PvZ: Heroes of the WalletStorm on Android and iOS

Darkewolfe

From the franchise that brought you a flash game turned pop sensation turned mobile device money generator turned multiple sequels as third person shooters turned back into a mobile device money generator, it's Plants vs Zombies: Heroes!

Featuring all your favorites, like: Space Alien Orange and Crazy Mecha-Zombie Midget!

Google play link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ea.gp.pvzheroes&hl=en

iTunes link:
https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/plants-vs.-zombies-heroes/id1000876192?mt=8

What is it?
It's a free to play/freemium collectible card game based around lane control. Comparisons are being made to Hearthstone, but there are several other competitors it more directly resembles because of the lane control structure. Though a lot of the window dressing is very hearthstoney.

How does gameplay work?
You build a deck ahead of time, either Plants or Zombies, and face off against other players in Ranked League, or the AI in campaign. There are five lanes between your hero and your opponent's hero, and each of you typically have 20 life. You get one more mana/resource/energy per turn than the previous turn, and you spend all your resources every turn playing cards from your hand. Each player will get a chance to play creatures and combat tricks in a specified order, and then combat automatically resolves with creatures attacking what's directly in front of them. Damage is preserved between turns.

What's this about asymmetric gameplay?
It's a bit of a stretch to emphasize asymmetric gameplay. Netrunner this is not. During the course of a turn, the Zombie player has the opportunity to play creatures only, then the Plants player plays creatures and combat tricks in any order they want, then the Zombies player can play combat tricks. After this, combat automatically resolves. Zombies skew slightly more toward aggro, but the difference doesn't seem huge so far.

How about the freemium stuff? How bad is it?
The game hasn't been out terribly long, so I don't know how bad it'll be to be hyper competitive. I will say that deck synergy is pretty huge, and the rarer card types are very rare. The game is probably pretty comparable to Hearthstone in this sense, as it has a high chase rarity (legendary) as well as card disenchanting and crafting. So far I've opened about 15 packs from free to play stuff, and I've only gotten one legendary. I have no idea how long it would take to farm the dust to craft a legendary, but I'd say a month minimum. That said, the legendaries seem pretty unnecessary so far, but we'll wait to see how the meta plays out.

Alright, so what about the actual HEROES part?
The game is much more similar to Hearthstone here. Each hero basically has two classes which they can pull cards from, plus a generic card pool. I haven't gotten enough time to play so far to determine how balanced the heroes are. My best decks so far all pull from synergy cards that are in the generic pool, and the class cards are just flavor. If one hero is substantially more sought after than another, this could be a big deal. You're given four heroes for free, but there are another 16 that are locked in the booster packs (freemium system). They seem to drop one in every 5-10 packs so far (small sample size), so you could get a bit peeved if you had bad luck.

Heroes also have a unique pool of combat tricks that they get access to.

What's unique about the gameplay?
There's not a whole lot that's totally unique. The lane based gameplay is pretty standard and fits the mobile device format really well. The biggest unique thing is probably the shields system, and that's RNG enough to be a tad annoying. Almost any time your hero takes damage RNG will give you 1-3 shield points, and once you earn enough shield points the next attack you take is mitigated and you get to play a combat trick for free. Since the shield points are partially randomized and which combat trick you get for free is randomized, games can massively swing on this.

Lanes are also divided into three types: Ground, High Ground, and Amphibious. There are several global combat tricks that affect anyone in the three center lanes only (ground); some units get bonuses on the left most lane (high ground); and only Amphibious units can be played to the water zone. It doesn't hugely impact the game, but does add a few dimensions to deck building.



All told, it's a decently fun deckbuilder on mobile device. It's not as chewy as Hearthstone, but it's also faster, lighter and less resource intensive.

Seidkona

Plants 4 lyfe.

Is it asynch or do both players need to be online at the same time to play?

Darkewolfe

Both players need to be online at the same time to play. A game probably takes 5-8 turns on average, during which initiative passes at least twice.

Jam Warrior

This is a solid good time. Fits brilliantly on the mobile screen and plays quick but fun matches.

There seems to be a glut of Plant players currently so match making as a Plant takes forever but you can dive straight into games as a Zombie.

Magic Pink

They DESPERATELY need to speed up the game play in this. Drop all the stupid animations, my phone is fucking shutting off before my turn comes back around.

Jam Warrior wrote: »

There seems to be a glut of Plant players currently so match making as a Plant takes forever but you can dive straight into games as a Zombie.

Well, that's because they force you to start as a plant and you have to play 5 games to even unlock zombies.

Seidkona

Magic Pink wrote: »

They DESPERATELY need to speed up the game play in this. Drop all the stupid animations, my phone is fucking shutting off before my turn comes back around.

Jam Warrior wrote: »

There seems to be a glut of Plant players currently so match making as a Plant takes forever but you can dive straight into games as a Zombie.

Well, that's because they force you to start as a plant and you have to play 5 games to even unlock zombies.

That is kind of stupid.

Magic Pink

omg the popup ads are driving me nuts

every time you try to go to a different menu screen

jesus

Betsuni

Magic Pink wrote: »

They DESPERATELY need to speed up the game play in this. Drop all the stupid animations, my phone is fucking shutting off before my turn comes back around.

Jam Warrior wrote: »

There seems to be a glut of Plant players currently so match making as a Plant takes forever but you can dive straight into games as a Zombie.

Well, that's because they force you to start as a plant and you have to play 5 games to even unlock zombies.

Yeah the animations is what made me play this game less than I wanted to. My friend dropped a $5 credit on the game and got a Zombie hero that is destroying the Plants since it is probably overpowered at this point. So he's having fun playing the game at least.

kime

Was wondering if there was a thread for this game! I like it a lot. It's faster and a bit less intense than Hearthstone, but Hearthstone's UI is definitely better. That's my biggest complaint so far.

Betsuni wrote: »

Magic Pink wrote: »

They DESPERATELY need to speed up the game play in this. Drop all the stupid animations, my phone is fucking shutting off before my turn comes back around.

Jam Warrior wrote: »

There seems to be a glut of Plant players currently so match making as a Plant takes forever but you can dive straight into games as a Zombie.

Well, that's because they force you to start as a plant and you have to play 5 games to even unlock zombies.

Yeah the animations is what made me play this game less than I wanted to. My friend dropped a $5 credit on the game and got a Zombie hero that is destroying the Plants since it is probably overpowered at this point. So he's having fun playing the game at least.

I'm playing Plants because the first couple Plant heroes, at least, look loooooads better than the Zombies. Green Shadow and Solar Flare (I think is maybe their names?) are cool designs, vs "boring zombie" :P

Darkewolfe

I've got the mechanical imp and the disco zombie and they're both fun. Disco zombie especially since I can frequently win with direct damage as a result of all my zombies dancing the night away.

Jam Warrior

Working my way through the surprisingly gem generous quests, but my favourite deck so far is an Impfinity deck with tons of imps, the imp that makes all imps deadly, and the imp that draws you a card if you damage the plant hero with an imp (which combines well with the strikethrough damage imp). Imp, imp, imp. Imp.

WingedWeasel

Downloaded this and tried to jump in. Holy shit the game will barely even "run" if you can call it that. Takes forever to load and then I can't even accomplish the first part of the tutorial (literally the "play a plant" part). Is this unusually resource intensive? Couldn't even load the setting menu to determine if there's anything I could do.

The technical support forums had a few posts about people being unable to login or getting stuck on the splash screen and the response was to log out of the connected account, relaunch, and log back in. Seemed to only be for iOS and not Android though.

Darkewolfe

Are you playing on a Soviet made ngage?

kime

WingedWeasel wrote: »

Downloaded this and tried to jump in. Holy shit the game will barely even "run" if you can call it that. Takes forever to load and then I can't even accomplish the first part of the tutorial (literally the "play a plant" part). Is this unusually resource intensive? Couldn't even load the setting menu to determine if there's anything I could do.

The technical support forums had a few posts about people being unable to login or getting stuck on the splash screen and the response was to log out of the connected account, relaunch, and log back in. Seemed to only be for iOS and not Android though.

It runs super smoothly for me on my iPhone 6s

Jam Warrior

Runs brilliantly on my iPhone 6 but noticeably chugs on my old iPad 2.

Also glad to find you can play the single player stuff or noodle about with decks whilst offline, which is a luxury this style of game doesn't usually allow.

WingedWeasel

I haven't had any issues with say clash royale, transformers earth wars takes a while to load but then is fine once the app actually starts. Was trying to run it on my home wireless so it shouldn't be trying to run over my data connection. I have to give it another shot when I am home, but I'm not really sure wtf the issue is.

Jam Warrior

Changed my mind to Super Brainz. He still gets all the important imps I was using before but he also has access to lots of bonus attack. Bonus attack plus deadly (with a side of anti-hero) is just plain rude.

WingedWeasel

After a few reinstalls got this working smoothly (for now). At first I thought "hey this is like solforge" then the client started working. The game itself aside from lanes seems very different to solforge, but I don't know how much fun it is since I'm still way early on. Has anyone done the math on whether to hoard (and to what point) crystals/gems/whatever they are called that are the real money currency?

Ended up getting spudow vs solar for my first plant pick and went with the former since my wife thought he was adorable.

Jam Warrior

I've been buying the 100 gem packs as soon as possible but that's because I have no patience. Things may slow down in the upper leagues but quests plus ranking bonuses means the gems come in at a pretty steady flow.

I've found three heroes (all zombies) in packs.

Darkewolfe

I saved up 1000 gems to buy a 10+1 pack. I'm not sure it was worth the delayed gratification.

Disco Zombie is still my favorite character. I run pets/dancing on him and he's just a beast.

kime

WingedWeasel wrote: »

After a few reinstalls got this working smoothly (for now). At first I thought "hey this is like solforge" then the client started working. The game itself aside from lanes seems very different to solforge, but I don't know how much fun it is since I'm still way early on. Has anyone done the math on whether to hoard (and to what point) crystals/gems/whatever they are called that are the real money currency?

Ended up getting spudow vs solar for my first plant pick and went with the former since my wife thought he was adorable.

You are both crazy, Solar is basically the most adorable.

Darkewolfe

Solar is probably the best pick power-wise for getting into pvp. The direct damage is definitely better combat tricks for this game type than trying to play defensively.

Betsuni

Darkewolfe wrote: »

Solar is probably the best pick power-wise for getting into pvp. The direct damage is definitely better combat tricks for this game type than trying to play defensively.

This is funny since I accidentally chose Solar at the beginning when I started. I started to just play this game when I get angry at Hearthstone or Final Fantasy to spend time just mindlessly playing and it is so much better.

WingedWeasel

kime wrote: »

WingedWeasel wrote: »

After a few reinstalls got this working smoothly (for now). At first I thought "hey this is like solforge" then the client started working. The game itself aside from lanes seems very different to solforge, but I don't know how much fun it is since I'm still way early on. Has anyone done the math on whether to hoard (and to what point) crystals/gems/whatever they are called that are the real money currency?

Ended up getting spudow vs solar for my first plant pick and went with the former since my wife thought he was adorable.

You are both crazy, Solar is basically the most adorable.

havent seen all the heroes, but i am not seeing hoesolar beats spudow on this front

Darkewolfe wrote: »

Solar is probably the best pick power-wise for getting into pvp. The direct damage is definitely better combat tricks for this game type than trying to play defensively.

this however is probably true. hopefully unlocking heroes isn't too cumbersome

Darkewolfe

After the first few, it's pretty bad to unlock heroes.

Edit: Imprecise language. It seems to be pretty grindy to get enough gems to buy enough packs to get much in the way of new heroes.

WingedWeasel

Enjoying the game so far, but card acquisition seems very, VERY slow. I like that there are specified packs for factions but 1000+ gems seems like a lot. Been playing a fair amount and I am only around 750

Jam Warrior

WingedWeasel wrote: »

Enjoying the game so far, but card acquisition seems very, VERY slow. I like that there are specified packs for factions but 1000+ gems seems like a lot. Been playing a fair amount and I am only around 750

?

The specified faction packs are 150. The specified hero ones are only 200.

I've been doing the 100 gem generic packs and I've got cards for days.

WingedWeasel

Jam Warrior wrote: »

WingedWeasel wrote: »

Enjoying the game so far, but card acquisition seems very, VERY slow. I like that there are specified packs for factions but 1000+ gems seems like a lot. Been playing a fair amount and I am only around 750

?

The specified faction packs are 150. The specified hero ones are only 200.

I've been doing the 100 gem generic packs and I've got cards for days.

I was looking at the bonus bundles because the gem generation rate seems really slow. Maybe I am just hitting quests that aren't great for that? Most have been 10 gems each, so the bulk of stuff I have generated was seemingly one time stuff.

Edit: also I was incorrect, the "bundle" is 1500 for the specific faction ones. Really I screwed up the first post because I waa posting quickly. I meant to have this be 2 separate things. As in: I like there being dedicated packs so you can hone in on what you want. Meanwhile the prices for the packs seem to be a little high and card acquisition seems slow. Yes, I am artificially increasing that length of time by going for the 10+1 bundle instead of single packs, however long term I don't really have a handle on how gem income will look so I was also partially waiting to see.

The basic pack seems to be very meager unnecessarily.

Jam Warrior

Are you playing ranked multiplayer? Combining the ranking bonuses with the hero quests has left me feeling fairly showered in gems.

I have 230 plant cards and 289 zombie cards and I've never felt I had to grind at any point, just buying packs as the gems accrue naturally.

I am rank 27. Is that particularly high? Apologies if I'm some kind of idiot savant.

I think this just an expectation difference thing. 700+ gems seems like loads to me. That's 7 packets woo!

WingedWeasel

I'm 3-0 in ranked but I haven't modified the starter decks all that much (just crafted some pet zombies last night so a little bit of editing). I hadn't jumped into much ranked because I'm rarely on a stable enough connection and I didn't have a comfortable grasp yet of what is available. That may be the issue with the income.

Part of the problem is quantity (for crafting) part is quality (I kinda want that banana t rex).

Darkewolfe

You really don't need all the cards to play effectively. Yes, you'll make an uber tier deck someday. But If you're feeling frustrated at your deck flexibility and you haven't opened ANY premium packs, maybe open some packs.

Also, I don't think that the best bet is to go for the deck you've set your eye on, for instance paying the 50% gem premium to get packs for your faction. I think it'd be more efficient to crack general packs and make decks with the strengths you end up with. You're saving for a 10+1 pack series, so you're saving 10% gems. Except you're paying a 50% premium to get within one faction. That's pretty quickly going to hinder your overall collection.

Also, don't neglect those character quests! Each one nets you a free craftable uncommon, a bunch of gems and common packs, and a premium pack at the end.

Edit: they're pretty aggressively depreciating ranks. I was rank 10 last week and am rank 7 this week.

Jam Warrior

I didn't know they went down! All the better for more gem gaining assume you still get the bonus for ranking back up.

Darkewolfe

Jam Warrior wrote: »

I didn't know they went down! All the better for more gem gaining assume you still get the bonus for ranking back up.

Yeah, I haven't had the chance to rank back up yet (have only won two of the four). It's easier to work back up, but it felt like the rewards were getting bigger at the higher ranks, so you have to keep crawling your way back.

WingedWeasel

Wow they deflate ranks? Interesting. Did not realize that.

Darkewolfe wrote: »

You really don't need all the cards to play effectively. Yes, you'll make an uber tier deck someday. But If you're feeling frustrated at your deck flexibility and you haven't opened ANY premium packs, maybe open some packs.

Also, I don't think that the best bet is to go for the deck you've set your eye on, for instance paying the 50% gem premium to get packs for your faction. I think it'd be more efficient to crack general packs and make decks with the strengths you end up with. You're saving for a 10+1 pack series, so you're saving 10% gems. Except you're paying a 50% premium to get within one faction. That's pretty quickly going to hinder your overall collection.

Also, don't neglect those character quests! Each one nets you a free craftable uncommon, a bunch of gems and common packs, and a premium pack at the end.

Edit: they're pretty aggressively depreciating ranks. I was rank 10 last week and am rank 7 this week.

I don't actually want all, or even most of the cards. I mentioned the faction specific stuff because I like the idea in general, however there are also the bundles as general packs as well. In general it seems that the card acquisition is slow, I have approximately 750 gems. Great I could've had 7 packs. That's not a whole lot. Compared to clash royale, duelyst, hearthstone, and other games I've played it seems slower. I haven't actually done the math to determine if that is the case especially since most of the games have essentially one time new account bonuses baked in for completing the tutorial/single player portions.

There's still a lot to this game that I am exploring so I am not trying to claim the methodology here is terrible or something. Just that my initial impression is that if it took me this long to amass the meager amount of resources I have it seems slow.

Darkewolfe

Yeah. I agree that acquisition compared to, CoC, Duelyst, or Hearthstone is significantly slower.

However, I also think that the contents of packs are significantly less required for building a winning deck out the gate.

WingedWeasel

Yeah, that's the sort of trade-off I can't really accurately assess yet. As it stands I enjoy the game, but I am still in the "cool new toy" phase.

kime

So I've got like 1500 coins. Is there anything to buy with them besides basic packs? Is there any way to buy more than one basic pack at a time?

Darkewolfe

kime wrote: »

So I've got like 1500 coins. Is there anything to buy with them besides basic packs? Is there any way to buy more than one basic pack at a time?

No, the basic coins you should just be spending as you get them.

kime

Darkewolfe wrote: »

kime wrote: »

So I've got like 1500 coins. Is there anything to buy with them besides basic packs? Is there any way to buy more than one basic pack at a time?

No, the basic coins you should just be spending as you get them.

Ugh. Gonna be unpleasant spending the backlog...

Jacoby

From my experience, the basic cards you get + the hero quest cards can generally make pretty viable decks. Using Anti-Hero units and mobility tricks with Super Brainz is really satisfying.

zipididee

Has anybody else had problems with freezing at the loading screen right before a battle where the little flower slins in the bottom right corner?