Plants vs. Zombies 2- What Went Wrong?

[shwnbob]

So, I know there's going to be a lot of disagreement regarding this post, but Plants vs. Zombies 2 is just terrible. Now, before I go into detail about why I hate this game so much I feel it's important to mention that I freaking loved the first Plants vs. Zombies game. I sunk weeks into trying to beat all the challenges and mini-games that game had to offer and the game play, though quite repetitive, never really got boring for me. So, when I heard that the game was going to get a sequel, (technically two sequels, but I don't count Garden Warfare as a true sequel to the game,) I was beyond excited. And, to top it all off, the game would be free too. The second I got a new phone, the contract on my old one expired, I immediately downloaded the game and went to work fighting the undead horde in the Desert.
As I was playing this game, I did obviously see all the locked doors, plants, plant boosts, etc that I could obtain faster if I was willing to buy them with real money, but I ignored these things thinking that I didn't want to just power through this game anyway, I wanted to enjoy the challenge these new worlds and zombies presented me. Anyway, long story short, I finished the last level in the first world and was ready to go to the pirate themed level and fight pirate themed zombies when... the game presents a locked door that can only be opened by getting stars, (or paying your way through.) How do you get stars? You might be asking yourselves. Well, you must go back to the previous levels you've just beaten and replay them three times, each time trying to complete certain challenges like; "complete the level only losing two plants" or, my favorite from the bunch, "produce X amount of sun by the end of the level."
So, here is where my problem lies with this game. Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to force the player to stop playing through the game just so they can go back to levels they've already beaten just to complete the same couple of challenges over and over and over again? It feels so freaking repetitive. I literally can't sit through more then like three or four challenges in a row without getting bored. Look, I'm not going to say the first Plants vs. Zombies game wasn't repetitive at times, but in that case, the game combated this repetitiveness by giving the player a new plant at the end of almost every single level so that they always had a new toy to play with in the next level. This game follows the same pattern as the first game of giving you plants at the end of almost every level, but once the world is completed and you need to go back to the previous levels to earn stars, the game doesn't give you anymore new plants to fight with.
Also, and this may just be me arguing this, but the "producing X amount of sun" challenges are ridiculously annoying almost to the point of feeling like those levels are broken. I only stood a chance at completing those levels once I got the double sunflower plant, which I had to wait for like five keys to obtain, because I'm not paying jack shit for anything in this game. But, even with this plant, those levels are still very difficult to complete because the zombies always, ALWAYS, swarm you if you choose to focus primarily on getting sun energy from your sunflowers.
Look, I get that if this game didn't have these challenge missions the game would have been to short, but they could have at least made these extra missions optional instead of making them mandatory in order to move the story along. I'm just so annoyed that the guys who made this game could screw up this freaking badly. The first game was nearly perfect and with some tweaks to the game play in the sequel it could have been a perfect game. Instead, we are left with this crappy version of a game that used to be fun, but now feels more like a chore then anything else to play through. At this point, all I have to say is screw this game. Good job PopCap/EA for taking a great game and turning it into a soulless cash-guzzling machine that would rather make a game so unlikable or fun that players would rather pay to get through it as quickly as possible rather then taking their time to complete the main game.
So, what do you guys think? Do you share similar thoughts on this catastrophe of a game?

 

[Joffas16]

As chance would have it, I do share similar thoughts on this game. It's a shame that it went for that grind or pay but the game is totally free design route that most phone games take. They really ruined something great. We can only hope they'll make a proper sequel in the future if this one doesn't do well, but it probably will.

 

[Joos]

Personally I always stay away from "free" games. I also check the in-game purchases tab, and if it says anything along the line of "pot of 100 gold 1.99$" or what have you, that game is black-listed from my devices indefinitely.

 

[Legion]

The repetition is what killed it for me in the end as well. I grinded through the Egyptian and Pirate levels, but by the time I unlocked the Wild West it had stopped being fun so I just deleted the game.

Re-doing the levels wouldn't have been quite so bad if the challenges weren't always the same. But considering it is basically the same as before except with limitations it became boring very quickly.

It doesn't really help that when it comes down to it the game is almost identical to the first though. When games are story based it doesn't matter quite so much if the mechanics are the same, but with this it was basically PvZ 1.5 as there were a handful of different zombies and plants. Even the new ones were mechanically almost the same, with only minor differences beyond skins.

For a free game it was an okay way to kill a handful of hours, but as a sequel to PvZ it was pretty lacking.

 

[Smooth Operator]

In short: EA bought Popcap
Now be sure to check out their latest Gears of PvZ game, combining all the non existing excitement of chest high wall shooters with PvZ cuteness.

I'm just happy we got the original game which I will still happily play from time to time before Beelzebub took over.

 

[krazykidd]

I never played the orignal, but i like the second . Yeah i'm not paying for shit, it's anoying especially since they always ask/tell you , you can.

As for produce x amount of sunshine. I use a specific combination of plants for those ( this is a strategy game after all). Sunflower , double sunflower, hazle nut , plant mine , dragon flower , and corn .

Row1 sunflower/double sunflower
Row2 corn
Row3 dragonflower
Row4 hazlenut ( then i upgrade with that power thinggy)

I'll drop a mine for the first enemy so it's an easy kill and cost only 25 sun . Once all is in place zombies will never get to you. Other than that 1 mine , you should never lose a plant.

 

[Yopaz]

In short: EA bought Popcap
Now be sure to check out their latest Gears of PvZ game, combining all the non existing excitement of chest high wall shooters with PvZ cuteness.

I'm just happy we got the original game which I will still happily play from time to time before Beelzebub took over.

Basically this.

Popcap was a successful company in their own niche of developing cheap, but decent games. They earned money with a combination of low budget and compelling gameplay (for those who like that sort of game at least). EA sees a relatively small company that cash in money with each of their releases and thinks to themselves that they can afford to buy that company and manage to get some good money.

However they misunderstand the reason Popcap had such success. They had low budget games where people paid a little to play them. EA shoves them into their own model where consumers have to feed them money through micro transactions or suffer for their poverty.

I would be happy to pay as much as $20 to get the full game on PC if it was like the original only with some new things. I have bought the first game on PC, Xbox 360, iPad and DS. I LOVE that game and I have bought it 4 times. Plants VZ Zombies 2 is a game I won't even touch and Garden Warfare is just putting an emphasis on why people hate EA getting their hands on new franchises. I'm almost curious why Need For Speed hasn't been turned into a shooter yet...

 

[not_you]

In short: EA bought Popcap

That basically sums it up for me...

But, yeah... Can't say that I've played PvZ2, but, PvZ1 was enough for me... I don't play many games on my phone to begin with, but I was bored of PvZ when I finished that, so, more of the same kinda didn't sell to me...

Knowing that they force-backtrack you sealed the deal...
I might install it later, just because it's free...

But otherwise, nope...

 

[Kolyarut]

In retrospect, I think PVZ2 was doomed to a muted reception regardless of what it did.

I loved the first game as much as everyone else (100%ed it on both iOS and PC), but it was starting to get a little on the dull side by the end - you settle into a pattern of plants to buy, modify it very slightly based on the gimmick zombies you're facing that wave, and repeat over and over.

When you look at the ways PvZ1 introduced variety, they're mostly the same as the sequel(though the sequel is missing some of the puzzle modes, which is a shame) - new plants, new boards, new zombie types. It can't have as wide a variety of plants as the original though, because it's got to have the original ones in there... and there's a limit to what you can do with the zombie (and the plant) gimmicks before it just gets annoying. It's not a very complex game, at its core, so most of the gimmicks are variations on "takes more damage / charges faster".

I'd expect anyone coming to it new is going to have a similar experience to the one we veterans had with the original, but since we've been there and done it all, more of the same isn't enough.

They do go a little overboard with the star gate requirements - but even if we are replaying the same level, that's all the entire game is really, at the end of the day, so I'm not sure "if you want to play some more game, play some more game" is the harshest of punishments.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

I agree, the star gimmick is annoying, especially when the stars become impossible to collect (Like the 3rd star on Level 10 of the Egypt World). The problem is, though, that you need to collect all of the stars to get to the final world! So I gave up on it. I mean, I did beat the first 3 levels, but that's all I did.

 

[Kolyarut]

However they misunderstand the reason Popcap had such success. They had low budget games where people paid a little to play them. EA shoves them into their own model where consumers have to feed them money through micro transactions or suffer for their poverty.

I would be happy to pay as much as $20 to get the full game on PC if it was like the original only with some new things. I have bought the first game on PC, Xbox 360, iPad and DS. I LOVE that game and I have bought it 4 times. Plants VZ Zombies 2 is a game I won't even touch and Garden Warfare is just putting an emphasis on why people hate EA getting their hands on new franchises. I'm almost curious why Need For Speed hasn't been turned into a shooter yet...

It's really not a case of "suffering for your poverty". With, I think, two exceptions? all the things you can pay for in game are fairly easily obtainable. They're not charging you dollars per sunflower here.

Plus, even if you're refusing to download it for free on the basis that you might not like being able to pay for stuff (???) I don't think you can say that it's not been more successful than Popcap's model - this news story was from a couple of weeks after release - http://kotaku.com/plants-vs-zombies-2-already-beat-the-originals-lifeti-1232090550

 

[Something Amyss]

It's really not a case of "suffering for your poverty". With, I think, two exceptions? all the things you can pay for in game are fairly easily obtainable. They're not charging you dollars per sunflower here.

Six plants require payment, five of which come from the previous game.

Plus, even if you're refusing to download it for free on the basis that you might not like being able to pay for stuff (???) I don't think you can say that it's not been more successful than Popcap's model - this news story was from a couple of weeks after release - http://kotaku.com/plants-vs-zombies-2-already-beat-the-originals-lifeti-1232090550

Depends on if the downloads are monetised at a more frequent rate than people paid for PVZ. A lot of freemium games don't make money. I'm sure PVZ2, being a sequel to a hit game, made it, but the question is how much.

 

[EHKOS]

Yeah, I noticed that too, and I'm only watching NCS's playthrough lf it. Some of the old plants are only available if you buy them, and it seems much more tedious and repetitive. Usually they would introduce a new zombie, say a little about it, and then start the level, but there were sun-stealers, torch guys, camel panels, and the like, but they all threw them in at once.

The pacing feels off. But I totally understand what you're talking about. When it comes out on Windows, I might just download some kind of trainer that let's you skip levels/stars or something.

DAMMIT EA, WHY MUST YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!!!!

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

One question I would ask, as I'm not quite sure why you're completely ruling out the solution presented:

You bought the first game, using money, and you love it, right?
You also said your initial reason for not buying stuff in Two was simply to avoid ruining the challenge/ 'power through the game'.
so if it's a game you like so much, and these things you can skip by paying aren't challenges but instead grindy and boring... why not spend some money on the game to skip them?

basically, why are you not willing spend some money to support something you said you like, (while also skipping the stuff you don't like), just because the format of payment has been altered slightly?

I mean, it's not like you're a problem spender right? You can say for example 'i spent $20 (or whatever) on PvZ, so i'm willing to spend the same amount of money on a sequel', then hold yourself to that. After all, the only thing that earns the developers money from free to play is monetization of the player base, making it free to play is a strategy to try and get more money, not less, so is it just an automatic compulsion to clam up ('it's freemium therefore i MUST NOT SPEND A CENT!' ?), or are you doing it based on the principal of the matte(paywall = bad, so i'm not going to bow to their hassling), or is it something else?


((not having a poke one way or the other, genuinely just interested into your thought process))


edit: Same goes for anyone else similar to the OP. It's interesting to learn the psychology at play here so more the merrier!

 

[Kolyarut]

It's really not a case of "suffering for your poverty". With, I think, two exceptions? all the things you can pay for in game are fairly easily obtainable. They're not charging you dollars per sunflower here.

Six plants require payment, five of which come from the previous game.

Yeah, the sum total of paying for all of those - if you need all of those (the Torchwood and Snow Pea are incompatible, and two are bombs, so you'll never need all six in the same map) - is the same as the previous game. The Snowpea can be easily circumvented with the Winter Melon, and there's plenty of alternatives to the Squash and Jalapeno, so the only reason to get all of them would be out of the sake of completeness.

[EDIT: Just to be clear, I've looked this up since you wrote your reply - I genuinely didn't know off the top of my head on post #1, I wasn't trying to deliberately misrepresent the facts. Sorry!]

Plus, even if you're refusing to download it for free on the basis that you might not like being able to pay for stuff (???) I don't think you can say that it's not been more successful than Popcap's model - this news story was from a couple of weeks after release - http://kotaku.com/plants-vs-zombies-2-already-beat-the-originals-lifeti-1232090550

Depends on if the downloads are monetised at a more frequent rate than people paid for PVZ. A lot of freemium games don't make money. I'm sure PVZ2, being a sequel to a hit game, made it, but the question is how much.

True. All we know for the time being is that more people played it. If they had fun - which as I say, I don't think there's any reason for a franchise newcomer *not* to have fun with it - then that's a good thing, IMO. There may be reasons to rage at EA but I don't think this is one of them.

I still think it was a fairly unnecessary sequel, though - I was ready to be wowed by it but if I was honest then there weren't a lot of ways I could think of to improve on the original.

 

[mirage202]

*snip*

Because spending $20 on a few pieces of a game is not, nor will it ever be equal to spending $20 on a complete game.

What you have said there is basically what all these freemium games are hoping for. The more people that do it the worse it is going to get. The day is going to come when companies like EA will release DeadSpace 5/6/7 for "free" meaning you'll probably get the first 2 levels, then have to buy the rest in packs, purchase ammo packs, health kits and save crystals.

 

[Kolyarut]

*snip*

Because spending $20 on a few pieces of a game is not, nor will it ever be equal to spending $20 on a complete game.

What you have said there is basically what all these freemium games are hoping for. The more people that do it the worse it is going to get. The day is going to come when companies like EA will release DeadSpace 5/6/7 for "free" meaning you'll probably get the first 2 levels, then have to buy the rest in packs, purchase ammo packs, health kits and save crystals.

Jesus, that would be amazing. DS4 would be a massive improvement over 3 if they rationed the health and ammo more tightly.

Just to be clear though, you know that what you're panicking about here is NOT what the F2P situation with PVZ2 is like, right? Spending an equivalent amount of money *does* get you everything - more than you need.

Assuming the game is actually fun in the first place being able to get it free is not really a nightmare scenario.

 

[Yopaz]

However they misunderstand the reason Popcap had such success. They had low budget games where people paid a little to play them. EA shoves them into their own model where consumers have to feed them money through micro transactions or suffer for their poverty.

I would be happy to pay as much as $20 to get the full game on PC if it was like the original only with some new things. I have bought the first game on PC, Xbox 360, iPad and DS. I LOVE that game and I have bought it 4 times. Plants VZ Zombies 2 is a game I won't even touch and Garden Warfare is just putting an emphasis on why people hate EA getting their hands on new franchises. I'm almost curious why Need For Speed hasn't been turned into a shooter yet...

It's really not a case of "suffering for your poverty". With, I think, two exceptions? all the things you can pay for in game are fairly easily obtainable. They're not charging you dollars per sunflower here.

Plus, even if you're refusing to download it for free on the basis that you might not like being able to pay for stuff (???) I don't think you can say that it's not been more successful than Popcap's model - this news story was from a couple of weeks after release - http://kotaku.com/plants-vs-zombies-2-already-beat-the-originals-lifeti-1232090550

Yeah, I was overly dramatic there. More like making you do something tedious rather than suffering.

What that article says is that it has had more downloads than the original, it says nothing about which game has actually had the most profits. A free game being downloaded more? A sequel with a bigger customer base than the original? All that is to be expected. If you want to claim that it's more successful than Popcap's model you need to show me more.

How much money are they bringing in compared to how much money they spent making and marketing? Also Poppcap didn't just make one game. Their model spans across several games. Bejeweled has sold more than 75 million copies and downloaded more than 150 million times. So if you don't want to do the maths here, Bejeweled has sold 3 times more than the free game has been downloaded and that's actually with less marketing.

 

[Kolyarut]

How much money are they bringing in compared to how much money they spent making and marketing? Also Poppcap didn't just make one game. Their model spans across several games. Bejeweled has sold more than 75 million copies and downloaded more than 150 million times. So if you don't want to do the maths here, Bejeweled has sold 3 times more than the free game has been downloaded and that's actually with less marketing.

I don't think we can say much more here than "I don't know and nor do you". It's honestly neither of our business really. EA/Popcap can sell their stuff however they please. All that ought to matter to us is a) is the game fun, and b) are we getting value for money? For anyone who's putting down $0, it has to be a pretty crummy game for them to get no value at all.

 

[Yopaz]

How much money are they bringing in compared to how much money they spent making and marketing? Also Poppcap didn't just make one game. Their model spans across several games. Bejeweled has sold more than 75 million copies and downloaded more than 150 million times. So if you don't want to do the maths here, Bejeweled has sold 3 times more than the free game has been downloaded and that's actually with less marketing.

I don't think we can say much more here than "I don't know and nor do you". It's honestly neither of our business really. EA/Popcap can sell their stuff however they please. All that ought to matter to us is a) is the game fun, and b) are we getting value for money? For anyone who's putting down $0, it has to be a pretty crummy game for them to get no value at all.

Actually, you were the one who said they were more successful. I said we don't have enough to go by. You passed judgement on their business model based on one game, not me. I said Popcap were successful. Not that they aren't now.

Also it does matter how they sell their game. I have bought Plants vs Zombies 4 times. I won't touch this one since they have chopped it up and put it behind a paywall trying to pass it off as free. So this method of selling is directly affecting my enjoyment of the game.