Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville might not officially be out yet, but players having been enjoying the early release in the form of the Founder’s Edition. Available throughout the month of September, the Founder’s Edition allowed players to get access to a slow trickle of content at a discounted price as PopCap adjusted, tuned, and got the game ready for its full launch on October 18. Today marks Week 5 for Founder’s Edition players, and it brings a major balancing patch that tunes quite a few of the characters as well as fixes some of the bigger issues that the game faced in its early release.
While the Founder’s Edition is no longer available to purchase, you can preorder the game to get ready for October 18. Meanwhile, Founders can jump in with added content, a new Hallowe- ahem, excuse me, I meant, “Lawn of Doom Festival” event, and a lot of changes and fixes that simply make the game more fun to play. This adds to all of the content that’s been added in past weeks.
Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville Update Patch Notes
Key New Features Turned On – Now Available for Founding Neighbors
- Enabled Town Center Zombie Region
- Added 4v4 Battle Arena game mode
- Started the Lawn of Doom Festival and Prize Map
- Enabled Daily, Weekly, and Character challenges
Characters
- Added friend or foe outline to better communicate enemies to players – togglable in settings.
- Added Signature Sound to burrowing Chompers to alert nearby zombies to their presence – players will now have a more audible cue for when being chased by a burrowed Chomper
- Improved Chomper run/landing animation to reduce stretching
- Added bullet drag to allow faster speeds from projectile launch and slow down projectiles as they get to max range
- Improved sprinting audio to amplify footsteps
- Added audio to Sonic Swarm when tracking towards characters
- Fixed some characters having invisible weapons
- Fixed missing impact audio sounds for several weapons and abilities
- Fixed missing hit escalation sounds when shooting with Rose/Space Cadet
- Fixed double Goatify abilities being present when using Goatify with Rose
- Created vfx to highlight Sunflower/Peashooter when in more powerful rooted state so they can’t hide in shadows
- Added setting to tune Cactus/Captain Deadbeard ADS Scope sensitivity
Character Tuning
- Night Cap
- Spore Strike:
- Slowed down over distance/decelerates
- Shadow Sneak:
- Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Shadow Sneak
- Refresh time lengthened to reduce escape capabilities
- Fung Fu:
- Flask VFX added when activating for better visual tell
- Total damage reduced to be more of a finisher
- Reduced Fung Fu radius
- Increased delay of other abilities when leaving Fung Fu
- Spore Strike:
- Kernel Corn
- Cob Busters:
- Increased rate of fire
- Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
- Butter Beacon:
- Increase throw distance for better usability
- Husk Hop:
- Increased launch distance to improve movement capability
- Cob Busters:
- Oak and Acorn
- Super Sap Trap:
- Increased detonate time to improve visual tell
- Invoke Oak:
- Increased channeling time
- Stopped health regeneration while channeling
- Treeject:
- Reduced launch height so Acorn doesn’t get easily lost
- Involved Oak goes on refresh timer, so Acorn form is not used purely for health regeneration
- Super Sap Trap:
- Soldier
- Z-1 Assault Blaster:
- Increased rate of fire and damage
- Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
- Super Stink Cloud:
- Increased throw distance for better coverage and better sight line blocking
- Rocket Jump:
- Improved responsiveness of Rocket Jump
- Z-1 Assault Blaster:
- All-Star
- Football Canon:
- Increased damage
- Increased bullet speed to be more effective at range
- Imp Punt:
- Reduced fuse to allow more precise usage
- Football Canon:
- Other Changes:
- Character ability adjustments to improve responsiveness, including:
- Rose Arcane Enigma – cut off some animation to speed up ability activation
- Kernel Corn – Shuck Shot delay removed
- Peashooter – Removed delay exiting Pea Gatling
- Snap Dragon – Improved Blue Blazes ability (improved speed / tracking)
- Citron – Improved EMPeach Trajectory and speed
- Electric Slide – Improved detonation audio for improved feedback
- Scientist – Improvements to weapon animations for activating heal mode
- Character ability adjustments to improve responsiveness, including:
UI Changes
- Added Character Class info to reward pop up for better context of who reward is for
- Added ability to skip reward presentation for Reward-o-tron-rewards to speed things up
- Added improvements to the Reward Images for customization items
- Fixed issues where incorrect expression was being displayed
- Fixed issue with expressions ellipses appearing over player head and unable to clear it
- Fixed some issues with equipping upgrades
Modes
- Improved audio awareness of when objectives being captured in Gnome Bomb/Suburbination
- Increased Multiplayer Mode Coin Rate to be more in line with Free Roam earn rate
- Ops:
- Complete retuning of ops waves and pacing
- Shortened time it takes to complete each wave
- Fixed some issues with AI navigation
- Added Elite Boss Waves
- Turf Takeover:
- Objective Time Tuning
- Tweaked Spawn Positions
- Minigame tuning
Free Roam Region
- Collected Gnome Race gnomes now show up as ghosted once completed
- Adjusted difficulty in several quests, gnome challenges, and hunts
- Improved compass navigation in a few oddball areas
- Chest reward pop ups now prioritized over reward level up to reduce sight blocking rewards in event player also levels up
- Fixed some exploits in Regions relating to using key items in split screen
- Fixed some issues with medal awarding
- Fixed some NIS issues
- Adjusted XP earn rate in Battle Chest events
- Improved VFX for mouseflies for improved readability
- Tuned down the difficulty on some of the harder Battlechest Challenges
Stability Improvements
- Made improvements to split screen stability
- Made Netcode improvements – reducing the bandwidth AI was taking in Free roam regions
- Made general improvements to online connectivity
PC
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- Added support for toggleable Anti Aliasing in Settings
- Added HDR support, allowing players to enable/disable in Settings
- Added video settings for cloth as well as volumetrics
That’s a pretty huge update for a game that’s not even officially out yet! Were actively playing this right now and will be bringing our thoughts on Battle for Neighborville soon, and you can expect a full scored review after the game releases on October 18.
[Source: PopCap]
