Why do mods nerf instead of buff?

[@ryelo5448]

Its crazy how most nerfs make me like plants more, like how eletric blueberry went from a boring broken plant to more fun in eclise. Also most nerfs imo make plants more fair

[@Cool_Kid95]

Broken? I always found that thing to be absolute garbage

[@squareguy5353]

30th like! Nice

[@el_mr6439]

@@Cool_Kid95 is good for swarms of weak zombies, good with plants with high damage to compensate

[@goldenhorse4823]

​​@@el_mr6439mmm no? Except if you are not making a joke that is literally it's main weakness. EletricBlueberry is best for taking out high dammage zombies since it is basicaly an insta kill but to it's slow regeneration and attack cooldown time it is pretty weak against hoards

[@chungo.]

​@@goldenhorse4823 probably was thinking about lighting reed instead

[@jordandelosreyes5656]

Pvz1 modding takes the exact opposite approach. (As a viewer of RCCH I've seen brutal mode, brutal mode EX, and brutal mode EX+). The buffs for plants are HEAVILY compensated by the extreme buffs given to zombies. Since the game has a much more limited set of plants and mechanics, people had to be very creative.

[@ExtraBritish]

I like this way of doing things a lot more

[@marcar9marcar972]

Yeah, while nerfing probably is easier, both can work

[@jojojo9240]

Probably because in pvz1 you got to experience balanced gameplay in vanilla in the first place

[@KL53986]

Small roster = easier time to balance certain things. Which is why Newspaper is like most buffed zombie usually in mods as otherwise its ability being like notable in early levels where you have nothing but puff shroom then you have heavy hitters that literally kills newspaper before it starts to run

[@silverblade2871]

@@KL53986 "What is different about the newspaper zombie you ask?"

[@biscuitporkasmealchoice6741]

I've been thinking a lot, and I figured out the best option for everyone. It's a win-win solution that I'm surprised no one has thought of. buff only the plants I like

[@viniciusgoulart5077]

Popcap hire this man

[@togeluga_the_cat]

bassicaly me when all i want is just a buff for my boi pepper pult

[@gratefulcranegames]

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of balance?

[@biscuitporkasmealchoice6741]

@@gratefulcranegames idk but i think citron and bowling bulb should be completely busted cause i think they're funny

[@GNVS300]

Wolfy be on it making Lightning Reed do quadruple damage

[@ketsupo]

“ 8:30 Mods are played by people familiar with the base game” Me, who has never played the base game but has tried multiple mods because I don’t like the existence of premium plants:

[@el_mr6439]

surely you already played it, but Reflourished is the perfect mod for you

[@andrewgreeb916]

Familiar with the base game or the previous one, as in you know how to play and can take a bit of challenge. Maybe not hard mode or eclise level challenges, but a challenge.

[@GNVS300]

ShyGuyMask moment

[@JustAnotherCommenter]

Newer players like you are lucky Veterans know the pain of the existence of plants being converted to premium (sorry for bad grammar idk)

[@theman4life]

i feel both pity and envy

[@satyaprakashbhavaraju3677]

Even PvZ1 mods nerf plants too. Scaredy Shroom and partially Jalapeño got slightly nerfed in Hard Mode. Scaredy Shrooms are no longer vulnerable when hiding, and Jalapeño’s damage was slightly decreased. Those “nerfs” can actually have their advantages. A major example of a nerf in a PvZ1 mod with absolutely no advantage is Puff Shroom and Sea Shroom in PvZ Brutal Mode. They disappear after a while, and cannot be replenished unlike PvZ2. Although they can drop sun upon dying.

[@Qw3rtYzStuff]

those are buffs, not nerfs edit: puffshroom example is actually a nerf nvm

[@satyaprakashbhavaraju3677]

@@Qw3rtYzStuff To further clarify, I did say that Scaredy Shroom’s inability to be used as a meatshield was the only downside, but its inability to get attacked while hiding is actually gives it an advantage, by not dying to the oncoming Zombie horde. In fact, if a Zombie eats Scaredy Shroom on a Lily Pad, the Scaredy Shroom will survive, allowing it to function like normal, while it levitates over the pool (LOL). Jalapeño’s very minuscule damage nerf is balanced out by an absolutely broken freezing mechanic that even outshines Ice Shroom. In a way, it can still eliminate anything as strong as a regular Buckethead Zombie or Zomboni. Think of how it can fare against Gargantuars and Football Zombies.

[@kolossis8283]

I don't know bro, scaredy shroom one sounds like a buff

[@satyaprakashbhavaraju3677]

@@kolossis8283 The more you think about it, it actually does. It really carried me through Level 2-8, where I was struggling with Dancing Zombie spam, but Scaredy Shroom, with its inability to get attacked while hiding, really shined.

[@kolossis8283]

@@satyaprakashbhavaraju3677 true. Atleast you don't need to spend another 25 suns to buy another shroom. I mean, scaredy shrooms are cheap and no problem if you spend suns for them, but it will a huge advantage to save a lot suns since these mods have hard modes

[@kulekid1015]

It's hard to say what should or shouldn't be buffed or nerfed and it comes down to the way the creators wish to make something and what people enjoy. The binding of isaac had many changes to a bunch of different items in repentance and they are still being changed. I think it comes down to what the creator wants the game to be like and what the players enjoy. The best way to go about it is just communicating to find out what should be changed.

[@nicholasaugello2534]

People in the binding of Isaac community don't even recommend Repentance for a first time player because of all the nerfs and genuinely, repentance is objectively the hardest dlc the binding of Isaac has to offer and it kinda fails at attracting new players until they feel like they're good enough or they want to play with other dlc characters that badly..

[@nicholasaugello2534]

Also nerfs to dark bum and buffs to items like holy water exist, I went from loving dark bum to out right avoiding him and holy water is bobs brain but better

[@cadetjones9205]

@@nicholasaugello2534What? There has been drastically more buffs in the Binding of Isaac Repentance than nerfs. I don't get what you're talking about. Repentance is the most balanced and fun Isaac has ever been. Ain't no way Repentance is the hardest DLC when even previously bad item like Breath of Life and Butter Bean can carry the early game. If someone told you they don't recommend Repentance in the past, you should definitely reconsider cause the game is in a pretty good state right now. The only notable nerf I can think off that isn't completely overshadowed by items and character buffs is the nerf to the donation machine, but even that is hardly an issue. Afterbirth plus was way less balanced, the game basically boiled down to start with a good item or suffer.

[@nicholasaugello2534]

@@cadetjones9205 I remember in my experience in repentance being alot more brutal but actually more fun , many items that were bad got buffed , but some of my favorite items got nerfed like blank pill , I just remembered getting a -100 win streak in repentance, cuz I had such hard time adjusting to the admittedly really fun alt path , but AB+ I never really had that tough a time outside of delerium, not that challenge is bad it's just when I routinely fail to beat a boss like Dogma mostly before I make it to beast , I'm gonna be of the opinion that repentance was a much harder experience, mostly because the day I unlocked Jacob and Esau I realized I was too harsh on the keeper.. because atleast with prepatched keeper I never got a -100 win streak, is it a skill issue? Yes I think repentance is objectively the hardest dlc, but it's WAY funner than AB+ by miles

[@cadetjones9205]

@@nicholasaugello2534 Well, it makes sense, why the game would feel harder now, Jacob and Esau are challenge characters that are intentionally difficult. If you play a challenge character then of course the game's gonna feel hard. I would recommend leaving characters like J&E, the Lost and Keeper for last, especially if you are adapting to the game changes. Repentance has quite a few new challenge characters, so you may want to unlock more stuff first.

[@MainChannel9521]

While I agree that super strong plants like Winter Melon need nerfs in mods, I feel like sometimes it just gets taken way too far, to the point where the plant becomes useless and you might as well not have it in the game at all.

[@nc7718]

That's not a bad thing. If making one plant useless makes six others equally viable, that's a good trade-off. Creeps goes over this in the vid.

[@MainChannel9521]

@@nc7718 I still feel like they can make those 6 plants viable without making the one plant useless. Like, just nerf the one plant a little bit less. Like for example, does Winter melon really need such a large recharge time in reflourished? Is lowering that a little bit really gonna make those 6 other plants less viable? I don’t think so.

[@Amario_]

I don't think there's any mod out there where wm is overnerfed, some wms (chronos) may be better than other wms (reflourished) but theyre almost always really good

[@HumanoidDerpling]

That is also something that should ideally also not happen.

[@elevated6941]

@@nc7718 at this point why not just buff said mentioned plants? Most of the time it's not the case of the plant being outmatched, but being a hassle to use. Like I don't see how you can make peanut viable without buffing it or completely changing how it functions. (Like how altverz made it interesting by making it shoot peanuts diagonally like starfruit, but in a short range.) Other examples would be vamporcini and tomb tangler.

[@wickman745]

One thing I don't like about this kind of balancing is the price, if you are going to make it expensive its because you know its strong enough to be worth the price, if you're going to keep the original/cheaper price, you must nerf it so isn't just broken due to being strong and cheap, but if you are making it expensive and nerf it you are making the plant bad and not worth it Edit: with some exceptions

[@Milesprowerthegamer]

In a lot of cases, nerfing the plant itself and the cost is both necessary to keep it in check. Reflourished Winter is a good example of this, it got the nerfed attack speed AND increased cost because simply changing one stat or the other wouldn't really fix its balance. Quite frankly, a vanilla stat Winter Melon would still be extremely strong at 1000 sun. And if you went about only nerfing the stats and not touching the cost, you'd probably have to gut the attack speed to about a third of normal and make the chill uptime so low that it wouldn't be fun to use.

[@lancetheking7524]

​@@Milesprowerthegamer vanilla winter with 1k wtf 💀

[@foxinabox5103]

​@@Milesprowerthegamer on the other hand, 350 cost holly barrier is expensive af. 150 in vanilla is busted as hell, but 250 is fine imo

[@ED-gw9rg]

​@@Milesprowerthegamer Funny enough, because of the 50 sun meta a 1000 Sun cost would keep it more in line with the PVZ1's crazy cost.

[@Milesprowerthegamer]

@@foxinabox5103 350-cost Holly is fine, the cost is not much of an issue for such a potent wall that has powerful synergies with numerous plants like Power Lily, Tile Turnip, Intensive Carrot, and of course Blover.

[@Neogears1312]

As someone working on a mod team; it’s so much simpler for people. You recognize why say in third strike, for an example of a very unbalanced game, why Chun li having a kick that’s incontestable, unpunishable and combos into a super that does half your health while being able to have 2 of those supers ready is op. But if you literally delete her from the game then you’re still not making anyone pick Sean more who’s so bad you can combo him when he hits you. It’s a lot easier to say what’s not allowed to have in a game than what you can, but the problem is most of the time the problem is the bottom tiers. The klobbs always gonna be atrocious even if you could quad wield it, bowser in melee has 3 moves that aren’t considered atrocious while being way too slow etc. When a game is very imbalanced its 9/10 the lower half. And usually if you’re to cut them from the select screen you’d get a very balanced game. Melee realistically has 14 viable characters out of 23 for example. So that’s…bad. Only about half the roster is viable. But if the bad characters didn’t exist you’d just have a roster of 14 with one guy lingering in viability. Which that’s a very good statistic. People just see the common stuff and want it to be less common and the less common stuff to be more common. But it’s so much better to find someone or something in the top 5 and draw the line there and ensure everything is at least around that level. That way you’re ok with something being a little better than average or worse but won’t deal with something really bad or op. People will make the underdogs popular if they’re under picked if they’re at least viable.

[@melindamuller4466]

I'm pretty casual, I'd say, and to me, levels are most fun when I don't need to run the perfect strategy. That's why Eclise alienates me, when there are levels where you need to *bait* Octos into throwing their ammo just to *dig up* the plant at the right moment, things are not fun anymore, at least IMO.

[@jkf16m96]

yeah, that's an example of a weird mechanic. it sounds wrong, they should just nerf octos so something like that can't occur. Like, each Octo can only send one octopus and that's it.

[@BlackJack1136]

I hate that in many mods much more plants are useless and you can't play casually with fun and unique builds or just to try plant that you don't play often because you will lose the level and most of the time you have to use much stronger plants and perfect strategy which makes game less fun and repetitive

[@neoncherry4449]

Poor little Timmy, dude. He just wanted to use wintermelons

[@YanYanicantbelievethistakenffs]

Also if you have to buff 70+ plants instead of nerfing 9 to 5 plants it lessens the workload.

[@alex_zetsu]

It's more tolerable when a mod nerfs a plant you don't want nerfed than if the devs do it since it is a lot easier to just ignore a mod you don't like,

[@samkeiser9776]

I feel like the simple truth about nerfs are that they usually feel bad. If there’s a thing you really like using, that’s really powerful, and you can’t use it anymore, a player that still wants to use that option is going to be disappointed by it. Not to say that nerfs are bad, but that players complaining about them simply don’t like their favorites being made worse.

[@trickywickbow5536]

Rest In Peace little timmy 😔 Press F to pay respects

[@Wall_nut77]

F

[@Geometricofficial]

F Ф At 2 languages, Russian abd u English i payed respect

[@HiyaDoesMinecraft]

F

[@helloiamenergyman]

F

[@RAWgaimes]

G

[@creeptrap3104]

God I love playing Reflourished so much, but some of the nerfs darn make some plants just seem really not... worth using. Being someone who's not the most expert-y at the game (I'm more into PvZ1), It's pretty weird to have Winter Melon have a slower recharge and attack speed, alongside the cost raise, making it way less reliable to use for chill damage, and honestly kinda outclassed by Cold Snapdragon (Haven't reached Snow Pea, but I've heard it was buffed from PvZ1 to have spread chill).

[@thisperson4162]

Yeah I agree Btw Im on BWB day 34 and I think in the later levels I really don't see myself using winter anymore except in LC and DA but in DA will take longer

[@el_mr6439]

yeah, i believe they nerfed it too much

[@GNVS300]

Yeah, the devs insist that Winter-Melon and Missile Toe are still really good, but... nah. Snow Pea did indeed get buffed to get splash (although does not have the freeze shot it got in PVZ2), so you might as well just use Snow Pea + Melon-Pult for cost efficiency. I agree with the three nerfs WM got by themselves, but all at the same time is a bit much; if it had the ROF nerf and lost the perma-chill but was still 500 sun I would be fine with it.

[@creeptrap3104]

@@GNVS300 I think if they made winter melon just cost 650-700ish sun then it would’ve been a fair nerf

[@Amario_]

@@creeptrap3104 if vanilla wm costed 650-700 sun it would be really op still

[@big__shell]

i'm not opposed to most nerfs but one trend i've noticed(personally i have only played altverz but this seems to be present in other mods as well) is when plants get a significant price increase while the sun meta changes to 25 sun without significant changes anywhere else. i feel like a big victim of this is altverz laser bean, which i have kind of just never used. it's just too expensive and does too little unless there is a huge number of zombies, which there usually isn't. and since one laser bean alone can barely handle a regular zombie, i just prefer to use bloomerang. it's faster to get on the field and does more in the early game while usually doing well enough in the late game.

[@skylargruhlke1620]

I think Doom Shroom should return in pvz 2 but with some changes, like 250 sun cost, extremely long recharge, and keeping the mechanic of making craters where your unable to place plants for awhile, also having it be excluded from any/all boss fights

[@andrewgreeb916]

Grind thousand added doom shroom, it's free and has no sun cost, 3 minute recharge. It kills all zombies, and all your plants, is it worth the risk?

[@Amario_]

@@andrewgreeb916 yes because u can just revive them all with nutraine

[@winmen5279]

that's dog shit plant. barely anyone would use it in general. primal potato mine is powercreeping the hell if it

[@Amario_]

@@winmen5279 thats just popcap being bad at balancing tbh, the idea they thought of sounds fine but unfortunately vanilla is far too unbalanced for an actual good idea to be able to make it into the game

[@andrewgreeb916]

@@Amario_ never thought of that, although it's rough having to bring a second plant to make your emergency plant usable.

[@Jaxv3r]

I actually thinked that reflourished Primal Sunflower is much better than Vanilla Primal Sunflower, since I can use the plant as a semi wall nut in the early game, even tho it cost 25+ more to place xd

[@GNVS300]

Agreed. PSF was already my favourite sun producer on vanilla but with the health buff it got even better and I set a column of them up in the middle as an almost producer-defence hybrid, I very rarely don't bring it

[@Jaxv3r]

@@GNVS300 and I also learn how to remove my Primal Sunflower before the zombies gobble it, so I can have my 50 sun back before the sunflower dies

[@MikhailAurellio]

​@@GNVS300 Try 8 columns of Primal Sunflower :Troll (And also 1 column Magnifying Grass in the back lol)

[@elevated6941]

I would say to nerf AND buff, because nerfing alone isn't gonna make me wanna use garbage plants like pea-nut. Also nerfing everything to the ground (like making banana launcher cost 1000) isn't gonna make me creative either. It's gonna make me pick the most boring option (that being repeater) because it's consistent. plants that needs buffs are for an example grave buster, and peanut (which's both a bad wall *and* a bad attacker.) Also the issue isn't with the sun producers, it's with the sun costs. There are plants, which are WAY to cheap for what they do like witch hazel. (Like literally how is witch hazel and hocus crocus even in the same league?)

[@APersonThat]

You just spoke my thoughts. Making huge nerfs to plants isn’t the way to go because it’s makes gameplay boring. Winter melon wasn’t “overpowered” it was just the meta that made it seem overpowered.

[@andrewgreeb916]

The point of making Banana 1000 sun is so you can make it's attack 3x3 and up it's damage to cherry bomb levels, like pvz1 cob cannon. Sometimes the change isn't really a nerf it's a rebalance.

[@elevated6941]

@@andrewgreeb916 at this point why not just add cob cannon from the Chinese version? They already did it with other plants, so it's possible.

[@Amario_]

@@elevated6941 not possible to make cob cannon take up two tiles, it just ends up looking really weird

[@nguyentam244]

​@@elevated6941 Cob takes up 2 tiles, while Banana only takes 1 tiles. Therefore Banana would still be better if they both have the 3x3 radius. Also Cob Cannon in PvZ 2 Chinese looks ugly af

[@GNVS300]

F in the chat for Gloom Vine and Missile Toe on RFL

[@guacodile2528]

Missile toe is fine, it just very annoying to use. I wish it had more sun cost and firing rate at the cost of having actual freeze and better chill. It's just too spam-clicky

[@Patadude100]

It's easier to nerf 5 plants than buff 105.

[@citcoin-official2681]

For most mods it's 'because balancing is complex and nerfing some things is healthy for the overall state of the game' But for Eclise it's 'Because I hate fun, I hate good game design, and I hate you' like pretty much all of Eclise.

[@cephalosjr.1835]

Why do you say that about Eclise? I’m not familiar with the mod, but I nevertheless really want to know. EDIT: I miswrote my sentiment. A better way of expressing it would be “It’s not that I’m challenging your statement, I just really want to know.”

[@citcoin-official2681]

@Cephalos Jr. If you look at the video on mints in Eclise, you'll see one of the many reasons I say that. (Mints in Eclise are designed in an unethical and predatory fashion) And it's a good example of Eclise's general design. It has a lot of stuff that's considerably worse than the basegame for seemingly no reason other than the dev didn't like it. It's also absolutely stuffed full of artificial difficulty.

[@R0CKDRIG0]

@@citcoin-official2681 Unethical and predatory how? From what I remember you could get them either by playing the updates as soon as they came out for a big amount or later at your own pace for a smaller amount; and buying plants with it, even if based on luck, would not take you longer than a few days.

[@Ladengoat]

First time you actually mentioned Reflourished in one of these videos

[@chadman9355]

Not the first

[@Ladengoat]

@@chadman9355 at least the first time I've seen it mentioned

[@guacodile2528]

​@@Ladengoat he mentioned on the "why I don't like how plants get buffed" video

[@Ladengoat]

@@guacodile2528 yeah I did not finish that one

[@acidicoasis7724]

what are you talking about that’s the BEST intro you’ve ever done

[@fortnitesexman]

best, but still dumbest

[@dundun26]

u are correct!

[@milkmonstrosity]

"You should buff more than you should nerf" is not exclusively a multiplayer/vs. concept. From what I've seen and tested, the fundamental reason why people often favor this idea is the simple truth that nerfs often make something just feel worse to use. Nobody's denying that Winter Melon is powerful, but seeing it cost 650 sun in a 25 sun meta is basically instant encouragement to never use it. Furthermore, mod creators often have a tendency to go totally overboard with nerfs, like making Dandelion cost a ridiculous 475 sun in AltverZ, while not giving it any substantial boost to damage output to compensate. In my own playthrough I came to the conclusion that this plant was kind of terrible after noticing just how little it actually contributed for the cost, which was just a bad feeling. It didn't make the game feel more balanced or fun, it just seemed like they had a vendetta against this one plant.

[@mr.dieharderrz]

I agree with you. After I have played Reflourished for awhile, some plants got nerf so bad that I don't even want to use it. Winter Melon is one of the best example. Some nerfings are good somes are really bad. For example shine vine got nerfed so much that I feel like "Why did I even spend my 75 gems to buy this trash plant" Electric peashooter price increase from 200 to 475 suns? WTF!? Who would even want to use it. (TBH most of the premium, gemium, or seedium plants got nerfed in Reflourished. Most of the nerfs are price increasing and longer recharge time.)

[@Creeps20]

This is something I explained in the video itself. In a multiplayer setting, both players recieve the same nerfs and buffs. In a single player setting, they both directly impact the ability for the player to win. In a multiplayer game, you can throw these buffs around a lot more without the game being damaged for it. In a single player game there needs to be more of a balance of buffs and nerfs, as otherwise the game becomes too easy. and frankly PVZ2 is already breaking at it's seems so buffs would actually just kill it oh and you are both wrong, like, electric peashooter in reflourished is so overwhelming strong that it's been nerfed 3 times and is still very effective according to the general community, as well as getting a damage buff from vanilla overall, and in altverZ dandelion has 3x3 splash instead of 1x1 splash, alongside a damage buff. like, i'm not gonna say you are like that primal sunflower guy, but you are like that primal sunflower guy

[@crackersandpie136]

@@Creeps20can confirm. Reflourished Epea is still one of the best attacking plants in the premium section and is a common recommendation for new players in terms of a heavy plant. *Seriously the amount of fantastical splat you can get away with Epea is honestly nuts.* He may be better balanced,but he’s still super strong and is always worth building a deck for.

[@mr.dieharderrz]

​@@Creeps20 You're wrong with one thing buddy. Electric peashooter in Reflourished didn't get any damage buff from Vanilla. and about it being effective. I know that it is effective but just look at its overwhelming sun cost from 200 -> 475. Is it really worth for such cost? Not to mention about its longer recharge time (from 5 -> 15). No one is gonna get a 475 sun cost plant within 5 seconds anyway pfft.

[@Creeps20]

@@mr.dieharderrz yes. it is worth it. i think you don't know how to manage sun being your issue here. Anyways it *did* actually get a damage buff, just not directly. It fires more bolts per shot than it did before, which increases it's damage by a lot. I'd check the changelogs, as they are your best way to learn this stuff for reflourished.

[@Ghosty_Dosty]

The problem is when all they do is nerf plants and make them cost more than the usual price but the OP zombies are still OP and the spam BS is still not modified

[@andrewgreeb916]

Usually they offer an alternative solution in that case. Grind thousand throws constantly stronger zombies at you, but you have plant leveling to counteract that.

[@Amario_]

Unless you're playing shuttle, there isn't any mods with op zombies

[@Ghosty_Dosty]

​@@Amario_ I consider Reflourished as the closest thing of what PvZ 2 was supposed to be excluding the "DLC" They made 2 patches, the first that was somewhat good and necessary. The 2nd one though is complete trash and I'm glad I didn't update to that. They nerfed the plants even more and even took out some of their effects completely like the zombie stun ability of Apple Mortar

[@Ghosty_Dosty]

​@@andrewgreeb916 It's mostly what plants you choose. The free will jumped from the window and died in PvZ2, if you didn't choose the wright plants even if they counteract the zombies. Woops, keep trying to beat the level with the wright plants! Which ones? Keep trying and figure it out yourself with infinite game overs!

[@MostlyJustWhipGaming]

That rarely ever happens because usually the "OP" zombies are not spammed

[@ED-gw9rg]

An interesting way to rework Winter Melon into a high-Sun Support would be to make his AoE temporarily Freeze enemies, so players get a feeling of "Daaamn, that's a high-cost, high-power Support!" It'd feel similar to Kingdom Rush's DWAARP, in a way: Relatively heavy hits with brief/guaranteed Stunning, but not so much of either that your other Towers no longer need to exist. Kingdom Rush gets away with awesome designs like the DWAARP costing +1000 Gold because every Stun/CC in that game is gonna cost you that much anyways. Imagine if we got a Tier 2 Archer that HALVES THE SPEED OF ENEMIES for only 300 Gold! That's what Snow Peashooter is to most mods, and it's kinda unfair.

[@imjoniiii]

Aoe freezing is the definition of god mode say you applied freezing to snow pea or gave kernel pult 100% butter chance, the front zombie gets frozen but several zombies can push forward over time granting a winter melon freezing means not just the targetted zombie, but zombies behind it too are frozen, there is zero push and you have a literal god plant

[@ED-gw9rg]

@@imjoniiii I mean a freeze that lasts for 1-2s or so, so that yes, it looks quite powerful, but it's about the same effect as the lame chill we have right now. It's all about the presentation, ya know!

[@imjoniiii]

@@ED-gw9rg 2-3 winter melons

[@Myirlnameisntidk]

I think reflourished primal sun teaches players to use it as a sun produczr and a wall which will encourage players to get better at pvz2 mostly because reflourisheds player base are not particularly good at the game

[@andrewgreeb916]

Sounds better than eclise's sink or swim style of learning. For eclise you either become a pro pvz player or you hit a brick wall on one of those numerous challenge levels.

[@KrazeemSB2]

that's true relourisheds aren't generally that great but man fuck lv 48 of holiday mash-up all my homies hate lv 48 of holiday mash-up

[@danielfazylov6960]

​@Krazeem that wasn't that bad for me ngl heck on launch the level was really easy except for the first phase

[@notyours807]

I agree with the video, but on a side note, I really don't like Reflourished's Shine vine nerf. It take 3 cycle to MATCH its price, where ever other sun producer EXCEEDS their own in just 2. It also takes forever to recharge. Seems no reason to run it when you can just put down another sunflower. It requires on space being a heavy problem, but Sunbean and Gold Bloom are better in that regard

[@enderallygolem]

Sun bean and gold bloom aren't passive producers, you can't slowly plant more and more of them as the level progresses. Space saving is pretty important, as usually the thinf stopping you from planting more sun producers is the lack of space. With something like shine vine, the only cost from planting one is a seed slot to pick the plant

[@The_hot_blue_fire_guy]

I do understand why most mods are harder than the base game because most people that play mods have probably played PVZ1, PVZ2 and PVZ3 for dozens of hours many for probably hundreds of hours. But I do think that some easier overpowered mods should exist. Not only because it can be fun in short bursts to just feel unstoppable or be able to turn off your brain and not think for a bit. But also to help introduce people to mods that might not otherwise want to try them because they are too hard or challenging. If you look at other games that are heavily modified like Minecraft. Pretty much every Bethesda game, factorio and many other games you will see that all though there are plenty of mods that make the game harder or more difficult there are also mods that add things that are silly or overpowered or just ridiculous just because they can. I remember my first Minecraft mods were TMI (to many items) basically a recipe and item spawning mod, clay soldiers. A really funny mod were you made little clay people and you could give them stuff to use as equipment and they would fight each other. And a mod called rainbow ore. It added a ore that looked like iron or gold but it was all rainbow colored. It was like 3 times stronger than diamond so really OP and it was only about as rare as diamond. But I remember that I had really fun with these mods. I didn’t care that some stuff was OP I just was fascinated by the fact I even could mod Minecraft at all. My point with this example is that not every mod has to mod for a more pro audience. Not every mod needs to be a challenge or needs to be difficult. Sometimes just silly fun and messing around is all you really need. I already have a couple of ideas for PVZ2 mods that could be easy and not very challenging but still fun. Hell even a simple mod that basically is just the original game but make all the micro transactions available for purchase with coins and rework some of the more bullshit levels and change to order you unlock worlds and plants and that is pretty much it. Yea it will probably be easy and could be easily exploited but the point of easy mods like this would be to act as a bridge between people that have never used a mod and people that play a lot of mods. Like I said with my Minecraft mods. If the only mods that exist for Minecraft were mods that made the game hard and more challenging I probably wouldn’t have gotten into mods until many years later and i would most likely have gotten frustrated with many mods feeling unfairly difficult or challenging. Easy and simple mods should exist to allow for different play styles and skill level. Sometimes you just want to turn your brain off for a while and not really need to think.

[@petrikhorr]

i mean sure, but for the most part mods are intended to be played after the base game. yes there probably should be some "chill out and do whatever" sandbox type mods, but especially in pvz1, you can kinda already do that for the most part.

[@phorchybug3286]

500 sun cost is already enough to scare me away from winter melon most the time. I'm better off using cheaper plants.

[@77elite9]

Pack in like 3 columns of sun producers and 500 sun is not hard to reach.

[@phorchybug3286]

​@@77elite9 easier said than done, buddy.

[@77elite9]

@@phorchybug3286 no? I find myself often with too much sun when I do that so it really is that easy. Anyways I’m done with this game, don’t message me again.

[@m4rcyonstation93]

​@@phorchybug3286 I mean if you just constantly keep enough sun for a sun producer on hand, and place the moment it goes off CD, it's really not that hard

[@enderallygolem]

Something worth saying is that mods not only generally have longer levels than vanilla, but also expect you to use at MINIMUM 2 columns of sun. That's why mods often have some plants "nerfed" to have crazy high plant costs. They're there by necessity. If this wasn't the case you could easily plant the most expensive plants within the first quarter of each level, and every level would have to be insanely spammy to compensate.

[@kyarumomochi5146]

I hardly see any mod that even lets you properly set up 2 collumms

[@KrisJ_]

​@@kyarumomochi5146 Well most the time i have 2 collumms of sun pretty easy , even 3 or 4 no problem.

[@willw5868]

@@kyarumomochi5146 skill issue

[@enderallygolem]

​@@kyarumomochi5146 Mods don't expect you to have a "proper" 2 columns. They expect you to constantly add sunflowers throughout the entire level so long as they produce more sun than their cost before they die

[@kyarumomochi5146]

@@enderallygolem Wich mods are we talking about here?

[@lotplantagon]

When I first saw and tried Winter Melon in Reflourished, I felt the plant wasn't worthy. Increased in sun cost and recharge, lower firing rate and shorter chill time, well, at first glance the plant isn't worth to bring out. However, the developers decided to give Winter Melon his splash buffs, and that overally increases the plant's effectiveness. Maybe some people don't know, Winter Melon's main power lies beneath his splash ability, this differs him from high, concentrated damage plants like Citron. Nerfing the chill time and firing rate will force the players to plant more of them instead of just 2 in the 2nd and 4th row; or pair the plant with the others instead of using the plant as the only attacker in order to creat a defense with least weaknesses possible. Nerfing the sun cost and recharge time will make the users more appreciate the plant, that it is very expensive to replant, that it is hard to restore once lost. That the whole point of a tower defense game, that everything needs to work together to form a good defense with no weaknesses, to make players think and creative; be challenging while fun to play at the same time. Overall, the Plants vs Zombies 2 itself used to be a fun game, but the amount of overwhelming-powerful plants added really makes the game no different than just-place-down-and-win game rather than a tower defense game. Some mods are doing a good job in balancing the plants, but some just not very good at it. And balancing isn't an easy work to do, it takes a lot of time to consider which one should be changed and should be kept, or if it's changed, then how so.

[@Amario_]

Well said. 👍

[@lotplantagon]

@@Amario_ well, thank you

[@antikytheracookie619]

only issue is... just use melon pult now im not paying 2x sun cost for a weaker melon pult

[@lotplantagon]

@@antikytheracookie619 You know, Melon-pult also receives a similar nerfs and buffs just like Winter Melon. Also, the balance that the developers decided for the Melon brothers just make them better together, one with cheaper cost and one with better crowd-control.

[@Amario_]

@@antikytheracookie619 "weaker melon pult" not at all a weaker melon pult, the crowd control this guy has is insane with even just a column of them, not to mention hes only 650 sun, thats cheaper than most winter melons you'll encounter. Melon Pult may be far cheaper but he doesn't have any of the crowd control options winter melon has.

[@dezmas9332]

as long as they are left as fun, then it doesn't matter if they are nerfed or buffed, unless that nerf or buff makes the plant absolutely broken and bad for the game, but a fun plant usually is just a really good niche instead of a sweep plant

[@etheron1235]

This is why I like Reflourished mod more than Eclise, because it still makes plants still familiar to use while being reworked/changed unlike Eclise reworks plants for the sake of making them balanced (Still don't like how Starfruits projectile is slower, Lightning Reeds very slow recharge, and what the heck does Red Stinger is)

[@andrewgreeb916]

Never understood the change to starfruit, I guess they wanted it to be unique compared to rotobaga, but honestly rotobaga is usually always the better plant even after the nerfs, so instead of making starfruit worse why not make it something else.

[@elfbeaned]

​@@andrewgreeb916 here is one explanation of starfruit (I tried my best, as I no longer play eclise till alpha 3) -Starfruit's slow attack speed is to make it less op compared to the vanilla version, but their damage output on hig health zombies is higher. That is gp2's concept -I must confirm, rotobaga+starfruit have almost never been balanced in eclise. Once one of them is buffed, the other goes almost useless and vice versa. In beta 1.9, t3 starfruit one shot most basic zombies and variants, while rotobaga took ages to place the first one, while has lower damage and worse AI. In eclise alpha, starfruit is more expensive, still slow *** attack speed, and t2, t3 damage is nerfed, while rotobaga received damage boost, cost reduction and in total, it is starfruit, but better.

[@AwesomeGamer-om4hm]

The one change I honestly dislike with Reflourished is that Draftodil cannot kill tiny zombies with a gust anymore. This pretty much kills the strat that combines her with Shrinking Violet.

[@R0CKDRIG0]

@@andrewgreeb916 Starfruit is cheaper and the layout they require to accurately defend both the front and the back is way easier to plan.

[@Cool_Kid95]

So I watched the video. And i have faced the balance issues in my own modding experience. I like to buff weak plants, nerf the strongest plants, and generally change things. I’ve also buffed and nerfed and overall changed several zombies as well. There’s not many plants that feel unfairly broken. I still need to fix sling pea tho. I tried but no one was able to help me make it knot target one lane.

[@chinchillinDaily]

Again solid video, just needs subtitles. Its often hard to hear the words you say at different sections of the video

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

There is actually a very simple reason for this and it isn't just mods. In shooters if you just buff everything either every gun becomes a sniper or you buff player health as part of this leading to everything but 1 item getting a buff which is no different then that single nerf as the world changes in the exact same way.

[@Zeldrake]

14:20 "... people just not understanding things. That's fine and human." Creeps spitting philosophy I was unprepared for xD

[@impachoblue1301]

Altverz is actually epic, the nerfs and other changes have made the game so much more fun to me

[@ItsMeHernandez]

The intro is the thing I would pay to see in an out of context compilation

[@Cahrssomething]

0:44 and in more vanilla style mods, that percentage can still be around twnehdatherdypessenousow

[@baaa838]

Give me that game you used, that has you crushing ingredients and putting it in a cauldron, NOW

[@Creeps20]

thanks for reminding me i'm an idiot and forgot to put it in the description. Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, tis a pretty a good

[@baaa838]

@@Creeps20 thank you so much

[@NeoCinnamon]

I'm still sad that Lightning Reed was Nerfed in PVZ 2 Reflourished, that plant was pretty middle of the road.

[@zorafox5866]

Before watching the video, some of the Plants of the original PvZ2 we're straight up overpowered, just because they sold them in the Real money shop, one of the best examples might be the Apple Mortar, 250 Sun cost, Hits 3 lanes at once and an additional stun on the enemy. I also felt like that later plants are power creep the older once, so you have more incentive to use them.

[@crackersandpie136]

Ngl,Reflourished/Altverz Winter is the only reason I ever use him because if I try to use Vanilla Winter,I would fall asleep before finishing a level because of how boring it is.

[@kyuosaya6241]

I was like most of what this video said tbh. I didnt like that op plants from 2 was nerfed, and it made me not want to play eclise. Then I tried some of the plants, and damn I kinda like the changes and nerfed plants so much more then the non nerfed version due to just how muhc more fun it is to spend 1350 for a calipower rather then like 250. and it not being broken makes me find value in plants more. I also like the idea of plant reworks in general, as plants like peanut are made more fun. Too bad reworks also make plants like lighting reed just unusable. eitherway good vid and I agree

[@JokR07]

For me, I play mods for just more of the base game, with some twists to spice it up. Most mods balance the plants by changing how the plant should be played entirely, and that I think is an issue. For people like me, we aren't exactly trying to play a new game, more like an extension of a base game. This is why I think reflourished does a good job of plant balancing. The roles of the plants aren't changed, instead how effective they are at the role they are given is changed. I don't have to relearn how a plant works, it still can be used the same.

[@butter_0021]

Yooo!! Potion Craft gameplay!! So hype to watch.

[@codywhen]

I started playing Reflourished after I got a little bored with the worlds in vanilla PVZ2. I wanted to check out the new and unique plants and worlds offered by the mod, but when I installed the mod I found the increase in difficulty to make the levels overall less enjoyable. Sure a casual game can be hard, but when the later stages of the game became a slog of nightmare level after nightmare level the game ceased being fun for me. I wish there was a mod for PVZ2 that introduced MORE broken plants and new worlds whilst maintaining the base games difficulty (or lack thereof)

[@jeremybottoms7619]

I agree like it hurts my brain that there the premium plants are free (which is a good thing) but you have to play the levels after the first boss of each world to unlocked them and the increase difficulty spike is insane and they encourage you to wait untill you beat modern day to play those levels meaning you don't even get to use those plants for moat levels. And they when wait to far in nerfing then plants, yes the game is more balanced but honestly kinda to balanced the premium plants don't feel as special since most of them is kinda worst than the ones you unlock from the main levels

[@Stirling96]

The balance changes in Reflourished are fairly balanced.

[@nou4410]

I love how eclise rework plants because they don't feel like better versions of other plant what is great

[@ED-gw9rg]

Eclise actually makes every Plant feel uniquely powerful. For example, Fume Shroom and Laser Bean are both piercing AoE Attackers, but feel completely different in gameplay: - Laser Bean brings Kingdom Rush's Tesla x104 to mind, being super slow but hitting everything in the lane. You want to stall Zombies for Laser Bean to do it's job, just like how the Artillery and Barracks synergize in KR. - Fume Shroom is faster with a shorter range, encouraging more aggressive/rightward setups than Laser Bean. Risky and rewarding in a different way.

[@R0CKDRIG0]

A few do (I think Iceberg Lettuce completely destroys the need for Potato Mine), but it's remarkable how most of them have unique characteristics. Even Peashooter and Repeater each have a place and time.

[@randomaccount559]

The problem is some if not most casual players prefer to install mods so they can play the plants they want without having to buy them using real money, So saying that they should go back to base game is gatekeeping and just inconsiderate

[@Mr_Doug]

There's no need to oversimplify the game, if you don't like the nerfs go play with free shop or something. Gatekeeping, huh? As if it was a bad thing.

[@M.3.K.Y]

Let’s just say the game is balanced around peashooter and not winter melon or pokra. If someone decides to make peashooter as powerful as winter melon or pokra, then what’s the point in using those plants in the first place? And since peashooter is so strong it could 1 shot everything, it raises the problem that you need to buff the zombie to match his power, and it’s not just 1, but EVERY zombies in the game. So just by buffing a plant because you think its weak, you accidentally create more problems for yourself, meanwhile nerfing some specific plants would save you more time.

[@mr.dieharderrz]

I hate that logics . . . especially comparing peashooter and winter melon.

[@M.3.K.Y]

@@mr.dieharderrz Of course it’d be unfair to compare peashooter and winter melon, but this is a tower defense game we’re talking about, you have account other factors as well. Says, both pvz1 and pvz2 winter melon have the same stats, but in pvz1, winter melon is more balanced, since the sun meta is 25 + you need to take both melons, so you’d need a long time before you’re able to place even 1 down. In pvz2, the game is much more faster thanks to the 50 sun meta, you don’t have to pick melon-pult and you also have plantfood to boost your sun production. It’s not just the stats that are the problems.

[@impossiblehanley2732]

But then the opposite problem happens with nerfs. Take reflourished for example. There's no point in using winter melon because it was overnerfed to the point it is outclassed by similar plants.

[@R0CKDRIG0]

Plants have more attributes than just pure damage. Pokra attacks through zombies at short distance, slows and poisons them. Winter melon slowly attacks from above, chills them and covers adjacent lanes. Peashooter attacks straight but it's projectiles can catch fire and it reloads fast. Plants should be designed to account for different situations.

[@dragonace5177]

5:50 Okay can we talk about the disgusting garbage going on over on the zombie's side there? Who at Popcap/EA okayed that?

[@DrDrao]

It's endless mode. It scales the longer you play it. You shouldn't ever encounter this in the base game.

[@lettucebob7395]

@@DrDrao It literally says day 13 at the top,still an average level though

[@DrDrao]

@@lettucebob7395 Never mind then. I didn't expect that to be a regular level.

[@guacodile2528]

It's cuz the chard guard kept knocking back so the zombies kept stacking Also we don't need the adventure to be any easier plz. It was already nerfed so much over time.

[@getalifeyoulosernerdfuckyo6164]

@@guacodile2528 what is bro waffling about 😂😂😂😭😭😭😭

[@Sekku829]

I love watching these videos while I eat food, they hit that perfect part in my head in a way I can't explain with words

[@flatwoodscryptid]

I've seen a lot of folks say "just buff the zombies too" and the thing is, that just takes more effort for what's largely the same end result for a whole lot more work. So let's buff every plant to be as good as what it does as Winter Melon is. Well now you can steamroll the game with no difficulty and no one's having fun. So now let's buff all the zombies to keep up with the new plant power. What did we accomplish in the end? Winter Melon is now on par with every other plant, but by changing 99% of the game instead of 1%. And if I were a professional programmer, let alone a modder doing this for fun, I would certainly choose the option that changes less for the same expected value.

[@edex59]

I to, spontaneously combust upon failure in PVZ2 0:22

[@mhb0496]

the intro hits the mark for me as Winter Melon is my favorite plant in pvz1, so seeing 650 SUN broke me. And even when I force myself to play winter melon is not as satisfying as it was in pvz1.

[@jaren12072]

I think a problem with nerfs in mods not just for PvZ, but in general, is the rest of the game isn't adjusted to compensate for the nerf. Sometimes, that's not necessary, but other times, it makes a drastic change to the difficulty that makes so many things far harder. Pikmin 2 mods are a good example of this. Most nerf the extremely powerful Purple Pikmin, but they don't adjust much about the games combat, and since the games combat is balanced around the Purple Pikmin, it makes normal encounters with enemies as hard as some bosses. Some things do need nerfs, but if a game is designed around something being as powerful as it is, the game needs adjusting as well.

[@winmen5279]

btw, killing infinite zombie is quite a hard thing to pull off if the plant will get distracted constantly let's say by tons of wizards not even on the map or gargs from far future.(iirc they can't be hit for a while) killing infinite zombie is very simple on some endless because of lack of strong ranged. so that would mean you need strong plant or boosted just to have a chance against them. I feel like if a consistent aoe plant gets too good to a point where it can clear so much of the game, it would cause the regular game that to be quite boring because you would spam them without thinking. if you play pvz2 vanilla a lot, some of the broken plants might not even seem broken to you because of how unbalanced the game is.

[@modageddon2742]

Yeah that happened to me i was playing around with winter and cherry bomb alot and never felt like i was very over the top in terms of damage

[@winmen5279]

​@@modageddon2742 yeah cherry bomb and winter melon dps is good. but no where close to some of the best plants. cherry bomb is very very mid in this game even bad, winter melon stays quite relevent in pp due to having long chill and 3 lanes(zomboss in pp reduce effect duration). banana launcher is completely out classed by boom flower if you can click.

[@winmen5279]

@@modageddon2742 The amount of busted aoe plants made it so st need to be on steroids to be good, which is pretty much why we got peavine.

[@johnjordan9589]

Winter melon definitely needed nerfed but not nearly as much as it was in Reflourished. Now it is complete garbage.

[@GNVS300]

True

[@Amario_]

not really, his damage and splash is really good, get down a column of them and you can have complete control of the playing field

[@klashslash6919]

Wow... 1:59 Someone finally using potion craft in a video

[@limerplaz8208]

The intro alone made me like. It caught me do off guard when he said I died and im in the ground😂😂

[@terrorsDomain]

I Think That The Easiest Way To Balance A Game Is To Make Everything You Have Broken And Then Make The Enemies More Broken For More Consistent Results. Also Enemies That Counter Stuff In Unique Ways As Theirs A Lot Of Ways To Make Instas Not Kill A Zombie Without Them Having Resistances And While Having That Zombie Still Contribute More Than Just That.

[@enzokalani]

Neat, bug fables footage when I'm playing it as I watch this.

[@eduardpeeterlemming]

Reflourished: "Lets make all good plants trash and like 5 weak plants slightly more decent

[@Amario_]

you're literally the little timmy shown in the intro lmao thinking rfl overnerfs plants cuz ur so used to the broken vanilla plants

[@isaacmon2252]

Primal sunflower is still great, in some situations better than vanilla because of its health, the nerf to its cost does not matter

[@chaincat33]

The fundamental problem with the nerf vs buff debate is that you go in circles. "Why not buff everything else?" "Then the zombies are weak" "Then buff the zombies" congratulations, you have fixed the game in exponentially more work than needed to be done without changing the core experience. If one thing is a problem, you do not buff everything else in the game around it, you nerf that thing to be in line with the game. This is true in singleplayer and multiplayer games. Let's take an extreme example, say there was a peashooter variant that dealt 10 billion damage and otherwise behaves like a normal pea shooter. Why would you use anything other than that? You have two options now, allow this plant to centralize the game completely and make everything else play catch up to it, or nerf it down to a reasonable level. By nerfing it, you allow other strategies to shine through. By buffing everything else, you would need to either tweak every other aspect of the game and effectively have nerfed that peashooter, or make everything else essentially just a carbon copy of it in a different color.

[@blacklight683]

2:18i don't agree cuz then you get games where every weapon kills you so fast due to multiple buffs and becomes a game of who sees the other first, but there are some cases like medic from tf2 where all of his primaries except 1 are bad and instead of making the good weapon worse(nerf) they should make the bad weapons better(buff) 2:45while this is true it forces players and lessens fun and playability, just like sniper in tf2 he's broken and the best way to counter him is to play sniper and be better,but that would mean I have to stop my fun and play style just to counter someone on the other team and that sucks the fun out of the experience

[@matthewkeenor5079]

Personally, I think a PvZ roguelike would be very fun and could have a valid excuse to buff certain plants. With a general roguelike format, you beat a room/level and then get a reward. Here, you could buff certain plants that would otherwise suck to receive as your reward. I haven't touched PvZ2 and the community in god knows how long so idk if this already exists but yeah

[@supersmashbghemming6445]

Actually a sick idea but i don't think the technology in terms of mods is there yet

[@thatwasanexperience3124]

There’s actually a fan game that attempts to do this called “I RULE” which is based on Isaac

[@seb-soup]

Great video!

[@dundun26]

thanks!

[@egg_ox]

I think it's impossible to make blanket statement as to "you should only nerd", or "you should only buff". Sometimes things need buffed while other things need nerfed. Using TF2, for example, you have weapons like the Medic's needle guns which are bad and need a buff, but those buffs aren't solely based on the fact that the crossbow completely outclasses them, so in this case one weapon needs nerfed while other weapons need buffed to put them on equal levels. In the case of PVZ2 (and mostly reflourished because that's what I primarily play), I now understand your argument for why wintermelon was nerfed, however as someone who isn't a pro MLG, 24/7 pvz ultra master, I honestly never thought of stacking wintermelons and cherry bombs, so to me it's gone from a plant that I never used much to a plant that seems worthless to me. I guess what I'm saying is, is that it all depends and maybe the real nerfs were the friends we made along the way. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk

[@sud1881]

the crusaders crossbow shouldn't be nerfed because its the only tool medic has that doesn't make medic just a game of positioning and nothing else besides following teammates while clicking on them.

[@egg_ox]

it should be nerfed because it's incredibly overpowered and does way too much. Kinda like the ubersaw

[@sud1881]

@@egg_ox the sandvich overshadows the shotgun, should we nerf it? no, because it gives use to an unused secondary slot, just like the crusaders crossbow. The ubersaw should be nerfed because its slot already has a purpose yet the ubersaw makes that irrelevant.

[@egg_ox]

The sandwich does something completely different than the shotgun, so I don't know what you're trying to say here.

[@sud1881]

@@egg_ox the sandvich makes a useless secondary slot useful, the crusaders crossbow makes the useless primary slot useful, the melee slot already has a purpose meaning that nerfing the ubersaw IS NOT a nerf . Neither slots should have been useless without a single weapon so Valve should make changes to give more viable options for those slots.

[@kemosonicfan123lbp]

I want to address a few things in the video: 1. Powercreep Plants aren't always the nerf targets. In your first point, you talk about how newer plants tend to be overpowered compared to the older plants, but this doesn't really excuse nerfing a plant like Winter Melon, which was already in the game when it first came out. I'll discuss this more in a later point, but I think for plants like Winter Melon, there are better ways to balance them for mods. That being said, overpowered new plants definitely need to be toned down, sometimes immensely, to work in a mod. So no disagreements there. 2. Nerfs sometimes go too far I'm gonna use Winter Melon in Reflourished as an example here. I played Reflourished during the time where Steam Ages was a brand new zone, and Winter Melon: Costs more sun, fires slower, deals less damage, doesn't have a good uptime on chill This... is a little overkill. Expensive Plants are already questionable to use at some of the more challenging parts of Reflourished, but, I won't deny base Winter Melon's power. So how would I fix it? Make Winter Melon an upgrade plant again. Seed Slots are an expensive commodity in PVZ2 in general, so if you make Winter Melon cost a ton, and require Melon Pult as a base upgrade, now you have to sacrifice a good earlygame and two seed slots for a potentially strong lategame. You can also bring back Winter Melon's long recharge time this way, there's a reason people didn't use it in every level in PVZ1. 3. Sun Economy is key If you balance the sun economy well enough, certain plants don't need to be nerfed to oblivion to become on par with more standard plants. If you aren't making enough Sun to get your Winter Melons up in time, for example, then you'll have to consider a cheaper alternative. But levels with more flags could be slowed down at the earlygame, to give plants like Winter Melon their time to shine. Simply put: prevent the player from having too easy a time making sun, increase recharge times and sun costs of stronger plants, and you've got a challenging mod.

[@IdkYouTellMe16]

5:15 I actually did do the whole adventure with pokra, (rent a plant and got enough packets to unlock it) and honestly, it just felt like not much was there to see. I got so used to my main plants being so busted that when a conveyor or locked and loaded level came on, it felt a lot harder because I wasn’t used to the plants of the world. While pokra is extremely overpowered for adventure, I would not recommend using her the whole way through as everything just seems to fly by. I could complete an entire world, mind you, without losing a single level, in less than a day.

[@pinkius]

In such single player game mods, where you dont have any multiplayer interactions, most plants should be balanced around game progression, maybe with an opportunity to later make your favorite plants on the same power level than your main ones. For example, you REALLY like peashooter, so why not making it deal same damage as other towers for the cost of a special item you get after certain levels. I dont know how it would be played, but its certainly sounds pretty interesting in my opinion, since it can make some older beloved plants much more useful in the late game. Balancing stuff around game progression is a bit easier than balancing all plants around pvp's. Terraria has a very good game progression where weapons become stronger the further you progress, but it also has some oddballs that receive buffs based on where exactly on the progress line you are, like Abigael's Flower (i think thats the name) that increases speed and damage of your summon after you enter hardmode.

[@prisma6445]

Agree! A lot of PvZ2 mods balance the entire game forgetting that you unlock certain plants at certain stages.

[@Youmu_Konpaku_]

I remember randomly replaying eclise and I'm here dumbfounded how my signature winter melon costs 1500 sun iirc Imo I don't like nerfing plants, it just makes the game arbitrarily harder for no reason. If you're objective in making a game is to make it unwinnable then there's no fun to be found there besides for masochists

[@potatoman7028]

Nerfing the win button plants dosent make the game unwinnable also eclise is a extreme case of this where its normal to have plants costing 1000-3000 sun and still being affordable because sunproducers in eclise are op you won't find any other mod that makes a plant cost over a 1000

[@flango348]

The objective is to be hard but doable for an engaging experience.

[@BaronElBardo]

One note about balance from a Warhammer 40K/Kill Team player and ex-magic player. If you only buff you will have eventually the problem of powercreep and the dominant strategies will become more uniform. That's what happened in 9ed and what is happening with magic and Yu-Gi-Oh.

[@erak7]

The hollow Knight music is fucking great.

[@Therevengeforget]

Nerfs don't really matter to me, because if I can still manage to make my strategy to work, then I feel it's good. (and it being using Twin Sunflowers and instas to save up for Winter Melons. Yes it worked in Reflourished last time I checked.)

[@pallingtontheshrike6374]

it's the difference between buffing 60% of plants fairly carefully, and then buffing all the zombies even more carefully, and nerfing 20% of plants maybe a little haphazardly. From a game design point of view, both have merits and demerits. From a modder's point of view, one is *strictly less work* for *close enough* results

[@drewhazel1121]

If you buff everything else to match, the game becomes easy, buff the enemies and suddenly it just looks like the op stuff is nerfed. You cannot buff everything, or else it is literally not changing a thing

[@liber2350]

How I feel about it: Buffing compared to nerfing allows devs to work with higher stats, which helps them find the perfect balance easier as they can make (percent-wise) smaller tweaks to make everything they want. However: this forces everything to be perfectly balanced to do everything they are designed to. Issue here: it becomes "have problem, use solution" and the game becomes easy. Things need to be proportionately unbalanced in order to achieve balance. It also encourages diversity and allows for weaker units to still be viable by allowing strong units alone to be less usable. Look at pvzh, generally low stats and a horrid stat growth compared to sun (4 stats for 1 "mana", 5 for 2, and 6 for 3, usually +2 per mana afterwards). Now this does bring a lot of imbalance to the game (cowboy... *cough cough*), but it also makes it so you arent just running cards to counter play, but youre running what you want to do and reacting how you must, it forces the game to be... consistently fresh in a way that makes it fun. I think this is a great concept for multiplayer games like pvzh, but other games suffer from this like fps games, as you can only be one character at a time and its tough to be a weak support unit without feeling left out. Despite this, base pvz2 does a great job of handing you the right tools for the job throughout your adventure... ok primal potato mine should lose like 1/3 of its dps and be reworked to be an aoe damager to weaken, but not kill, zombies.

[@YuyuHakurei]

Playing the game originally is about adapting to learn the game. Installing a mod is about fixing the flaws the original game had or to play more of that game. They are fundamentally completely different experiences. Balance changes should not be seen as nerfs or buffs. They should be seen as rebalancing. Nerfs are almost always the right direction because fixing what is madly op generally allows more strategies to be played. Versatility = Fun. It also depends on the game. RPGS generally need both because they are more complex. Like Diablo 2 about half the skills in the game are useless because they never scale to be useful in end game. Which is fundamentally against what the game was designed to be. Every skill in the game is supposed to be good and that used to be the case in 1.09. Beyond that version is when Blizzard took over and basically created a mod in 1.10 and above. Now all of the strongest strategies and builds are what they buffed in 1.10. Which kinda made the game boring for those who like skills that got nerfed in 1.10. Since that resulted in less Versatility the fun was eliminated for certain people. Thus a Mods goal is always to make the game more Versatile than it used to be. More choices that didn't exist before. More new paths that now exist.

[@phoenixmacrae5597]

I wanna say that the one Seedium that I feel really works in base game is Dazey Chain which the only reason I’m okay with it is because it half-carried me through the entire game Along with Cherry Bomb

[@gabrielfreire3732]

14:22 it actualy does because reminder the primal sunflower takes longer to produce sun so if you compare both the primal in the long run is making less sun thanks to that nerf Nerfing can be good but they should also buff Hell there are times when the mod is more fun because it buffa the zombies instead of nerfing the plants

[@Juuuuuuuj]

0:25 yes that is what happend to me, please help me get out. The neighbors keep doing religious rituals whenever they hear me snoring.

[@XperimentorEES]

Mods are effectively passion projects, and it's why I tend to splice some together because I rarely entirely agree with just one creator's opinion of how the game should be designed.

[@SupaPuttyYT]

The greatest intro to a video ever made

[@henrystickmin8812]

When u call a frame perfect challenge "casual" because theres only one button to press

[@melvint-p9500]

Geometry Dash moment

[@KimFareseed]

Ah, super late game endless, I can feel the hardware and software cry out in pain.

[@bearboy.]

idk why i got so hyped at the 5 seconds of bug fables footage

[@camwoodstock]

"On your totally not emulated Android device," I am simply unhinged and play Altverz on mobile. With touchscreen and all.

[@fortheloveofgodlaugh2981]

Balance is key, especially in a game with a cast as diverse as PvZ2, legit hundreds of plants. So many plants are just dead matter worthless because the premiums and even Jurassic Plants just eclipse them in terms of power and overall usefulness

[@kit9837]

Such a banger intro, rip lil timmy

[@captainphoton1693]

Honestly the fact it's single players make buffs even better as an options. You can add bullshit in the game. If it's fun and enjoyable for a long emperiod of time (so deep enouth) then it just work. Except if something is way too good. You should buff some enemies to make that option less brain dead or buff other things to bring it to the same lvl. It's not really power creap because you never uped the best power possible. You just made it more Intresting because now you need or you can use more things in different ways. Nerfing here is just a loss to the player. And a win for nobody because you are alone against an AI. sometimes it make stuff more fun to nerf a stupid strategy. But except if it bypass the best challenges, stupid starts are a healthy thing for a solo game to have. You should more empheqise the fact it will not carry you very far and give more challenges to the player to compare themselves to others. And the best scores and achievement are done without using a stupid strat. And if you really don't want to powercreap at all then do the buff in reverse. Instead of making it stronger you can either (as I already said) make a new enemy that has new property. Or reduce the amount of condition to get it. Ex here reduce the cost to match what people are willing to spend to use it. And if you really gotta nerf something do it intelligently. WHY? is it good. Too much damage? Is that it's main purpose? Well maybe you can lower it and give it another utility. Or make him do damage in a different way that is not fit for every situation while maybe making him even better in some others. Balancing a game is really tricky. And how players perceive and understand thoses is probably the hardest part. A game that does it perfectly is bloon td 6. Or a game that does it in a fun way. Just mixing the meta from time to time would be paladins (but they have their fair share of op characters but instead of taking stuff away they change the condition. This perk is bad nobody pick it, and this feature is to broken. They delete the perk and change it to have this broken feature behind it. Now they gotta chose.)

[@guncolony]

What i have issue with is mods nerfing plant's unique abilities into the ground. You can beat most levels when spamming repeater and the more specialized plants are just worse in most situations

[@melvint-p9500]

the broken plants have always been generic damage dealers like winter, primal mine and dusk lobber. in what mod is unique stuff nerfed??

[@m4rcyonstation93]

literally what mod does this

[@Shyboofie]

That intro is something else.

[@Ririxpj]

"by a dedicated team of individuals" are you challenging me?

[@Adam-zt6di]

that intro feels like an oversimplified bit