The State of Power Creep in PVZ2

zombie go of Punk tried his best but he seems to have failed now let's see however the compassor is doing okay fair enough [Music] [Music] pz2 is not a very balanced game hottaker the goddamn Century here I know but I still feel the need to point us out this is because inherently balance isn't exactly the goal plans are broken worlds have different difficulties and different challenges pz2 is like most games ever made not intended to be a perfect balance between every Factor imaginable this almost inevitably results in a little something we know as power creep which is probably a buzzword at this point now look power creep is not necessarily a bad thing in fact in the vast majority of cases it's a good thing for games it keeps gameplay fresh it ensures that players can't do the same thing forever and just generally encourages Variety in this way power creep is just one of those words that have this unfair meaning you get used to it however pv2 not only has power creep it has like three to four different flavors on it some good some bad and some ugly very ugly and I think it's an interesting topic because quite frankly I can look at a plant like Mega Gatling go how on Earth did we get here and I think the answer is pretty interesting but I'm also sort of a weirdo probably anyways there are four different stages of power creep in pz2 and I feel like covering the first one immediately like one to two minutes after this video has started speed is my specialty anyways uh pvz1 to pz2 power three have happened like basically immediately this may come as a shock but pvz1 and pz2 are different games that share some of the same plants entering the initial leap a lot of these plants got changed well not the initial leap exactly but the second one at least 1.7 was essentially a total rework of pv2 and while beforehand plants had their PV once that's exactly this would change those stats forever it would also make all Sun production 50 sun which is like obvious but it also changed with recharge in particular this would make two players in particular out of the initial set really strong when a melon and Cherry Bomb but also globally screwed over cheap plants too so let's start with that 50 Sun meta is a huge change reducing sunflowers recharged at 5 seconds from 7.5 is also really big because of its change as it means to play against scale production way faster this means that you usually have more sun and hand at any particular stage of a game to spend which basically means that any plant that doesn't cost a lot tend to just really suck like really suck your PC should are basically worthless on so many levels but it's just upsetting but that isn't necessarily A Bad Thing using bigger plans is more fun after all winter melon benefits from his change most of all it's the most expensive Planet pz2 so that shouldn't be surprising plus it just got hugely buffed from bz1 by recharge and being its own plant untied to any other this makes a plan deceptively strong in more situations than you mainly realize honestly as it means you can use it solo and once you learn how to do that well winner sort of has a habit of breaking the game just a little watermelon bizarre Evo is one of the few plants that seems to resist power creep for a while so this doesn't actually impact the rest of the game that much which is honestly appreciated though the most likely reason for this is that most people don't realize how strong winter actually is Cherry Bomb is more direct in pvz1 it has 50 seconds recharge which is fast but not too fast in pz2 it's 35 seconds recharge which means I can recharge often before zombies reach the left side of the screen you do not buff Cherry Bomb recharge under any circumstances now if I may please direct your attention to the fact that winter melon is the best plant in the game at least for right now then you may notice that having a fast recharging three times free explosive with a 3X3 chilling plant might just get a little strong just a little bit this is the first piece of power creep I'm not a huge fan of as the zombies don't get any real counter play to this at all zombies are all weak to instant plans and the only zombie resistance simply dies to two so they can't really do all too much and because Cherry Bomb is the Baseline for all future instant plans yeah this could get problematic real quick however zombies on the whole lot better in pvz1 a lot of zombies did the same job mostly being the pole vault of friendship rather group but in pz2 they tend to be stronger and with a lot more variety even in the original PVZ2 release Prospectors are common in a huge threat compared to Digger chicken Wrangler is super dangerous bararola can be a huge issue left alone etc etc these zombies are stronger for good reason and I think it certainly helps the game out as a whole though they weren't buffed with 50 Cent meta off right so that's the first of the power creep pretty manageable if you're not Cherry who might be pushing it Cherry in general as I said before sets a bad precedent of instance so from this point onwards basically every other pure damage instant plant is absurdly broken and a few of the stalling ones too I do really think Cherry should have stayed a few seconds to recharge now small plans get added we'll cover why this recharge is so terrible now for the sake of Storytelling pz2 just released a new world then another and then another like five more times each world coming with new plans which improved upon old ones and made things stronger alongside a generally higher difficulty for routes so that's fun most of this stuff isn't particularly outrageous mostly but it's worth covering so sit down and grab your popcorn tis info dump time for future starts a trend with some of the strongest zombies PVZ2 has ever seen though with a bunch of ways to play around admittedly and magnifying grass and laser beam magni being one of the best DPS plants due to the way it mixes with the intense Sun production this game adds Blazer also just completely power case Bloomerang for 25 Sun more you can hit infinite targets with his planned food also clearing the entire Lane it's so strong in fact that its biggest weakness is that it causes ways to speed up significantly this plan had a hand in setting the president for future piercing plans to be equally ludicrous for sure even if the laser beam itself can be a questionable pick which more or less entirely killed sunflower it's just a better producer in every single way with literally no downside like you make a profit at the same time for both and sunshine will grow to medium size at least before the seconds and it's reduced and beyond that point the planet is just straighter better at a measly 72 seconds to grow the final stage frankly ludicrous and below a plant cost means you can get more down at the stops it is frankly absurd in so many ways Big Wave Beach powercrafter game in a different direction mostly in terms of difficulty really octo zombie and fishermen alone are still extreme fresh to this day and the world gimmick is still difficult to what nine years later it did also attempt to do an interesting thing to kill power creep though which I think is worth talking about for a bit so if you please let's put a break on this and discuss this method of solving power creep complexity see the free musical plant and Big Wave Beach are all very complicated plants in fact I'd say that bowling bulb minimum is one of the hardest plans in the entire game to use the other two having much more complicated uses that helps ensure that they aren't too overwhelming to the game yet when faster these plants will absolutely Shred the game crocodile is a fantastic enemy cleanup insta for 125 sun and 5 Seconds recharge bowling bulb has the highest DPS in the entire game capable of wrecking holds rapidly if played well and banana launcher is a plant that requires content management to work but is a very good damage to support for basically any strategy and can easily solo levels despite the high cost due to its range and a high skill ceiling I have to assume this is intentional because well how else would all three plans act like this but more realistically because the later worlds wouldn't follow it at all really frostbite caves introduced some of the best stores in the game a power creeping Iceberg and all other walls significantly charcut can push zombies back constantly for very cheap and with great recharge each rate's so powerful it had never been seen before meanwhile stunnion introduced the world to AOE stun for only 25 morphs on an iceberg and it would get worse in the next worlds lost city introduces stolia which more or less totally removes Iceberg from relevancy slowing zombies in a three times three area for zero sun and pretty fast recharge it forms a great team of stanyan and the pair basically nudge Iceberg out from ever really being the best plant anymore the only remaining trade it has would be is planned through defects but by this point you should have had better plan food effects in your deck otherwise resting or an ackee are the most direct form of power creep this game has seen yet together being just a better version of Peter and Bloomerang in every feasible way Well Bar some Bloom ring exclusive Jank I guess oh and Relic Hunter is literally just a more dangerous swashbuckler so yeah that's fun the zombies have been generally increasing in power this entire time but they're just way less flashy so they don't get mentioned that much and trust me zombies at this point always strong when he's been World West like oh God neon mixtape tour added fine Warp fire warp is quite literally the final evolution for a stall Planet pz2 while it used to be locked to the world it present shows that PopCap was experimenting with some insanely hot fire around this time it is also available everywhere now I'll be the very nerd from this initial Incarnation celery stalker also makes his home here being essentially the best early game you could hope for with grayscale ability mid to late game if you play well Jurassic March has a combination of some of the most dangerous ways to fall a zombies onto you with the caveat that there is literally no normal conventional special zombies because someone aside on kylo store need to be broken and quite frankly I'm not sure why they did otherwise literally every plant in this world is diuretically stronger than another except for perfume's room I guess Primal potato mine in particular is completely absurd being a stronger plant than Cherry Bomb while also being able to run alongside Cherry Bomb and having a plant food effect that spawns to additional cherry bombs you now quite literally can beat half a level without a normal attacking plant that is absolutely absurd if that wasn't already clear Monday is the final world and introduce duslobber the strongest damaging plan the game thus far the hunter of the sun dealing incredible damage that only really lacks long support that winter melon provides beyond that this will doesn't actually power things much more bar raising the minimum bar for plant foods and some answers with grim Rose and shadows room I guess regardless all the main worlds have plants that are very clearly power crapped after one another still though there's a few plans that remain viable and at least decent throughout the game and the thing is that not much of this can really be considered problematic at worst you get plans that are often directly replaced so nothing of worth is really lost well outside of instas these are obviously insanely strong and the power group of them has already resulted in Primal potato mine which is an infamously ludicrous plant that basically means every single future insta has to be insanely broken to be remotely similar and trust me they will be after all this is just the first layer of power creep we have yet to talk about the premiums and the premiums are a little interesting this may come as a bit of a surprise but premium plants are generally a little stronger to the plants this isn't necessarily the point though interviews and the like have went on record to say that premium Planter's main job were to be distinctly interesting and unique plants as opposed to necessarily stronger ones and if you look a lot of early premiums aren't really all too strong a lot of them being much weaker than the main game Plants including the likes of Snoopy pre-buff so it was hungry snopy from Spacey one Torchwood squash and jalapeno the only notably strong one is really power Lily and somewhat imitate her but they're an interesting case and I would necessarily call all too strong apparently also doesn't really contribute to power Curry due to his extremely unique mechanics that are so far removed from normal plans that is not really anything competition this also is a running Trend as plans of today rarely add an E from a power creep an even big We Beat featuring some incredibly mere plants it's not until lost city and Frostbite caves where premium plans start to gain any form of power at all and even then there's best plans in these worlds are available for gems the one exception being told still which literally just power creeps Chomper and other plants premiums aren't exactly the biggest of a power creep it's only later when they become obviously blames however I will briefly point out that hurricane is comedically broken as a staller and is arguably the best one in the game thus far and honestly it takes a while for it to be the Thrones out of all the conventional premiums the only set I consider Troublesome to a base game is Jurassic Martian Mondays at Southern call Snapdragon grape shot Escape Route and drinking violets and excluding Escape Route because I think nobody actually thought about him for more than 10 seconds anyways Cole's Snapdragon and grape shot directly replace Snapdragon and Cherry Bomb these are some of the few plants that left his whole ideal tolling skate them until now and these are especially outrageous because these are huge boosts to these already pretty good plants call Snapdragon in particular is absurd with improved damage to boot due to the way stalling works striking Violet is a genium but has an extremely unique effect multiplying damage by two times in Target in a free test free area lowering the amount of damage they can deal and making them visually smaller this can affect every Target buff you irrelevant ones and come that the Steep cost of 50 sun and didn't take his recharge rigging Violet is an insanely powerful option that doesn't directly power creep but increases the overall power of your kids especially considering the AFC slot that used to be viable at the time premiums were really a thing but yeah ping definitely hits in the power creep but honestly it's nowhere near as bad as the main game Power creep mostly because of a low amount of plants partly because of the game to make it more interesting and even partially because power creep hasn't actually begun yet yeah uh all we've talked about now this is a kiddie pool and we're diving right to the bottom of the Abyss because it was after the game ended where power creep well it got a little crazy [Music] let's start with a few remaining premiums goldbloom could add a huge chunk of a game entirely so that player doesn't need a true early game strategy kiwi Beast is risky but has an insane amount of damage which the zombies are much better Bonk risotto with a bit of missile mistletoe with a better banana launcher blah blah blah that's not web how group really began let's go a little further Beyond Exploder nuts exploit on Earth is a 50 Sun 10 seconds recharge plant but I detonate in a three-time 3 area on death of 1 800 damage it's a better Planet Walling than a walnut and it explodes like an insta when it's destroyed by the vast vast majority of ways this plant is the absolute most broken plant we've seen thus far and unfortunately we haven't even reached the cdm's yet well properly explode your nut is currently a serium but like broken plants be broken this isn't a surprise moving on the first plan to have real note in Arena was pretty early on a little guy called shadowby Shadow beat is a single Target P shooter and is relatively unimpressive however as a shadow plant that's not at all the full story when powered he will do a staggering 70 damage or 3.5 P damage would Pierce every single Target in his Lane not only that but he will stall the first you in it adding a janksta's effect to the 30 targets Wireless fire raid is slightly worse he still has the damage output overall of almost a repeater and a half to all Targets in the lane and install zombies yeah this thing is stupid insanely so goopy is Splat outrageous but people would get mad at me if I didn't bring him up here he's a straight shooter with an effect to ignore armor that zombies wield and use however he applies the effects slowly and doesn't really deal all too much damage he's still strong and basically a classes every other straight shooter so far but that's to be expected at this point really and honestly dripples in a bucket compared to the next one pokra pokra is an infamously absurd plant that is more or less Unstoppable there are very few things that can kill pocra and there are very few things that can survive just one you see pokra is a melee plant fat deal 60 damage per hits but it tastes like this it also appears that through zombies infinitely in a two-tile Range just in case he thought that was too weak with a 50 stall of course being stronger than chill because nothing can remove it at right it also costs 175 Sun oh and two can kill empaths as you probably already know it's honestly hard to believe plans can get much stronger which is good because Parker is more or less about the peak of power creep because you can't get much stronger against the normal zombies which is fine because they've also been getting stronger even before Arena properly expansions were very major and a huge piece of power creeper for the zombies not necessarily due to new veteran zombies though a few of these are quite strong but because of a general level of difficulty and swarm size levels were starting to get more zombies and as the trend continues a few more specific zombies started to rear their heads the general class of zombies these are essentially mini bosses which have a variety of different effects they can pull out of nowhere and torment you with and are not impossible to kill a normal play cardio zombie will provide huge Buffs to other zombies in the area cmek will fire missiles launch imp summons jet packs and glastronauts and even teleport zombies to make him go further seasonal speeder Plans by turning into salads promote basic Romans into stronger forms and otherwise just sorta be a menace and these are just small selection those aforementioned Roman zombies have some utter nonsense of her own zombies like healer can allow gargantuas to recover 1.8 000 HP constantly ballista will spawn dangerous zombies constantly and deep into your defense killing plants as they do so Z Corp alien a set of zombies includes Consultants a fast-moving zombie that tears through plants twists zombie lanes and totally wrecks with RNG these zombies are required to deal with plants like pokra but it's not quite enough really because here's the thing the zombies are going to be using their weaker stuff and not just them the broken stuff while players will be spamming that broken stuff now hold on for a second explain something about the post poker era plants let's say you're interested in the brand new card game uh numbers too okay so each pack contains five cars with fancy art and a large number on top you can use eight cars Mega deck to play with and the game is very simple both players put down a card and whoever has the highest value wins they got it okay so on release the game only had the base game pack which had a random set of value between one to five with fives being incredibly rare and each deck can only use each kind of card once based on art or something the game was a huge success so they made a second set with the same chance for one to five if this was equally successful and keeps going you end up in a situation where every single card in a deck can eventually become fives and fives with a maximum you can increase the ratio of five cards or remove the lower values altogether but it doesn't matter every good deck includes some combination of those number five cards this in essence is the issue a proper provides you see after apocra and explode are not realistically every other plan stops mattering they need to match with a five power card here pokra and explodio it doesn't matter if URL for a power card anymore as you need to be keeping up with the best and as time goes on power continues to scale this is what power creep is all about but popra hit a hard limit you don't kill proper and indeed no plan since pokkara has ever truly been better than it had better lettuce well it's equally powerful and broken but not really better per se due to the lack of AOE that makes parkour as overwhelming as this tell a potato while in an entirely different role it's no strong explanator already was about the same for sure but not all that much more broken the one exception I can even remotely think of will be P Vine plus Mega Gatling but even then that is only strong due to Arena's format pokra would do just fine in the majority of the cases as a result post-pocara plants stop murdering power creep has successfully hit the limits you literally cannot get a stronger plant any stronger plant would be incapable of allowing a plant to fundamentally be played anymore pokra broke everything and even they are so powerful that half of zombies in the game no longer matter anyways uh if you were to really really grind you could multiply Parker's damage I thought why in the holy hell is the fact okay so you know what I said before about packery the entire video of the star yeah uh that's not the whole story before arena there was something else a little something known as leveling now I brought us a blast for two reasons one I don't have any footage of leveling two this calls power creep on levels never before seen because when any plan can scale nigh infinitely they all become broken they all become too powerful and the worst part is this isn't even equal among plants let's take a look at pokra's level ups for a second from Level 1 to level 2 they gained 33 damage across the board now let's look at goopy's leveling we're from Level 1 to level 2 its initial projectile damage is increased by just five not even the poison damage no its initial projectile is just slightly stronger and poctor goes up to four times damage goopy gains at most 2.5 times damage on his base projectile and a slight Improvement to the part of a plant that you use it for do you see the issue here this means that plan stats no longer matter when a plant like pichida can do 110 damage when winter is Shackled 160 with a far worse fire rates when Citron loses weakness of low fire rate and where Rick and increases both the amount of pierces and the amount of damage it does at the same time where a plant like repeater can cost 100 Sun mitigating anything that mattered about the plants where a plant like graybars that can explode a plan likes dollar can knock back a plant-like stunion can poison zombies where Iceberg gains AOE bowling bulbs order changes the breaker plants and where tile Turner can lose his cost scaling where plant like blowther can lose its cost where a plant like tangle kelp can work on multiple targets these plans don't matter anymore none of them do by changing these plans in such a way these plans become generic same me they are just stat blocks you put on a field the deal of level zombies who similarly become nothing more than larger and larger staff blocks leveling is the face of power creeping pv2 not the sediums not the premiums not even winter melon Primal potato mine pokra or anything else leveling broke pv2 and as a result stands out as the core source for rendering half of plants in the game worthless because after all every plant is weaker than his level version and at a certain point they lose their identity leveling is entirely unhealthy to the game as the game was not built for it plants were not built for it and that's all it'll ever truly be [Music] now if you were wondering this is why I don't use leveling in my videos it just makes the game end fun and the main game was literally not made of it in mind which my videos are mostly focused on seriously the main game levels barely changed when leveling was introduced so come on it's right there isn't exactly much of a discussion though a bad sort of Shame you from using leveling though I really despise it but my opinion is not the Baseline for all others I'm just a guy who knows pv2 well and I've been here for a while a boomer if you will so it's very much a back in my day thing but still that's my opinion on it and not much can shift it that's just sort of how I've learned the game and what my experience says sometimes broken plans can be fun to use but my definition of fun isn't what leveling provides still I hope you enjoyed this video was voted by you guys so I can only hope you enjoyed as much as I did this video took a while because it is long and editing this video is hard my videos are slowly taking longer and longer I am noticing and I'm not happy with it but we'll have to make do you know you could wait these videos are getting better probably well whatever I finally finished a certain script I've been working on for past month so I think that'll be my next project so look after that it's gonna take a while because that's even longer than this is but well it's gonna be a fun video hope you stick around for it otherwise this has been creeps and have a good one right [Music]

Channel: Creeps20

Views: 1,096,273

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Id: YJouJlgCtXo

Length: 30min 9sec (1809 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2023