User blog:Tecku/Tecku Talks: Future of PvZ

Hey guys, let's talk about the future of PvZ for a moment. There's been a lot of talk on the forums saying things like "microtransactions ruined PvZ" or "PvZ is dying." While I'm not sure if that's true, there are some points worth talking about.

Tecku Talks About: The Future of PvZ

Microtransactions
Let's start with the talk about microtransaction in the games, especially in the mobile games. People say that the transactions are "killing" the games, about how EA is "price gouging" us. Now, in my opinion, a lot of the talk about the microtransactions are overblown, but there are some serious issues on it. Let's go by each game:

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures was a Facebook game that first introduced microtransactions into the franchise. And.... yeah, it sucked. Okay, maybe not sucked, but a lot of it was a great big paywall. The best plants were locked up in the store, and required HUGE amount of the PvP currency to earn. Which is a shame, because PvZA was pretty fun once you got the stuff. A game that mixed Farmville with PvZ and classic tower defense games could have been really unique. I'm not sure if it just didn't get enough of a following, or if it didn't make enough money, but it was better without the transactions.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 became free to play, and had plants locked behind a paywall. And honestly, I'm just gonna say it- people who whined about the microtransactions were just blowing things out of porportion. Aside from the starting Sun and Seed Slot upgrades, was there really anything Pay to Win about the game? Sure, Big Wave Beach was a chore, but you get enough coins to make it through. Yes, they made poor choices when the selected which plants would become premium, but the plants were just unlockables- they didn't get into direct upgrade plants until the very end.

Now, yes, the Power Plant addition with the harder bonus level segment is a desperate add-on to try and make more money. And yes, the Battlez arena will likely rely on Power Plant levels. But to me, that's not a sign that PvZ is dead, just PvZ2. The real sin here is that they should have waited, made a bunch of single player content, and just done PvZ3 with a multiplayer mode instead. Free to Play was PvZ shooting itself in the foot, but mostly because it makes it harder to move on to a new game after spending money in PvZ2, and being already free makes it hard to be attracted to another new game, even if the new game is free as well.

GW and GW2 had microtransactions, but they're barely worth mentioning. The characters are well balanced, upgrades are earned through experience, and a lot of stuff is easy to unlock. My gripe is with there being 200,000 versions of each cosmetic. I blame that for not gettingthe rarest stuff in packs more than I do drop rates.

So now we get to Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, the game that probably gets the biggest gripe. People talk about how you need to spend money to get the best cards, and to get new heroes. These guys aren't wrong, per say. I think that the actual Heroes should be a lot easier to unlock. But here's the thing: have you guys ever played a minion card game before? This sort of stuff has been going on for DECADES. You can trace this stuff back through Clash Royale, Hearthstone, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon Cards, and even Magic The Gathering (which came out ALMOST 25 YEARS AGO). I'm not saying it's right, but saying that it's unreasonable for a minion card game to have microtransaction is being a little unfair.

Yes, microtransactions can be trouble, but seeing them incorporated is not a sign that the franchise is dying. This is more of a market indicator than a franchise indicator.

Organization
Now let's get into what we should be worried about: organization. (Coming Soon).