Re: Re evaluating the pea cannon summonable

by Iron_Guard8
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Re evaluating the pea cannon summonable

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★★★★★ Expert

A while back i examined spawnables to compare them across games. I'm going to rectify a few things starting with pea cannon and parts of his family tree.

 

50 health across all games.

 

Gw1: my PS3 account went to crap so I couldn't accurately test but they should do 20 damage as numbers suggest in ops to browncoats. Since my ps3 account just fell off a cliff one day I couldnt properly test vs player damage in turf. Pea cannon did twenty damage shots, gatling did three damage per shot but fired infinetly, repeater fired two 15 damage shots.

 

Gw2: when hit by a large pea from a pea cannon spawnable a zombie should take roughly 20 damage right? Well on direct hit tests in the backyard on hard (stock difficulty in multiplayer) my scientist in a direct hit went from 100-76 health. Which means pea cannon hits at 24 damage and a regular browncoat who is at 30 health online took two shots to vanquish. Gw2 doesnt have pot damage numbers so its harder to analyse the specifics.

 

24 damage in one shot is very bizarre as its the same damage gatling pea gets off in his gw2 8 round bursts. So in gw2 gatling pea and pea cannon are neck in neck as their fire rates usually are almost neck an neck as pea cannon will fire his second shot the moment gatling prepares another barrage unlike gw1 where gatling kept shooting aslong as his opponent was alive making him better.

 

Strangely enough in solo play/multiplayer it still does just 20 damage on direct hit and heavy splash radius. Is there some kind of oversight in the backyard for extra pot damage?

 

Bfn: this is where I really got ticked off at bfn's handling of pots. Pea cannon in bfn shoots 2 peas but unlike repeater they don't deal 15 damage each. Instead I noticed one did 12 damage while another did 13 so I'm assuming they do 12.5 damage so in two shots they can now finally take out a regular browncoat because bfn lowered the standard health for them is 25. The only offensive Spawnable in bfn with 25 health is tv head and wildflower.

 

Gatling pea is unchanged so if pea cannon deals 24 damage in two shots why is he free yet gatling on a lengthy cool down when they are identical in range and damage with only 10 health seperating them? If they wanted repeater why not just actually use repeater?

 

I've brought up before and i'll say it again that the hit detection and accuracy on bfn pots is absolute garbage. Sometimes an enemy will stagger but otherwise will have no actual damage taken on them.

 

I can stand still and have one shot go by me on the left than another on my right. I can stand next to pots as a zombie and they don't see me till I shoot them.

 

Gatling pea hits only 3 out of 8 shots in a slow moving screen door (random thing but can I just talk about how much I hate that every projectile from corn, soldier, and gatking pea is a freaking dirty yellow tic tac laser).

 

Browncoats seem to beeline fo the objective and ignore pots shooting at them. For reference a pea cannon cannot reliably even remove a 4th of heal zombies HP before he is vanquished by rock tosses.

 

Compared to gw2 a pea cannon in seeds of time can reliably shoot down a buckethead without even getting hurt. Gatling pea can win but only if his shots connect well and he staggers the browncoat enough as his shots dont relaibly stagger. He also misses a lot of shots aiming up at an opponent that is attacking him since they move around while doing so.

 

 

Why change pea cannon to two shots if he's just gonna do the same damage he could get in one like he used to? Even if gw1 and two is only 20 why add two (or 2.5 I guess) if its not gonna help him at all in the long run against anything unlike repeater who can dispose of enemies cannon can't?

 

Apparently bfn was gonna have an upgrade system in ops that would make pots golden giving them more health and damage. Why not just make them actually viable in the first place?

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Re: Re evaluating the pea cannon summonable

★★★★★ Expert

I know you focused on the Pea Cannon here, but it applies to all of them. BfN's pots/bots being so bad is part of why BfN is my least favorite of the 3 shooters. There are so many things wrong with them in BfN:

 

  • Poor placement (It's not universally perfect in GW or GW2, but there are spots in BfN that even if the pots/bots worked well, they'd be terrible).
  • Poor accuracy.
  • The Wildflowers and TV Head AI decimate the stationary summonables since they shoot at range as their focus unlike every single other mobile 'horde' AI.
  • Lack of variety.

In GW I replace pots in Ops on a continuous basis, but at least they damaged the zombies consistently and could be useful to defend with in PvP matches. In GW2, I feel the bots/pots were the best as far as overall effectiveness without being oppressive to the other team. In BfN, we replace them so often, and they are so ineffective, that getting a 'pot/bot vanquish' +XP message is almost shocking. Every wave in Ops sees us replacing at least 50% of them, and up to every single one more often than it ever should be. 

 

For me, the number one issue are the wildflowers and TV heads as they destroy the dynamic between attack and defense and range, but the mobile melee AI do throw rocks and such too often as well. It was mostly used against players and hero/champions in GW and GW2 as we could jump out of reach and stuff so that they'd not be useless. In BfN, they do it far too often and it makes the pots and bots terrible in comparison.

 

 

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Re: Re evaluating the pea cannon summonable

★★★★★ Expert
@Iron_Guard8 Bfn ruins so many of the pots and bots its insane. Scaredy shroom and hidey's damage resistance hardly works where before they could tank an entire clip from supremo up close, Lightning reed lost their close range aoe defense, breaker bot only counters one enemy in the whole game and they nerfed his damage for some reason, Bonk choy and boxer bot have no redeeming quality whatsoever, and the others got straight up wiped from the series.

Gw1 had some really strange positioning mainly in cactus canyon and such (I did like some of the rooftop positions in maps but we needed more than just one of them). gw1 pots were weird. Some had wack balancing like Scaredy, snapdragon, and Bonk choy being armor busters for some reason.

Some pots like bamboo shoot and choy were a bit too good (ice shroom and goop shroom were also stupidly effective against bosses for some reason) while ones like laser bean and repeater were painfully average in gw1 and struggled to find a set purpose.

Ive been thinking of a ranking list that includes every era of pot and bots.

Gw2 nerfed some unfairly but it balanced them as counterparts to the bots pretty well.

Tv head and wildflower aren't the only issue as you state as the other offensive spawnables focus ranged attacks way too much and their basically aimbots. Seriously why do browncoats no longer focus a pot that's directly attacking them?

I have some more stiff to bring up soon as I reinstalled bfn after over a year to just make sure im getting information straight.
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Re: Re evaluating the pea cannon summonable

Champion

I am generally not provided with the exact stats of the summonables, although I will have a rough idea of damage and health values. 

 

Let me start with Battle for Neighborville stats, I do like the cooldown system for Pots and Bots, especially the Pea Cannon and Rocket Bot as they have no cooldown and you can place them whenever you want. That being said, I almost never get a vanquish with the summonables and they never seem to support me and my team that much. It would be better if more summonables were added and if the hit detection and accuracy was improved.

 

I feel that the Pea Cannon and quite balanced to each other from the information that I have gathered on them, the same would probably apply to Rocket Bot and Gatling Bot. The Pea Cannon deals higher damage and deals splash damage, although at the cost of a slow fire rate, while the Gatling Pea fires at a faster fire rate and shoots more peas, although at the cost of low damage per shot. I generally use each of these summonables at the same frequency, placing both in a game of Ops or something.

 

Summonables are always real fun to use and I would possibly like to see summonables added in the future!

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