric Slide/Disco Queen:

 

Funky Bouncer is okay to me, fixing capture issues and maybe adding some screen shaking would do.

Outta Fight definitely should lose the regen. I wonder if it could have shorter duration but deflect attacks back at plants.

Disco Tornado could be replaced with a Disco Ball, but I feel like this would make a great alternative upgrade to Funky Bouncer. Forced dancing is fine as long as it is not something that stays on the field. Maybe just one round of "Hurray" Taunt for plants and zombies alike in surrounding area with low cooldown.

 

Space Cadet:

 

Preserving Space Station is possible if we are nerfing/removing overhealth and removing health merge. Picking off one Space Cadet at a time or the core Station would be easier even with shields. Although having giant orbital laser instead of that joke at Turf Takeover is really cool. 

I also would replace the rocket with spawning a couple of Miner Problems

 

Plants:

 

Nightcap:

 

Fung Fu can be simply solo target or damage to a random single target per tick in the area. That way Nightcap preserves some amount of AoE control but decimates any careless zombie.

I agree with removing the pull of Casting Shadow. Maybe it could introduce friendly fire?

 

Acorn/Oak:

 

Oak is a bit overpowered in BfN, but with all mechanic changes regarding sprint, damage drop off and overhealth, he might actually require the Treetop Riders. Imp's mech has decent damage to stay alive, but Oak by himself is too slow and in need of some armor.

 

Snapdragon:

 

Swoop Slam is weird in terms of damage and I would rather have it as mostly a mobility option with guaranteed knockback.

As for elements.. well, that's one of the reasons I want a hybrid system - so there would be more candidates for characters. I guees we need to make a research on types of dragons and possible variants for Snapdragon Standard smile

 

Iceberg Lettuce:

 

Judging by the model and general character, I would say that she is an elemental and for base we could have something like Arcane Lettuce. I would really love to see her in the game)

Message 6 of 7 (361 Views)

Re: Next Game Discussion: Changes and Variants for BfN Characters

★★★★★ Expert
@voidlistener I suggested the disco ball could act like the hazrads in zombopolis which cause plants to just taunt once then they are fine to not be op.

Oak will need a bit more to compete with z mech but that really shouldn't be too hard with some slight changes to things like speed, fire rate, and health/armor.

Swoop slam being a mobility option with knockback and a better camera could be a good movement ability.

There are so many dragon, wyvern, wyrm, and sea monster mythologies we could use as inspiration for snapdragon variants.

Maybe the legends about dragons that brought fortune or were greedy gold lovers could be used as an armored variant with armor made of various metals and jewels.
Message 7 of 7 (348 Views)