PC Performance Patch Is Great But.. [ Edited ]

[EQOAnostalgia]

The patch is great, i can finally play PvP without stuttering! BUT, it's exposed an even larger issue... Popcap, this PvP is... well it's not Garden Warfare... and now it's clear why you left that title out. At least i think, i THOUGHT it was due to the PvE aspects, which btw are BRILLIANT. I have dumped over 120 hours already on your PvE content and it wasn't very stable at times. Nevertheless i kept playing and will continue to do so, it's incredible! The changes to ops have been very good as well. BUT WOW

This feels very different. I'm going to list things from previous GW titles and then show how BFN compares. 

TIME TO KILL: GW1 and 2 had great TTK, i heard complaints that those games feel sluggish to people used to twitch style shooters, but that's why i loved GW... it was more thought out, more slow paced, when you came across a player you usually duked it out, because escape and evasion weren't nearly as prevalent. In BFN nearly everyone has a get out of jail free card. This lead me to several instances of people getting away, with a shred of health left, they would dip behind their team, and if i gave chase it was like a MOBA, insta regret! 

TEAM STACKING: GW1 and 2 always encouraged team play, but this was more of a Team Fortress or Monday Night Combat style of team play... BFN feels more like OverWatch, where everyone is glued to one anothers butts, and if you deviate from that too much, you're dead, because 2-4 people are going to steam roll you in seconds. 

ABILITIES: GW1 had a few insta kill abilities, Pea Shooter had his, All-Star had his, Cactoose was a mine-a-holic and Chomper could CHOMP, Let's not forget the ZPG. We had them yes... but now... it feels like everyone has 2 insta kill abilities. I know they don't, but it's usually how i die. Primary fire is useless for the most part, it's always the SPLODEYS that get me

PACING: GW1 especially had a slower pace, love it or leave it, i LOVED IT. GW2 sped things up a bit, and made things a bit more chaotic... ok a lot more chaotic by adding the new classes and variants. We don't have ANY variants, yet i feel like things are 3x more chaotic. You never quite feel comfortable, at least i don't. The maps are still new to me yes, but a certain element of familiarity is missing. It's the pacing. But not just that... it's also

MAPS: Holy chokepoints batman! Especially in Turf Takeover. This was my FAVORITE mode of all time from GW1, which i feel only become worse with each sequel. The maps in general have degraded imo. GW1 had perfect pacing, when you took a garden, it opened up to the next point and the route to the next garden felt amazing. The battles that took place between them were incredible. Engineers had to fight to get those teleporters up, and it was life and death. The Cactoose had to wiggle her butt off and try to troll the teleportal with her drone strikes, with the aid of a trusty Pea Shooter on a roof somewhere, making life miserable for anyone who tried to spawn, only to be countered by a not so happy All-Star with a bone to pick! Now you just zerg from control point to control point, capture and move. Each garden or control point is in a crazy small space, nothing open anymore like traditional gardens and it just feels like a splodey match. 

I know Popcap was asking for feedback, but in terms of PvP, i don't think you can fix this... because the very foundation was going for an Overwatch, while i wanted a Team Fortress 2. 

[Iron_Guard8]

Ah so this is the post you were talking about! Glad it's up so we can discuss things like this.

I'm so glad it's running better for other PC players. The PC community in GW2 has never been dead as some love to cry out, but it certainly wasn't as healthy as I would have liked, so I don't want to see people being unable to play it and shrinking the playerbase before the game even fully launched! They still need to address general issues across the various platforms like aiming, but this looks like a major improvement.

I'll add my own comments on yours. 

TTK: It is longer here and honestly reminds me of TF2 when Scouts would run away from my pyro or soldier and go to their spawn to heal. They mentioned an adjustment to sprinting to make it less easy to use which should help. However, I'm seeing less escapes as people adjust to it, and am getting more vanquishes as well. Not saying it's perfect right now, but it does appear people are adjusting to it.

Team Stacking:  To be honest,in both GW games but especially in GW1, it was more of a mob of individuals rather than true teams most of the time. Teamwork always made a difference but the prior games never felt like actual teams. In TF2 we used to use a lot of medic pushes and would even communicate with spies on when to backstab or sap an engineer's equipment to make the push, in GW it mostly just; "let's all attack and hope this works!''

If it sounds like I'm bashing GW I'm not, I have 771 hours in TF2, less than 400 in Overwatch, and 494 in Paladins compared to over 2000 between GW1 and 2, mostly in 2, and haven't touched Overwatch in at least a year, but part of the appeal of GW was being able to just jump in and not deal with the toxicity that plagues a lot of this style of shooter (part of why I quit Overwatch and never play CoD). There are some glaring problems here, like the space station, but teamwork should always be encouraged in games like this.

Abilities: I do agree that it feels like special damage abilities overshadow primary fire quite often. The changes to some of the classes like soldier have redressed this some, but I would like to see more of a rebalance between primary fire and the special abilities. I'm quite glad that they didn't give us ultimates like in Overwatch and Paladins, they are another reason I got sick of Overwatch.

Pacing: All of these shooters can be chaotic, especially when the team size increases. Attacking the tactical cuke on Main Street in GW1 was very chaotic, especially while the corn mortars were still up. GW2 is more chaotic as it added more new classes and variants than GW1 was. BfN does feel different, it feels more rushed, so some won't like that (as you indicate), others will, and some will be indifferent. I'm mixed on this one to be honest. I'm really liking the PvP here but some adjustments do need to be made to improve it.

Maps: TT has been my favorite mode since it was only G&G in GW1. I still love it here but some of the points need to be adjusted and some of the final objectives too. They did adjust the drill at the end of Goopy Gully, but the batteries at the end of Turning Point are still difficult to defend. I know that in theory it should be easy to defend them in that small round room but I've been able to grab a battery from 2 engineers and friends as a cactus much less characters that are better at frontal assaults.

Some of the points feel too constrained, too easy to defend, that first point on Peachy District can be a major pain to take for example, so I'm all for more adjustments to make the maps more balanced. There are a lot of choke points too, that's a common thing in these maps, and I'd prefer a mixed approach; some chokepoints and some open areas. TF2 did a good job of mixing these up usually, although games of 2 fort could take all day! One thing that often seems forgetten is that the defenders only have to succeed once to win whereas the attackers have to succeed at every single point to do so.

The lack of teleporters I don't mind so much although I did like them. Some of the spots in GW2 for the porters were of very little help. That 3rd point on Moonbase Z, if you had the teleporter on the left, it was barely worth having as you could walk from the porter entrance to the exit almost as fast as it took you to teleport. This is one thing I wish they would have directly copied from TF2, letting engineers (and roses) build the teleporters anywhere, but it's obvious they want to move away from that. I remember many heated battles over them, especially in GW1, where Peashooters would gatling up in spots and the engies would need help to establish the beachhead. I did love those times when my team helped but I've been in many battles where no one even tried to support getting the porter up so just gave up on it and switched class.

Keep bringing up that feedback! I'm happy with BfN but I'll never say its perfect. The more people that enjoy the experience the better as it looks like its going to be the PvZ version of other long term shooters so it should hopefully get support for a long time to come. GW1 and 2 had a lot of support early but it petered off and became little more than a trickle after a time, and when people see that, they feel the game has been abandoned and then that snowballs across the community with negative effects. 

[delete180]

Im not pro programmer, but only unfixable problem i see is maps that we have, obviously devs can't do huge rework to them(But history shows that even this possible, look at RS Siege). Yes devs can remove some small obstacles, or add :/. But lets next map wont be tunnelfest. 

Skills easyly can be reworked, even god dam overwatch doin this often.

Classes, well yeah too late to add that, but if in next year we gonna have plenty new heroes im fine with that. Wich is far more work for the devs, but they choose it. Im just sure on 99,9% that in october 2020 we gonna have like 4 new chars(2 plant and 2 zombie) and 1 TT new map, wich is unacceptable.

Even sprint can be changed, devs can remove delay like bf4 did, or its even possible to completely remove it and make normal walkin way faster. Yes, alot of animations will go to trash can, but screw them most of them are ugly or annoying.

Problem of team stackin is obvious. Maps are to tight, standart weps mostly useles, so everyone is just usin all their skill and thats it, even snipers havin trouble, because of maps desighn.

I want to say, don't loose your hope( You already wasted your money anyway)), but cmon its harsh reality and we have what we have, game that looks like GW, smells like GW, but its not even close as good as GW. I can't recommend it to my friends, they already asked, and i said no, right now game ist worth.