Board Thread:Plants vs. Zombies 2/@comment-27053902-20180529023301/@comment-24275721-20180722065341

AstroNut1 wrote: Yeah, those are intended to be used as cheats when the level is too hard for the player so they don't get frustrated and stuck if they can't find the right strategy.

The difference about leveling is that you basically grind for a permanent cheat that's glorified as a legit strategic element of the game and while they are currently lazy to make it fully non optional by remakimg levels that came before leveling update, it's definetely not their intent to have it remain optional (in fact as I mentioned, they don't let you keep playing until you do the tutorial and level up Peashooter to lvl 2).

Casual players who struggle on certain levels too much already had options while this feature heavily changes the way PvZ 2 is gonna be played to the worse in an attempt to nake the game fit EA's goals of making everything into gambling p2w hell. At the same time, zen garden boosts are also sort of permanent as they can be activated anytime and everytime including powerups. When they were first introduced, both times they were also adverstised as "part of a strategy" since they could still be a part of your thought process on how to finish the level. But as with everything, you can use this to break the game and any level easily. On the other hand, since levels ups give plants added abilities, they can be integrated into newer strategies which wasn't possible before. Yes, it also breaks the game but it ALSO gives more possibilities on how to complete a level. I wrote this above that anything is both bad and good. When plant leveling wasn't there, the beginner plants had to be completely scrapped from tougher levels as they were ill-equipped for the situation. But now, tutorial plants are enough and to me and many others, it does spice up the gameplay whether you like it or not. You cannot justify a part of a game as wholly bad. Even though I hate Battlez, I can still see the positives but you are hell bent on sticking to your "this is only bad" mentality.

There is a way to bypass that forced tutorial but since you did bypass that, there is no point in explaining. So technically, you can still have a compete vanilla plant collection without ever needing to level up.

I hate EA just as much as the next guy, but the concept itself is good. It's the execution that's bad. Blame the devs and the publishers who made this a grind fest, not the mechanic itself.