Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville - Founder's Patch Notes [ Edited ]

[EA_Lanna]

Hello Founding Neighbors!

It’s been a fun ride recently with all our Founding Neighbors (those who purchased the Founder’s Edition, that is), and we’re in the fifth week of dropping content during the Founders program -- so don’t forget to keep playing! While the Founder’s Edition is now unavailable for those who haven’t yet picked it up, launch is right around the corner on October 18! Before the wackiest plant-on-zombie conflict blooms everywhere, though, we wanted to take a few moments to say thanks and detail all that we’ve unveiled, tweaked, and twisted with the latest update. And, we want to give a giant thanks to all who took part as a Founding Neighbor – your help and support not only drives us but helps us into making Battle for Neighborville! Now let’s dig into the details.

Key New Features Turned On – Now Available for Founding Neighbors

• Enabled Town Center Zombie Region
• Added 4v4 Battle Arena game mode
• Started the Lawn of Doom Festival and Prize Map
• Enabled Daily, Weekly, and Character challenges

Full Patch Notes

Characters

• Added friend or foe outline to better communicate enemies to players – togglable in settings.
• Added Signature Sound to burrowing Chompers to alert nearby zombies to their presence – players will now have a more audible cue for when being chased by a burrowed Chomper
• Improved Chomper run/landing animation to reduce stretching
• Added bullet drag to allow faster speeds from projectile launch and slow down projectiles as they get to max range
• Improved sprinting audio to amplify footsteps
• Added audio to Sonic Swarm when tracking towards characters
• Fixed some characters having invisible weapons
• Fixed missing impact audio sounds for several weapons and abilities
• Fixed missing hit escalation sounds when shooting with Rose/Space Cadet
• Fixed double Goatify abilities being present when using Goatify with Rose
• Created vfx to highlight Sunflower/Peashooter when in more powerful rooted state so they can’t hide in shadows
• Added setting to tune Cactus/Captain Deadbeard ADS Scope sensitivity

Character Tuning

• Night Cap
  • Spore Strike:
    • Slowed down over distance/decelerates
  • Shadow Sneak:
    • Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Shadow Sneak
    • Refresh time lengthened to reduce escape capabilities
  • Fung Fu:
    • Flask VFX added when activating for better visual tell
    • Total damage reduced to be more of a finisher
    • Reduced Fung Fu radius
    • Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Fung Fu
• Kernel Corn
  • Cob Busters:
    • Increased rate of fire
    • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
  • Butter Beacon:
    • Increase throw distance for better usability
  • Husk Hop:
    • Increased launch distance to improve movement capability
• Oak and Acorn 
  • Super Sap Trap:
    • Increased detonate time to improve visual tell 
  • Invoke Oak:
    • Increased channeling time
    • Stopped health regeneration while channeling
  • Treeject:
    • Reduced launch height so Acorn doesn’t get easily lost 
    • Involved Oak goes on refresh timer, so Acorn form is not used purely for health regeneration

• Soldier
  • Z-1 Assault Blaster:
    • Increased rate of fire and damage
    • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
  • Super Stink Cloud:
    • Increased throw distance for better coverage and better sight line blocking
  • Rocket Jump:
    • Improved responsiveness of Rocket Jump
• All-Star
  • Football Canon:
    • Increased damage
    • Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
  • Imp Punt:
    • Reduced fuse to allow more precise usage
• Other Changes:
  • Character ability adjustments to improve responsiveness, including:
    • Rose Arcane Enigma – cut off some animation to speed up ability activation
    • Kernel Corn – Shuck Shot delay removed
    • Peashooter – Removed delay exiting Pea Gatling
    • Snap Dragon – Improved Blue Blazes ability (improved speed / tracking)
    • Citron – Improved EMPeach Trajectory and speed
    • Electric Slide – Improved detonation audio for improved feedback
    • Scientist – Improvements to weapon animations for activating heal mode

UI Changes

• Added Character Class info to reward pop up for better context of who reward is for 
• Added ability to skip reward presentation for Reward-o-tron-rewards to speed things up 
• Added improvements to the Reward Images for customization items 
• Fixed issues where incorrect expression was being displayed
• Fixed issue with expressions ellipses appearing over player head and unable to clear it 
• Fixed some issues with equipping upgrades 

Modes

• Improved audio awareness of when objectives being captured in Gnome Bomb/Suburbination
• Increased Multiplayer Mode Coin Rate to be more in line with Free Roam earn rate
• Ops:
  • Complete retuning of ops waves and pacing
  • Shortened time it takes to complete each wave
  • Fixed some issues with AI navigation
  • Added Elite Boss Waves

• Turf Takeover:
  • Objective Time Tuning
  • Tweaked Spawn Positions
  • Minigame tuning

Free Roam Region

• Collected Gnome Race gnomes now show up as ghosted once completed
• Adjusted difficulty in several quests, gnome challenges, and hunts
• Improved compass navigation in a few oddball areas 
• Chest reward pop ups now prioritized over reward level up to reduce sight blocking rewards in event player also levels up  
• Fixed some exploits in Regions relating to using key items in split screen
• Fixed some issues with medal awarding
• Fixed some NIS issues
• Adjusted XP earn rate in Battle Chest events 
• Improved VFX for mouseflies for improved readability
• Tuned down the difficulty on some of the harder Battlechest Challenges

Stability Improvements

• Made improvements to split screen stability
• Made Netcode improvements – reducing the bandwidth AI was taking in Free roam regions
• Made general improvements to online connectivity

PC

• Added support for toggleable Anti Aliasing in Settings
• Added HDR support, allowing players to enable/disable in Settings
• Added video settings for cloth as well as volumetrics 

[3DJRD]

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@EA_Lanna wrote:

• Made improvements to split screen stability

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I hope this means Split-Screen plays smoothly now on Xbox One. It has been virtually unplayable.

[Iron_Guard8]

This all looks good, no doubt about it, but I feel that we'll need another significant patch prior to the 18th (along with the 2nd PC patch Justin tweeted about that's coming), I'll outline why:

-I didn't see a fix for the team swap glitch, and this one is huge. I've only seen it in Giddy Park but Giddy Park needs this to be fixed so we can have it spiced up and more exciting.

-With the balance changes (which look good overall), I feel that Super Brainz and Engineer will dominate more than ever, and the station may need to be tuned as well. Rose and Sunflower feel a little weak right now too.

-Is the Imp ejection being frozen in place fixed? I didn't see that in the notes.

Those are the big things I didn't see in the patch notes, looking forward to see what this is all like after work today, this is all good stuff (We just more of it)!

Edit: First thing I'm doing after checking the prize map is jumping into Weirding Woods and getting that feather badge!

[Screion]

Good thing i see so far that has not been discussed much is the audio being addressed. The game just does not give a proper feedback when hit or being shot at.

I hope this stupid aim bug is fixed. Makes Cactus and Deadbeard unplayable when all of a sudden the speed feels like driving a truck until i respawn to have it work again.

Also who complained about the Pea Gatling being too weak? Seriously. Are we doing the casual nonsense again?

There is already a massive amount of Gating spam going on from all angles and now i have to wonder if the new "VFX" to highlight Peas around corners will make up for the easy escape they get. The ZPG is a classic to punish Peas with reckless Gatlings and now it looks like they are scratching the entire concept to have the Pea escape before the ZPG arrives.

Time to finally beat zombies battle chest 5 all alone and get the engineer stuff.

[SigmaTheDJ]

I hope this fixes the framerate issue on Xbox One X when you return to the free roam area after playing a match, cos to me that's by far the most annoying bug in the game on that platform, as the framerate drops to sub-30 and that affects the actual game modes as well. Any time I go back to Giddy Park, for example, I need to force quit the game and restart it to get back to 60 FPS before I jump back into a match.

EDIT - It does appear to be fixed! Great job team!

[brady3176]

@Iron_Guard8 Completely agree about super brains and engineer. I wouldn't be surprised if the plant team's win rate dropped an extreme amount since the two most powerful plants got entirely just nerfs. Even foot solider seems to have received a better buff than Corn did. Also disappointed there was no compensation to acorn for the Oak nerfs. Same with Snapdragon, Rose, and Sunflower. All are pretty weak right now, with sunflower probably being the best of the worst. The plants team really doesn't have anything going for it now while Zombies have 4 man space stations, super brains, parrot's air strike, an assassin healer, etc. I don't expect every single issue to get fixed in the 1st patch, just kind of sucks that these patches are seemingly going to be spread apart by a good amount of time with some major balance issues just sitting there.

[YayHorseys]

@Iron_Guard8 I was so hoping team swap glitch got fixed.

[3DJRD]

Why do people keep asking for the Engineer to be nerfed?

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@3DJRD wrote:

I respect your opinion, but did you not play the previous games? The engineer’s primary weapon and mobility have already been nerfed this go around. The concrete launcher does less damage, and no longer explodes on impact (unless you directly hit an enemy). And you can no longer shoot while quickly jack hammering around the enemy. All this actually makes it harder to 1v1 then it used to be. As for his abilities; the turret was just as powerful before (if not more so) and that damage boost only applies to teammates, and the stun from his megaphones is just as long as before. He has definitely been re-tooled to be even more of a support class now then he was before.

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[addx03]

The XP Battle Chest change is incredibly disappointing. It was the best way to make some character actually viable without taking an extraordinarily excessive amount of time. It seems really silly to nerf something like that. 

EDIT: As an aside, is there a way to suggest this card be added to the Trello board? This is an unnecessary nerf that feels like it doesn't help a player at all. Is there a way to see if it can be added to the board and have members vote on whether it should be reverted to how it was before or not?

[MowsDaLawn]

I log in, I cannot see my chars! Been happening for 3 weeks now. This  is a game stopper!!