Next Game Idea: Personal Neighborhood

[Iron_Guard8]

As the second part of the 2 hubs, I’ll be covering the one more closely linked to GW2’s amazing Backyard Battleground; the Personal Neighborhood. Like that feature, you can leave it wide open for anyone, open it to only friends, or set it to invite only. I’d like to allow more than 4 total people here for more fun times as well, preferably a full 12v12 if possible.

When you first boot up the game, you’ll spawn here in the base of the character you last played, or if it’s your very first time playing, you choose zombie or plant and it will spawn you in that base as either a Peashooter or a Foot Soldier and then get a basic tutorial on how the game works and how this personal hub works. Once you’ve done that, you’re free to mess about how you like.

It won’t be exactly like the Backyard Battleground, but will be very similar; there will be a Rux store, either in both bases or in a central location, multiplayer and Ops portals in each base (with private match options), quest/challenge boards, a stickerbook (this must come back, I really noticed its absence in BfN), customization/character selection booths, turret spots, and so on. The biggest differences will be that A) it will be much bigger than the backyard battleground, and B) much more customizable. Note too that Rux replaces the sticker machines as you can always buy anything you have unlocked from Rux with coins.

Size: When I first played GW2 and saw the Backyard Battleground I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been on other shooters before. It feels so much more alive than any MMO I’ve ever played and despite its size, there was a lot to do and fid with exploration, and more was added over time to make this even better. When I saw all the cranes in the distance, past where we could physically go, I had expected them to expand the backyard over time and add more stuff, which alas, never came to pass. I want to rectify this in the next game. I’m thinking it will be at least twice as big as far as it’s surface footprint, but also more extensive underground areas to go too; a larger sewer, some deeper tunnels, and gnome ruins that lead to a new Gnomiverse that has multiple reasons to go there (I enjoyed it in GW2 but once you were done with the trials, it became pointless and I’d like no amount of work on the game to go to waste), some other places to visit too, like the Citron station in GW2, maybe even allow you to do stuff on your own private moon!

Some of this may be unlocked by coins and/or quests, but the main goal here is to give every player a private (or not so private if you open it up) playground they can visit whenever and have it of a decent size.

Customization: This is where a lot of players are going to want to spend their coins and time and effort to really make their personal neighborhood personal. We had those limited spots in GW2 to customize our backyards, but I want to turn this up to 11.

When you start out, your neighborhood has the 2 bases, maybe some other special buildings, but mostly generic buildings and unused locations that are covered in ‘under construction’ tape bundles. You can use it as it just fine; AI will spawn all over the map and at the bases just like in GW2, bosses will spawn when bases detect opposing players or AI, both bases have all needed functionality, the town hall and progress-o-meter will be back in some form, and any event based quests and quest givers will appear somewhere in your neighborhood even if you don’t customize it at all.

That being said, you will have a lot of options here. Not only can you place different styles of basic buildings (houses, shops, parking lots, and so on), just to spice things up, you can change the colors with a simple tool kind of like in the Spore vehicle tool. And note there will be a lot of basic building options to play with. Some buildings and paint schemes you will start with, and with the free player/basic paid player/deluxe paid player system, the more expensive tiers will start with more options, some will be unlocked from the battle pass, some from questing in free roam zones, some from Rux that are generally available or added to his inventory over time.

Even the basic buildings that are there just for decoration will have options. From basic Suburbia houses to zombie style mansions and many in between, the options will be significant and will grow over time as Rux will have everything in stock that’s ever been added to the game barring the current battle pass items (which will be added to the store once it’s complete so newer players or those that missed some/all of it, can get the things they want and not feel left out), and those rewarded for specific things like free roam zone rewards.

Some of the spots will be keyed as zombie building only, others as plant only, while a large chunk in the central area will be either so you can change it around and have one side or the other have more spots of their own. Between this and the ability to use some custom paint schemes to further personize them, even without the special buildings, you will be able to make your neighborhood distinct and reflect your personal style.

The spots will likely need to be in different sizes, small, medium, large, and epic. And I’d like at least 5 of the epics, 10 large, 20 medium, and 30 small ones. The starting buildings will be replaceable by any building of the same size that matches the location requirement (plant, zombie, any), while the under-construction spaces can have any building of their size or smaller placed in them.

But there’s a lot more too. While more expensive, you will be able to place special buildings and decorations as well.

Special building examples:

• Sports Arenas: Like the soccer field in GW2, you will be able to place these in large or epic locations and will be able to select different sports like baseball, golf, soccer, basketball and so on. Like the GW2 soccer field, you’ll be able to push a button to start an event where AI spawn to watch while you play with your friends or possibly spawned AI.
• Landmarks: These will be at least medium sized and may be restricted to large and epic or just epic. At any time, any player in your neighborhood can activate this landmark which initiates a big battle as AI of both sides rise up and battle over this landmark! Things like the Sunflower Lighthouse from Driftwood Shores, the Zomboss Statue from Zombopolis, and other special structures can be used to initiate these big fun fights.
• Flag of Power: This may be a special area that is placed in the center from the start like in GW2, but perhaps its something you can instead place manually so you have more options. In either case, it will function much like it does in GW2. Adding some changes to the formula wouldn’t hurt, but it would be something I’m sure many players would like to have as an option.
• Special spawners: While basic AI plants and zombies will spawn in their areas at all times, and the ones you unlock may also automatically spawn as well, the option to place particular spawners would also be available. They could range from extra scarecrows and tombstones that spawn ‘normal’ AI but at a higher rate to unique boss spawners, champion spawners, and so on. There could be a lot of different options here that you could use.
• Other: I’ve probably barely scratched the surface here! I imagine we’d also get special gnome buildings, maybe some temporary neighborhood only buffs, and other stuff.

Note that while it will cost coins to do so, you can paint, remove (leaving an empty under construction spot, or restoring it to the default building for the slot), or replace any building location in your neighborhood. And while, your base won’t allow you to remove key items like Rux or the game portal, you will be able to add decorations and repaint portions of them to make them as unique as you can. Personal expression is the key and it’s another way to keep coins important for the long term and to encourage players to explore and quest in the free roam zones and play other modes too.

AI Spawns: Any basic AI can spawn and as you unlock others, they can spawn too, although some like special bosses will be very specific to particular buildings. One thing to note here is that zombies spawn around zombie buildings and plants around plant buildings, while both spawn at neutral ones.

There may even be an option to turn certain unlocked AI spawns on and off when you work on your neighborhood too, it depends on how robust the system is.

Earning XP and coins in your neighborhood: XP should be normal in my opinion as leveling in this game is mostly just to earn bonus coins, bragging rights, and to customize your player bar (like the 3 current games but instead of fixed by level as to what it looks like, you can customize it a lot, at higher levels you have more options), as there is no level cap and you start with all upgrades available for every character/variant you unlock. As for coins. I’d say to leave it just like the backyard in GW2, but there could be special events and buildings that modify this.

Architect Mode: This is a special mode you enter when you’re working on building, painting, changing parameters, demolishing buildings and so on. Essentially when you enter this mode, it may be a simple control toggle or a building in each base you interact with to enter this mode. When in this mode you are ghostly and move very fast and can likely fly too, and there’s a possibility instead of being your current character, you are a ghostly Zomboss or Crazy Dave, depending on which side you were on upon entering this mode. You can’t be hurt, can’t hurt anything else, and can’t score XP or coins, but you can build, paint, remove buildings, and so on without worrying about being attacked either. When you’re done, you can just exit the mode and return to where you entered it.

Expanding your neighborhood: This may or may not be a thing. The idea here is that the outer borders of your current neighborhood are surrounded in impenetrable fencing or other obstructions, but you can spend coins (and it would likely be pricey), to purchase extra square or rectangular sections. There would have to be an upper limit to how many extra such lots you could buy if this was implemented, because there has to be some limit, but it could be yet another way to customize your neighborhood.

Under the surface and beyond: Much like the backyard battleground, there will be places to explore beneath the surface of your neighborhood; the sewers, ancient tunnels, and the doorway to the Gnomiverse are deep down below your neighborhood and will also be customizable to a degree! You’ll be able to paint things down here, change some decorations around, and likely have special underground only buildings to place!

You can also add space stations, mystic portals, and rockets to the moon to visit! The moon would have to only be a small portion of it of course, but would have low gravity and unique structures available, maybe even that worm from Moon Base Z. The other special destinations would also have unique customization options and limited space (think of the Citron’s station or Rose’s court area in GW2), to keep things from getting out of hand.

Defining Buildings: While I use the term buildings to define things in the neighborhood and things you add yourself, it will be most than just buildings of course; parking lots, cars, buses, airplanes, boats, and other things will all use the building spot system, it’s just used as simple reference term here.

Water and other terrain: I’m thinking that there will be a lake and maybe some rivers present to start with that have limits on what can be built there, but also, you can place certain things like a pirate ship or shark zombies only in the water areas. If the neighborhood ends up expandable, there be certain plots adjacent to the already existent water that have to be water based as well.

Thoughts on why this would be a nice thing to have: I have many reasons that I’ll outline below:

• I love the backyard battleground but always felt it could use a lot more of pretty much everything.
• It allows players to express themselves.
• It gives another reason to play various modes to unlock new options.
• It gives you a place to play in a relaxed or frantic style, depending on your mood and how you set it up.
• It’s another reason to earn and spend coins.
• You can easily invite friends and play all kinds of custom games or throw it wide open and go crazy. It would be great for YouTubers that want to have people over for fun videos, especially if the cap is more than 4 people.
• It has a lot of options and can easily be expanded upon by the devs as PvZ has so many fun and weird ideas for places to add to your neighborhood.

Is there more stuff we could do with it? Yes! Although some stuff here could be altered too; for example, maybe the neighborhood is divided into zones with a few different sized building slots but once a building of a particular side is placed there, you can’t place the other side’s buildings in the same zone. Maybe you have to unlock the sewers and beyond via quests or other method. My goal here is to have a place we can all call our own and give us reasons to spend time here and enjoy the game and world more than ever!

[stukapooka]

@Iron_Guard8One thing I really loved about the backyard were the ai battles and their intensity as the longer you fought the more threats came with weeds having more healing but zombies having more armor. I hope if a gw3 was ever made they expand this to a greater scale where we can put things like corn mortars from gw1 to bomb the enemy side, maybe even call in a tatical cuke or butterhawk strike

Glad to know I'm not the only who misses the almanac and all the interesting little lore pieces like welder only fighting because he's on parol or superbrainz believing he's in an 80s action movie (they even reference this in his ops teamate description).

Imagine a battlefront 2 styled galatic conquest mode for the hub world where the more battles you won increased your sides presence on the map and would allow you to fund your war effort farther such as unlocking more troops and powers. Imagine startimg with only foot soldier/browncoat teams and slowly unlocking imps/healing zombies and vice versa for plants.

I want the gnomes to be used more and imo they should be the main focus as an enemy in the next game where defeating the plants/zombie team on higher difficulties in a campaign would unlock the gnomes domain and they lash out full force to stop the winning team from gaining control of time and space.

Maybe even individual endings for the character you win as like rose returning to the past with the timeline secure, citron going home to a zombie free future filled with humans, or an imp piloting z mech securing the zombies victory on top of a pile of defeated plants holding a brain or Dave's pot before crushing it in triumph or wearing it as a hat.

Sad that we will never likely get another game and the idea here are probably more interesting than what we get.

[TheSprinter85]

This idea sounds really cool! 

This idea seems to combine the Backyard Battleground in GW2 and Giddy Park in BfN, but it builds more upon the idea of the Backyard Battleground. Being able to personalise your neighborhood would sound quite exciting, and would be something that I would like to see in a potential future shooter. Having a tutorial seems like a new way to benefit new players if they had not played a PvZ Shooter before or are new to PvZ. However, it should either be skippable for more experienced players or the tutorial should mainly cover content that would be new to this shooter (less content that has been in previous shooters). Bringing back a lot of the content from the previous shooters, such as character booths, Rux and the Stickerbook, as well as the other more essential content, and being able to access them from this personal neighborhood seems really useful. This personal neighborhood could be the area that you always spawn in whenever you first boot up the game. If we ever got a new shooter, since many players would prefer a GW3 type game instead of a BfN 2, it would more likely be more beneficial to build upon the idea of an expanded Backyard Battleground, rather than building on Giddy Park.

Having your entire Personal Neighborhood be really large and customisable means that players would be able to put their creative skills to the test, and you can show what customisations you have done to other players, whether it is just friends or other players in general, or you could keep it to yourself. It would be really interesting to see what some more creative players come up with as well. I would really like the idea of being able to expand the size of your neighborhood, perhaps you would be able to expand your personal neighborhood in any direction by paying Coins or something similar for a designated amount of land. It could start with pretty much only the Plant and Zombie base, the necessities and the war zone in the middle, but after you reach a certain rank or if you pay a certain amount of Coins, you can expand on it in certain directions (I am sure there would be a limit though). Having lots of choices is what would could each player's own neighborhood very unique. Perhaps certain customisations are only available from Rux for a limited time, and rarer customisations would be available much less often, meaning if you really want a specific rare customisation that Rux sells, you may have to wait really long periods of time, but you would look forward to getting it.

This idea of the Personal Neighborhood also reminds me of some of those sandbox games out there (such as Minecraft), where the aim of those games are to build, mine and basically do whatever you would want. The personal neighborhood would allow you to build as you like, similar to the sandbox games, while also allowing you to get other players to join and visit your neighborhood. This is something you would be able to work on freely, at your own pace, and you could do this if you do not want to play in Multiplayer. This idea also reminds me of those building kind of games, where you try to expand your empire or something (I do not generally play those sorts of games though), because of the abilities to build on your land, customise it and expand it. Some items could possibly be unlocked automatically as your overall rank in the game goes up, for instance, for every 100 ranks you gain on your characters, you unlock a new and exclusive sort of customisation, meaning that you and your neighborhood would benefit by playing the game for long amounts of time and it might encourage players to level up most or all of their characters. I do notice that, in the current shooters, that some to most players never reach a particularly high rank, as they are not interested in using certain characters or maxing out their characters. However, who knows, these exclusive customisations could provide incentive? To randomise this, there could be a specific set of exclusive customisations only obtained by ranking up this way, and the game would give one to you randomly whenever you level up 100 ranks or something, and this will continue until you hit max rank, meaning that if you are after a specific customisation, you may have to nearly hit max rank to get. There could also be a specific customisation, and a really rare one, that you get if you hit max rank?

In these neighborhoods, perhaps seasonal or limited-time events can happen at specific points of the year, where certain items can be bought, which can customise your personal neighborhood even further. If some of these items would change throughout the years, it would open up even more ways of exclusively customising your neighborhood (like a Battle Pass that changes over time). 

To keep this neighborhood idea interesting, hopefully it would be supported for a long time, such as adding new customisations and updates over time, adding new features, adding new lands possibly or something that will greatly improve the replayability of the neighborhood (so it will never truly be boring, even after a long time). Being rewarded while doing certain actions or activities in the neighborhood sounds like an awesome idea as well, which means that you can simply play around in your neighborhood to earn rewards, you are not required to play in Multiplayer. Perhaps if they made it so you could play around in your Personal Neighborhood while offline as well even?

In Conclusion

I would really like to see a Personal Neighborhood or a similar feature added to a new shooter. It would be an expanded variant of the Backyard Battleground (which is already really cool, and fairly expansive already). It seems like a really awesome way to show off your creative passion, as well as having a way to switch up the look of your hub if you so desired. There would also be really good replayability as you would be able to change the look of your neighborhood when you wanted, and not only that, but you can also unlock more items to customise it as you progress through. You can show it off to your friends, have hours of entertainment perfecting and working on the look of your personal neighborhood and more. 

That is it from me!

[Iron_Guard8]

@TheSprinter85 You hit on a lot of the ideas and goals I have for this idea! The Backyard Battleground is to this day, one of the best things I've ever seen in any game and it boggles my mind that we don't see things like it more often. It didn't have as much customization as I wanted, and the idea of expanding that, allowing players to personalize it as much as they can, and a good place to spend time and coins as well as being your home base and where you log into when you play.

For the area more like Giddy Park so you can have free form open battles, I also have: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Next-Game-Idea-The-Public-Battlefield/m-p/10514009#M310... . I also like Giddy Park as an idea, I just feel that like many ideas in BfN, it was never fully realized.

The only part I really disagree with you on is the limited time Rux items, barring seasonal items like feastivus decorations. I really want the next shooter to avoid FOMO so while the game would likely have a battle pass system, my idea is that once the battle pass is over, all those items are permanently available in the Rux store. I posted about my ideas for the economy awhile back, I may repost it after going over the Word document first to refresh it though. 

But yes, the goal here is to give us reasons to login and play a lot, visit those free roam zones to unlock special buildings, paint schemes and decorations, to play PvP games, and to spend those coins to avoid the coin issue in BfN.

Extra Idea: Decorations: In addition to buildings, I was thinking about all those banners, postings, and the like we see all over the place in the current 3 games. Perhaps these could be placed on buildings as well and would be unlocked via playing various game modes, via Rux, and the battle passes as well.

[Iron_Guard8]

I have the 'Art of Plants vs. Zombies' book (no shocker I'm sure), and beyond that, seeing some of the ideas around the net that show off  ideas for the games shows just how much variety we could have for not just maps and objectives for all modes, but also for customizing our neighborhoods.

And of course these, that have been linked before: https://www.hazetoonz.ca/gardenwarfare

There are so many ideas that we've seen and maybe be stored unseen in the PopCap team's storage that could be used for the next games, especially a new shooter! Thanks to PvZ2 and GW2 we have time travel, the moon, and beyond! GW1 focused on Suburbia, BfN of course focused on Neighborville, neither of which are bad, but the sky isn't the limit in PvZ, we can go so much further beyond, but even if we focus on Suburbia again, the variety of what PopCap has done and can do with even mundane buildings and locations, is simply amazing, and one reason why I love PvZ so much.

Edit: a lot of these have of course been used, but not all of it, and there are others I haven't linked as well. 

[stukapooka]

@Iron_Guard8I really wonder what early gw1 would look like with those concepts still as cactus canyon looks like a spoof of area 51 or some sort of listening post.

Driftwood shores artwork showed a swat soldier manning a mounted machine gun ontop of a stranded submarine firing blue lasers at a retaliating mega flower.

Moon base z was gonna focus on stinky cheese ray (I'm glad they chose an eclipse with the crystal mining instead personally) and the pieces were gonna be mined by enslaved gnomes which is pretty dark in context.

And while they are in frontline flats background it shows the machines zombies used to repurpose houses to their liking.

The bfn concept art that's barely in there kinda makes me sad as its just further proof that they probably rushed the game and what we do see is imo more interesting than what we got in game as it seems to have more graveyards and such.

And of course there was the infamous gravedigger class and edgelord soldier who to be fair, I think he could make a great variant skin.

[TheSprinter85]

@Iron_Guard8Agreed, the Backyard Battleground is one of the coolest features that I have seen in the GW series. There were some customisations you could unlock by opening the Chests around the place or completing specific activities in the game, but that was really the only customisations that could be placed, and there would only be limited places where they could be placed. I will check out the Public Battlefield idea and post my thoughts on that as well. 

Good point with the limited time items actually - if there was those players who could not play often and they were unable to get their hands on some really cool limited items, it would be unfair to those players. Perhaps instead those items would be quite rare to come by, but they would be sold from time to time so if players missed out the first time, they could save up and wait for it to appear again, then buy it, so they do not suffer from FOMO? The seasonal items could simply appear a solid once a year, on the other hand, for a decent amount of time, but only during a specific time of the year.

I've had a lot of fun reading through your new game ideas and they are extremely cool ideas! 

[stukapooka]

@TheSprinter85 I'm glad about the removal of limited time items as it created the painful fomo system that plagued the prize maps in bfn.

The system you present sounds like rux in gw2 with his items coming back every once in a while.

Seasonal stuff should stay seasonal but last a fair amount of time.

The chests were cool in BB but once they ran out the map became emptier but you still had the neat little side quests like snowglobes and dead fish.

[Iron_Guard8]

@stukapooka @TheSprinter85 I need to redo my economy post from awhile back but my idea for Rux is that he will have some stuff always available from the start of the game, will sell copies of stuff you unlock via free roam zones, leveling up, and so on, will sell items that were on expired battle passes, and then seasonal items. The only items I feel he should sell on a limited time basis are seasonal items, I want him to sell pretty much everything else, barring stuff you get in the free roam zones. He'll have a huge inventory over time, but of course it wouldn't be difficult to have a big store in game; just make sure it's not too difficult to use, and as you buy some items, you'd not have to get them again, barring consumables.

They'd probably sell coin packs like in GW1 and GW2 as those never seemed to bother people since you can just earn them in game. Having one main currency to cover almost everything you buy that you can earn from just playing (and of course regional currencies only for the appropriate regions), means that you would only buy coins if you really wanted to for various reasons, but quite a few folks would, I'm sure I would, I bought a lot of them in GW1 and GW2.

[stukapooka]

@Iron_Guard8 I like this idea as it makes rux not a greedy cash grab and gives reasons to constantly visit him.

I feel like the star system from 2 would be a good extra currency for certain things as they allowed players to pay for certain things for doing simple quests such as unlocking the target range, enchanting gardens, and getting xp boosts from the fish.

The coins didn't bother people in gw1 &2 because playing just a game of team vanquish would allow you to buy multiple packs of spawnables or cosmetics.

Ops also had the enchanted gardens for extra rewards in higher difficulties for so little in return from the player.