The tragic development history of BFN - PVZ Documentary
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- BFN has become rather notorious for how its development was handled rather inadequately, from its lack of proper optimisation, to lack of communication between the community and the developers, to their many poor decisions, that would lead the game to its early fate.
Tonight we shall dive into BFN's development history, and uncover every hurdle that the game had to face, what troubled the game, and what ultimately caused it to be rejected by the community.
Special thanks to Mr. JT for collaborating with me on this documentary!
Channel - / mrjtgaming
Credit to the following channels for using their footage/audio, in order of first use
Zero - / zeroxfusionz
Head Hunter - / headhunterkillcounts
Wolfy Playz - / wolfenplayz
Krook - / @krook9656
Gameaholik - / gameaholik
Psycho Sibs Gaming - / psychosibsgaming
The Chemist Zombie - / thechemistzombie
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Gonna be holding the poll for the next documentary this time through the TH-cam community tab instead of reddit (since I can actually schedule the poll to go up right as the documentary ends, rather than having to manually post it).
Also gonna be changing up the format of the schedule for when documentaries are uploaded after this one (post will be going up on Monday as to give me plenty of time to make the final decision.
@Gamefan#@ it’s through the use of a text-to-speech program
@Gamefan#@ Text To speech on the App Store
Lt, please do not do any commentary. You’re special with that bot voice
I love it so much, It’ll be so unfortunate to see it go
Could you do the development history of gw2 one day?
It's a shame to see the game come to a close so soon, the game had so much potential and the fact that the final patch made the game more enjoyable just feels like a huge punch in the face
They were gonna add blue stars as well (I think?)
@@Air_Epic_Wubbox32what would they have been for
The worst part is that the Game Wasn't Even announced, it just came out randomly, ready to play THAT second.
I can just imagine a family of the three games the dad being gw1 being strong and lovable but hard to halde some times and gw2 being the mom the more favorable parent/game with evey thing you want in a game and bfn being the only child having pros and cons but you can't really argue about it but only be sad and feel hope full for in the community
I honestly can’t comprehend the whole ordeal that was BFN. You can’t really “blame” any one side, on the one hand the game leaked and really hurt the devs, but they could’ve still bounced back or something. Then there’s the whole deal with the balance issues and baffling decisions, like buffing Burrow’s range and such, which makes it seem like they were just making blind changes for a giggle.
I could go on and on about this damn game, but ugh. Talking about it just makes me sad and confused, but hey, at least BFN happened.
It is a shame how bfn ended. You can see that they put a lot of effort and love on it. Yet this is how it finished.
If ea decide to make a new studio for future pvz shooter games (which knowing how ea work, i doubt it) they should learn about these mistakes. Bfn had a lot of potential.
If the 7th content update is the final piece of content that the PvZ shooter franchise is ever gonna get, then I am gonna DISAPPIONTED of how the franchise ended, just 2 classes that are just reused models of 2 AI CONTROLLED SPAWNABLES!!!!??? THOSE 2 ARE THE WAY TO END THE SHOOTERS OFF WITH A BANG?!!??!? THOSE WERE JUST REUSED MODELS!!!!!! What a rip off. How pathetic. >:(
I had a lot of fun playing bfn to be honest and I think it had a lot of potential but I feel like they pulled the plug too early instead of focusing on its weak points
Ea didn’t pull the plug on it popcap Vancouver lost a ton of money and they had to shut down because of this game flopping so hard
This is definitely one I’m interested to see.
In the end, the game might've lasted longer if PopCap listened to the cries of their community
They did, the cries of “Bfn bad”
Lt, your documenteries are just amazing. Loved watching the whole thing. I have to agree that bfn's discontinuation was incredibly frustrating, and that the developers made really poor choices during development. Sometimes I wish this game can continue with its updates to refine it more than it has ever been. Nonetheless, this is a game I still enjoy playing, despite its problems. Thanks for the content!
BFN.
Has it’s goods and has it’s bads.
I find it kinda strange that it takes a game to end just for it to finally be fun.
(Of course I don’t mean every game by this)
But BFN definitely followed it’s other predecessors footsteps.
I disagree, BFN as a whole game attempted to change for the sake of change. They cut out everything that made the game unique in the first place and made the game more kid appealing than it needs to despite the growing of the old audience. And as stated “Plants vs. Zombies BFN is **Not** a GW game.” This is coming from a level 2049 level that plays bfn everyday since October of 2019.
Just to make my comment only four words: BFN is the genesis.
@@chessyboidaily1150 I definitely am on board with the whole change for the sake of change thing. It definitely wasn’t the best decision (In fact some would probably say it was the worst)
The GW games were already doing so well in the way they worked which made many of BFN’s changes seem pretty unnecessary.
And yes I know BFN is no Garden Warfare, I picked up on that as soon as I played founders edition. (The no variants and sticker packs made it pretty obvious)
BFN was trying to do things other games did and follow it’s other predecessors footsteps (And I don’t mean the Garden Warfare games when I say that)
@@miniman04X I see, ty for reaching out! Some people are just somehow wiring between the three so obliviously. I myself think that they are just waiting for the community to die out so they can finally cut support (or if they don’t make that electricity bill and servers’ costs)
@@chessyboidaily1150 Knowing the PVZ community.
They probably won’t die any time soon.
6:28 I think this is an important point, at least for me when thinking about why I like BFN. I really like long-lasting encounters, especially 1v1 that can happen naturally during Team Vanquish games. Because it all comes down to skill. An endurqnce match that goes on to the bitter end and winning a duel like that never falls to satisfy me.
I guess that also makes up a part of why I love playing Acorn so much. To manage your health, movement and your own damage output at the same time in the middle of a fight gives me such a rush.
As a wise man once said
"Such wasted potencial"
BFN is a bit sad ngl,i hope the next pvz shooter becomes better
I doubt there’s finna be another PvZ shooter because of bfn’s failure. Apparently, most of popcaps employees that worked on gw gw2 n bfn left after bfn. I hope there’s another but I doubt it
To be honest, I really love battle for neighborville, I play it alot now on my switch! I genuinely think if they gave this game one more go with developments and updates and a new mode selection. I know this game will make a long way. I played alot of GW2 and GW back in the day and made max on them. though not having the shine as the old ones, I do think the game could go far as it does now
Imagine if they added variants in this game.
I can imagine they’d have to make some new ones to replace the ones made into upgrades (since I can imagine vampire flower with the vampire flower upgrade would be quite hard to kill)
At this point i don't think variants would save the game. Instead, it would make everything worst. Imagine having 5 unbalanced peashooters.
I think the only way for variants to work would be to make them have less upgrade slots and not let them use upgrades that they already have built in like Vampire flower with the Vampire flower upgrade.
@@LtDarkRing I think they should of never even had the more in depth upgrades in the first place and just stuck to variants cause thats what everyone liked and made the other games have so much replay value
Imagine if they just made GW3
I've always loved bfn, and didn't mind no variants I think in the next shooter, They should have variants and upgrades with each variant having their own unique type of upgrades which will really add new variety and strategies for people to enjoy and maybe work on the game in secret for one year so there won't be any pressure and it gives them a head start once the trailer launches
This channel is very underrated.
It died because people were to LAZY to make a proper build game had to much potential but the COMMUNITY killed this game .
I'm hurt now, seeing the game suffer all this, when I was young, plants vs zombies was my childhood game, and now realizing how hurt this game was, it pushed my beyond my heart, that's why I tried to find a way to keep the pvz game alive
Honestly if the community didn't rush Popcap into fixing the game then there would have still been loads more updates and would be the best pvz shooter there ever was
Thank you for this video, it cured my boredom for a while. Really enjoyed this one!
i don't know if is it just me but i really like BFN and i love it, i have soo much fun when i play it and i don't know why since i started playing bfn i was slowly loosing GW2 fun ( i played all the GW and bfn its the more energetic and fun to me ) i think bc bfn it's has much better movement and more responsive controls and the thing about the upgrades give me soo much fun trying new combos etc but it's a shame that the comunity of gw where crybabies about bfn, yes it's different etc but i think almost all of the players that shit on bfn have like 10 or 30 hours on the game and just leave it when it was in the worst moment ( unbalanced etc )
AND the fact that GW2 it has super few maps in graveyards etc
I kinda hope BFN gets revived. If not then RIP PVZ shooters :(
Only hope BFN has of getting a second chance would be if the switch version becomes popular enough (though given that all we’ve had so far are minor bug fixes and frame rate improvements, I have the feeling that might not happen)
I wish GW2 would get revived, how f-ing cool would that be
@@LtDarkRing I also wonder why we didn’t have a Super Brainz or 80’s Action Hero Costume with a pair of shoes. (Well at least 80’s Action Hero WAS supposed to have one, but the model was somewhat incomplete) at least GW2 at least has one costume for a zombie class to have a pair of shoes. Guess the games discontinuation caused that.
@@LtDarkRing BFN for switch sold pretty well tho, did it not?
@@nickytembo4112 ye, switch version I think is ok, definitely the best version of BFN to play
i might be the only one who liked most of the stuff in the game, like the new designs, characters, most of the reworks, etc.
the biggest problem i had with the game is how crappy its performance was, while gw 2 barely ever lags no matter how many matches i played, bfn can't even play a single match without crashing/loading forever/lag spikes
and i'm not happy overall with the changes they made in the later updates which are the addition of AIs to fill multiplayer servers, fighting bots is not as fun as playing with actual people and we already have private matches to play with bots, and the newer classes which is another case similar to torchwood of reusing an AI model already in the game, it has a very unique mechanic at least but it would be way better if these classes never existed at all, i can't tell a single difference between them and an AI that i'd rather not target over other human players, and when i was playing as rose once, the only times i died in the whole match was due to an yeti imp ability used by a TV head, shouldn't the yeti imp and dandelion deal less damage in order to have an use for their freezing/stunning abilities and not be a surprize instakilling tool?!
also besides finding variants not that good of a mechanic as most of the time they just change the appearence and primary, and agree with their decision of removing variants so they can focus on actually unique characters, they're still one of the unique things from the franchise and variants in bfn could've been better than ever due to nearby every character having a primary and a secoundary and maybe variants could change some abilities as well like frozen snapdragon having ice variants for the blue flare and blazing trail, and for some reason they decided to make the entire game a ripoff of overwatch, i'm not sure exacly how since i've never played overwatch so i can't compare both but yeah it really lost all of its originality
16:07 I don't remember if these were official statements in one of their videos or you got them to say that, but man, Chemist Zombie and Wolfy sound so upset about it. I can completely understand that. Even the Switch version, it's mentally draining to play.
BFN's downfall was completely the fault of EA and Popcap, if they hadn't made the huge mistake with the picnic beta then the devs wouldn't of been as annoyed. If they stayed with the garden warfare formula eg: Variants and such then it would of been better received, and finally but most importantly: if they listened to their community more they'd know what decisions are best but instead made nonsensical decisions which was paid back tenfold with their practically nonexistant playerbase even though not even a year had passed
I was excited for BFN and even played it for a while after launch. I didn't stick around until the end as I was already feeling the dread of playing the game. It just didn't feel as good to play as GW2. It's a shame, too, because I wanted the game to succeed. I wanted to see where they could take the game to bring back players. But instead of doing anything that would bring players back, they put the final nail in the coffin and told everyone to leave permanently.
I have a question for everyone:
Would it make you throw up everywhere if I told you that I really like bfn?
no, everyone has their preferences in what they like
Love ya!
this is crazy but
I ACTUALLY ENJOY BFN MORE THAN GW2
Man it feels so unreal how I was so excited for bfn 2-3 years ago and although i loved the game-play more than gw2 it really didn’t leave a impact on me or the community which is honestly quite sad considering gw1 had some of the same issues (although not on such a grave scale) and managed to overcome and make roads towards future pvz projects
I wish we could turn back time… to the good old da-ays.
There was also the part where EA FIRED THE TEAM THAT HAD ORIGINALLY MADE THE FIRST TWO GAMES
its EA after all lmao
There was a hope, there was a dream, that this game would be good. The variants, the characters, the bots, the unfair maps, and so many more. But hey, atleast it's sometimes easier. Loved it a tiny bit less than gw2.
This game just makes me sad man. It had so much potential to be a good spinoff game but, unfortunately it wasn't
Ah, BFN. I am surprised people don’t talk more about the addition of sprinting, like I feel like that is such a big change to a game. Whaddayou think?
The new characters were built In a way that making variants Is close to impossible. I can't think of how the variants would work out with the 9 new characters being Nightcap, Acorn, Snapdragon, Electric Slide, 80s Action Hero, Space Cadet, Wizard, TV Head and Wildflower. You couldn't make an Ice, Fire, Toxic or Electro/ic variant out of these since they were made for one character and one character only. If you were to take Snapdragon and give It Ice, Fire, Toxic or Electric variants that would make the Spray Chompers useless. You could do less damage for Snapdragon cause of long range and more for Spray Chompers but there's just no way
Gw1 and Gw2 had merch and toys and commercials that got me into the Gw community and games but bfn didn't have merch and commercials only content creators saying the game is good so I can see why the game failed so quickly.
the biggest mistake was changing the IP, ip in the video game industry is everything and to change that is like to swap out the skin of a human. imagine how fast other game series like fnaf or call of duty would die if they just changed their ip all of the sudden. garden warfare 3 was set up for success not battle for neighborville
Bfn is such a mess tbh but the game is still pretty fun
i really needed to see this, thank you
you forgot when the game launch got very fast updates but then the pandemic happens and make the updates very slow
Amazing documentary I learned a lot
3:43
Damn. Now I feel really sorry for them.
Why does this feel like a horror movie summary?
Battle for Neighborville is a game with so much wasted potential, I really would've liked to see more added to the game. Hopefully someone in Popcap/EA sees this video and decides to relay the message so the same mistakes aren't made with future PVZ games.
The lack of Varients kinda killed it for me. But not to say I didn't enjoy the New classes. But it would of been nice to see Varients of them. Like what if we got the Cold Snap Dragon? Or like a Pinecone for Acorns Varient? So much possibility lost because of piss poor Management and a lack of regard of what made the old games good. Replayability is null and void and the cosmetics. Albeit better doesn't make for good replayability. While the Varients did. Also literally no reason to get Max Rank in GW2 besides the bragging rights because they made it where you have to buy the Founders edition to get a Unicorn Chomper Cosmetic... They made it look pretty but did everything else wrong. Even the Single player was boring after like. The first world cause it's just rinse and repeat with what you can collect n stuff. At this point I've already moved on and it sucks cause I didn't want to move on like this.
I think that a lack of character variants actually allowed them to go nuts with the costumes. Garden Warfare 2 had so many shit customizations, maybe EA and Popcap felt like they needed redemption, so they cut class variants to make many good character skins. I think the decision was a worthwhile trade-off.
*cough* combat adrenaline epea *cough*
also the lack of variants is because the old engines for the og gw games were outdated, they couldnt copy and paste variants again into bfn as it was a different engine. As such, to add variants back, they’d need to recreate every variant all over again, which is also too bulky for the already unbalanced upgrades in bfn.
@@Cerbonado Aimbot Plasma Pea.
Or Electro Pea with Legend meter.
Nec'rose with Thorn Apart.
Supercharged Football Coolant Baseball/Hockey Star.
Speed Bag Tiberius Toaster/Cosmic Brainz.
Mech Hunter Scallywag Imp.
Hotrod + Speedy on Count Chompula.
Toxic Brains Brainium Basher.
And that's just off the top of my head.
@@quertiywop5856 I agree the cosmetics in BFN are better but actually getting them is a real pain
@@quertiywop5856 still doesn't excuse it for me.
Seeing this late but the main reason I didn’t like it was because they completely switched and changed the whole game idea, no variants, no completed game and the name being different
The story of the dev team and bfn is essentially a kid trying to put blocks in the block hole and the people wanted to help by cutting more blocks, cutting more holes, and making triangles Impossible to figure out. They later decided to actually help the child by putting a good shape to the shape hole but it still had a few shapes left but the people later on left leaving the child stuck there eternally having no help to finish what was left.
BFN is the first time i bought a game without looking at any gameplay or anything, i just heard about it and instantly bought it with the little money i had on day one of founders edition since its pvz right? its like gw3 just different name i was so hyped that a new one finally released.
The game was in beta yes but for me it was actually unplayable i got 30fps on lowest settings at best, but i knew that would get fixed when the game releases fully, that was not the main issue tho the game just felt worse everything about it just felt worse than gw2 i hated the change of removing character variants, i hated the fact that all characters could just run i even hated how most of them looked and a lot more different smaller things, and im not saying that just to hate on the game i geniuinely hate all of that, i was so dissapointed with the game i barely even got myself to play it at all. If you look at the game itself its ok at best but when you compare it to gw2 or even gw1 its just so much worse. and it is true that they just changed too much, they had a good formula all they needed was to stick with it make a gw3 maybe change some things up but mostly keep it the same and boom another good game (most likely). Now it just feels like an overwatch clone, the changes they made imo made it closer to overwatch to maybe steal some of that audience? idk, im just dissapointed with it and ranted about it for too long :3
again, why do you need to put horror music like it's a murder documentary ?
I think it’s down to a personal preference, mainly in setting the scene and tone for the documentary (that or I’ve probably watched far too many that have creepy music playing in the background and have just adapted to it)
I feel like varients for characters could have partially saved bfn
tbh since this game is pretty much dead it would have been great to at least get the founder’s edition rewards as a dlc/add on much like the seasons eatingz upgrade pack or something like that but then again it would be hard to tell if someone was playing the game since day 1 or just spent a few bucks for the rewards but can you really blame them the cosmetics are quite nice after all and besides they literally did this with gw2 by making upgrade packs that pretty much defeat the purpose of rng packs/infinitey time/trials of gnomis
Did popcap failed again at design university because look how they killed my poor queen Rose well designed from gw2 and heroes!!! But i appreciate them for the most cutest voice for sunflower
Wishing the game will live on through mods eventually
Why did ea let everyone play picnic alpha is beyond me
Lmao especially with broken animations and ability functionality
@@mrwaffles3106 more like popcap let everyone played
This is a really well put together and edited video. My only complaint is that the annoying Text to speech voice is used. I would love to hear some human speech to match this great editing
Glad you enjoyed the documentary. As for the use of the text to speech voice, I can understand why it does get annoying to listen to for an extended period of time, hence why I’m trying to see if I can get some other narrators to balance it out.
I mainly use it since when trying to follow a script myself, I keep slipping up (hell, I tried last documentary, and kept slipping up on the first sentence about 4 times before deciding “screw it”)
@@LtDarkRing fair enough I understand if script reading isn’t your cup of tea. 👍🏻
it had so much potential theyre was so much cut stuff they scrapped more classes and alot of removed stuff from the old games
personally I think it’s ea’s fault for buying pop cap
3:23 The blurred message displays the player’s username with ‘Alpha’ underneath it.
We were blinded by a new pvz game and it was the most frustrating pvp game i ever played the sprinting feels clunky
Well i think the fundamental concept of the game was a piece of trash (Throwing variants out the window) But the leaks and bad development only made things worse.
Im confident they are working on gw3 and we may have its by 2024
Bfn still feels really unfinished and buggy, especially when compared to gw2. Still a fun game on its own, though.
its sad I played BFN first and loved it so much but then I played GW2 and its even better and now I see the problems all the time to the point that I don't play BFN anymore or make TH-cam videos on it. But that's just it the game is not as fun as GW2 it just docent improve what was there it tried to be its own thing but fell. I hope that in time pop cap learns from this and does better, in other words not A repeat of BFN
IDK, it seems like you should've made GW3...
I wish they had not killed the game so bad. For all its criticism, its still a very fun game
Hi can we play tomorrow in gw2 if you have xbox
I really have nothing to say but I feel like the game was just slow it didn’t have the chaotic and sharpness that GW1 and 2 had.
Tom Scott my guy!
simple
its ea
it doesnt make them much money, they pulling the plug without hesitation
After garden warfare 2 got added to steam, I started getting into that again and it's been wonderful. The only caveat is that the hackers ruin it for hours on end so I re-downloaded Battle for Neighborville and I'm honestly having quite a bit of fun. It's just a bummer that the servers are mostly bots.
the thing i hate about ai that they dont have custom name like in gw2 especially im a ps4 player that doesnt buy psn membership so i enjoy ai but in bfn i hate it
I feel like I just watched a murder documentary.
The murder of pvz
Anyone else see a pattern in these games?
But yea they should’ve made it cross platform but not to pc cuz hacker’s hey second heart from you this week thank you
There are almost no hackers on pc bfn, it actually has a functional anticheat unlike gw2
Please polish my bald head
I came here from hyperion
16:31 bros bot dubd
Other than super brainz I liked this game
Kinda weird hearing an ACTUAL VOICE in your videos, kinda got used to the robot tts voice
12:43 sounds like skill issue
Using my gameplay lol
This is the problem sometimes, when companies get bigger and stop listening to the community and start doing their own thing it starts falling apart, leaving a nearly dead game, a ghost town whatever you call it. Then the developers decide to leave the game to drown in its own mistakes and flaws, thus BFN’s plug was pulled and left to rot for years.
Borger
My favorite part was when wolfy was in
The biggest mistake of this game was changing the entire system getting rid of variants is the biggest mistake
I still say Popcap's biggest mistake was removing variants. Unlocking variants gave me a reason to keep playing and gave the game a Pokémon-like feel.
Already said this, but combat adrenaline epea.
OMGG
Sum up: EA fuck up and they should have done GW3 instead
More like pop cap fricked up
Bfn sucks