So, did you get in trouble for stealing your parents' credit card?
Alright, jokes aside, don't think I don't know what's going on here. You're a big fan of PvZ 2 because you're at the age where you don't really mind if a game is an obvious cash grab, and don't get turned away by the typical awful design that mobile games usually have. And when people attack a game you like so much, you feel offended because you feel as though people are attacking you personally for liking it. Trust me, I understand, I was like that too.
But someday, you'll start to understand these situations for what they are. You'll start to learn the many tricks that mobile game developers put in their games to try to force people to spend money. Even if you feel accomplished for playing through the game without getting frustrated enough to give EA money, the game wasn't designed for you. It's designed for the kind of people who WOULD give into that frustration. They're like gambling addicts, except their dopamine hit doesn't even come from earning part of their money back, it comes from succeeding in something that was designed to have them fail.
Microtransactions in games literally wouldn't exist if there was no point in using them, so developers come up with ways to make people want to use them. And of all the companies that do, Electronic Arts, the publisher of PvZ 2, is by far the most infamous of all of them. They were literally voted the most hated company in America at one point, and have made it to the top 10 in plenty of other similar votes. There's literally an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to criticism of EA, and given Wikipedia's strict rules on notability, that's fucking saying something.
So in short, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is:
- Published by EA
- A game that locks plants, including plants that were literally available for free in the first game, behind paywalls
- Mobile exclusive
Even the original producer of the game talked about how bad PvZ 2 turned out.
So when people say a game is bad, don't just automatically assume they mean that it's IMPOSSIBLE to have fun with, or that the people who do like it are wrong for doing so. I have plenty of games that I despise, that I still have fun with. Clearly there was a game here that the developers cared about making. But then they got acquired by EA mid-development, and it all went down the drain. Developers try to make good games, and executives like these try to get them to make bad games (that make more money) instead. Naturally, since the executives have complete control over the developers, this goes about as well as you'd expect.
What's all this I keep getting about essays? I just tend to ramble a little. Is that really so alien to everyone else on the internet?? Well sorry I couldn't be more "concise" for you. You know what they say, "if I had more time I would've written a shorter letter." I'm not gonna sit here and go through multiple drafts of something that I don't wanna spend more than maybe 15 minutes writing.
Also it's not marketing techniques, and I didn't say you're not allowed to like it. I'm just saying that there are many things about it that have been ruined by EA, the company PopCap is currently a subsidiary to, and the company that replaced the producer for PvZ 2 because it wasn't "enough like current free-to-play games".
Besides, I was never talking about whether the game was fun or not. I've played a couple mods that fix EA's mistakes (like re-tooling or otherwise removing the leveling system, removing microtransactions, removing many of the more detestable updates, etc), and there is a game that WAS at one point GOING to be good. It's just that it didn't turn out that way. And what do I think after playing these mods? Eh, it's okay. Could never beat the original in a million years, but if a diehard PvZ fan just wants "more PvZ", then (modded) PvZ 2 can certainly be described as "more PvZ".
No, I just find it pretty ridiculous that you attacked someone just for not liking a fairly mediocre game. You made an account JUST to attack them. That's, uh... pretty extreme. I'm just trying to get you to see why people have that opinion. Opinions aren't universal, and you can't expect people to share yours, especially when there are MANY good reasons to dislike the game.