later

[benn1nat0r]

@Iron_Guard8, @Gormey  & @TheSprinter85 

I have also started playing GW2 again, as I wanted to check if the reports of a healthy player base are correct. I have encountered way more toxicity than in BfN and don't enjoy the experience nearly as much. BUT. I realized why some people keep on playing it. The sticker collection system really draws you in and ops can be a lot of fun. That doesn't mean BfN Ops is bad, they just focus on different things. GW2 ops = action at every difficulty level; BfN ops = relaxing, play pvp for action.

I have to admit, I have gone from outright hating it to somewhat enjoying it at times, now that I have unlocked Ice Pea. Ice Pea was my favorite character in PvZ. I even bought him in PvZ 2, even though he is pretty underpowered in that game. Unlocking him in GW2 was the first time I ever smiled while playing that game, while I'm very happing playing BfN most of the time. To summarize: All PvZ shooters are good and hating someone for having preferences is bad. I just dislike GW2 a lot, due to things like Toxic Brainz, Imp Punt, most z-Mechs, Super Brainz in general, Deadbeard,...

[TheSprinter85]

@benn1nat0r I totally understand your point here! GW2 has loads of cool replayability, while BfN does not as much, it is still such a fun game in many ways. The fact that it is quicker to rank up in BfN is quite cool, especially if you would like to achieve max rank in that game, it is much easier to do so (barring the Grandmaster ranks). BfN could have become such a cool game if it got more support.

I really like both of the PvZ Shooters and will continue to play them often. How do you notice toxicity in GW2?

[Iron_Guard8]

@benn1nat0r 

Certain characters in GW2 are definitely unbalanced; especially the detonation characters and toxic brainz and GW2 could use at least one more bug squashing pass. That being said, even though I'm done with everything in GW2 it's more fun for me to play than BfN now that all I have left in BfN is to get GM5 on all the characters which is such a boring grind that I almost have to force myself to get at least 1 level every day.

As for toxicity, you're either insanely unlucky or it's just the fact that it's so much harder on PC to do that. You can taunt (and I do see that but rarely) in the vanquish cam, but you directly message people on PC unless they're friends so my time is largely decent. In BfN I see a poop emote or something of that nature quite often, easily 5x as often as GW2 and the time difference is huge; I have 2600 hours in GW2 and 733 in BfN, and most of my BfN time is in the free roam zones.

I do like that BfN's anti-cheat means I've never seen a hacker, that's a huge plus for certain.

I also stand by my earlier statements that BfN has such massive potential to be absolutely amazing  but suffers from a poorly ran economy, lack of characters, performance issues on some set ups (especially console lag from what I've seen posted), missing features, and them abandoning the game all made something that should be fantastic into something that while still can be fun, just isn't as good as it could have and should have been.

[benn1nat0r]

@Iron_Guard8 & @TheSprinter85 

I mainly encounter toxicity in voice chat. While I deactivated it in settings, I can still hear others talk. I have been insulted many times since I started playing it and witnessed a lot of other people being harassed as well. In addition to this, I get targeted a lot in GW2, while this has only happened 3 times to me in BfN. Considering I'm way better at playing BfN, I don't get why I would be chosen as a victim. Some people insulted me because I was using Ice Pea. I wouldn't consider the character to be overpowered, especially considering they were playing as Toxic Brainz. I feel like GW2 is only being played by toxic 13 and 20 year old guys who watch a certain YouTube I dislike a lot and who spreads toxicity ... .

@Iron_Guard8 

Well, BfN could have been the best game ever. Just looking at the leaks from data miners hurts. There was so much in the pipeline .

As I said many times before, for me it's basically the opposite.

I return to BfN all the time, even though I have completed everything. The game is so much fun to me. Therefore, I don't notice there isn't anything new most of the time. Now that I have started playing GW2 again, though, I like the feeling of discovering and unlocking new things. Everything else feels frustrating to me. The TTK, way more unbalanced characters, lack of Preserve Pastures Capture Theme (very subjective, I know ), no Acorn & Nightcap, (to me) less attractive visual design, objectively worse graphics (not the style, but worse geometry -> especially apparent when looking at trees).

I also thought leveling up was less of a pain in BfN. In addition to this, I don't really understand why the economy should be worse in BfN. GW2 has a pay to win system built in, while BfN does not. 

I know we have talked about this a lot and I, of course, respect your opinion. There are many things I feel like I can agree with you, even though I prefer BfN. At least the both of us can be happy playing the games they prefer, as GW2 and BfN seem to have enough players to be fun and BfN is optimized for PS4 Pro, which means I can play it without lag in 60 fps on PS5

[Iron_Guard8]

GW2 isn't P2W, as pay to win means if you pay more than me you win and that's not the case. Yes, you can purchase certain characters (which for the record, I'm not a fan of), but barring the Frontline Fighters characters by the time you could buy Torchwood, Hovergoat, and so on, everyone I knew had already unlocked them anyway, and I take an especial joy on taking out people who think being a toxic brainz mean they're going to just vanquish me and then trashing them, especially on a character like the maligned Rock Pea! I bought mostly coin packs in GW2 to show support for the game so I have a ton of coins now, but at least I have something to spend them on.

GW1 has the best economy out of all 3 games as you could only buy coins which you earned anyway. So I only did to speed things up a bit and to show support.

BfN has a terrible system if you want to get things. People were legitimately angry over the Feastivus upgrade being sold while it had so many bugs. The almost 10 million coins I have left that are only for the XP machine is terrible. The rainbow star system is dreadful unless you spend money or have an insane amount of patience (I spend some money on the game early on to again support a PvZ shooter, but barring one Sunflower costume that showed up after the September announcement, I've had everything for months). Looking at why people left the game over the past year and some change, the 2 biggest reasons are the economy and the technical issues. For me the game runs pretty well on DX12 with everything maxxed out, but it does have some weird bugs where I have to kill the game with task manager, aiming is still randomly flakely and so on, but GW2 has some bugs too (like spawning as a plant in the zombie base).

I log in to GW2 and BfN every day, sometimes only briefly, but when I login to BfN and jump into a free roam region to get some XP as I grind out the GM levels, I see so much lost potential. The quests were so good (escorting washy and the dummy dimension quest in Weiridng Woods were some of the most fun I've had in any game ever), the visuals lovely, the ideas behind things were so good, and yet, so much was missed. I was really looking forward to ops phase 3, berry brigade, Iceberg Lettuce, the toxic zombie and other character ideas that were in the pipeline that were never realized. It's quite sad as my first impressions with BfN when it was brand new was that BfN was going to surpass GW2 for me, which is a tall order, but that changed reasonably early on. It definitely got some things right that GW2 didn't (like the customization booth in GW2's UI is such a pain to scroll through, it's much nicer in BfN), but it fell off for me instead of me loving it more.

As for visuals, those are of course largely subjective, but all 3 games look amazing. The fact that made the games look like cartoons come to life and with the details, colors, and hidden (and obvious) jokes make them all a joy to look at. If the next game looks like any of the current 3, i'll be happy.

I always forget about open mics. In any game with mics the first thing I do is turn it off. We have our discord channel for friends when we play together. Random people on the internet can be awful. It was really bad in OW for example. When GW1 launched, the mics were stuck on all the time and hearing random screaming, eating, and such was a really bad time, thankfully they added PTT and the ability to turn it off quickly!

Obviously game play differences like TTK are subjective, I mean some people play Valorant and that game's TTK is horribly quick and that's a hard pass for me! 

[Iron_Guard8]

Oh and my favorite piece of music from BfN:

[TheSprinter85]

@benn1nat0r I see what you mean. I do not use Voice Chat so have not experienced it in this way. Targeting does seem quite prevalant in this game.

Each game has its own advantages. GW2 is not really pay to win, except for some characters such as Z7 Imp, as @Iron_Guard8 mentioned.

BFN has some really interesting changed mechanics that I really like, such as different attacks, shields, the way reviving happens and so on.