...Well, now I'm REALLY curious.
@golden-hearts-muses
So. Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is aā¦ complicated game. Not in terms of āneeding a high IQ to understand the gameplayā, rather EVERYTHING else behind it that feeds into the general loop of this game which makes its such a hassle to actually engage with.
Iāll tell you what you NEED to know to understand why I think this character and why virtually everyone in the PvZ community else agrees that this character is the single most broken and unfun one in all 3 pvz shooters.
So. To begin:
1. Sprinting.
Sprinting was a mechanic introduced in BFN that allows a character to run faster, but cannot use most of their abilities (minus mobility based ones) and when shot will slow down drastically. A feature thEY HAD TO ADD IN A LATER UPDATE BECAUSE POPCAP THOUGHT THIS WOULDNāT BE AS BIG A ISSUE AS IT WOUND UP BEING.
You cannot sprint backwards and can only run in the direction your character is going, which is forward. If you try to, youāll just stop sprinting.
2. Upgrades
BFN did the usual class shooter thing where instead of implying what the class was they arranged every character into Attack/Defense/Support.
This not only gave them character-based upgrades; but class based ones too.
For example, Attack got an upgrade called Combo that refreshed your abilities faster with kills. Defense had upgrades like Health Regeneration Delay and Health Regeneration because characters in the PvZ shooters can regenerate health naturally after several seconds of not taking damage.
3. DAMAGE FALL-OFF.
I donāt think I need to explain what this is, but in case anyone reads this and doesnāt know:
Damage Fall-Off is the basic principle of dealing more damage in close range, but less damage at longer range. The first two PvZ shooters HAD this function. Battle for Neighborville did not. And when the community begged for it, Popcap doubled down and refused. Claiming they would add velocity drag and projectile fall-off to prevent characters from functioning at the range they were intended.
(They claimed to have added this in an update, but if you check the gameās code: IT IS NOT THERE.)
They even joked about the fans wanting damage drop off in a livestream, but insisted they wanted to do their own thing.
So. With this information in mind, I will explain properly why citron is the single most stupidest character Iāve ever seen a shooter game.
He is the Plants Tank class. A *mobile* tank class. His whole design philosophy is similar wrecking ball from Overwatch (though Citron predates that fuck ass hamster.)
He has 200 HP. Makes sense. Tank, big health. The issues arise with the fact that he has a 600 HP shield. Exactly like Reinhardt. You can manage Reinhardt. Reinhardt is bulky, slow, big, and has almost no mobility aside from that rocket charge he has.
This is not the case with Citron. When you sprint with Citronā¦ he becomes a ball. Which prevents him from taking headshot or critical damage at all. You can also FREELY change direction when sprinting with, something no other character in the game can.
IN FACT.
Every base character from attack, defense, and support have the SAME movement speed, backward movement speed, and strafe speed. (Except a select few, but we disregard them for this case because theyāre meant to be slower-)
But CITRON.
CITRON has the fastest sprinting speed in the game. And when you with his primary? Instead of zooming in, it pulls up the shield. Which still makes him move faster than every other character when theyāre aiming.
Now, you would think: Okay, he has the shield down, I can just shoot him until it breaks.
Except. You canāt, because youāre dealing with a few crucial factors.
One. The TTK is VERY high. Garden Warfare 1 & 2 had reasonable TTKās where encounters were quick, but not so quick that they were jarring. There was a nice balance between how long a fight lasted and every character despite having a varying DPS, felt natural.
This is not the case in BFN.
The average DPS of all the charactersā¦ is 65. In garden warfare 2, itās 75. Already a giant difference.
Citronā¦
HAS THE HIGHEST UNUPGRADED DPS IN THE FUCKING GAME.
Heās also technically a melee character because he as a rotating, triple-barreled cannon. It has 50 ammo. And each shot deals 12 damage in total. The game doesnāt tell you this because it doesnāt have GroupDamage on for any shotgun in the game despite shotguns in the previous game being a HITBOX rather than shrapnel??
Also, the way the trapezoid of his primary is shaped, means heāll do extra damage if heās fucking barrel stuffing you with it. Which he can get away with because of high HP, high DPS, and high mobility.
And two. Even if you break the shield, thatās fine! He can just run away, kill you, or use his abilities. When you shoot the shield- IT GIVES HIM AMMO BACK. The damage you deal is converted into about 10 bullets for his 50 round drum magazine so when you destroy it, heāll just gun you down because youāll likely need to reload or heāll just have the ammo necessary to kill you regardless.
Speaking of abilities-
Citron has three. Like every character.
EMPeach. Spin Dash. And Navel Laser.
Spin Dash makes Citron briefly spin up before dashing forward and dealing 75 damage. This kills one character class instantly, despite it doing 50 damage in the previous entry.
Itās also a mobility option that lets you just LEAVE.
Navel Laser. Probably his most useless ability. Not because itās bad, itās actually solid- but you would be better off using his primary because it just does more damage.
Navel Laser is a precision weapon that fires constantly for six seconds increasing in damage and width every two seconds. Fundamentally, itās cool. Its DPS is still lower than his primary unfortunately. Any grandmaster citron player will never be caught dead using it. Because itās just outclassed.
And thenā¦ EMPeach. He shoots a peach at you and it stuns you for 1.4 seconds. Meaning no abilities, no shooting, no sprinting, and it cuts your base movement by 67%. Basically an instant win button.
But remember those upgrades I talked about? As you level up characters in BFN you unlock new ones. They marketed it as ābeing able to create your own characters and playstylesā, but the problem is some upgrades were legitimately broken in every conceivable and after about a year after they cut live service for the game, people had found out the best possible loadouts for each out character.
Using other ones would be fun, but they just werenāt optimal and made the game harder to play.
Citron is unfortunately a character with combination of the worst possible upgrades to fight against.
The upgrades with the shield are exclusive to the Defense class, and ones without an icon are general upgrades that every character in the game has.
You have a maximum of 7 upgrade points to use whatever you want. Citron has the unique capacity for multiple ideal loadouts depending on what you want.
Lemme just. Tell you his most egregious upgrades.
Emergency Exit: Move 41.9% faster for 3.65 seconds after exiting Spin Dash.
Freshly Squeezed: Sprint 30% faster for 5 seconds after earning a hero vanquish.
Health Regeneration: Double health regeneration rate.
Health Regen Delay: Half health regeneration delay.
Adrenaline Rush: Increase movement speed by 32.9% for 3.75 seconds upon earning a vanquish.
Fallback: Increase movement speed by 20% at or below 20% HP.
Peached: Enemies hit directly by E.M.Peach's are stunned for 2.9 seconds instead.
Peel Out: Move 35% faster while Peel Shield is up.
Now, you may have noticed a common trend surrounding his upgrades. Majority of them are focused on MOBILITY. A character, who is already the most MOBILE character in the entire game, gets upgrades that amplify his strongest trait to THE STARS.
AND he has two health based upgrades. A character with 200 HP and is fast as hell. So he can just run away, or put the shield up, and just regenerate back to full after youāve popped however many caps in his fruity ass head-
The BIGGEST offender by far, however, is PEACHED.
It is a full 3 second stun. If you get hit directly. WHICH ISNāT HARD CONSIDERING HE IS A CLOSE RANGED CHARACTER. Itās an instant win button because thereās nothing you can do once youāre stunned.
Not to mention, the DEFENSE characters in this game have a general higher DPS than the attacking characters, despite them being the offensive characters. Especially since the great DPS homogenization of this game and the lack of fall off means characters just donāt do enough damage to compensate for it.
And they would frequently buff citron in updates while the game was still supported, while removing any and all EXP glitches because the game was so ass to play at launch and in the first few months.
So to summarize.
Citron is an incredibly mobile tank that has a plethora of movement options, the fastest general speed in the game, the highest DPS of any unupgraded weapon in the game, has an ability that basically lets him win any fight and it recharges in twenty seconds, has a shield with high hp and that heals itself in mere seconds, upgrades that allow him to replenish his 200 health points in about five fucking seconds, and the second you get him down to low HP, heāll just leave and you wonāt be able to kill him.
He is one of the most broken, unfair, and upsetting characters Iāve ever seen in a class based shooter. Itās like fighting a god damn hydrogen bomb that harasses you, throws stunning peaches at your forehead, kills you, and then T-bags your corpse while calling you a slur nobody uses anymore.
This godforsaken FROOT LOOP is so intolerable. Youād have a better time finding out where the fuck Carmen Sandiego is because at least SHE is a good sport about it. BFN Citron is the shooter game equivalent of BILL CIPHER.
You get killed by him and itās just.
I start missing Electro Pea. ELECTRO PEA. The single most braindead character in garden warfare 2 with his overturned stats. But at least you can KILL HIM.
Anyways. BFN citron sucks. This nigga needs to be hung upside down like a piƱata so we can bash him in the head repeatedly.
Thank you.
