The crazy thing is for modern day they could have gone with nostalgia bait plants but they didn't, im glad about that but man half the shadow plants aren't really shadow plants in function only name
@@xiaotaoliang7787 half of them don't have any reason to be powered because their effect is either redundant, like shadow shroom or noctarine, or it makes the plant directly worse, like nightshade. They might be shadow plants but they get no benefits from being used with other shadow plants, aside from noctarine which is a worse moonflower, cherry bomb, lava guava and powering it means you lose most of the single benefit left.
I feel like Grimrose could potentially be fixed for this system by being changed from an insta plant into a chomper substitute. It functions like it does normally, shooting a little shadow along the ground and swallowing the first zombie it sees into a void in the ground, or dealing large damage to and temporarily stunning large enemies. However, instead of disappearing after this, it instead just goes into a downtime state for a little while. When powered, the down-time between swallowing zombies is reduced drastically, something like half of its usual downtime. It would also naturally need to cost more sun to account for it being a permanent plant, as opposed to a temporary one.
Honestly, reworking ALL of the mints after Conceal-mint is a great idea. They are EXTREMELY powerful for ZERO downside, and need some sort of other effect other then a one-time board wipe/watered-down instant plant
Well, mints already have a downside, just not big enough. Even a plant with amazing value is still taking a seed slot from you and their slow cooldown shows that. If their cooldown was so slow you could only use a single mint per level (with a lot of stall on a slow level maybe 2) would mean that it would be a great boost, but not consistent and only a one time thing. Also, decrease their damage so they aren't screen wipes that kill all zombies, they are supposed to be support, not do the damage. Only problem with increase cooldown would be that plant food instantly fixed that weakness.
@@TheEpikalREKT People already don't like Nightshade and his "shadow version does less damage" thing, I don't think that's a good idea. Plus, a melee attacker that poisons isn't very smart. Being long range it gives time for the zombies to die to the poison, in this case you NEED a wall because the poison will not take them out quick enough (at least it would incentivise use of Murkadamia nut, so you might be onto something)
Hey Creeps (and guys in general) , I was doing my own business, walking my dog and insulting in Spanish, and I asked myself, "Huh, I recognize what a good plant is , but what about Zombies?" And, knowing this, I have to ask, what is a good Zombie to you? Special wise talking.
I pretty sure video expresses you saying this without saying it is, as then what was the point of the joke if you're not gonna let people figure it out?
I dislike his system. It doesn't feel as rewarding as linking a bunch of Moonflowers. Instead, a Moonflower should get more defensive as it gets closer to the edge of the lawn, as if there was the shadow of the moon powering it or something. The closer to the lawn, the stronger the sun production (strongest at 1st and 2nd column). They should keep the power linking scale system. Moon Flowers should be able to link if there's a 1 tile gap between them, but any more and the link won't work and 1 tile gaps will have a weaker power increase. Incentivizing the player to bring two sun producers seems a little too "obsessed with PvZ2 mods" for me. Shadow Shroom should just be Gloom Shroom. When unpowered, attacks only main cardinals, and powered attacks all cardinal directions. Gloom Vine should instead be a singular tile of power, but not as strong as full shadow link, but would still allow Gloom Shroom to deal damage in all 8 directions (at weaker damage) Grimrose is my favorite, so I may be biased for this, but Grimrose should stay as a single-use! This new system ruins Grimrose, and it should be a great single-use as is, especially with Gargantuar spam. Dusk Lobber should be a lot weaker, and that's the only one I consider that should instead play differently. Night Shade also is just very pointless with Dusk Lobber around and no counter like in Lost City. Shadow Peashooter should stay how it is.
@@arcanine_enjoyer Remember, in this system, Moonflower is 175 sun. Might not be a good wallnut. Also, an idea I had is that when one moonflower pulses, all moonflowers next to it give a shorter pulse that doesn't detract from their main pulse timer. Essentially, with enough moonflowers, you can get pretty good coverage.
I have a great idea to reinvent shadow plants:the shadow states of plants should be alternate version of a plant , turning them not into a better version but a version more apropriated for it's position(being on the back)it's just like night shade works,he becomes a powerfull,Sacrificial , melee when he is not powered and a slightly less strong ,constantly active,ranged plant so for some examples I came up with:shadow pea should slwoly fire peas that do 15 damage with a stall effect when not powered and *fire his laser* when powered tough,it now does 10 damage(could have some good chemestry with his non powered ver.)toxic shroom(or whatever his name was)should act as his powered varient when non powered(tough that could be to op so maybe nerf him in another way)and when he is powered he will loose this abilty,BUT he will spawn randomly poison tiles every 5 seconds in a 3x2 (or 2x3 idk it's just a vertical rectangle)they stay for a good amount if time,do small damage and slow zombies ,grimrose could do less damage to zombies that don't wanna go to the shadow realm in his powered version and the rest could freak off(future me here:I decided to Change grimrose since my idea for him was preety boring and uncreative and I came up with a better idea the lines up with what I Said about the positions:in his non powered form he will attack the strongest in the field that is not flying and when powered he will attack 3 of the zombies close to your house in it's lane but will do weaker damage to those Fatso strong guys that don't fit in the hole than normal and flying zombies are still imune,*THANK YOU FOR WASTING YOUR TIME READING THIS*)
I was literally about to comment that concept, as well. It's a lot simpler than this short-term power-ups that Creeps presents, so it would be more fun to casual players, while also being more fun for veterans. Grimrose, for example, could act like an on-land Tangle Kelp, instantly killing the first non-gargantuar zombie to make contact with it, while the powered version would stretch out and remove the first zombie in the lane. I was also thinking about Scaredy Shroom from PVZ1, and thinking about how a buffed version of it could be integrated into PVZ2 by making it one of these hypothetical shadow plants, acting as a higher-defense version of the mid-row Red Stinger when not powered, but standing up and acting more like long range Puff Shroom (as in, pea shooter range, with the single puff projectile) when it is powered. Edit for more ideas: - Moon Flower wouldn't produce more sun when powered up, but more spaces. Only effecting one space behind it normally, buffed Moon Flower will add shadow power to all adjacent zones. Sun production will always be at 50 sun, regardless of Shadow Power or not. This is the only straight up buff.
I do have a couple of problems with some of these changes. 1, Moonflowers inconsistency wont just make her worse, but annoying and irritating to use. Who likes your dusk lobbers having 3x less effectiveness on the last wave? 2. Whats stopping people from just using gloom vine and ditching moonflower? Its way more consistent and is honestly just a better torchwood in a sense since it can be placed in the backline. All the benefits with none of the risk. 3. This isnt really your fault but i hate the idea of shadow plants because it forces synergy onto specific plants and heavily restricts strategies. Like when are you ever going to use dusk lobber without moonflower or gloomvine and vice versa. Torchwood isnt that fun either, but at least there are a plethora of pea shooters to choose from. A plant could be better with a certain other plant, but not so much better that it becomes worthless incomparison alone.
1. Stacking moonflowers or other dusk producers is a viable strategy. Three of them will equal 100% uptime, and coincidentally three is the number that will be affecting your middle three lanes if you dedicate a full row to it. Which is enough to have Dusk Lobber cover all five lanes. 2. Cooldowns and sun cost I guess? It's a viable alternative to Moonflower power which is kinda the point. 3. Yeah there's no getting around this one, but that's not really avoidable.
To remove the inconsistency instead of Moonflower powering nearby plants in a set interval of time maybe you could have to consciously click on the Moonflower to activate it. Aka give it the Jack O' Lantern treatment
No? Shadow plants don't restrict strategies. Saying that is like saying torchwood does that. Torchwood is just shadow plants 1.0 afterall. You don't need to go full shadow plants, you can just use a shadow tile producer and a shadow plant, it's already good enough. Also, saying that sinergy plants are bad overall is just idiotic. The concept of plants comboing and sinergysing with each other does not limit you, it does the exact opposite!
@@tpfoxCastro There's a big difference between say "emergent" synergy and forced synergy imo. For example, Creeps did a video talking about why spikeweed is his favorite plant and he talked about how spikeweed's design opens up a lot of room for synergy with stalling. That's not something built into spikeweed fundamentally, but a natural consequence of its mechanics encouraging you to want to keep zombies on top of it for as long as possible. The game doesn't have spikeweed power up when you put it in front of a wall-nut or when a zombie is slowed, but the mechanics of both naturally synergize and complement each other. However, spikeweed is still a functional attacker with some unique upsides alone, just as how walls and stallers are perfectly usable in other decks as well for their general utility. Shadow plants, on the other hand, are essentially worthless without both halves of the puzzle going together. Moonflower is worthless without providing power, most of the shadow plants are worthless without being powered. Unlike the spikeweed example, where you might already be using a staller and decide to add spikeweed to round out your deck, you decide you want to use a specific shadow plant and now are forced to bring in moonflower without any other thought going into that choice. There's no thought going into the "synergy", you just make the decision of "oh I want to use this shadow plant" and have to pay the moonflower tax as a result because a good chunk of that plant's functionality is actively locked behind bringing in moonflower. Even if you are actively choosing to use spikeweed + stalls, there are a lot of options to choose from with depending on the specifics of the level. With shadow plants, you just don't get that kind of flexibility.
my opinion on shadow plants is they're a cool concept executed badly. it's basically torchwood and pea synergy done poorly. torch & peas: - consistant 2x damage boost across all pea plants - torchwood only powers up 1 lane so you need 5 of them to power up every lane - has to be placed in front of your defence meaning its more likely to die and need more attention to keep it alive - literally does nothing else, a sitting duck that only powers up peas and nothing else meanwhile moon flower: - inconsistent strength boost, dusk and grimrose 3x their effectiveness, while nightshade trades less damage for range and ammo regen, and shadow shroom shadow boost does nothing, together with hardcode, this makes balancing them very tricky and headscratching - moon powers up 3 lanes, so only need 2 to power all 5 lanes - powers plants *in front* of her meaning she's less likely to die compared to torch wood - generates sun too so there's no risk replacing sun producers to moon flowers, they will produce even more sun than the sun producer they replaced
Torchwood in PvZ 2 technically does something, it’s just only in melee range as it damages zombies eating it, and explodes like jalapeño on death, but otherwise it does nothing but power peas.
@@snakemaster254 Torchwood in PvZ2 also has alot of health, so its like a Wallnut hybrid with some extra damage potential on top of buffing pea plants. Kinda complicated compared to most plants (which is a trend among the PvZ1 Plant buffs) but its a solid boon against the relentless swarming of the front line in PvZ2
I’d like to point out that shadow shroom shadow boosted indeed does something. When shadow shroom is shadow boosted, whenever a zombie eats it and gets poisoned, the poison can spread to other nearby zombies. Although the point still stands that this is pretty useless and also a pain since you’d have to boost the shroom in the middle of the field and what’s the point of putting a moonflower in the middle of the field just to boost a shroom.
I think the perfect system would be like this, but you manually activate the moonflower area shadow powerup/synergy. So you have a bit more control over it and can activate it when need it (i think really long cooldowns on games like pvz should be more manageable by manually activation)
Nightshade doesn't have decreased damage when powered. Even when it's powered it will still deal 200 damage if zombie is close enough. So it actually only gets stronger when powered
"this thing is good while all its competition isn't. Clearly the only way to make the other things viable is to make the good thing just as bad as them... actually lets make it worse because I want to nerf everything else too" yeah, cuz that works *so* well... that's why everyone is in love with the helldivers balancing team right now
Theres an entire video about the nerfing vs buffing made by crees which would make you have a better grasp on the nerfing of moonflower And also how in hell you buff the other plants? Make the vine have a 3x3 radius too? Besides as the aformentioned creeps video said Everything would be too broken forcing the game into balance hell
You don't have a problem with shadow plants, you have a problem with the fact that half of them are trash and the other half are broken. The problem was never the concept, it's just the numbers. If they were balanced (just decrease the damage values of the broken ones and increase of the weak ones LOL) no one would bat an eye, it's not a concept problem, it's a stats one. They don't need to be changed, the idea works well, it's just that some are too stronger and for that you have no reason to bring other shadow plants. It's a number issue. (Comment for everyone, not just Creeps)
I think his change really helps with the fact that shadow plants don't exist outside of their power form (except for shroom etc.) As he said, moonflower is never in any real danger, unlike with torchwood for peas. Theres no point to even having the changing effect shadow gimmick when they're in 1 version 99% of the time
I wonder if it might be more interesting if moonflower did still always buff the plants in its radius, but the buff gets slightly weaker the more plants moonflower buffs. (They do slightly less damage or take longer to fire). But the upside is if there’s one boosted in moonflower’s range, the buff is better than vanilla.
i really like the shadow plants in vanilla, since it's a concept so simple that someone who's never played a tower defense game before could understand it, while still being effective, and in theory requires strategic placement to be effective. a huge problem i have with them though is that they're way too good in relation to the skill required to use them. moonflower, for example, is literally just "twinsun but it costs 50 instead of 125", and powered dusk lobber is just "half cost melon-pult that attacks 3 lanes", and that just makes it hard to justify not using them. on the other hand there's shadow shroom and nightshade, which are arguably better outside of the shadow aura, making the whole conceal-mint family feel like an unbalanced mess. i think making moonflower a limited uptime plant that you can't effectively use as your main sun producer is a great and creative workaround for these issues, and gives the shadow family the strategic synergy i'm sure it was always intended to have. as for how to fix shadow-shroom, one idea i had was to make it so that if a zombie eats the powered form, it walks backwards for about a second to spread the poison, making it both a decent staller and a crowd control option without needing support from other plants such as chard.
In my last English exam (I'm Spanish) I noticed that the article I had written was inspired in your videos (In the way I written them). Then I noticed that the article of my last 6 exams, (which are the best ones I've ever written) are inspired by your videos. Thank you so much for making me improve at English with your videos.
reccomendation -all shadow plants have the moonflower 3x3 thing -nightshade reloads automatically and guarantees a one shot on a normal zombie and faster reload when boosted -grimrose basically pulls + 1 zombies (2 at normal and 4 when boosted) the effect can splash too but close range like potato mine only -shadow shroom shoots fumes like scaredy shroom that can poison zombies (normal) and spores that kinda look like seaflora's projectiles that poison multiple zombies (boosted) -murkadamia nut acts like bean sprout or guard shroom when boosted instead of that goofy ass endurian knockoff -dragon bruit acts like guacodile but with three lanes when defeated -shadow peashooter drags multiple zombies like tangle kelp plant food effect -NOCTARINE DOES THAT FART STUN THING TOO -moonflower, gloom vine, and dusk lobber is fine for me
I feel like if you want to go for more of the inconsistency angle for shadow plants, itd be better to change how the powered state works. With the aforementioned changes, the shadow plants feel much worse, (except for nightshade, but they got a buff,) because the powered state itself is a straight upgrade for how the plant functions (again, ignoring nightshade), and not having it up feels like suboptimal play. I think a better idea would be to have the powered state work like a mini-plantfood. For example, instead of shadow pea becoming a plant unique from snow pea for 15 seconds, when pulsed by moonflower, it fires one, much stronger beam, and immediately goes back to not extinguishing explorers until it gets another order to fire. With this system it would be less their weak unless you babysit them and more unleashing their power when necessary. Moon flower can remain the same as your changes, maybe bring down the pulse time to account for the lack of a need for uptime. Dusk lobber can maybe throw stronger projectiles with larger splash, nightshade could rapidly fire all his remaining shots, then reload instantly. Murkadamia could start small, but everytime its pulsed, it gets a health state worth of jelly, keeping its identity of being a regenerating endurian. Concealmint could work on a column, or be map wide, since its effectively an insta now, leaving space for the other insta that i forget the name of tbh. The only plants that dont fit well are grimrose and gloomvine. Maybe grimrose could stay for a little bit without ammo, so it can be pulsed to get one more shot back? I dont have anything for the vine yet.
To remove the inconsistency instead of Moonflower powering nearby plants in a set interval of time maybe you could have to consciously click on the Moonflower to activate it. Aka give it the Jack O' Lantern treatment
@@viniciusgoulart5077 while interesting in theory It would be micro management hell and very inconsistent As they are SUN PRODUCERS It Will cause too many false positives ruining cordinated triggers and such Maybe having to activate the plants rather than the moon flower with this mini plant food effect seems a better idea Because otherwise It would be micro hell again
An interesting change would be to have Moon Flower send out a 3x3 pusle every time it produces sun naturally, giving shadow plants in this area a mini plant food effect (specifying naturally to avoid an infinite loop with other Moon Flowers). Gloom Vine would still give permanent power, but the fire rate of these mini boosts would be slow enough to not make it extremely busted to do so. Concealmint would give board wide boosts (like 3 times or smthn before leaving). Since the effect isn't constant (essentially), quite a few of the plants boosted moves would need to be reworked a bit (Macadamia Nut in particular), but most would functionally be a single attack in their current powered form but with boosted damage.
This was a really cool video and I think providing these alternate takes on certain elements of the game and then comparing them is a very good and educational system to examine to games design beyond just it's balance.
I like the temporary boost idea, but instead of it being at a constant rate, you need to pay sun to keep it up. This would require Moonflower to no longer work as a sun producer, but I think it's still a good idea.
I think it could still be a sunproducer. Making it slightly weaker than Sunflower (like, gives sun 3% slower or whatever) is what they should've done from the beginning. It can give sun, but the fact that you need to use sun to boost other shadow plants would require you to bring a second sun producer, and I think that's neat
I personally think moonflower should work more like Coconut cannon, e.g, every 30 seconds, you can click on it to provide 5-10 seconds of power. This would provide strategy due to a lack of permanent power, and when you want to use your power. Or it could even work like missile-toe, firing upon an area to charge it.
I've got a couple ideas on how Shadow Shroom & Grimrose could be changed to fit the reworks: 1. Shadow Shroom's trait of poisoned zombies poisoning other zombies would be removed, instead it'd have a decently high health pool (kinda like torchwood) & poison all zombies in a tiny 1x1 range upon death, while their boosted variant would poison all zombies in a 3x3 radius upon death. It'd be like a stronger but riskier alternative to Murkadamia Nut, providing a weaker defense but stronger damage potential. 2. Grimrose's range would be limited, only being able to attack 3 tiles in front of itself, giving them some time to be boosted by the moonflowers before using up their attacks. They'd have 3 charges by default, with their normal variant only able to kill one zombie per attack while their boosted variant would kill all zombies in a 1x1 radius per attack, making them more efficient with dense swarms as well as zombies clustered together from wall plants. These changes aren't perfect, and the reload/sun cost stats would have to be reworked a bunch, but I felt like they were interesting propositions to share here.
Bro, at this point you are not even reworking shadow plants, just singular plants. Like, you are not charging the shadow plants gimmick and why/how is it used, you're just making an insta become a semi-wall that poisons after death. I agree that this would make the shadow effect more useful, but like, bruh.
i think instead of boosting them, shadow area should rework the plants, giving them another purpose, heres my ides moonflower would cost 150 and gets boosted health (like 2000-3000) but whenever theres more moonflowers in its area it loses scaled hp but produces +25 sun nightshade can stay the same, its already reworked, not really boosted shadow-shroom when boosted can hit multiple zombies but has a weaker poison dusk lobber keeps its splash damage when not boosted, but loses the splash when boosted but attacks in 3 lanes grimrose will pick the strongest zombie except gargs and kill it, when boosted itll destroy 3 random zombies in any lanes instead shadow pea when not boosted shoots slowing peas but when boosted switches to piercing attack with no slow murkadamia nut can also stay the same, maybe has more hp when unboosted? etc
The issue with some of these is they start stepping on the toes of other plants (ie. boosted shadow pea is now basically just laser bean) But I like your thinking
Uuuhhh, no. No they are not. I have gotten through so many levels I couldn't beat with normal plants only using Moon Flower, Shadow Pea and Dusk Lobber.
As an incise, because I know Creeps videos. For him a good plant is not a plant that is insanely effective (Pokra or M.G. Pea for instance) but that is fun and interesting to play with, while doing his work effectively.
That's cool. Here's my rework for my fangame Plants vs. Zombies Danmaku (I actually took quite a few cues from this video) Instead of Moonflower powering plants, it's simply a Sun producer that benefits from the Shadow buff. It's a 100 Sun cost Sunflower that produces Sun equivalent to 4 Sunflowers while briefly powered by Shadeleaf The main plant that powers Shadow plants is now Shadeleaf (Umbrella Leaf from PvZ1 in their edgy phase, got this idea from my sister when I was showing her this video) Shadeleaf protects plants in a 3x3 area from Danmaku attacks, though there is a limit to this (basically an FPS-style shield with 1/4 Wall-nut HP, but starts recharging 4 seconds after not taking damage, taking another second to fully recharge, similar to how I reworked Infi-nut) You can also spend 100 Sun to manually activate Shadeleaf so it powers all Shadow plants within its range for 5 seconds, including itself (the Danmaku Shield restores full HP and becomes invulnerable while powered). This effect has a 15-second cooldown (25% uptime if you're willing to spend the sun) Plant Food would apply the same effect for 10 seconds with no cooldown As for the rest of the Shadow plants, I'll likely implement them very similarly to how you did (though Gloom Vine is 250 Sun because Gloom Shroom exists and would likely benefit quite well despite not being a Shadow plant. That gets me thinking. Should I make Gloom Shroom a Shadow plant?)
To be honest, increasing Moonflower's cooldown would already make Shadow plants as a whole so much better (balance wise). Worst sun producer, worst power setter and it's more harmful if you lose one. You could even make it so shadow plants need two shadow tiles created by Moonflower to become their shadow form, like Moonflower itself needs to many Moonflowers to enter that form.
I'd say to fix Grim Rose and Dragon Brute, you'd make Grim Rose a full-on attacker and not an instant use plant (I'm thinking like a support attacking plant that works well with others. also, I'm bias, I like Grim Rose's design, I just don't like how it works.), and make Dragon Brute a melee plant.
My personal issue with the Shadow Plants is they decided to introduce a new plant group and mechanic in the final world of adventure mode, so in addition to the very few Shadow Plants you get in Modern Day, you only get one world to play around with them (I'm not counting Penny's Pursuit or the Arena because those are really face paced levels to a point where you can't do a good job just experimenting. Not to mention I only played PVZ 2 for the adventure mode) Since they're called Shadow Plants, I honestly think it would've been cool to have them be introduced in Dark Ages instead. Make that world longer, and maybe have Moonflower power up all shroom plants too (I'm fine with keeping the permenant effects, but maybe just nerf the powers) They could do something creative (and nostalgia bait) with Modern Day by having half the world be in the day, and the second half be at night. Usually they do an aesthetic change halfway through the world's level select screen, like Big Wave Beach, Dark Ages, Jurrasic Marsh, etc. so why not have the actual gameplay change halfway through too. Having no sun fall from the sky can be their way of a "difficulty spike" in the final world, and they can introduce maybe one or two more Shadow Plants in Modern Day, like Shadow Pea
I did make my system for Shadow plants, but it's for a mod, of which I'm thinking, and with some changes in some plants due to my idea of Special Plant units (which, unlike all plants and Shadow plants, can be moved to other tiles). Only Gloomvine, Noctarine, and Conceal-Mint retain their Vanilla mechanics. Moonflowers do not have any changes, but their Special Plant forms are offensive units that can either appear mid-battle or be chosen before starting the battle that also provide the shadow terrain, but can attack zombies up close, dealing massive damage. They do not produce sun in the process. Nightshades retain their abilities, but can slap zombies up close, dealing 50% more damage than its unpowered form. The range attack remains the same. Their Special Plant forms deal 2x more damage in range, and some of their units are flying hindering their slapping ability completely. Shadow Shrooms retain their ability, but zombies poisoned by a powered Shadow-Shroom have a 5% chance to infect another zombie, which also spread the poison effect as well. Their Special Plant forms can't be eaten to induce the poison effect, but become offensive units that leave temporary poison tiles upon being moved. Dusk Lobbers retain their ability. Their Special Plant forms shoot bolts in its range in front of them, dealing 450 damage on the first zombie, then 25% less damage when it pierces each zombie, but reload every 2.5 seconds. When powered, the reload time decreases by 25%. Grimroses retain their ability, but as long as they are powered, they can regenerate their stamens every 30 seconds when not attacking. Both unpowered form and powered form can actually hide and sleep, taking 90 seconds to regenerate all of their stamens (powered only), becoming vulnerable to Gargantuar smashes. Their Special Plant forms attack zombies up close, dealing 50 damage, and can throw shadow shurikens randomly that deal 100 damage to the closest zombie in its lane on top of their OG ability. When powered, they deal 50% more damage, and can throw shurikens at significantly tougher threats in their lane. Shadow Peashooters retain their RFL abilities, but staggering zombies do not cause Shadow Peashooters to hide. Their Special Plant forms snipe the toughest zombie in their lane, defeating the toughest zombie. When powered, their sniping ability use piercing bolts, dealing damage to all zombies equal to 75-80% of their target, and can see said targets in adjacent lanes. Murkadamia Nut's gelatin can deflect any projectile thrown at or deflected by zombies, including Piercing Cold's projectiles, on top of their abilities. All of the Special Plant forms of Shadow Plants have a secondary effect in their attacks, which is, that they have a 10% chance to inflict Entanglement on zombies for 10 seconds. Entanglement functions similarly to HSR; it deals 25 damage on the inflicted target as soon as they recover, and during the time, they are stunned for that duration. Additional hits cause the damage dealt to the inflicted to increase, going up to 10 hits. Normal Shadow plants do not inflict this secondary effect. Your system is reasonable in terms of Vanilla-related issues if I can be honest, since my system tends to take a lot of mods, and my imagination into consideration, and because of that, my system might be a bit too close to some of the hardest mods of PvZ2, and not the Vanilla version. So, I agree with your system in regards to the problems in vanilla.
Before reaching Modern Day myself, I thought the Shadow Plants used a synergy system, in which being adjacent to 2 or more other shadow plants (as in, excluding other plants of the same name) would cause them to become buffed. I feel that would work better than having it be a boost that only some shadow plants can provide. It even fits in with an actual plant concept of Cross-polination. If you want to get more complicated, each shadow plant produces shadow tiles in different directions. Murkadamia has 2 tiles behind it, etc, and you need 2 shadow tiles to overlap to create a boost spot. I'd also buff the weaker Shadow Plants to make them just as viable, obviously.
One issue I have with shadow plants is that they don't synergise with non-shadow plants. There's no incentive to use shadow plants alongside non-shadow plants which renders one or the other unused. For instance if you removed moonflowers sun producing it doesn't do anything at all when shadow plants aren't present. I don't know exactly how to fix this but perhaps the shadow aura could have provided a small buff to any plant within it, however shadow plants will get a more significant boost and more dramatic change when powered. That way it's more favourable to use shadow plants but all shadow plants are viable to use without any other shadow plants. The only other thing I can think of that ruins shadow plants is the mint system. Because shadow plants are considered their own family despite every plant within the family having completely different roles. It would have been better for them to be considered a plant characteristic similar to aquatic, and amphibious.
Tbh I feel giving shadow plants, mainly the stronger ones, drawbacks when powered(Dusk Lobber targets 3 lanes but has a lower fire rate, Shadow Pea fires its slowing lasers but has weakened firepower), reworking and buffing the weaker ones, and maybe nerfing Moonflower’s powering(maybe a 1x3 area?) and sun production would help a lot for them.
I think needing Moonflower's area is bad idea because it would just encourage Gloom Vine. But I like reducing Sun Production. Maybe 10-15% slower than Sunflower?
I feel like one problem I have with them is that there’s 5 of them in Modern Day, and they have a sun producer, a melee plant/straight shooter, a lobber, a pre-plant insta, and a normal insta, which means from Modern Day alone you get most of the things you’d need in a plant deck with only 2 slots left, and are actively discouraged to not bring all 5 of them because they’re designed to be stronger together. You can’t not bring Moonflower for a Shadow Plant deck, and that decision alone means you have to commit to your Shadow Plant deck because while Moonflowers can power other Moonflowers, do you know what’s better than thousands of sun you won’t spend? Something to spend it on! So why not spend it on the plants that directly benefit from Moonflower’s existence? It’s an infinite chain of “Oh, well if I have Shadow Power, I’ve gotta bring this plant, and that plants works well with this plant, and so does this other plant” and on and on and on it goes until you’re out of seed slots and you feel like you need more.
The only thing I can see having this being a problem is when you want to use dusk lobber and maybe grimrose. The other two work by themselves and are probably better when they work alone. You can literally just bring moonflower and dusk lobber for your shadow plants and fill the rest with whatever you want.
@@anotheraccountforthings That’s why I mentioned building a _Shadow Plant_ deck. You pretty much HAVE to bring Moonflower for one of those, and then you’re gonna wanna bring Dusk to use up all that sun and Shadow Power and especially if you have Seediums unlocked you’ll bring some of those because they’re strong. I’m not saying it’s the BEST strat, I’m saying it’s the one you’ll WANT to use as a new player because they have a cool new gimmick to them that no other plants have.
My man, you can beat all "choose your seeds" levels without using any shadow plants and it isn't hard. The game is not forcing you to do anything, you are. You can bring only 2 or 3 shadow plants if you want, you don't need to bring them all.
@@username5155You need to bring a sunproducer to most levels. All levels suck? It is all terrible because you HAVE to pick a plant (ugh), because you are FORCED to? Grow up. "If you want to make a shadow deck you need Moonflower" Yeah, cuz Moonflower is the first and the shadow plant made to give the buff! That's like saying "you need to bring peashooters if you are using torchwood"!
You could just turn shadow shroom into insta Some suggested stats Recharge: equal to pvz1 doom shroom Cost: maybe same as Cherry Bomb or 50 less Effect: just give it its plant food effect, but make it 5x5 and adjust the damage
I’d love to see you do a rework style video pertaining to plants such as Peanut and Snap pea (two plants mixed into one plant), as from my experience both of them along with other plants of their kind are quite weak and useless. Either way, really enjoyed this video, keep up the good work!
@@tpfoxCastro In my experience using Snap pea, it's been quite situational and (in my opinion) quite underpowered (though I could just be using it wrong)
Honestly if your system was in place. I would just never use it. I like the shadow plants, especially nightshade and all this does is make shadow plants miserable to use and be the least consistent option you could ever use
To be fair, I feel like the Shadow Plants being really powerful is because they are unlocked in the Modern Day levels which are very difficult. I see the Shadow Plants as rewards for beating Modern Day levels.
I would've made the powered Shadowshroom act like the Lava Guava, where it turns the tile it's on into a poison tile that lasts for a long while; unpowered and it spews poison at any target within a 1-tile distance of it, even above, below, behind, and ahead of it (full + attack, no corners though). Makes choosing which form you want it in an important function of it.
Here’s my thoughts for Grim Rose: Cost: 175 Recharge: 20 Seconds Charges: 3 Attack Rate: once every 7 seconds Range: Four tiles in front of it, one tile behind it Shadow Buff: Regain expended charges, increase range to entire lane Plant Food: Engulf up to 5 zombies in a 3x3 area around the Grim Rose, this does not refill charges. Additional Effect: Tiny enemies such as chickens and weasels will perish once they make contact with the Grim Rose. The Grim Rose will not target Tiny enemies due to this effect. I feel like giving Grim Rose three charges by default and decreasing its range will help with the issue brought up by the Shadow Flower rework, allowing it to have a better chance of persisting long enough to get its buff.
Honestly I do like the simplicity of shadow plants but yeah they just don't feel balanced at all The only one that feels reasonably balanced is Grimrose as it is an insta that rewards you with two more uses when powered which is pretty cool honestly and feels like a fair reward rather than being too high or too low of a reward Noctarine, Gloom Vine, Murkadamia nut, Nightshade, and Shadow Shroom feel too underwhelming and Dusk Lobber and Shadow Pea feel too powerful Edit: I haven't played pvz2 much since after mega gatling pea, Dragon Bruit i've heard mixed stuff on how good it is but it seems to share a lot of the same problems as the ones mentioned
Here are a few ideas on how to fix the other shadow plants. For shadow shroom, its base effect could be 3x3 allowing it to better function as a panic option, alongside make the spread more likely and more deadly. For grimrose, it could shoot all three portals at once to function in the new system. And for noctarine, it could have its damage reduced in its base form, but the powering effect would last a lot longer than the other ways of powering. And while it is powered, it could gain more damage, and it would affect a 5x5 area for more consistent power. I don’t know what to do for dragon bruit though.
Popcap fans: so you are a shadow plant? Shadow plants: yup. Popcap fans: so you have the first gimmick involving class in all of pvz? Shadow plants: yup. Popcap fans: and you gain cool effects when it happens? Shadow plants: yup. Popcap fans: so then you will be fun to play with? Shadow plants: sounds good to me. Popcap fans: then be fun to use. Shadow plants: no, the only activating plant in base game renders some of us useless, we can completely break the game, and most of us just get direct buffs. Honestly, this guy should just run Popcap at this point.
haven't even watched the video yet but commenting for algorithm just wanted to say thanks for shouting out alt univerz, I'm a casual pvz2 player but I've been having alot of fun with it so far, so cheers :)
11:25 ok hear me out, what if instead of poisoning, dragon brute will VERY BRIEFLY spawn shadowy vines that act like spikeweed, lets say for no more that 2 seconds max. When powered up, it’s more effective since it can shoot in 3 lanes, spikes can now overlap once to cause a slight slowdown effect for 3-4 seconds
I think an good way to do the shadow plants would be to make them buff night plants since most night plants are cheap and weaker. Having an expensive upgrade for night plants that makes them more effective would allow for night plants to remain cheap but allow them to become way more powerful when you have a good amount of sun. Another thing that would work would be to make gloom vines buff attacking plants and make moon flower buff sun producers and walls. And to make it good to have moon flowers and gloom vines in the same deck you could make moonflowers heal and enhance the durability and sun production stats of certain attacking night and shadow plants that have gloom vine on them and the gloom vine itself by making its stats a worse pumpkin or like infi nut.
I feel like shadow shroom could be changed completely since in vanilla he's very. Plant food gimmicky. Instead he needs to be used with shadow power to be able to use it to fulls potential. Shadow shroom would be 0 sun with a 60 second cool down. In shadow form it will become like a potatoe mine after getting buffed by moonflower (taking 20 seconds) which then Shadow shroom will do a plant food and be destroyed leaving a 3x3 radius of a mist that makes the plants around it lose 20% at speed. Making it an op use but high risk factor of a plant!🎉
Reflourished has something kind of like that. In the holiday mashup there's several different kinds of groups of zombies. And they're all immune to different types of statis effects, such as Sun Bean, Butter, Frost, and Stun. It makes it so that stalling against the heavy herds of zombies requires specific plant set ups and I actually lost quite often to things such as a garg walking straight past any freeze effects.
Playing against Jester isn't very fun already, so having more zombies that limit you plant selection that much wouldn't be fun either, and would instead decrease the variety of strats you could use. But also if their abilities aren't 'annoying' enough, then there would be no reason for them having that elemental weakness and they wouldn't change up the plants you use. Overall it's a cool idea, but also one that's not really gonna work in the way that you would expect
I have a better idea to fix shadow-shroom. When powered, Shadow-shroom now can spit poison to zombies like in GT000, but with weaker poison effect. Shadow-shrrom can be synergized with pumpkin obviously.
I have mixed feelings about your reworked Shadow System, but it did give me an idea for how I'd like it to work: The Shadow Combo system Each Shadow plant has its base capabilities (With some reworking to prices & specific plants to fit the system better), BUT *Every* Shadow plant within a 3x3 of said plant gives an incremental buff to it. For example, Moonflower starts off at its weak sun production, and grows up to produce similar or even better sun to the other good producers when all 8 of its surrounding squares are Shadow plants.
Shadow plant is like ez mode to me because shadow sun flower - shadow lobbers done. It is the whole package and it’s dead ez to set up. What should have had happened is taller plants cast shadows, and if you plant a shadow plant in that shadow it gets a buff.
To be honest, I feel like the shadow plants should have... more synergy with each other in addition to moonflower, like perhaps having X plant in range gives a sort of buff in one aspect but also nerfs another aspect. Or perhaps it changes it in another way, thus giving more reason to have a full shadow deck. Granted, I don't really know balancing, or coding. I also feel like that the shadow plants in general should have a more... working in tandem feel, sort of like the Bros. Attacks in the Mario and Luigi games or the combo moves in Chrono Trigger. Maybe there could be a way to code a thing where each plant only gets powered up once every other plant is out on the field or something. Just some ideas. I always got the feel that the shadow gimmick was meant to be a mechanic where you used this plants in tandem with each other more than other plants.
IMO what should b done is rework shadow power as a gradual stat buff, not as a binary aspect. Like with every shadow plant on the field, each plant gets better. And one of them dying hurts all of them(unless its an insta or a wall) For example, you would need 15 shadow plants on the field to get to what the powers are right now. In the meantime, stat buffs are applied, and at intervals such as 5 10 and 15 abilities are added to all. I kinda want shadow plants to feel like the trees from Avatar(the blue alien film), as in they all are interconnected. So like if a moonflower dies all your plants get a debuff.
Shadow plants are a great idea but poorly executed. I honestly love to have actual strategies instead of just picking a dps option and spamming it. I wish there were more plant synergies like what happens with Pvz Beautiful town or Bloons TD6
I remember when modern day first came out, i re-downloaded the game and had the easiest progression ever by abusing modern day and Jurassic plants. Basically, after completing the tutorial, go straight to Jurassic to get peashooter and wall nut, then go to modern day to get moonflower and nightshade, go back to Jurassic to get potato mine, go to modern day to get dusk lobber and u can clear almost every stage with the 3 shadow plants, primal mine and wallnut
this rework would have to coincide with a massive rework of so many other strategies, cuz while better from a game design standpoint, as the game is it’ll just make using shadow plant strategies unviable when other spam starts are far more cost efficient, would probably be more at home at a mod which is exactly where these kinds of reworks would be
Off topic, but I just wanted to say I found a true use for ice weed, you combo it with pyrevine(just trust) and pokra, placing pyrevines on pokra, on the 3rd tile to the left from the rightmost lane, and ice weeds at the very rightmost tile brings one of the deadliest combos in history, pokras stalling and ice weeds constant freezing mixed with pyrevine is indisputably the most powerful combo to go for
I've always liked them. They remind me of slivers in magic, and I'd kind of prefer if they leaned even more into that direction. Aka, they start weak, but the more of them you have, the better they get. So i would probably split the buffs into different categories, (speed of firing or giving sun, pierce, sun or damage amount, plant health, etc) and have different plants provide different buffs. I really like things that start slow, but give that feeling of becoming unstoppable with time.
From my knowledge the best shadow lineup in base game is a line of shadow pea, a line of moonflower, and then a line of dusk lobber. Shadow pea is there incase a prospector manages to jump as i think it hides when zombies are close to it
For shadow shroom i'd make it so instead of requiring direct contact, the poison just bounces to a nearby zombie (3x3 area or something) and can do this a certain amount of times to allow you to poison many zombies at once provided that they are close enough together
I think while moonflower is powered, it should have the appearance of it's powered form. Makes it clearer to the player that it's currently active and they can work around it's power.
I don't like Shadow Plants in Modern Day, because they are the least like the original PVZ1 in gimmick. Meanwhile Modern Day should be returning back to familiar elements after going on a wild trip across time in the previous worlds. Shadow Plants do the opposite of that, and I have no idea why it was like this
I feel all shadow plants need to synergize with each other not just 3 or 4 plants. Having multiple power stages that ramp up more slowly (Kind of like torchwood in refloruished). Attacking plants like dusklobber would apply less power then other shadow plants that are more focused on applying power (Moonflower, Conceal mint, Gloomvine). Plus it removes the inconsistency creeps system has.
I honestly really liked nightshade and was kinda sad to see his damage halved by his shadow power up, i never really liked his long range power up. This would be a nice change
I feel like you could use moonflower more like a fuel source. Like it has 100 fuel source to start, and for every shadow plant it charges it uses 1 fuel per second, and then when it runs out of fuel then it needs to recharge until it gets to 100. I think it also should have an indicator for how much fuel it's at e.g. when it has 50 fuel moonflower becomes sad or loses petals or something. I think it would be interesting.
Shadow shroom gives enemies doeses of poison by blowing rasperries at them, when powered it also has increased hp and does its big poison effect in a 1x2 area when destroyed
i think another big thing with the shadow plants is the fact that like. wanna use shadow plants in a plan your defense? oh sorry buddy you dont have moon flower...
Personally, i think moonflower should not randomly add shadow power but rather have a limited amount of times you can add shadow power and you have to manually activate it. Maybe have it lose petals every time you activate it
I feel like the biggest thing shadow plants suffer from are, unless they're powered by Moonflower or Gloom Vine, they're so weak they don't a candle to their powered forms. Buffing their normal forms to help them hold their own against zombies would solve the overreliance on Moonflower issue.
the shadow pea's shadow form should steal zombies movement speed and convert it to attack speed based on how many zombies in a lane and dissapeares after a few seconds
Instead of creating shadows constantly in 3x3, Moonflower should initially start off with a 3x3 and each of the shadows should propagate diagonally in a wave like fashion every ~10 seconds. Eventually after reaching the edge of the lawn, all of the shadows should vanish. Moonflower should cost around 100 sun; it should produce 50 sun or 25 sun (depending on the sun meta). When boosted by a shadow tile, the sun production speed is increased by ~125%. It should also have a sluggish recharge (~20s). This way, unless you plant them strategically, you'll run out of shadows at inopportune moments. *I haven't yet fully watched your video and so I don't know your idea*
If you want to simplify moonflower and reduce rng i think you could decrease the attack speed of all shadow plants in its range but increase their attack speed/regen rate with each consecutive shadow power on that plant. (E.g. 0.75x -> 1x -> 1.25x etc) This would be intuitive as the sun production of the moon flower correlates to its boost. Conceal mint would be used as a typical instant instead of to maintain uptime. Gloomvine could be within moonflowers range without taking up valuable room for realitivly expensive plant. Your problem with grimrose would be solved as it acts functionally identicle to vanilla so you can just nerf it like other mods. The problem is that the already good shadow plants would get even stronger. I.e. Dusk lober and shadow pea but you could implement a cap to attack speed.
The thumbnail: I don't like this, would like to change it for my own enjoynment. The title: Shadow plants SUCK, they are TERRIBLE and I have to FIX them right NOW!
I think giving moonflower a sun cost to power plants temporarily would be better, but idk if thats balanced with pvz2 sun or even able to be modded in edit: Could be like the moon reflecting the sun
Maybe you could include shadow plants in Garden Rush, making moon flower not produce sun to be a hero plant for a max of 8 powered shadow plants in a line up with permanent uptime
The crazy thing is for modern day they could have gone with nostalgia bait plants but they didn't, im glad about that but man half the shadow plants aren't really shadow plants in function only name
wow.
Wdym that half for the shadow plants aren’t shadow plants?
@@xiaotaoliang7787 half of them don't have any reason to be powered because their effect is either redundant, like shadow shroom or noctarine, or it makes the plant directly worse, like nightshade.
They might be shadow plants but they get no benefits from being used with other shadow plants, aside from noctarine which is a worse moonflower, cherry bomb, lava guava and powering it means you lose most of the single benefit left.
Educate them
Which would be the shadow plant who would have an easier time at school?
the poison shroom one (forgor name)
@@mihneababanu4224
The name of the Poison Shroom one is Shadow Shroom.
@@JustAnAutobotWheeljackG1GuyShadow Shroom is like that kid in the class that despite always seeing him, you Dont even know his name.
@@JoseViktor4099 well, I obviously know Shadow Shroom's name
I feel like Grimrose could potentially be fixed for this system by being changed from an insta plant into a chomper substitute. It functions like it does normally, shooting a little shadow along the ground and swallowing the first zombie it sees into a void in the ground, or dealing large damage to and temporarily stunning large enemies. However, instead of disappearing after this, it instead just goes into a downtime state for a little while.
When powered, the down-time between swallowing zombies is reduced drastically, something like half of its usual downtime. It would also naturally need to cost more sun to account for it being a permanent plant, as opposed to a temporary one.
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
Soooo Toadstool?
@@rigboy1234hehe, yeah, like toadstool without the sun
Honestly, reworking ALL of the mints after Conceal-mint is a great idea.
They are EXTREMELY powerful for ZERO downside, and need some sort of other effect other then a one-time board wipe/watered-down instant plant
Or just remove them. Most mods don't even have mints for this reason.
Well, mints already have a downside, just not big enough. Even a plant with amazing value is still taking a seed slot from you and their slow cooldown shows that. If their cooldown was so slow you could only use a single mint per level (with a lot of stall on a slow level maybe 2) would mean that it would be a great boost, but not consistent and only a one time thing. Also, decrease their damage so they aren't screen wipes that kill all zombies, they are supposed to be support, not do the damage.
Only problem with increase cooldown would be that plant food instantly fixed that weakness.
make mint only be placeable once per level, and allow imitating them
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
@@TheEpikalREKT People already don't like Nightshade and his "shadow version does less damage" thing, I don't think that's a good idea. Plus, a melee attacker that poisons isn't very smart. Being long range it gives time for the zombies to die to the poison, in this case you NEED a wall because the poison will not take them out quick enough (at least it would incentivise use of Murkadamia nut, so you might be onto something)
Hey Creeps (and guys in general) , I was doing my own business, walking my dog and insulting in Spanish, and I asked myself, "Huh, I recognize what a good plant is , but what about Zombies?" And, knowing this, I have to ask, what is a good Zombie to you? Special wise talking.
Snorkel zombie,he goes more in detail in the zombie ranking stream he did
One that's not easy to deal with but also not annoying
@@caramelflann One that's not easy to deal with but also not annoying
@@Blapzeone that's easy to deal with but also annoying
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
Creeeps: I’m gonna fix shadow plants.
Also Creeps: “It’s Nerf or Nothing.”
(This is a joke)
I pretty sure video expresses you saying this without saying it is, as then what was the point of the joke if you're not gonna let people figure it out?
I dislike his system. It doesn't feel as rewarding as linking a bunch of Moonflowers.
Instead, a Moonflower should get more defensive as it gets closer to the edge of the lawn, as if there was the shadow of the moon powering it or something. The closer to the lawn, the stronger the sun production (strongest at 1st and 2nd column). They should keep the power linking scale system. Moon Flowers should be able to link if there's a 1 tile gap between them, but any more and the link won't work and 1 tile gaps will have a weaker power increase. Incentivizing the player to bring two sun producers seems a little too "obsessed with PvZ2 mods" for me.
Shadow Shroom should just be Gloom Shroom. When unpowered, attacks only main cardinals, and powered attacks all cardinal directions. Gloom Vine should instead be a singular tile of power, but not as strong as full shadow link, but would still allow Gloom Shroom to deal damage in all 8 directions (at weaker damage)
Grimrose is my favorite, so I may be biased for this, but Grimrose should stay as a single-use! This new system ruins Grimrose, and it should be a great single-use as is, especially with Gargantuar spam.
Dusk Lobber should be a lot weaker, and that's the only one I consider that should instead play differently. Night Shade also is just very pointless with Dusk Lobber around and no counter like in Lost City. Shadow Peashooter should stay how it is.
@@arcanine_enjoyer To each their own. I myself just took away Moonflower's ability to power plants and gave it to Umbrella Leaf as a manual ability
I'm glad someone is fixing, not complaining
@@arcanine_enjoyer Remember, in this system, Moonflower is 175 sun. Might not be a good wallnut.
Also, an idea I had is that when one moonflower pulses, all moonflowers next to it give a shorter pulse that doesn't detract from their main pulse timer. Essentially, with enough moonflowers, you can get pretty good coverage.
I have a great idea to reinvent shadow plants:the shadow states of plants should be alternate version of a plant , turning them not into a better version but a version more apropriated for it's position(being on the back)it's just like night shade works,he becomes a powerfull,Sacrificial , melee when he is not powered and a slightly less strong ,constantly active,ranged plant so for some examples I came up with:shadow pea should slwoly fire peas that do 15 damage with a stall effect when not powered and *fire his laser* when powered tough,it now does 10 damage(could have some good chemestry with his non powered ver.)toxic shroom(or whatever his name was)should act as his powered varient when non powered(tough that could be to op so maybe nerf him in another way)and when he is powered he will loose this abilty,BUT he will spawn randomly poison tiles every 5 seconds in a 3x2 (or 2x3 idk it's just a vertical rectangle)they stay for a good amount if time,do small damage and slow zombies ,grimrose could do less damage to zombies that don't wanna go to the shadow realm in his powered version and the rest could freak off(future me here:I decided to Change grimrose since my idea for him was preety boring and uncreative and I came up with a better idea the lines up with what I Said about the positions:in his non powered form he will attack the strongest in the field that is not flying and when powered he will attack 3 of the zombies close to your house in it's lane but will do weaker damage to those Fatso strong guys that don't fit in the hole than normal and flying zombies are still imune,*THANK YOU FOR WASTING YOUR TIME READING THIS*)
I like that idea as well - Nightshade being a mini-insta when unpowered and a good attacker when powered seems to be the concept they were going for.
I was literally about to comment that concept, as well.
It's a lot simpler than this short-term power-ups that Creeps presents, so it would be more fun to casual players, while also being more fun for veterans.
Grimrose, for example, could act like an on-land Tangle Kelp, instantly killing the first non-gargantuar zombie to make contact with it, while the powered version would stretch out and remove the first zombie in the lane.
I was also thinking about Scaredy Shroom from PVZ1, and thinking about how a buffed version of it could be integrated into PVZ2 by making it one of these hypothetical shadow plants, acting as a higher-defense version of the mid-row Red Stinger when not powered, but standing up and acting more like long range Puff Shroom (as in, pea shooter range, with the single puff projectile) when it is powered.
Edit for more ideas:
- Moon Flower wouldn't produce more sun when powered up, but more spaces. Only effecting one space behind it normally, buffed Moon Flower will add shadow power to all adjacent zones. Sun production will always be at 50 sun, regardless of Shadow Power or not. This is the only straight up buff.
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
I do have a couple of problems with some of these changes.
1, Moonflowers inconsistency wont just make her worse, but annoying and irritating to use. Who likes your dusk lobbers having 3x less effectiveness on the last wave?
2. Whats stopping people from just using gloom vine and ditching moonflower? Its way more consistent and is honestly just a better torchwood in a sense since it can be placed in the backline. All the benefits with none of the risk.
3. This isnt really your fault but i hate the idea of shadow plants because it forces synergy onto specific plants and heavily restricts strategies. Like when are you ever going to use dusk lobber without moonflower or gloomvine and vice versa. Torchwood isnt that fun either, but at least there are a plethora of pea shooters to choose from. A plant could be better with a certain other plant, but not so much better that it becomes worthless incomparison alone.
1. Stacking moonflowers or other dusk producers is a viable strategy. Three of them will equal 100% uptime, and coincidentally three is the number that will be affecting your middle three lanes if you dedicate a full row to it. Which is enough to have Dusk Lobber cover all five lanes.
2. Cooldowns and sun cost I guess? It's a viable alternative to Moonflower power which is kinda the point.
3. Yeah there's no getting around this one, but that's not really avoidable.
To remove the inconsistency instead of Moonflower powering nearby plants in a set interval of time maybe you could have to consciously click on the Moonflower to activate it. Aka give it the Jack O' Lantern treatment
On top of that, make it unable to produce sun when activated.@@viniciusgoulart5077
No? Shadow plants don't restrict strategies. Saying that is like saying torchwood does that. Torchwood is just shadow plants 1.0 afterall.
You don't need to go full shadow plants, you can just use a shadow tile producer and a shadow plant, it's already good enough. Also, saying that sinergy plants are bad overall is just idiotic. The concept of plants comboing and sinergysing with each other does not limit you, it does the exact opposite!
@@tpfoxCastro There's a big difference between say "emergent" synergy and forced synergy imo. For example, Creeps did a video talking about why spikeweed is his favorite plant and he talked about how spikeweed's design opens up a lot of room for synergy with stalling. That's not something built into spikeweed fundamentally, but a natural consequence of its mechanics encouraging you to want to keep zombies on top of it for as long as possible. The game doesn't have spikeweed power up when you put it in front of a wall-nut or when a zombie is slowed, but the mechanics of both naturally synergize and complement each other. However, spikeweed is still a functional attacker with some unique upsides alone, just as how walls and stallers are perfectly usable in other decks as well for their general utility.
Shadow plants, on the other hand, are essentially worthless without both halves of the puzzle going together. Moonflower is worthless without providing power, most of the shadow plants are worthless without being powered. Unlike the spikeweed example, where you might already be using a staller and decide to add spikeweed to round out your deck, you decide you want to use a specific shadow plant and now are forced to bring in moonflower without any other thought going into that choice. There's no thought going into the "synergy", you just make the decision of "oh I want to use this shadow plant" and have to pay the moonflower tax as a result because a good chunk of that plant's functionality is actively locked behind bringing in moonflower. Even if you are actively choosing to use spikeweed + stalls, there are a lot of options to choose from with depending on the specifics of the level. With shadow plants, you just don't get that kind of flexibility.
my opinion on shadow plants is they're a cool concept executed badly. it's basically torchwood and pea synergy done poorly.
torch & peas:
- consistant 2x damage boost across all pea plants
- torchwood only powers up 1 lane so you need 5 of them to power up every lane
- has to be placed in front of your defence meaning its more likely to die and need more attention to keep it alive
- literally does nothing else, a sitting duck that only powers up peas and nothing else
meanwhile moon flower:
- inconsistent strength boost, dusk and grimrose 3x their effectiveness, while nightshade trades less damage for range and ammo regen, and shadow shroom shadow boost does nothing, together with hardcode, this makes balancing them very tricky and headscratching
- moon powers up 3 lanes, so only need 2 to power all 5 lanes
- powers plants *in front* of her meaning she's less likely to die compared to torch wood
- generates sun too so there's no risk replacing sun producers to moon flowers, they will produce even more sun than the sun producer they replaced
Torchwood in PvZ 2 technically does something, it’s just only in melee range as it damages zombies eating it, and explodes like jalapeño on death, but otherwise it does nothing but power peas.
I don’t understand them and I still don’t
@@snakemaster254 Torchwood in PvZ2 also has alot of health, so its like a Wallnut hybrid with some extra damage potential on top of buffing pea plants. Kinda complicated compared to most plants (which is a trend among the PvZ1 Plant buffs) but its a solid boon against the relentless swarming of the front line in PvZ2
Torchwood🤝Snowpea
(Giving them extra Abilities just because peas didnt pea splash)
I’d like to point out that shadow shroom shadow boosted indeed does something. When shadow shroom is shadow boosted, whenever a zombie eats it and gets poisoned, the poison can spread to other nearby zombies.
Although the point still stands that this is pretty useless and also a pain since you’d have to boost the shroom in the middle of the field and what’s the point of putting a moonflower in the middle of the field just to boost a shroom.
I think the perfect system would be like this, but you manually activate the moonflower area shadow powerup/synergy. So you have a bit more control over it and can activate it when need it (i think really long cooldowns on games like pvz should be more manageable by manually activation)
ok nvm, will prob be 2 complicated
Nightshade doesn't have decreased damage when powered. Even when it's powered it will still deal 200 damage if zombie is close enough. So it actually only gets stronger when powered
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
"this thing is good while all its competition isn't. Clearly the only way to make the other things viable is to make the good thing just as bad as them... actually lets make it worse because I want to nerf everything else too"
yeah, cuz that works *so* well... that's why everyone is in love with the helldivers balancing team right now
Dude did you not watch the video. He gave detailed explanations why he changed like this. He also said that his system isn’t really better.
Theres an entire video about the nerfing vs buffing made by crees which would make you have a better grasp on the nerfing of moonflower
And also how in hell you buff the other plants?
Make the vine have a 3x3 radius too?
Besides as the aformentioned creeps video said
Everything would be too broken forcing the game into balance hell
i've been thinking about how these could be improved for a while, but never actually managed to get anything down
great stuff!
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
You don't have a problem with shadow plants, you have a problem with the fact that half of them are trash and the other half are broken. The problem was never the concept, it's just the numbers. If they were balanced (just decrease the damage values of the broken ones and increase of the weak ones LOL) no one would bat an eye, it's not a concept problem, it's a stats one. They don't need to be changed, the idea works well, it's just that some are too stronger and for that you have no reason to bring other shadow plants. It's a number issue. (Comment for everyone, not just Creeps)
I think his change really helps with the fact that shadow plants don't exist outside of their power form (except for shroom etc.) As he said, moonflower is never in any real danger, unlike with torchwood for peas. Theres no point to even having the changing effect shadow gimmick when they're in 1 version 99% of the time
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
@@Megusakayeah this, even if shadow plants were perfectly balanced the gimmick is pointless anyway
I wonder if it might be more interesting if moonflower did still always buff the plants in its radius, but the buff gets slightly weaker the more plants moonflower buffs. (They do slightly less damage or take longer to fire). But the upside is if there’s one boosted in moonflower’s range, the buff is better than vanilla.
Wouldn't that just encourage Gloom Vine?
I don’t think that’s possible to code in modding
@@tpfoxCastro it's only for moonflower
Kinda sounds like an adapter when you put too many plugs in it. That's neat to prevent the overuse of spamming dusk lobber around moonflower
i really like the shadow plants in vanilla, since it's a concept so simple that someone who's never played a tower defense game before could understand it, while still being effective, and in theory requires strategic placement to be effective. a huge problem i have with them though is that they're way too good in relation to the skill required to use them. moonflower, for example, is literally just "twinsun but it costs 50 instead of 125", and powered dusk lobber is just "half cost melon-pult that attacks 3 lanes", and that just makes it hard to justify not using them. on the other hand there's shadow shroom and nightshade, which are arguably better outside of the shadow aura, making the whole conceal-mint family feel like an unbalanced mess. i think making moonflower a limited uptime plant that you can't effectively use as your main sun producer is a great and creative workaround for these issues, and gives the shadow family the strategic synergy i'm sure it was always intended to have.
as for how to fix shadow-shroom, one idea i had was to make it so that if a zombie eats the powered form, it walks backwards for about a second to spread the poison, making it both a decent staller and a crowd control option without needing support from other plants such as chard.
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
In my last English exam (I'm Spanish) I noticed that the article I had written was inspired in your videos (In the way I written them). Then I noticed that the article of my last 6 exams, (which are the best ones I've ever written) are inspired by your videos. Thank you so much for making me improve at English with your videos.
reccomendation
-all shadow plants have the moonflower 3x3 thing
-nightshade reloads automatically and guarantees a one shot on a normal zombie and faster reload when boosted
-grimrose basically pulls + 1 zombies (2 at normal and 4 when boosted) the effect can splash too but close range like potato mine only
-shadow shroom shoots fumes like scaredy shroom that can poison zombies (normal) and spores that kinda look like seaflora's projectiles that poison multiple zombies (boosted)
-murkadamia nut acts like bean sprout or guard shroom when boosted instead of that goofy ass endurian knockoff
-dragon bruit acts like guacodile but with three lanes when defeated
-shadow peashooter drags multiple zombies like tangle kelp plant food effect
-NOCTARINE DOES THAT FART STUN THING TOO
-moonflower, gloom vine, and dusk lobber is fine for me
I feel like if you want to go for more of the inconsistency angle for shadow plants, itd be better to change how the powered state works. With the aforementioned changes, the shadow plants feel much worse, (except for nightshade, but they got a buff,) because the powered state itself is a straight upgrade for how the plant functions (again, ignoring nightshade), and not having it up feels like suboptimal play. I think a better idea would be to have the powered state work like a mini-plantfood. For example, instead of shadow pea becoming a plant unique from snow pea for 15 seconds, when pulsed by moonflower, it fires one, much stronger beam, and immediately goes back to not extinguishing explorers until it gets another order to fire. With this system it would be less their weak unless you babysit them and more unleashing their power when necessary. Moon flower can remain the same as your changes, maybe bring down the pulse time to account for the lack of a need for uptime. Dusk lobber can maybe throw stronger projectiles with larger splash, nightshade could rapidly fire all his remaining shots, then reload instantly. Murkadamia could start small, but everytime its pulsed, it gets a health state worth of jelly, keeping its identity of being a regenerating endurian. Concealmint could work on a column, or be map wide, since its effectively an insta now, leaving space for the other insta that i forget the name of tbh. The only plants that dont fit well are grimrose and gloomvine. Maybe grimrose could stay for a little bit without ammo, so it can be pulsed to get one more shot back? I dont have anything for the vine yet.
To remove the inconsistency instead of Moonflower powering nearby plants in a set interval of time maybe you could have to consciously click on the Moonflower to activate it. Aka give it the Jack O' Lantern treatment
@@viniciusgoulart5077 while interesting in theory It would be micro management hell and very inconsistent
As they are SUN PRODUCERS
It Will cause too many false positives ruining cordinated triggers and such
Maybe having to activate the plants rather than the moon flower with this mini plant food effect seems a better idea
Because otherwise It would be micro hell again
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
An interesting change would be to have Moon Flower send out a 3x3 pusle every time it produces sun naturally, giving shadow plants in this area a mini plant food effect (specifying naturally to avoid an infinite loop with other Moon Flowers). Gloom Vine would still give permanent power, but the fire rate of these mini boosts would be slow enough to not make it extremely busted to do so. Concealmint would give board wide boosts (like 3 times or smthn before leaving). Since the effect isn't constant (essentially), quite a few of the plants boosted moves would need to be reworked a bit (Macadamia Nut in particular), but most would functionally be a single attack in their current powered form but with boosted damage.
0:40 bro use stunion to stall a robot zombie💀
This was a really cool video and I think providing these alternate takes on certain elements of the game and then comparing them is a very good and educational system to examine to games design beyond just it's balance.
I like the temporary boost idea, but instead of it being at a constant rate, you need to pay sun to keep it up. This would require Moonflower to no longer work as a sun producer, but I think it's still a good idea.
I think it could still be a sunproducer. Making it slightly weaker than Sunflower (like, gives sun 3% slower or whatever) is what they should've done from the beginning. It can give sun, but the fact that you need to use sun to boost other shadow plants would require you to bring a second sun producer, and I think that's neat
Imo dragon brute should be a melee attacker weaker then nightshade unpowered (do 50 dmg or smth), and 20 dmg + posion when powered
I personally think moonflower should work more like Coconut cannon, e.g, every 30 seconds, you can click on it to provide 5-10 seconds of power. This would provide strategy due to a lack of permanent power, and when you want to use your power.
Or it could even work like missile-toe, firing upon an area to charge it.
I've got a couple ideas on how Shadow Shroom & Grimrose could be changed to fit the reworks:
1. Shadow Shroom's trait of poisoned zombies poisoning other zombies would be removed, instead it'd have a decently high health pool (kinda like torchwood) & poison all zombies in a tiny 1x1 range upon death, while their boosted variant would poison all zombies in a 3x3 radius upon death. It'd be like a stronger but riskier alternative to Murkadamia Nut, providing a weaker defense but stronger damage potential.
2. Grimrose's range would be limited, only being able to attack 3 tiles in front of itself, giving them some time to be boosted by the moonflowers before using up their attacks. They'd have 3 charges by default, with their normal variant only able to kill one zombie per attack while their boosted variant would kill all zombies in a 1x1 radius per attack, making them more efficient with dense swarms as well as zombies clustered together from wall plants.
These changes aren't perfect, and the reload/sun cost stats would have to be reworked a bunch, but I felt like they were interesting propositions to share here.
Bro, at this point you are not even reworking shadow plants, just singular plants. Like, you are not charging the shadow plants gimmick and why/how is it used, you're just making an insta become a semi-wall that poisons after death. I agree that this would make the shadow effect more useful, but like, bruh.
i think instead of boosting them, shadow area should rework the plants, giving them another purpose, heres my ides
moonflower would cost 150 and gets boosted health (like 2000-3000) but whenever theres more moonflowers in its area it loses scaled hp but produces +25 sun
nightshade can stay the same, its already reworked, not really boosted
shadow-shroom when boosted can hit multiple zombies but has a weaker poison
dusk lobber keeps its splash damage when not boosted, but loses the splash when boosted but attacks in 3 lanes
grimrose will pick the strongest zombie except gargs and kill it, when boosted itll destroy 3 random zombies in any lanes instead
shadow pea when not boosted shoots slowing peas but when boosted switches to piercing attack with no slow
murkadamia nut can also stay the same, maybe has more hp when unboosted? etc
The issue with some of these is they start stepping on the toes of other plants (ie. boosted shadow pea is now basically just laser bean)
But I like your thinking
I had the Same idea
Uuuhhh, no. No they are not.
I have gotten through so many levels I couldn't beat with normal plants only using Moon Flower, Shadow Pea and Dusk Lobber.
As an incise, because I know Creeps videos. For him a good plant is not a plant that is insanely effective (Pokra or M.G. Pea for instance) but that is fun and interesting to play with, while doing his work effectively.
@@JoseViktor4099 yeah, even I'm able to see that the shadow plants are kinda gimmicky X3.
@@JoseViktor4099 Idk, for me, if it makes the game easier it, it's fun!
that's what he meant, they're dumb not because they're bad but because they're so unbalanced
That's cool. Here's my rework for my fangame Plants vs. Zombies Danmaku (I actually took quite a few cues from this video)
Instead of Moonflower powering plants, it's simply a Sun producer that benefits from the Shadow buff.
It's a 100 Sun cost Sunflower that produces Sun equivalent to 4 Sunflowers while briefly powered by Shadeleaf
The main plant that powers Shadow plants is now Shadeleaf (Umbrella Leaf from PvZ1 in their edgy phase, got this idea from my sister when I was showing her this video)
Shadeleaf protects plants in a 3x3 area from Danmaku attacks, though there is a limit to this (basically an FPS-style shield with 1/4 Wall-nut HP, but starts recharging 4 seconds after not taking damage, taking another second to fully recharge, similar to how I reworked Infi-nut)
You can also spend 100 Sun to manually activate Shadeleaf so it powers all Shadow plants within its range for 5 seconds, including itself (the Danmaku Shield restores full HP and becomes invulnerable while powered). This effect has a 15-second cooldown (25% uptime if you're willing to spend the sun)
Plant Food would apply the same effect for 10 seconds with no cooldown
As for the rest of the Shadow plants, I'll likely implement them very similarly to how you did (though Gloom Vine is 250 Sun because Gloom Shroom exists and would likely benefit quite well despite not being a Shadow plant. That gets me thinking. Should I make Gloom Shroom a Shadow plant?)
To be honest, increasing Moonflower's cooldown would already make Shadow plants as a whole so much better (balance wise). Worst sun producer, worst power setter and it's more harmful if you lose one. You could even make it so shadow plants need two shadow tiles created by Moonflower to become their shadow form, like Moonflower itself needs to many Moonflowers to enter that form.
I'd say to fix Grim Rose and Dragon Brute, you'd make Grim Rose a full-on attacker and not an instant use plant (I'm thinking like a support attacking plant that works well with others. also, I'm bias, I like Grim Rose's design, I just don't like how it works.), and make Dragon Brute a melee plant.
Creeps is at it again criticizing, no hate though, you're the only modern day PVZ youtuber I watch
My personal issue with the Shadow Plants is they decided to introduce a new plant group and mechanic in the final world of adventure mode, so in addition to the very few Shadow Plants you get in Modern Day, you only get one world to play around with them (I'm not counting Penny's Pursuit or the Arena because those are really face paced levels to a point where you can't do a good job just experimenting. Not to mention I only played PVZ 2 for the adventure mode)
Since they're called Shadow Plants, I honestly think it would've been cool to have them be introduced in Dark Ages instead. Make that world longer, and maybe have Moonflower power up all shroom plants too (I'm fine with keeping the permenant effects, but maybe just nerf the powers)
They could do something creative (and nostalgia bait) with Modern Day by having half the world be in the day, and the second half be at night. Usually they do an aesthetic change halfway through the world's level select screen, like Big Wave Beach, Dark Ages, Jurrasic Marsh, etc. so why not have the actual gameplay change halfway through too. Having no sun fall from the sky can be their way of a "difficulty spike" in the final world, and they can introduce maybe one or two more Shadow Plants in Modern Day, like Shadow Pea
I did make my system for Shadow plants, but it's for a mod, of which I'm thinking, and with some changes in some plants due to my idea of Special Plant units (which, unlike all plants and Shadow plants, can be moved to other tiles).
Only Gloomvine, Noctarine, and Conceal-Mint retain their Vanilla mechanics.
Moonflowers do not have any changes, but their Special Plant forms are offensive units that can either appear mid-battle or be chosen before starting the battle that also provide the shadow terrain, but can attack zombies up close, dealing massive damage. They do not produce sun in the process.
Nightshades retain their abilities, but can slap zombies up close, dealing 50% more damage than its unpowered form. The range attack remains the same. Their Special Plant forms deal 2x more damage in range, and some of their units are flying hindering their slapping ability completely.
Shadow Shrooms retain their ability, but zombies poisoned by a powered Shadow-Shroom have a 5% chance to infect another zombie, which also spread the poison effect as well. Their Special Plant forms can't be eaten to induce the poison effect, but become offensive units that leave temporary poison tiles upon being moved.
Dusk Lobbers retain their ability. Their Special Plant forms shoot bolts in its range in front of them, dealing 450 damage on the first zombie, then 25% less damage when it pierces each zombie, but reload every 2.5 seconds. When powered, the reload time decreases by 25%.
Grimroses retain their ability, but as long as they are powered, they can regenerate their stamens every 30 seconds when not attacking. Both unpowered form and powered form can actually hide and sleep, taking 90 seconds to regenerate all of their stamens (powered only), becoming vulnerable to Gargantuar smashes. Their Special Plant forms attack zombies up close, dealing 50 damage, and can throw shadow shurikens randomly that deal 100 damage to the closest zombie in its lane on top of their OG ability. When powered, they deal 50% more damage, and can throw shurikens at significantly tougher threats in their lane.
Shadow Peashooters retain their RFL abilities, but staggering zombies do not cause Shadow Peashooters to hide. Their Special Plant forms snipe the toughest zombie in their lane, defeating the toughest zombie. When powered, their sniping ability use piercing bolts, dealing damage to all zombies equal to 75-80% of their target, and can see said targets in adjacent lanes.
Murkadamia Nut's gelatin can deflect any projectile thrown at or deflected by zombies, including Piercing Cold's projectiles, on top of their abilities.
All of the Special Plant forms of Shadow Plants have a secondary effect in their attacks, which is, that they have a 10% chance to inflict Entanglement on zombies for 10 seconds. Entanglement functions similarly to HSR; it deals 25 damage on the inflicted target as soon as they recover, and during the time, they are stunned for that duration. Additional hits cause the damage dealt to the inflicted to increase, going up to 10 hits. Normal Shadow plants do not inflict this secondary effect.
Your system is reasonable in terms of Vanilla-related issues if I can be honest, since my system tends to take a lot of mods, and my imagination into consideration, and because of that, my system might be a bit too close to some of the hardest mods of PvZ2, and not the Vanilla version. So, I agree with your system in regards to the problems in vanilla.
Before reaching Modern Day myself, I thought the Shadow Plants used a synergy system, in which being adjacent to 2 or more other shadow plants (as in, excluding other plants of the same name) would cause them to become buffed.
I feel that would work better than having it be a boost that only some shadow plants can provide. It even fits in with an actual plant concept of Cross-polination.
If you want to get more complicated, each shadow plant produces shadow tiles in different directions. Murkadamia has 2 tiles behind it, etc, and you need 2 shadow tiles to overlap to create a boost spot.
I'd also buff the weaker Shadow Plants to make them just as viable, obviously.
I can fix them...
Fix yourself first 🥰
@@GabrielHernandez-pe7wlno Way you tryna start beef
@@Levor_fl
No I'm over here with the BBQ cooking burgers, want one?
Dawg
I liked the plants but the balancing really was gimicky especially when they get really thrown around to just be powerful gahhh
One issue I have with shadow plants is that they don't synergise with non-shadow plants. There's no incentive to use shadow plants alongside non-shadow plants which renders one or the other unused.
For instance if you removed moonflowers sun producing it doesn't do anything at all when shadow plants aren't present.
I don't know exactly how to fix this but perhaps the shadow aura could have provided a small buff to any plant within it, however shadow plants will get a more significant boost and more dramatic change when powered. That way it's more favourable to use shadow plants but all shadow plants are viable to use without any other shadow plants.
The only other thing I can think of that ruins shadow plants is the mint system. Because shadow plants are considered their own family despite every plant within the family having completely different roles. It would have been better for them to be considered a plant characteristic similar to aquatic, and amphibious.
Tbh I feel giving shadow plants, mainly the stronger ones, drawbacks when powered(Dusk Lobber targets 3 lanes but has a lower fire rate, Shadow Pea fires its slowing lasers but has weakened firepower), reworking and buffing the weaker ones, and maybe nerfing Moonflower’s powering(maybe a 1x3 area?) and sun production would help a lot for them.
I think needing Moonflower's area is bad idea because it would just encourage Gloom Vine. But I like reducing Sun Production. Maybe 10-15% slower than Sunflower?
Having no control over when your Moonflowers are powering plants seems annoying.
I feel like one problem I have with them is that there’s 5 of them in Modern Day, and they have a sun producer, a melee plant/straight shooter, a lobber, a pre-plant insta, and a normal insta, which means from Modern Day alone you get most of the things you’d need in a plant deck with only 2 slots left, and are actively discouraged to not bring all 5 of them because they’re designed to be stronger together. You can’t not bring Moonflower for a Shadow Plant deck, and that decision alone means you have to commit to your Shadow Plant deck because while Moonflowers can power other Moonflowers, do you know what’s better than thousands of sun you won’t spend? Something to spend it on! So why not spend it on the plants that directly benefit from Moonflower’s existence? It’s an infinite chain of “Oh, well if I have Shadow Power, I’ve gotta bring this plant, and that plants works well with this plant, and so does this other plant” and on and on and on it goes until you’re out of seed slots and you feel like you need more.
The only thing I can see having this being a problem is when you want to use dusk lobber and maybe grimrose. The other two work by themselves and are probably better when they work alone. You can literally just bring moonflower and dusk lobber for your shadow plants and fill the rest with whatever you want.
@@anotheraccountforthings That’s why I mentioned building a _Shadow Plant_ deck. You pretty much HAVE to bring Moonflower for one of those, and then you’re gonna wanna bring Dusk to use up all that sun and Shadow Power and especially if you have Seediums unlocked you’ll bring some of those because they’re strong. I’m not saying it’s the BEST strat, I’m saying it’s the one you’ll WANT to use as a new player because they have a cool new gimmick to them that no other plants have.
My man, you can beat all "choose your seeds" levels without using any shadow plants and it isn't hard. The game is not forcing you to do anything, you are. You can bring only 2 or 3 shadow plants if you want, you don't need to bring them all.
@@username5155You need to bring a sunproducer to most levels. All levels suck? It is all terrible because you HAVE to pick a plant (ugh), because you are FORCED to? Grow up. "If you want to make a shadow deck you need Moonflower" Yeah, cuz Moonflower is the first and the shadow plant made to give the buff! That's like saying "you need to bring peashooters if you are using torchwood"!
@@tpfoxCastro What part of “Shadow Plant deck” implies it has no Shadow Plants in it?
You could just turn shadow shroom into insta
Some suggested stats
Recharge: equal to pvz1 doom shroom
Cost: maybe same as Cherry Bomb or 50 less
Effect: just give it its plant food effect, but make it 5x5 and adjust the damage
Is that not just Puffball?
@@onwithmarie6769 a what?
edit after looking it up:
completely forgot that thing exists
Each shadow plant should boost other shadow plants like nerfed chess pieces
I’d love to see you do a rework style video pertaining to plants such as Peanut and Snap pea (two plants mixed into one plant), as from my experience both of them along with other plants of their kind are quite weak and useless. Either way, really enjoyed this video, keep up the good work!
Snap Pea, weak? And useless?
@@tpfoxCastro In my experience using Snap pea, it's been quite situational and (in my opinion) quite underpowered (though I could just be using it wrong)
A new creeps video means its a good day
Honestly if your system was in place. I would just never use it. I like the shadow plants, especially nightshade and all this does is make shadow plants miserable to use and be the least consistent option you could ever use
I love this channel ❤❤❤❤
To be fair, I feel like the Shadow Plants being really powerful is because they are unlocked in the Modern Day levels which are very difficult. I see the Shadow Plants as rewards for beating Modern Day levels.
I would've made the powered Shadowshroom act like the Lava Guava, where it turns the tile it's on into a poison tile that lasts for a long while; unpowered and it spews poison at any target within a 1-tile distance of it, even above, below, behind, and ahead of it (full + attack, no corners though). Makes choosing which form you want it in an important function of it.
Leave the shadow plants be. They are perfect as they are. They are what theyre supossed to be, after all; the strongest team.
As a shadow plant main the name of this video made me angry
Here’s my thoughts for Grim Rose:
Cost: 175
Recharge: 20 Seconds
Charges: 3
Attack Rate: once every 7 seconds
Range: Four tiles in front of it, one tile behind it
Shadow Buff: Regain expended charges, increase range to entire lane
Plant Food: Engulf up to 5 zombies in a 3x3 area around the Grim Rose, this does not refill charges.
Additional Effect: Tiny enemies such as chickens and weasels will perish once they make contact with the Grim Rose. The Grim Rose will not target Tiny enemies due to this effect.
I feel like giving Grim Rose three charges by default and decreasing its range will help with the issue brought up by the Shadow Flower rework, allowing it to have a better chance of persisting long enough to get its buff.
Honestly I do like the simplicity of shadow plants
but yeah they just don't feel balanced at all
The only one that feels reasonably balanced is Grimrose as it is an insta that rewards you with two more uses when powered which is pretty cool honestly and feels like a fair reward rather than being too high or too low of a reward
Noctarine, Gloom Vine, Murkadamia nut, Nightshade, and Shadow Shroom feel too underwhelming and Dusk Lobber and Shadow Pea feel too powerful
Edit: I haven't played pvz2 much since after mega gatling pea, Dragon Bruit i've heard mixed stuff on how good it is but it seems to share a lot of the same problems as the ones mentioned
Finally, Shadow Leaf
Here are a few ideas on how to fix the other shadow plants. For shadow shroom, its base effect could be 3x3 allowing it to better function as a panic option, alongside make the spread more likely and more deadly. For grimrose, it could shoot all three portals at once to function in the new system. And for noctarine, it could have its damage reduced in its base form, but the powering effect would last a lot longer than the other ways of powering. And while it is powered, it could gain more damage, and it would affect a 5x5 area for more consistent power. I don’t know what to do for dragon bruit though.
Popcap fans: so you are a shadow plant?
Shadow plants: yup.
Popcap fans: so you have the first gimmick involving class in all of pvz?
Shadow plants: yup.
Popcap fans: and you gain cool effects when it happens?
Shadow plants: yup.
Popcap fans: so then you will be fun to play with?
Shadow plants: sounds good to me.
Popcap fans: then be fun to use.
Shadow plants: no, the only activating plant in base game renders some of us useless, we can completely break the game, and most of us just get direct buffs.
Honestly, this guy should just run Popcap at this point.
haven't even watched the video yet but commenting for algorithm
just wanted to say thanks for shouting out alt univerz, I'm a casual pvz2 player but I've been having alot of fun with it so far, so cheers :)
11:25 ok hear me out, what if instead of poisoning, dragon brute will VERY BRIEFLY spawn shadowy vines that act like spikeweed, lets say for no more that 2 seconds max.
When powered up, it’s more effective since it can shoot in 3 lanes, spikes can now overlap once to cause a slight slowdown effect for 3-4 seconds
I think an good way to do the shadow plants would be to make them buff night plants since most night plants are cheap and weaker. Having an expensive upgrade for night plants that makes them more effective would allow for night plants to remain cheap but allow them to become way more powerful when you have a good amount of sun.
Another thing that would work would be to make gloom vines buff attacking plants and make moon flower buff sun producers and walls.
And to make it good to have moon flowers and gloom vines in the same deck you could make moonflowers heal and enhance the durability and sun production stats of certain attacking night and shadow plants that have gloom vine on them and the gloom vine itself by making its stats a worse pumpkin or like infi nut.
The sneak peek at the end was awesome
I feel like shadow shroom could be changed completely since in vanilla he's very. Plant food gimmicky. Instead he needs to be used with shadow power to be able to use it to fulls potential.
Shadow shroom would be 0 sun with a 60 second cool down.
In shadow form it will become like a potatoe mine after getting buffed by moonflower (taking 20 seconds) which then
Shadow shroom will do a plant food and be destroyed leaving a 3x3 radius of a mist that makes the plants around it lose 20% at speed.
Making it an op use but high risk factor of a plant!🎉
Imagine zombies that have annoying abilities that could be disabled if hit by a plant with a specific element, that would highly encourage variety.
So like explorer zombie’s torch being disabled by ice plants? Or dragon imp not taking fire damage
Reflourished has something kind of like that. In the holiday mashup there's several different kinds of groups of zombies. And they're all immune to different types of statis effects, such as Sun Bean, Butter, Frost, and Stun. It makes it so that stalling against the heavy herds of zombies requires specific plant set ups and I actually lost quite often to things such as a garg walking straight past any freeze effects.
The 2018 Pvz3 beta:
Playing against Jester isn't very fun already, so having more zombies that limit you plant selection that much wouldn't be fun either, and would instead decrease the variety of strats you could use. But also if their abilities aren't 'annoying' enough, then there would be no reason for them having that elemental weakness and they wouldn't change up the plants you use.
Overall it's a cool idea, but also one that's not really gonna work in the way that you would expect
I have a better idea to fix shadow-shroom. When powered, Shadow-shroom now can spit poison to zombies like in GT000, but with weaker poison effect. Shadow-shrrom can be synergized with pumpkin obviously.
I have mixed feelings about your reworked Shadow System, but it did give me an idea for how I'd like it to work:
The Shadow Combo system
Each Shadow plant has its base capabilities (With some reworking to prices & specific plants to fit the system better), BUT
*Every* Shadow plant within a 3x3 of said plant gives an incremental buff to it. For example, Moonflower starts off at its weak sun production, and grows up to produce similar or even better sun to the other good producers when all 8 of its surrounding squares are Shadow plants.
Shadow plant is like ez mode to me because shadow sun flower - shadow lobbers done. It is the whole package and it’s dead ez to set up.
What should have had happened is taller plants cast shadows, and if you plant a shadow plant in that shadow it gets a buff.
To be honest, I feel like the shadow plants should have... more synergy with each other in addition to moonflower, like perhaps having X plant in range gives a sort of buff in one aspect but also nerfs another aspect. Or perhaps it changes it in another way, thus giving more reason to have a full shadow deck. Granted, I don't really know balancing, or coding. I also feel like that the shadow plants in general should have a more... working in tandem feel, sort of like the Bros. Attacks in the Mario and Luigi games or the combo moves in Chrono Trigger. Maybe there could be a way to code a thing where each plant only gets powered up once every other plant is out on the field or something. Just some ideas. I always got the feel that the shadow gimmick was meant to be a mechanic where you used this plants in tandem with each other more than other plants.
IMO what should b done is rework shadow power as a gradual stat buff, not as a binary aspect.
Like with every shadow plant on the field, each plant gets better. And one of them dying hurts all of them(unless its an insta or a wall)
For example, you would need 15 shadow plants on the field to get to what the powers are right now. In the meantime, stat buffs are applied, and at intervals such as 5 10 and 15 abilities are added to all. I kinda want shadow plants to feel like the trees from Avatar(the blue alien film), as in they all are interconnected. So like if a moonflower dies all your plants get a debuff.
After thinking for a bit, Moonflower should have a dissapear thing like puff shroom
Shadow plants are a great idea but poorly executed. I honestly love to have actual strategies instead of just picking a dps option and spamming it. I wish there were more plant synergies like what happens with Pvz Beautiful town or Bloons TD6
I remember when modern day first came out, i re-downloaded the game and had the easiest progression ever by abusing modern day and Jurassic plants. Basically, after completing the tutorial, go straight to Jurassic to get peashooter and wall nut, then go to modern day to get moonflower and nightshade, go back to Jurassic to get potato mine, go to modern day to get dusk lobber and u can clear almost every stage with the 3 shadow plants, primal mine and wallnut
Fun fact, my username is based off Nightshade lmao
The description of the smacky shadow plant needs to be fixed
this rework would have to coincide with a massive rework of so many other strategies, cuz while better from a game design standpoint, as the game is it’ll just make using shadow plant strategies unviable when other spam starts are far more cost efficient, would probably be more at home at a mod which is exactly where these kinds of reworks would be
I was wondering is this pvz2 you playing but different? or it’s just a modded version you are playing! 16:59
That’s pvz reflourish a mod
Off topic, but I just wanted to say I found a true use for ice weed, you combo it with pyrevine(just trust) and pokra, placing pyrevines on pokra, on the 3rd tile to the left from the rightmost lane, and ice weeds at the very rightmost tile brings one of the deadliest combos in history, pokras stalling and ice weeds constant freezing mixed with pyrevine is indisputably the most powerful combo to go for
I've always liked them. They remind me of slivers in magic, and I'd kind of prefer if they leaned even more into that direction. Aka, they start weak, but the more of them you have, the better they get.
So i would probably split the buffs into different categories, (speed of firing or giving sun, pierce, sun or damage amount, plant health, etc) and have different plants provide different buffs. I really like things that start slow, but give that feeling of becoming unstoppable with time.
From my knowledge the best shadow lineup in base game is a line of shadow pea, a line of moonflower, and then a line of dusk lobber. Shadow pea is there incase a prospector manages to jump as i think it hides when zombies are close to it
For shadow shroom i'd make it so instead of requiring direct contact, the poison just bounces to a nearby zombie (3x3 area or something) and can do this a certain amount of times to allow you to poison many zombies at once provided that they are close enough together
I think while moonflower is powered, it should have the appearance of it's powered form. Makes it clearer to the player that it's currently active and they can work around it's power.
I don't like Shadow Plants in Modern Day, because they are the least like the original PVZ1 in gimmick. Meanwhile Modern Day should be returning back to familiar elements after going on a wild trip across time in the previous worlds. Shadow Plants do the opposite of that, and I have no idea why it was like this
grim rose could function as a secondary moon flower and be permanently boosted until its three instant uses are gone
I feel all shadow plants need to synergize with each other not just 3 or 4 plants. Having multiple power stages that ramp up more slowly (Kind of like torchwood in refloruished). Attacking plants like dusklobber would apply less power then other shadow plants that are more focused on applying power (Moonflower, Conceal mint, Gloomvine). Plus it removes the inconsistency creeps system has.
creeps when will you start streaming again
This was a fun little experiment that we all learned a little from. I like it.
I really like shadow plants. I think they look cool and their dependency on big sis moonflower is cute
I honestly really liked nightshade and was kinda sad to see his damage halved by his shadow power up, i never really liked his long range power up. This would be a nice change
I feel like you could use moonflower more like a fuel source. Like it has 100 fuel source to start, and for every shadow plant it charges it uses 1 fuel per second, and then when it runs out of fuel then it needs to recharge until it gets to 100. I think it also should have an indicator for how much fuel it's at e.g. when it has 50 fuel moonflower becomes sad or loses petals or something. I think it would be interesting.
Gonna be real, making them like coconut cannon where its an activated ability is far more fun to play than making it inconsistent.
Shadow shroom gives enemies doeses of poison by blowing rasperries at them, when powered it also has increased hp and does its big poison effect in a 1x2 area when destroyed
i think another big thing with the shadow plants is the fact that like.
wanna use shadow plants in a plan your defense? oh sorry buddy you dont have moon flower...
Personally, i think moonflower should not randomly add shadow power but rather have a limited amount of times you can add shadow power and you have to manually activate it. Maybe have it lose petals every time you activate it
creeps leaking altverz modern day
1000 sun cost caulipower in altverz time
I feel like the biggest thing shadow plants suffer from are, unless they're powered by Moonflower or Gloom Vine, they're so weak they don't a candle to their powered forms. Buffing their normal forms to help them hold their own against zombies would solve the overreliance on Moonflower issue.
the shadow pea's shadow form should steal zombies movement speed and convert it to attack speed based on how many zombies in a lane and dissapeares after a few seconds
Instead of creating shadows constantly in 3x3, Moonflower should initially start off with a 3x3 and each of the shadows should propagate diagonally in a wave like fashion every ~10 seconds. Eventually after reaching the edge of the lawn, all of the shadows should vanish. Moonflower should cost around 100 sun; it should produce 50 sun or 25 sun (depending on the sun meta). When boosted by a shadow tile, the sun production speed is increased by ~125%. It should also have a sluggish recharge (~20s). This way, unless you plant them strategically, you'll run out of shadows at inopportune moments. *I haven't yet fully watched your video and so I don't know your idea*
If you want to simplify moonflower and reduce rng i think you could decrease the attack speed of all shadow plants in its range but increase their attack speed/regen rate with each consecutive shadow power on that plant. (E.g. 0.75x -> 1x -> 1.25x etc)
This would be intuitive as the sun production of the moon flower correlates to its boost. Conceal mint would be used as a typical instant instead of to maintain uptime. Gloomvine could be within moonflowers range without taking up valuable room for realitivly expensive plant. Your problem with grimrose would be solved as it acts functionally identicle to vanilla so you can just nerf it like other mods.
The problem is that the already good shadow plants would get even stronger. I.e. Dusk lober and shadow pea but you could implement a cap to attack speed.
The thumbnail: I don't like this, would like to change it for my own enjoynment.
The title: Shadow plants SUCK, they are TERRIBLE and I have to FIX them right NOW!
He literally said in his opinion and he made lots of good points why they’re flawed
@@mydogghost Ok, and? I didn't say he didn't. Just thought was funny
will you rework other mint families?? i really liked what you did with conceal-mint, id love to see what you can do with the other ones
I think giving moonflower a sun cost to power plants temporarily would be better, but idk if thats balanced with pvz2 sun or even able to be modded in
edit: Could be like the moon reflecting the sun
Finally. Better resource management in pvz2.
Maybe you could include shadow plants in Garden Rush, making moon flower not produce sun to be a hero plant for a max of 8 powered shadow plants in a line up with permanent uptime