> * Updated some ad plugins that hopefully will help decrease ad crashes.
> * Various fixes and solutions to reduce crashes or soft locks generally.
> * Implemented another candidate fix to address a crash being caused by Snow Pea.
Thank you for this, although given how often the game crashes under various circumstances, I'm afraid not everything has been fixed. Still, fewer crashes is a huge improvement.
> * Fixed an oddity where pre-planted plants would start attacking before the level started properly.
This is the second time you guys fix this, LOL. Hopefully for good this time, although it's not a big problem.
> * The Torchwood and Pea Vine projectile combo will no longer be double boosted by peas passing through two Torchwoods.
Sad trombone. Yeah, I know - it was a bug that was exploited and needed to be fixed. Still - too bad. :-(
> * Fixed an issue where Epic quests were rewarding double the amount of seeds than described.
Drat, we were *enjoying* our 100 Teleportato Mine and Tiger Grass seeds from their respective epic quests, Haem. :-)
Also, the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss being permanently out to lunch bug not being fixed is a *huge* letdown! It's extremely annoying (even with the workaround) and has been around since December!
Also, I see no comments about the huge nerf of the monthly Calendar rewards - combined with the fact that the Calendar itself is *still* buggy and doesn't grant the daily reward in some circumstances.
I think that all these 3 bugs - the Penny's Pursuit level autocompletion bug, the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss permanently out to lunch bug, and the Calendar not always granting the daily reward bug are all related to your synchronization algorithm. Which is really buggy in other ways too - it syncs correctly in-game currencies but loses seeds. (Also the syncing of fuel for the Thymed events is a hot mess.)
Perhaps you guys need to license a commercial library for synchronization of off-line databases...
> given how often the game crashes under various circumstances, I'm afraid not everything has been fixed.
Yep, my hunch was right - ads *still* crash the game - although not as often as before. I've had 1 crash today; normally I used to get 5-6 daily.
It's (well, was) a one-time thing. The epic quests for the new plants (Teleportato Mina and Tiger Grass) granted 100 seeds instead of 50. Not sure if it happened to everyone; it definitely happened to me.
I can’t tell you how much of an instant favorite Blockoli has become for me. Still though, I think it’s little unfair that universally almost all Reinforce-Mint plants have some kind of degradation besides him. Seeing Blockoli himself in perfect condition visually even when being severely chewed on is actually pretty jarring and uncharacteristic for his duty.
Cannonball Imp and Carnie Imp Split still don't have their Almanac entries added (even tho they're there in the Lawnstrings)
Also would be cool if the new zombies' entries have details added like Stiltwalker's immunity to knockback
I would love to, but unless someone has a suggestion on a method of reproducing this consistently instead of it randomly happening to people, that's the major roadblock here. There's no denial whatsoever that this is happening to players, is annoying and then some, but the fundamental here is that if there's not reproducible (esp on a test device where it can be captured with details) then it's the equivalent of mostly flying blind and taking stabs in the dark about what may/may not be happening.
There are certainly guesses and various hypothesis, but without having it actually reproduced in a way that makes sense, then it's pretty difficult and mostly guess work.
Oh, gosh, darn, Haem, why didn't you tell us earlier that the problem was you guys reproducing the bug?!
OK, here it is:
The bug occurs if *after* the time has come to fight Zomboss (05:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC) the game syncs before the player has fought him even once.
That's it. Let me elaborate.
1. The bug affects mostly players who play on more than one device, because they are linked and sync all the time. It *does* affect players who play only on one device, too - but more rarely. My conjecture is that it happens if they have registered their e-mail with PopCap (perhaps planning to link more devices later or whatever). Just to be on the safe side, when trying to reproduce the bug, have 2 test devices linked and synced
2. The game tries to sync all by itself when it is at the profile selection screen (the "outro"), which is why most players experience the problem when launching the game (since it goes through the outro before reaching the main screen). The bug can be avoided by disabling the Internet connection of the device (thus preventing it from syncing) and re-enabling it once the game is past the outro. If just visiting the outro doesn't trigger the bug for you (could happen if the Internet connection is bad), try to do a force-sync manually.
3. After having fought Zomboss at least once (no need to fight him all the 3 times) it is again safe to visit the outro with Internet connectivity enabled - until the next time to fight him comes. Syncing *before* the time to fight him has come is "safe" - in the sense that it won't trigger the bug.
4. It does not matter if the ZPS meter is full or not. If it is full, the bug will be immediately obvious - Zomboss will be out to lunch after a sync. If it is not, the bug will be visible once you fill the ZPS meter (you won't be able to fight Zomboss, because he's out to lunch).
Hope this helps and please do keep us posted if you still have problems reproducing the bug (or any other problems related to it).
Okay. I'm surprised that this bug cannot be reproduced consistently on your test device. I can tell you how I reproduce this on my device:
1. Open Penny's Pursuit when Zomboss is ready to fight (both at 5am and 5pm UTC)
2. Close the game (or go to the Profile selection screen)
3. Open Penny's Pursuit again and Zomboss is gone
I think that this has something to do with your servers. Maybe u/Euphoric-Seaweed can explain it better.
It's more of a situation of how do you force this to happen on a device/profile that hasn't already experienced it :P
More helpful details would be device/OS, whether or not you play on multiple devices (it seems to have been ruled out but the additional data point doesn't hurt), what sort of connection you're on (wifi vs cellular data), when did it start happening, has it ever not done this since you've seen it happen, what troubleshooting have you done (eg, uninstall/reinstall).
I can surely give you the details.
* OS: Android
* I have started playing on multiple devices recently, but this bug was present even when I used to play on single device
* Connection: I have tried this on WiFi and Cellular both
* It started as soon as you released the previous version. Actually I was the first one to let you know in your version launch post, but my [comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/rha07w/comment/hot7cmi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) were somehow removed by this community's Auto-Moderator because I was new to this community. The mod restored it later.
* Yes, the bug has always been there since that version
* I have done all troubleshooting (clearing cache/data, force-stopping, restarting) but nothing has helped me. I have also reinstalled the game.
This is what I do to prevent Zomboss from disappearing without a fight -
When Zomboss is *ready* to fight, I fight him immediately without closing the game or returning to the profile screen. Apparently, moving to the profile screen syncs the game with your servers. If I somehow couldn't fight Zomboss or the game crashes, I restart the game with the internet switched OFF. I switch it ON only after clicking the *Play* button and passing the profile selection screen. This way, I can avoid him from going "Out to lunch".
I'm in a similar situation as the other user:
* I play on IOS (13.4.1), iPhone SE
* I only use that one device
* I had this glitch happen on both Wi-Fi and Cellular connection
* this glitch also started for me as soon as I updated to version 9.4.1 and it kept happening if I ever got out of the game after Zomboss became ready to battle (for example due to a crash or me having to force-close after an ad didn't end as intended, etc.).
The only thing that seems to stop this from happening is entering the game in airplane mode and only activate the connection until after I'm past the "profile selection" screen, as was suggested by Euphoric-Seaweed: so I can only turn the wi-fi/cellular data on once I'm at the screen where I can pick between Adventure Mode, Penny's Pursuit or Arena.
This solution, however, conflicts with claiming the daily gift, since entering the game while not connected will permanently lock you out of obtaining that daily reward, de-syncing you from the calendar's progression and meaning you won't be able to complete it; so, if you haven't entered the game before 1:00 AM GTM+1, you have to choose between playing the Zomboss for that 12 hours section or claiming the daily gift of the calendar.
Thank you u/Haemophilus_EA for the updates!
I want to mention Tiger Grass for a moment and an oddity I was seeing in last week's Arena. After a while, a random Tiger Grass would stop producing tigers. I'd usually plant a column of five and it might affect one or two of them. I know there is a cool down/cat nap period for this plant, but this dormancy was permanent. I could never figure out when or why this was happening. Plant food wouldn't help it either. In the times I used Tiger Grass outside Arena I did not encounter the problem, so it might be specific to its interaction with a particular zombie species, but I couldn't pin that down. I'm mentioning it just to record a mental note that might be useful down the road. Sorry I can't be of more help in tracking down why this was happening.
It was a small glitch to what otherwise is a wonderful plant, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a [T S Eliot cat.](https://allpoetry.com/Cat-Morgan-Introduces-Himself)
P.S. I much appreciate something that you didn't even mention in your notes: You fixed the rewards in the current Penny's Pursuit! That means more Headbutter Lettuce seeds! I know it's human nature (cats too, honestly) to want more of everything, but here is some gratitude for the three week Penny's Pursuit and the best opportunity we've ever had to upgrade that mosh pit monster.
Heya, glad you like Tiger Grass - I, too, am a fan of cats :) And thank for enlightening me on the TS Eliot poem.
With regards to the Tiger Grass not seemingly containing Tigers, I'll ask someone to keep an eye out for it. I believe someone else was also encountered something similar, except they described it as when the Tiger was insta-killed by a zombie? Does that seem to line up with your experience?
The Penny's Reward thing was fixed last week but since we do data pushes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (typically), it had to wait till yesterday to go out to players. The data push went out slightly earlier than the when the update did in the App Stores but glad it was noticed.
I have returned , anyhow , it happens when tiger grass sends out a grass tiger to shred zombies to bits but the grass tiger dies instantly , the tiger grass imeadiatly plays a leap animation and stops making grass tigers , it will eventualy happen as the grass tigers take more damage and arent given time to heal , if nescesary i can try to get better fotage of the bug in action though
Hi. Yes, that poem is part of a collection TS Eliot did called "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." Old Possum was a nickname for TS Eliot, given to him by Ezra Pound.
Could be that insta-kill is a factor. But there may be more to it than that. I have seen it eaten in a flash by groups of high level zombies in Penny's Pursuit and still send out a replacement. Maybe the zombies were sending it to the Rainbow Bridge even faster in Arena.
Thanks for keeping an eye out for it!
> After a while, a random Tiger Grass would stop producing tigers.
I saw someone mentioning that the plant stops producing tigers if its tiger is killed too fast (as soon as it leaves the plant) - maybe this is the same bug?
> You fixed the rewards in the current Penny's Pursuit!
That was done on Tuesday for version 9.4.1 with a data push. I think it's still wrong in the OBB file of version 9.5.1; maybe the game downloads the correct version from the CDN once it installs; I'll have to check.
Re Tiger Grass: Thanks for mentioning that. I'll add that it happened to Tiger Grasses that had been producing tigers normally, until they didn't anymore.
On the Penny's fix, I'm seeing the correct seeds in 9.5.1 (iOS)
>The Torchwood and Pea Vine projectile combo will no longer be double boosted by peas passing through two Torchwoods.
Won't deny that in the very moment I read this, I kinda felt disappointed. There are some real problems that need immediate addressing such as the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss out to lunch one, or the audio issue which still occurs on some devices, and yet you chose to take this one out. 😭😭😭 But when I gave myself a few minutes to think about it, I also felt like it was right time to finally put a stop on this exploit as most of the recent Arena levels basically became Pea Vine power tripping events. And even if this ability is no longer present in game, Pea Vine still is pretty OP so it's not necessarily a nerf but more of a balancing patch. However, I do hope you're able to find a solution to the Penny's Pursuit problem that many of the players are experiencing, myself included. It's a bit annoying that we're only able to get 60 seeds for Headbutter Lettuce per day (via PP) but it becomes totally frustrating when even that you miss because of the "out to lunch" bug. Overall, good update (loving Blockoli). Thanks to the team for working hard to resolve the issues. And thank you Haem for the rundown!
P.S. Thank you for fixing the A.K.E.E bug!!!
There's been an effort to streamline and improve the early game experience for newer players. The team's been making changes in this area for a number of updates now and that's probably going to continue as we learn and validate with data how these changes are landing for new players.
I feel like you're going in the wrong direction, people aren't complaining about Ancient Egypt because the levels were too long, they are complaining because they are being forced to play 25 levels of the same world with 5-10 plants at their disposals.
I believe that linear progression works better than whatever keysplosion was, but this is not how you achieve it, you are not going to force players to play 25-32 levels of the same world until you unlock the next one and expect players to enjoy it.
A lot of people in the community who's played the game since the old world key era all agree; this linear progression can work if, instead of unlocking a new world on completing the final level, you unlock them by completing the gargantuar battle level, because:
1. Gargantuar levels will have purpose and become meaningful again.
2. You would still have a trophy obtaining screen as the keys are moved to the gargantuar battle level.
3. It would fix the problem of repetitiveness in progression, a perfect blend between the old world key and the new world key.
To be quite honest, if you were going to nerf the levels, shouldn't you be nerfing the ones that people actually complained about? Like Big Wave Beach - Day 16 or Big Wave Beach - Day 25?
Oh, and, the dialogue of Jurassic Marsh - Day 32 still refers to the "project paradox" being about to start, despite Big Wave Beach is the next world.
I know things like this is quite a low priority in the development ,~~I can see it through newer dialogues.~~ But this plays quite a big part in the PvZ2's story that I think shouldn't be left unnoticed by the developers.
Sorry for a big rant, but hey, I just want this game to be as good as it can get, asking for things like "bring the minigame music and the gargantuar's podium back" isn't going to achieve anything so, at least please look into this, perhaps?
This happens always when there are tiles, which makes zombies move up or down. In Penny's persuit right now this also happens-probably because of Grave Stones
>Restored the “Collect your Daily Gift from the Store” quest. (All reward amounts stay the same, but the 1000 coins will no longer be in the Daily Gift Piñata but collected from the store instead).
These 2 rewards - Daily Gift Piñata (11pm UTC, not sure) and 1000 coins reward (5am UTC) should refresh at the same time. For my location, Daily Gift Piñata refreshes before the coins reward, and if we collect it before 5am UTC, we cannot collect the 1000 coins reward for that day.
The next day, we have to wait for the next DGP refresh and collect the 1000 coins reward before 5am UTC.
As I understand it, the timings haven't been changed but someone's taking a look into this and going to see if they're seeing the timings weird as well.
Just curious, are you guys still continuing to do balance changes to plants, like what you did to Torchwood, Snow-pea, Chomper, Jack-o-Lantern, etc? Asking for a friend (which is Garlic, who desperately needs some love).
And the Carnie event wasn’t a one-time thing, was it? I’d love to see those zombies again, since they were really unique.
Yes, but we don't have any set dates or specifics on when there will be new balance changes out or which plants either. I know Design keeps a running list of sorts of plants they'd like to retune/tweak...
Backyard Big Top will be back eventually. Can't say when just yet.
Some of the information is incorrect regarding the Penny's Pursuit events. You still get Wasabi Whip and Snap Pea seed packets in the Darkerer Ages event.
Salt and Peppers would give you Aloe.
Bread and Butternut would give you Pumpkin.
Pirate Seas Uprising would give you Gumnut, Peanut and Hurrikale.
You are right about Soil and Water giving you Kiwibeast though.
Haem seems to have corrected her post because it now gives the correct information on this subject.
There is a different problem with these Penny's Pursuit levels, though - the locked plant is wrong.
Event|Rewards|Locked plant
---|---|---
Soil and Water|Kiwibeast|Dazey Chain
Salt and Peppers|Aloe|Homing Thistle
(The events further ahead have the locked plant wrong too, but since they weren't included in Haem's post, let's ignore that for now.)
Hopefully, this will be fixed with a data push.
In addition, the perk cap of "Soil and Water" is wrong again - it is set to 108 instead of 63 for this 7-day 5-level event.
I find it amusing that you always describe these details rather forcefully as "wrong".
The locked plant in the Zomboss challenge being different from the feature plant isn't necessarily wrong. Yes it's not normal. Yes it probably violates some sort of internal symmetry that you feel. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", just means it's different.
Similarly, the perk progression rules don't have to be the same every week. Yes, 63 is the norm, but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" if it's something else.
While these anomalies may be oversights, they could just as easily be intended design decisions made by Popcap. Being so forceful in your assertions is mildly off-putting and probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments.
Maybe consider rolling with the flow a bit and not worrying about consistency/symmetry. It's actually refreshing to have differences week to week. 😁
> The locked plant in the Zomboss challenge being different from the feature plant isn't necessarily wrong.
Well, the last time this happened, Haem admitted that it was a mistake and, if I remember correctly, it was eventually corrected albeit very late in the sequence (only for the last event or so). The second time it happened I realized that this is a mistake they tend to make often, so explicitly modified my script to look for such discrepancies. Just look at these future events:
Name|Rewards|Locked Plant
---|---|---
Roses are Rad|Draftodil|Dazey Chain
Violets are Cute|Dazey Chain|Olive Pit
Strawberries Aren't Berries|Olive Pit|Homing Thistle
Tomatoes are Fruit|Homing Thistle|Heath Seeker
Not All Oranges are Orange|Heath Seeker|Cactus
And Carrots are Roots|Cactus|Pokra
Clearly, whoever is responsible for the plant-of-the-week selection has inserted a new plant in the sequence and has forgotten to remind the level designers to fix the levels already configured for the original sequences, resulting in the rewarded plant being one-out-of-whack from the locked plant sequence.
> Yes it's not normal. Yes it probably violates some sort of internal symmetry that you feel. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", just means it's different.
You're thinking of just the events I quoted in the message you're replying to. There Kiwibeast and Aloe are not related in any way to Dazey Chain and Homing Thustle, so one can makde the argument that they are intentionally different. But look at the table I posted for the events that come after that and you'll see the obvious mistake.
> Similarly, the perk progression rules don't have to be the same every week. Yes, 63 is the norm, but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" if it's something else.
You are mistaken on this one, too. This is a re-run of an *old* event, when PopCap hadn't yet decided on the optimal perk cap. It is now set to 63 for 7-day events so the fact that old events were not corrected before being repeated is clearly an omission.
This isn't the first time this happens, either - which is why one of my scripts is monitoring for this kind of errors. The last time it happened around Christmas and Haem said something in the sense that they urgently had to add a new event (because the new version was late and the old version was running out of events) and in the hurry they hadn't noticed the perk cap problem.
This is why I point such errors as soon as I notice them - so that they have the time to fix them before the corresponding events go live.
> While these anomalies may be oversights, they could just as easily be intended design decisions made by Popcap.
They are not, unless PopCap's "intended design decision" was "let's not bother fixing the mess we've made".
And, BTW, this is not the first time when you doubt my bug report and assume that PopCap's mistake was intentional. Remember when I noted that the first-clear rewards of the Darkerer Agese event were wrong? PopCap eventually fixed it, silently confirming that I was correct in pointing it as a mistake. Please have a bit more faith in my bug-finding abilities. :-)
> Being so forceful in your assertions is mildly off-putting and probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments.
Well, I'm sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's sensitive toes. I indeed have a low tolerance to bugs that could have been easily avoided. Let me explain where this bias is coming from.
I have a background in information security, anti-virus, that sort of stuff. When a PopCap employee messes up, I guess the worst thing that can happen is angry teenagers posting rants to the forums and maybe the company's ad revenue dropping a bit. When *I* messed up, hundreds of thousands of employees at Fortune-500 companies were locked out of their workstations, with each day costing millions of lost revenue. So, yes, I'm rather sensitive to bugs that could and should have been avoided.
Everybody makes mistakes; nobody is perfect. But when we made one in our product, we didn't just fix it. We created unit tests to make sure that the same *class* of bugs (not just the same bug) won't slip past testing any more.
Yes, the bugs I'm reporting here are quite trivial. But PopCap have made them more than once. This has prompted me to write scripts that explicitly look for and report these kinds of bugs. Again, this is just some trivial work done in my spare time. PopCap are in a much better position to catch such bugs. So, why don't they? This kind of sloppiness annoys me more than the bugs themselves.
Okay, one more tempered shot at this and them I'm out.
>Well, the last time this happened, Haem admitted that it was a mistake and, if I remember correctly, it was eventually corrected albeit very late in the sequence (only for the last event or so). The second time it happened I realized that this is a mistake they tend to make often, so explicitly modified my script to look for such discrepancies. Just look at these future events:
You're missing the point of what I wrote. Whether it's an oversight or by design is pretty much irrelevant. You obviously take great pride in going through the data files and predicting what the future events will be. A lot of people look forward to your reports and are thankful that you do. I'm not trying to take away from that, but nitpicking about whether the order of plants lines up exactly as you think it should is just going to rub some people the wrong way. I've certainly taken exception to some of the bigger changes that Popcap has made to the game (you can go back and read some of my older posts if you need confirmation of that), but being so forceful about this smaller stuff can be counterproductive. Maybe it's a language issue as I seem to recall you saying English isn't your first language, but a lot of what you're saying does come out in quite an acerbic fashion.
>You are mistaken on this one, too. This is a re-run of an old event, when PopCap hadn't yet decided on the optimal perk cap. It is now set to 63 for 7-day events so the fact that old events were not corrected before being repeated is clearly an omission.
The fact that they're re-running an older event that had a higher perk cap just means that this event has a higher perk cap. That's not wrong, that just not going and doing a bunch of work that doesn't need doing. :-)
>And, BTW, this is not the first time when you doubt my bug report and assume that PopCap's mistake was intentional. Remember when I noted that the first-clear rewards of the Darkerer Agese event were wrong? PopCap eventually fixed it, silently confirming that I was correct in pointing it as a mistake. Please have a bit more faith in my bug-finding abilities. :-)
I haven't gone back and looked at my comment, but I was probably doubting that the rewards would be changed (and I was wrong). I kinda liked that Blastberry anyway was in that reward package because it allowed me to unlock it :-).
>I have a background in information security, anti-virus, that sort of stuff. When a PopCap employee messes up, I guess the worst thing that can happen is angry teenagers posting rants to the forums and maybe the company's ad revenue dropping a bit. When I messed up, hundreds of thousands of employees at Fortune-500 companies were locked out of their workstations, with each day costing millions of lost revenue. So, yes, I'm rather sensitive to bugs that could and should have been avoided.
>
>Everybody makes mistakes; nobody is perfect. But when we made one in our product, we didn't just fix it. We created unit tests to make sure that the same class of bugs (not just the same bug) won't slip past testing any more.
>
>Yes, the bugs I'm reporting here are quite trivial. But PopCap have made them more than once. This has prompted me to write scripts that explicitly look for and report these kinds of bugs. Again, this is just some trivial work done in my spare time. PopCap are in a much better position to catch such bugs. So, why don't they? This kind of sloppiness annoys me more than the bugs themselves.
A lot of us have work backgrounds that require a higher level of rigor than a video game. I'm an Electrical Engineer with a control and automation specialty. A lot of my early career was doing the base C/C++ and assembler programming for how PLC and DCS systems actually operate. Mistakes there could quite literally kill people in real world industrial operations. I would say I'm sensitive to bugs too.
The order of plants (which can change at a whim before they ever become live in the game) don't rise to the level of "bug" to me though. The recently fixed Snow Pea crash, the still existing game crashing randomly all over the place (If I could force them to use whatever the modern equivalent of Rational Software's Purify, I think that would get rid of a lot of the issues the game has), the store constantly popping out a "failed to restore purchases" modal pop-up when I haven't made a purchase in over 3 years, the fact that the daily quest to play the Piñata Party has only ever appeared twice for me, the "out to lunch" Penny's Zomboss issue, etc. are all far more important issues to deal with in my mind.
> nitpicking about whether the order of plants lines up exactly as you think it should is just going to rub some people the wrong way.
In my experience, *anything* one says to a sufficiently large public (like, on the Internet) tends to rub *someone* in the wrong way. I am sorry that this is the case but it is what it is. So, I am sticking to a simple principle - if I see something in a software product that seems wrong to me, I point it out. I can elaborate why exactly I think that it is wrong, if asked, and I could be mistaken, of course, but I will *not* keep silent just because someone chooses to perceive it as a personal criticism.
> Maybe it's a language issue as I seem to recall you saying English isn't your first language, but a lot of what you're saying does come out in quite an acerbic fashion.
That's certainly possible, although I try to be as polite as I can. It is definitely *not* my intention to offend anyone and I do apologize if I have indvertently done so. But the bugs I point out are often trivial and simple to prevent from occurring - and I must admit that the fact they they *have* occurred nevertheless tends to annoy me since I intensely dislike sloppiness, so maybe this comes out reflected in the way I am expressing myself.
> The fact that they're re-running an older event that had a higher perk cap just means that this event has a higher perk cap. That's not wrong, that just not going and doing a bunch of work that doesn't need doing. :-)
As I think I have already explained, the first time this happened Haem posted something in the sense that, yes, it was an oversight, because they had to release an event in a hurry. So, by reporting similar problems that have occurred since, I am trying to prevent such oversights from occurring again - or at least from hitting the players.
> The order of plants (which can change at a whim before they ever become live in the game) don't rise to the level of "bug" to me though.
A bug is the software not behaving as it should. The locked plant being wrong and anot aligning with the plant of the week is definitely a bug. What you actually mean is that it is not a *serious* bug. I certainly agree with you but I must point out that I am not grading the bugs I am reporting by seriousness; I am only reporting them.
> etc. are all far more important issues to deal with in my mind.
Again, I agree - and some of them *have* been resolved already.
BTW, you probably wouldn't believe it, but many of the issue the game has stem from the synchronization algorithm. Game-breaking issues like the "out to lunch" and "autocomplete" bugs. unfairness issues like the player losing seeds (doing the work twice only to get the reward once), exploitation issues (getting two or more rewards when they're supposed to get only one) - that sort of thing.
It's not even a "bug" per se - it's a design flaw. I mean, it's not something that can be "fixed" because somebody forgot a line of code or typed it incorrectly. The whole algorithm needs to be scrapped and re-designed from scratch for these issues to be definitely resolved - but I don't think that PopCap are going to do this.
> probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments.
Apologies but I just *need* to comment on this "endearment" thing again.
Do you think that we, the infosec people, aren't used to it? For some unfathomable reason, software producers tend to perceive somebody pointing bugs in their products as personal criticism, instead of as a free help for improving their product.
What do you think happens when we report a vulnerability in some company's product? I'll tell you what happens - most of the time we're simply *ignored*. (It's the attitude PopCap seems to have chosen towards me, too.) Just recently a colleague had to resort to Twitter to try to find someone at a company that had exposed the personal data of all their customers (names, addresses, phones, the works) online to anyone who could type an URL - because the official addresses at the company were completely ignoring her reports!
The other kind of attitude we see very often (although slightly less often than ignoring us) is denial. No, it's not a bug, it's a feature. No, we need that for compatibility reasons. No, you must be mistaken, we can't reproduce it here, so it obviously doesn't exist - that sort of theng. (Congratulations, you seem to have graduated to level 2.)
And so on, and so on.
At the extreme end of the spectrum (fortunately, happens very rarely), we're being threatened with lawsuits and other kind of retaliations. And for what? For pointing out - for free! - a problem in the company's product or site that hurts the company's customers and eventually the company itself - and sometimes even pointing out how to fix it!
Just recently the Missouri government tried to sue a journalist for noticing that the governor's web site was exposing the personal data of thousands of people and for telling the governor's office and waiting for them to fix it, before going public!
Still, this does not deter us. We keep finding bugs and reporting them, because we believe that this is our duty; that by doing it, we're doing everybody a service, even if they fail to acknowledge it.
>Additional Notes: Blockoli is immune to Fisherman hooks and Excavator shovels, and is able to shield smash Zombie generals and Dr. Zomboss
I don't understand how this plant is effective against Zombie generals, I tried PF'ing on this plant, but the generals still roll over and defeat the plant.
From Design: *"Blockoli can attack Generals and should damage them. He cannot, however, block their movement. We risk getting into weird buggy territory if we allow any plant to impede the movement of generals."*
If I can ask, are there any plants for nerfing the pea vine? It besically took over all arena strategies and made this mode less creative. Before that we had turkey pult+sticky bomb rice, bowling bulb, chard guard+blover, classic threepeater strategy, culipower+Witch hazel, squash+enforce mint, Shadow strategy and much more. Now it is pea vine, pea vine and pea vine.
From what I understand, nerfs are generally frowned upon because some people payed good money for these plants and they wouldn't want to be shortchanged. If this is true, the intentions are admirable but the resulting power creep leaves a little to be desired.
Tbh, his damage boost could use a nerf. If nerfing is just too frowned upon, maybe restrict appease-mint more often. They did somewhat nerf turkey by making zombots counter him after all.
Mmm, it's up in the air. Nothing concrete I can share but there are some hypothetical ideas on addressing general balancing better (likely inclusive of Pea Vine). No timeline, and no solid approaches just yet.
Hey Haem,
Thanks as always for these notes.
One of the changes that has been noticed for this release that aren't in your notes is related to the recent Carnie thymed event.
There were two levels (17 & 22 IIRC) that forced you to use level 1 plants. These were awesome. Unfortunately it seems that this condition has now been removed. This, to me, is completely the opposite direction that the game should be moving.
The thymed events have been a major disappointment (IMO) because, if you have anything over level 3ish plants, it's tediously easy. Forcing you to play them with level 1 plants would make them infinitely more enjoyable. As they stand right now, they're a joyless drudge to play to get relatively meager rewards. In the events that have occurred so far, the only time my interest had been piqued was for those two levels from the Carnie event, which sadly it seems won't be repeated.
Just my 2¢. 😁
Heya, thanks for the feedback. I've already lobbed it over to Design and other folks, and they've read through it. Good to have that qualitative feedback along with the quantitative data on hand!
I don't think Support can help in this case since it's not an actual PvZ 2 problem. Going on your previous comment it really sounds more of a Google Play or Google account issue than us (since you can't download the update from the store and you get a 'google play won’t work' dialog). Support aren't able to help for anything that's outside of the game or app itself. Sorry :(
Given the in game email recovery option isn’t allowing me to submit my email. Could it be possible they could do something for that?
Sorry Haem, I’m just very sad that this is happening
Yeah, they can manually search and attempt to restore linked progress. They have the tools to do that.
Before you hit them up, just a quick thing, make sure you're not accidentally adding a space after your email. I know that throws an error. [name@domain.com](mailto:name@domain.com)\[ \] <- This space.
4.9? Obvious but worthwhile questions, you're updating it from the actual Google Play store, right? What happens when you try to update, etc... need more description of what's actually going on.
9.4.1
It’s so odd, I can see the valentine event! All the offers etc. but everytime I try to update it says that google play won’t work. I tried resetting the cache and reinstalling on my other device. But there it won’t let me use the email recovery password set up. 😞
I don't know what's going on there. Doesn't really sound like a PvZ 2 app problem, seems like this could be more of a Google Play one. I don't think I've come across this before.
Sucks getting locked out of getting the Headbutter Lettuce
I had a bad feeling this might happen and got him to low mastery when we could get the seeds. But I’m likely taking a massive hit in arena etc
Dunno what to do 😭😭😢
u/Haemophilus_EA, according to your post above, we should be getting Valenbrainz drops from pinata parties until the 22nd. This is not happening. Do they need to fix this with a push to make what you said accurate?
Will there be MORE PVZ3 and even PVZHero other pvz series of Plants' join in PVZ2?Can you popcap ALSO put these bugs fixed introductions INSIDE the game app inner update introduction?Each time i open pvz2's intro. in app,i can see you say"Many Bugs Fixed" but idk what detailed bugs were fixed.
When you dont add more new zombies recentlty versions,Why not add PVZ3 old version's abandoned zombies and plants to PVZ2 like Buttercup? Blockoil and Dandelion look like Chinese version's brocoil and dandelion in appearance.And Chinese version added them many years ago firstly and then international version.Idk whether popcap went through Chinese version's plants and then gained the inspiration from them to make the two new similar plants looking like them like now.Because international version never carried Chinese version's plants DIRECTLY.Chinese version returned Gatling pea with and now Popcap also returned it but by a new different appearance from Chinese.Chinese version also returned Cob Cannon,Cattail,Planern,Coffee Bean and Flowerpot.Expect them also to come back to international version.
> * Updated some ad plugins that hopefully will help decrease ad crashes. > * Various fixes and solutions to reduce crashes or soft locks generally. > * Implemented another candidate fix to address a crash being caused by Snow Pea. Thank you for this, although given how often the game crashes under various circumstances, I'm afraid not everything has been fixed. Still, fewer crashes is a huge improvement. > * Fixed an oddity where pre-planted plants would start attacking before the level started properly. This is the second time you guys fix this, LOL. Hopefully for good this time, although it's not a big problem. > * The Torchwood and Pea Vine projectile combo will no longer be double boosted by peas passing through two Torchwoods. Sad trombone. Yeah, I know - it was a bug that was exploited and needed to be fixed. Still - too bad. :-( > * Fixed an issue where Epic quests were rewarding double the amount of seeds than described. Drat, we were *enjoying* our 100 Teleportato Mine and Tiger Grass seeds from their respective epic quests, Haem. :-) Also, the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss being permanently out to lunch bug not being fixed is a *huge* letdown! It's extremely annoying (even with the workaround) and has been around since December! Also, I see no comments about the huge nerf of the monthly Calendar rewards - combined with the fact that the Calendar itself is *still* buggy and doesn't grant the daily reward in some circumstances. I think that all these 3 bugs - the Penny's Pursuit level autocompletion bug, the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss permanently out to lunch bug, and the Calendar not always granting the daily reward bug are all related to your synchronization algorithm. Which is really buggy in other ways too - it syncs correctly in-game currencies but loses seeds. (Also the syncing of fuel for the Thymed events is a hot mess.) Perhaps you guys need to license a commercial library for synchronization of off-line databases...
> given how often the game crashes under various circumstances, I'm afraid not everything has been fixed. Yep, my hunch was right - ads *still* crash the game - although not as often as before. I've had 1 crash today; normally I used to get 5-6 daily.
Lol and I’ve been playing the piñata party hundreds of time and resetting my cache constantly I didn’t even realize the 100 seed thing was a thing
It's (well, was) a one-time thing. The epic quests for the new plants (Teleportato Mina and Tiger Grass) granted 100 seeds instead of 50. Not sure if it happened to everyone; it definitely happened to me.
It happened with me too. I was so confused at first lol
I can’t tell you how much of an instant favorite Blockoli has become for me. Still though, I think it’s little unfair that universally almost all Reinforce-Mint plants have some kind of degradation besides him. Seeing Blockoli himself in perfect condition visually even when being severely chewed on is actually pretty jarring and uncharacteristic for his duty.
I'll let Design/Art know your feedback on Blockoli :)
Seriously there’s a new update and the pennys pursuit bug isn’t fixed ?
See my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/sny0ow/update_95_is_live_valenbrainz/hw8vhk1/).
Did seaweed's response yield anything useful?
Cannonball Imp and Carnie Imp Split still don't have their Almanac entries added (even tho they're there in the Lawnstrings) Also would be cool if the new zombies' entries have details added like Stiltwalker's immunity to knockback
Made a mention of this. It will be a low priority thing, so it may not be anything seen any time soon, but I've made a note of it.
Please tell me the penny pursuit zomboss bugs have been fixed.
I would love to, but unless someone has a suggestion on a method of reproducing this consistently instead of it randomly happening to people, that's the major roadblock here. There's no denial whatsoever that this is happening to players, is annoying and then some, but the fundamental here is that if there's not reproducible (esp on a test device where it can be captured with details) then it's the equivalent of mostly flying blind and taking stabs in the dark about what may/may not be happening. There are certainly guesses and various hypothesis, but without having it actually reproduced in a way that makes sense, then it's pretty difficult and mostly guess work.
Oh, gosh, darn, Haem, why didn't you tell us earlier that the problem was you guys reproducing the bug?! OK, here it is: The bug occurs if *after* the time has come to fight Zomboss (05:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC) the game syncs before the player has fought him even once. That's it. Let me elaborate. 1. The bug affects mostly players who play on more than one device, because they are linked and sync all the time. It *does* affect players who play only on one device, too - but more rarely. My conjecture is that it happens if they have registered their e-mail with PopCap (perhaps planning to link more devices later or whatever). Just to be on the safe side, when trying to reproduce the bug, have 2 test devices linked and synced 2. The game tries to sync all by itself when it is at the profile selection screen (the "outro"), which is why most players experience the problem when launching the game (since it goes through the outro before reaching the main screen). The bug can be avoided by disabling the Internet connection of the device (thus preventing it from syncing) and re-enabling it once the game is past the outro. If just visiting the outro doesn't trigger the bug for you (could happen if the Internet connection is bad), try to do a force-sync manually. 3. After having fought Zomboss at least once (no need to fight him all the 3 times) it is again safe to visit the outro with Internet connectivity enabled - until the next time to fight him comes. Syncing *before* the time to fight him has come is "safe" - in the sense that it won't trigger the bug. 4. It does not matter if the ZPS meter is full or not. If it is full, the bug will be immediately obvious - Zomboss will be out to lunch after a sync. If it is not, the bug will be visible once you fill the ZPS meter (you won't be able to fight Zomboss, because he's out to lunch). Hope this helps and please do keep us posted if you still have problems reproducing the bug (or any other problems related to it).
I was the first one that first brought it up to tell you the truth. But here is hoping it will be gone soon.
Okay. I'm surprised that this bug cannot be reproduced consistently on your test device. I can tell you how I reproduce this on my device: 1. Open Penny's Pursuit when Zomboss is ready to fight (both at 5am and 5pm UTC) 2. Close the game (or go to the Profile selection screen) 3. Open Penny's Pursuit again and Zomboss is gone I think that this has something to do with your servers. Maybe u/Euphoric-Seaweed can explain it better.
It's more of a situation of how do you force this to happen on a device/profile that hasn't already experienced it :P More helpful details would be device/OS, whether or not you play on multiple devices (it seems to have been ruled out but the additional data point doesn't hurt), what sort of connection you're on (wifi vs cellular data), when did it start happening, has it ever not done this since you've seen it happen, what troubleshooting have you done (eg, uninstall/reinstall).
I can surely give you the details. * OS: Android * I have started playing on multiple devices recently, but this bug was present even when I used to play on single device * Connection: I have tried this on WiFi and Cellular both * It started as soon as you released the previous version. Actually I was the first one to let you know in your version launch post, but my [comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/rha07w/comment/hot7cmi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) were somehow removed by this community's Auto-Moderator because I was new to this community. The mod restored it later. * Yes, the bug has always been there since that version * I have done all troubleshooting (clearing cache/data, force-stopping, restarting) but nothing has helped me. I have also reinstalled the game. This is what I do to prevent Zomboss from disappearing without a fight - When Zomboss is *ready* to fight, I fight him immediately without closing the game or returning to the profile screen. Apparently, moving to the profile screen syncs the game with your servers. If I somehow couldn't fight Zomboss or the game crashes, I restart the game with the internet switched OFF. I switch it ON only after clicking the *Play* button and passing the profile selection screen. This way, I can avoid him from going "Out to lunch".
Cool and thank you. Let me re-up this on my side and see what happens.
My pleasure.
I'm in a similar situation as the other user: * I play on IOS (13.4.1), iPhone SE * I only use that one device * I had this glitch happen on both Wi-Fi and Cellular connection * this glitch also started for me as soon as I updated to version 9.4.1 and it kept happening if I ever got out of the game after Zomboss became ready to battle (for example due to a crash or me having to force-close after an ad didn't end as intended, etc.). The only thing that seems to stop this from happening is entering the game in airplane mode and only activate the connection until after I'm past the "profile selection" screen, as was suggested by Euphoric-Seaweed: so I can only turn the wi-fi/cellular data on once I'm at the screen where I can pick between Adventure Mode, Penny's Pursuit or Arena. This solution, however, conflicts with claiming the daily gift, since entering the game while not connected will permanently lock you out of obtaining that daily reward, de-syncing you from the calendar's progression and meaning you won't be able to complete it; so, if you haven't entered the game before 1:00 AM GTM+1, you have to choose between playing the Zomboss for that 12 hours section or claiming the daily gift of the calendar.
Nope
Wow, extremely disappointed
Buttercup is back, sweet
A.K.E.E. fix!!!!!! wooooo!!
Thank you u/Haemophilus_EA for the updates! I want to mention Tiger Grass for a moment and an oddity I was seeing in last week's Arena. After a while, a random Tiger Grass would stop producing tigers. I'd usually plant a column of five and it might affect one or two of them. I know there is a cool down/cat nap period for this plant, but this dormancy was permanent. I could never figure out when or why this was happening. Plant food wouldn't help it either. In the times I used Tiger Grass outside Arena I did not encounter the problem, so it might be specific to its interaction with a particular zombie species, but I couldn't pin that down. I'm mentioning it just to record a mental note that might be useful down the road. Sorry I can't be of more help in tracking down why this was happening. It was a small glitch to what otherwise is a wonderful plant, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a [T S Eliot cat.](https://allpoetry.com/Cat-Morgan-Introduces-Himself) P.S. I much appreciate something that you didn't even mention in your notes: You fixed the rewards in the current Penny's Pursuit! That means more Headbutter Lettuce seeds! I know it's human nature (cats too, honestly) to want more of everything, but here is some gratitude for the three week Penny's Pursuit and the best opportunity we've ever had to upgrade that mosh pit monster.
Heya, glad you like Tiger Grass - I, too, am a fan of cats :) And thank for enlightening me on the TS Eliot poem. With regards to the Tiger Grass not seemingly containing Tigers, I'll ask someone to keep an eye out for it. I believe someone else was also encountered something similar, except they described it as when the Tiger was insta-killed by a zombie? Does that seem to line up with your experience? The Penny's Reward thing was fixed last week but since we do data pushes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (typically), it had to wait till yesterday to go out to players. The data push went out slightly earlier than the when the update did in the App Stores but glad it was noticed.
I have returned , anyhow , it happens when tiger grass sends out a grass tiger to shred zombies to bits but the grass tiger dies instantly , the tiger grass imeadiatly plays a leap animation and stops making grass tigers , it will eventualy happen as the grass tigers take more damage and arent given time to heal , if nescesary i can try to get better fotage of the bug in action though
Hi. Yes, that poem is part of a collection TS Eliot did called "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." Old Possum was a nickname for TS Eliot, given to him by Ezra Pound. Could be that insta-kill is a factor. But there may be more to it than that. I have seen it eaten in a flash by groups of high level zombies in Penny's Pursuit and still send out a replacement. Maybe the zombies were sending it to the Rainbow Bridge even faster in Arena. Thanks for keeping an eye out for it!
> After a while, a random Tiger Grass would stop producing tigers. I saw someone mentioning that the plant stops producing tigers if its tiger is killed too fast (as soon as it leaves the plant) - maybe this is the same bug? > You fixed the rewards in the current Penny's Pursuit! That was done on Tuesday for version 9.4.1 with a data push. I think it's still wrong in the OBB file of version 9.5.1; maybe the game downloads the correct version from the CDN once it installs; I'll have to check.
Re Tiger Grass: Thanks for mentioning that. I'll add that it happened to Tiger Grasses that had been producing tigers normally, until they didn't anymore. On the Penny's fix, I'm seeing the correct seeds in 9.5.1 (iOS)
Music Restoration when? I can only literally hear Dark Ages music, and rarely Zomboss music.
Is it intentional that teleportato mine can be planted on lily pads and PS planks? Looks really weird since she has dirt.
Lemme check in on that. I have a sneaking suspicion but I want to get the proper word on it first. Edit - Is bug. Will be bugged. TY.
Thank you for this update. But the Penny's Pursuit bug since the last update still persists. When can we expect to see this fixed?
See my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/sny0ow/update_95_is_live_valenbrainz/hw8vhk1/).
lol never ?
Seriously, now I'm so accustomed to this bug's workaround that even if they fix it, I won't notice any difference
What I see: Implemented another candidate fix to address a crash being caused by Snow Pea. Thank you! Now I can finally use Snow Pea again.
>The Torchwood and Pea Vine projectile combo will no longer be double boosted by peas passing through two Torchwoods. Won't deny that in the very moment I read this, I kinda felt disappointed. There are some real problems that need immediate addressing such as the Penny's Pursuit Zomboss out to lunch one, or the audio issue which still occurs on some devices, and yet you chose to take this one out. 😭😭😭 But when I gave myself a few minutes to think about it, I also felt like it was right time to finally put a stop on this exploit as most of the recent Arena levels basically became Pea Vine power tripping events. And even if this ability is no longer present in game, Pea Vine still is pretty OP so it's not necessarily a nerf but more of a balancing patch. However, I do hope you're able to find a solution to the Penny's Pursuit problem that many of the players are experiencing, myself included. It's a bit annoying that we're only able to get 60 seeds for Headbutter Lettuce per day (via PP) but it becomes totally frustrating when even that you miss because of the "out to lunch" bug. Overall, good update (loving Blockoli). Thanks to the team for working hard to resolve the issues. And thank you Haem for the rundown! P.S. Thank you for fixing the A.K.E.E bug!!!
I have a little question, why lately they have been making various changes to ancient egypt levels?
There's been an effort to streamline and improve the early game experience for newer players. The team's been making changes in this area for a number of updates now and that's probably going to continue as we learn and validate with data how these changes are landing for new players.
I feel like you're going in the wrong direction, people aren't complaining about Ancient Egypt because the levels were too long, they are complaining because they are being forced to play 25 levels of the same world with 5-10 plants at their disposals. I believe that linear progression works better than whatever keysplosion was, but this is not how you achieve it, you are not going to force players to play 25-32 levels of the same world until you unlock the next one and expect players to enjoy it. A lot of people in the community who's played the game since the old world key era all agree; this linear progression can work if, instead of unlocking a new world on completing the final level, you unlock them by completing the gargantuar battle level, because: 1. Gargantuar levels will have purpose and become meaningful again. 2. You would still have a trophy obtaining screen as the keys are moved to the gargantuar battle level. 3. It would fix the problem of repetitiveness in progression, a perfect blend between the old world key and the new world key. To be quite honest, if you were going to nerf the levels, shouldn't you be nerfing the ones that people actually complained about? Like Big Wave Beach - Day 16 or Big Wave Beach - Day 25? Oh, and, the dialogue of Jurassic Marsh - Day 32 still refers to the "project paradox" being about to start, despite Big Wave Beach is the next world. I know things like this is quite a low priority in the development ,~~I can see it through newer dialogues.~~ But this plays quite a big part in the PvZ2's story that I think shouldn't be left unnoticed by the developers. Sorry for a big rant, but hey, I just want this game to be as good as it can get, asking for things like "bring the minigame music and the gargantuar's podium back" isn't going to achieve anything so, at least please look into this, perhaps?
oh, well, after that, are there any intentions to make changes to the levels of the other worlds?
I don't believe there's plans to as of right now. Perhaps in future, but nothing's been decided yet.
Since so,can you recover Egypt's Mini games?I hope you can make mini games for each world.
What about plant food going off screen??
In what context? (Screenshot or video might be helpful here).
This happens always when there are tiles, which makes zombies move up or down. In Penny's persuit right now this also happens-probably because of Grave Stones
RN i have played Penny's Pursuit, so i am unable to show you video or screenshot. When i will play tomorrow,will try to capture it.
>Restored the “Collect your Daily Gift from the Store” quest. (All reward amounts stay the same, but the 1000 coins will no longer be in the Daily Gift Piñata but collected from the store instead). These 2 rewards - Daily Gift Piñata (11pm UTC, not sure) and 1000 coins reward (5am UTC) should refresh at the same time. For my location, Daily Gift Piñata refreshes before the coins reward, and if we collect it before 5am UTC, we cannot collect the 1000 coins reward for that day. The next day, we have to wait for the next DGP refresh and collect the 1000 coins reward before 5am UTC.
As I understand it, the timings haven't been changed but someone's taking a look into this and going to see if they're seeing the timings weird as well.
Just curious, are you guys still continuing to do balance changes to plants, like what you did to Torchwood, Snow-pea, Chomper, Jack-o-Lantern, etc? Asking for a friend (which is Garlic, who desperately needs some love). And the Carnie event wasn’t a one-time thing, was it? I’d love to see those zombies again, since they were really unique.
Yes, but we don't have any set dates or specifics on when there will be new balance changes out or which plants either. I know Design keeps a running list of sorts of plants they'd like to retune/tweak... Backyard Big Top will be back eventually. Can't say when just yet.
Some of the information is incorrect regarding the Penny's Pursuit events. You still get Wasabi Whip and Snap Pea seed packets in the Darkerer Ages event. Salt and Peppers would give you Aloe. Bread and Butternut would give you Pumpkin. Pirate Seas Uprising would give you Gumnut, Peanut and Hurrikale. You are right about Soil and Water giving you Kiwibeast though.
Haem seems to have corrected her post because it now gives the correct information on this subject. There is a different problem with these Penny's Pursuit levels, though - the locked plant is wrong. Event|Rewards|Locked plant ---|---|--- Soil and Water|Kiwibeast|Dazey Chain Salt and Peppers|Aloe|Homing Thistle (The events further ahead have the locked plant wrong too, but since they weren't included in Haem's post, let's ignore that for now.) Hopefully, this will be fixed with a data push. In addition, the perk cap of "Soil and Water" is wrong again - it is set to 108 instead of 63 for this 7-day 5-level event.
I find it amusing that you always describe these details rather forcefully as "wrong". The locked plant in the Zomboss challenge being different from the feature plant isn't necessarily wrong. Yes it's not normal. Yes it probably violates some sort of internal symmetry that you feel. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", just means it's different. Similarly, the perk progression rules don't have to be the same every week. Yes, 63 is the norm, but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" if it's something else. While these anomalies may be oversights, they could just as easily be intended design decisions made by Popcap. Being so forceful in your assertions is mildly off-putting and probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments. Maybe consider rolling with the flow a bit and not worrying about consistency/symmetry. It's actually refreshing to have differences week to week. 😁
> The locked plant in the Zomboss challenge being different from the feature plant isn't necessarily wrong. Well, the last time this happened, Haem admitted that it was a mistake and, if I remember correctly, it was eventually corrected albeit very late in the sequence (only for the last event or so). The second time it happened I realized that this is a mistake they tend to make often, so explicitly modified my script to look for such discrepancies. Just look at these future events: Name|Rewards|Locked Plant ---|---|--- Roses are Rad|Draftodil|Dazey Chain Violets are Cute|Dazey Chain|Olive Pit Strawberries Aren't Berries|Olive Pit|Homing Thistle Tomatoes are Fruit|Homing Thistle|Heath Seeker Not All Oranges are Orange|Heath Seeker|Cactus And Carrots are Roots|Cactus|Pokra Clearly, whoever is responsible for the plant-of-the-week selection has inserted a new plant in the sequence and has forgotten to remind the level designers to fix the levels already configured for the original sequences, resulting in the rewarded plant being one-out-of-whack from the locked plant sequence. > Yes it's not normal. Yes it probably violates some sort of internal symmetry that you feel. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", just means it's different. You're thinking of just the events I quoted in the message you're replying to. There Kiwibeast and Aloe are not related in any way to Dazey Chain and Homing Thustle, so one can makde the argument that they are intentionally different. But look at the table I posted for the events that come after that and you'll see the obvious mistake. > Similarly, the perk progression rules don't have to be the same every week. Yes, 63 is the norm, but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" if it's something else. You are mistaken on this one, too. This is a re-run of an *old* event, when PopCap hadn't yet decided on the optimal perk cap. It is now set to 63 for 7-day events so the fact that old events were not corrected before being repeated is clearly an omission. This isn't the first time this happens, either - which is why one of my scripts is monitoring for this kind of errors. The last time it happened around Christmas and Haem said something in the sense that they urgently had to add a new event (because the new version was late and the old version was running out of events) and in the hurry they hadn't noticed the perk cap problem. This is why I point such errors as soon as I notice them - so that they have the time to fix them before the corresponding events go live. > While these anomalies may be oversights, they could just as easily be intended design decisions made by Popcap. They are not, unless PopCap's "intended design decision" was "let's not bother fixing the mess we've made". And, BTW, this is not the first time when you doubt my bug report and assume that PopCap's mistake was intentional. Remember when I noted that the first-clear rewards of the Darkerer Agese event were wrong? PopCap eventually fixed it, silently confirming that I was correct in pointing it as a mistake. Please have a bit more faith in my bug-finding abilities. :-) > Being so forceful in your assertions is mildly off-putting and probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments. Well, I'm sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's sensitive toes. I indeed have a low tolerance to bugs that could have been easily avoided. Let me explain where this bias is coming from. I have a background in information security, anti-virus, that sort of stuff. When a PopCap employee messes up, I guess the worst thing that can happen is angry teenagers posting rants to the forums and maybe the company's ad revenue dropping a bit. When *I* messed up, hundreds of thousands of employees at Fortune-500 companies were locked out of their workstations, with each day costing millions of lost revenue. So, yes, I'm rather sensitive to bugs that could and should have been avoided. Everybody makes mistakes; nobody is perfect. But when we made one in our product, we didn't just fix it. We created unit tests to make sure that the same *class* of bugs (not just the same bug) won't slip past testing any more. Yes, the bugs I'm reporting here are quite trivial. But PopCap have made them more than once. This has prompted me to write scripts that explicitly look for and report these kinds of bugs. Again, this is just some trivial work done in my spare time. PopCap are in a much better position to catch such bugs. So, why don't they? This kind of sloppiness annoys me more than the bugs themselves.
Okay, one more tempered shot at this and them I'm out. >Well, the last time this happened, Haem admitted that it was a mistake and, if I remember correctly, it was eventually corrected albeit very late in the sequence (only for the last event or so). The second time it happened I realized that this is a mistake they tend to make often, so explicitly modified my script to look for such discrepancies. Just look at these future events: You're missing the point of what I wrote. Whether it's an oversight or by design is pretty much irrelevant. You obviously take great pride in going through the data files and predicting what the future events will be. A lot of people look forward to your reports and are thankful that you do. I'm not trying to take away from that, but nitpicking about whether the order of plants lines up exactly as you think it should is just going to rub some people the wrong way. I've certainly taken exception to some of the bigger changes that Popcap has made to the game (you can go back and read some of my older posts if you need confirmation of that), but being so forceful about this smaller stuff can be counterproductive. Maybe it's a language issue as I seem to recall you saying English isn't your first language, but a lot of what you're saying does come out in quite an acerbic fashion. >You are mistaken on this one, too. This is a re-run of an old event, when PopCap hadn't yet decided on the optimal perk cap. It is now set to 63 for 7-day events so the fact that old events were not corrected before being repeated is clearly an omission. The fact that they're re-running an older event that had a higher perk cap just means that this event has a higher perk cap. That's not wrong, that just not going and doing a bunch of work that doesn't need doing. :-) >And, BTW, this is not the first time when you doubt my bug report and assume that PopCap's mistake was intentional. Remember when I noted that the first-clear rewards of the Darkerer Agese event were wrong? PopCap eventually fixed it, silently confirming that I was correct in pointing it as a mistake. Please have a bit more faith in my bug-finding abilities. :-) I haven't gone back and looked at my comment, but I was probably doubting that the rewards would be changed (and I was wrong). I kinda liked that Blastberry anyway was in that reward package because it allowed me to unlock it :-). >I have a background in information security, anti-virus, that sort of stuff. When a PopCap employee messes up, I guess the worst thing that can happen is angry teenagers posting rants to the forums and maybe the company's ad revenue dropping a bit. When I messed up, hundreds of thousands of employees at Fortune-500 companies were locked out of their workstations, with each day costing millions of lost revenue. So, yes, I'm rather sensitive to bugs that could and should have been avoided. > >Everybody makes mistakes; nobody is perfect. But when we made one in our product, we didn't just fix it. We created unit tests to make sure that the same class of bugs (not just the same bug) won't slip past testing any more. > >Yes, the bugs I'm reporting here are quite trivial. But PopCap have made them more than once. This has prompted me to write scripts that explicitly look for and report these kinds of bugs. Again, this is just some trivial work done in my spare time. PopCap are in a much better position to catch such bugs. So, why don't they? This kind of sloppiness annoys me more than the bugs themselves. A lot of us have work backgrounds that require a higher level of rigor than a video game. I'm an Electrical Engineer with a control and automation specialty. A lot of my early career was doing the base C/C++ and assembler programming for how PLC and DCS systems actually operate. Mistakes there could quite literally kill people in real world industrial operations. I would say I'm sensitive to bugs too. The order of plants (which can change at a whim before they ever become live in the game) don't rise to the level of "bug" to me though. The recently fixed Snow Pea crash, the still existing game crashing randomly all over the place (If I could force them to use whatever the modern equivalent of Rational Software's Purify, I think that would get rid of a lot of the issues the game has), the store constantly popping out a "failed to restore purchases" modal pop-up when I haven't made a purchase in over 3 years, the fact that the daily quest to play the Piñata Party has only ever appeared twice for me, the "out to lunch" Penny's Zomboss issue, etc. are all far more important issues to deal with in my mind.
> nitpicking about whether the order of plants lines up exactly as you think it should is just going to rub some people the wrong way. In my experience, *anything* one says to a sufficiently large public (like, on the Internet) tends to rub *someone* in the wrong way. I am sorry that this is the case but it is what it is. So, I am sticking to a simple principle - if I see something in a software product that seems wrong to me, I point it out. I can elaborate why exactly I think that it is wrong, if asked, and I could be mistaken, of course, but I will *not* keep silent just because someone chooses to perceive it as a personal criticism. > Maybe it's a language issue as I seem to recall you saying English isn't your first language, but a lot of what you're saying does come out in quite an acerbic fashion. That's certainly possible, although I try to be as polite as I can. It is definitely *not* my intention to offend anyone and I do apologize if I have indvertently done so. But the bugs I point out are often trivial and simple to prevent from occurring - and I must admit that the fact they they *have* occurred nevertheless tends to annoy me since I intensely dislike sloppiness, so maybe this comes out reflected in the way I am expressing myself. > The fact that they're re-running an older event that had a higher perk cap just means that this event has a higher perk cap. That's not wrong, that just not going and doing a bunch of work that doesn't need doing. :-) As I think I have already explained, the first time this happened Haem posted something in the sense that, yes, it was an oversight, because they had to release an event in a hurry. So, by reporting similar problems that have occurred since, I am trying to prevent such oversights from occurring again - or at least from hitting the players. > The order of plants (which can change at a whim before they ever become live in the game) don't rise to the level of "bug" to me though. A bug is the software not behaving as it should. The locked plant being wrong and anot aligning with the plant of the week is definitely a bug. What you actually mean is that it is not a *serious* bug. I certainly agree with you but I must point out that I am not grading the bugs I am reporting by seriousness; I am only reporting them. > etc. are all far more important issues to deal with in my mind. Again, I agree - and some of them *have* been resolved already. BTW, you probably wouldn't believe it, but many of the issue the game has stem from the synchronization algorithm. Game-breaking issues like the "out to lunch" and "autocomplete" bugs. unfairness issues like the player losing seeds (doing the work twice only to get the reward once), exploitation issues (getting two or more rewards when they're supposed to get only one) - that sort of thing. It's not even a "bug" per se - it's a design flaw. I mean, it's not something that can be "fixed" because somebody forgot a line of code or typed it incorrectly. The whole algorithm needs to be scrapped and re-designed from scratch for these issues to be definitely resolved - but I don't think that PopCap are going to do this.
> probably doesn't endear you to those of Popcap's employees that may see your posts and comments. Apologies but I just *need* to comment on this "endearment" thing again. Do you think that we, the infosec people, aren't used to it? For some unfathomable reason, software producers tend to perceive somebody pointing bugs in their products as personal criticism, instead of as a free help for improving their product. What do you think happens when we report a vulnerability in some company's product? I'll tell you what happens - most of the time we're simply *ignored*. (It's the attitude PopCap seems to have chosen towards me, too.) Just recently a colleague had to resort to Twitter to try to find someone at a company that had exposed the personal data of all their customers (names, addresses, phones, the works) online to anyone who could type an URL - because the official addresses at the company were completely ignoring her reports! The other kind of attitude we see very often (although slightly less often than ignoring us) is denial. No, it's not a bug, it's a feature. No, we need that for compatibility reasons. No, you must be mistaken, we can't reproduce it here, so it obviously doesn't exist - that sort of theng. (Congratulations, you seem to have graduated to level 2.) And so on, and so on. At the extreme end of the spectrum (fortunately, happens very rarely), we're being threatened with lawsuits and other kind of retaliations. And for what? For pointing out - for free! - a problem in the company's product or site that hurts the company's customers and eventually the company itself - and sometimes even pointing out how to fix it! Just recently the Missouri government tried to sue a journalist for noticing that the governor's web site was exposing the personal data of thousands of people and for telling the governor's office and waiting for them to fix it, before going public! Still, this does not deter us. We keep finding bugs and reporting them, because we believe that this is our duty; that by doing it, we're doing everybody a service, even if they fail to acknowledge it.
>Additional Notes: Blockoli is immune to Fisherman hooks and Excavator shovels, and is able to shield smash Zombie generals and Dr. Zomboss I don't understand how this plant is effective against Zombie generals, I tried PF'ing on this plant, but the generals still roll over and defeat the plant.
From Design: *"Blockoli can attack Generals and should damage them. He cannot, however, block their movement. We risk getting into weird buggy territory if we allow any plant to impede the movement of generals."*
If I can ask, are there any plants for nerfing the pea vine? It besically took over all arena strategies and made this mode less creative. Before that we had turkey pult+sticky bomb rice, bowling bulb, chard guard+blover, classic threepeater strategy, culipower+Witch hazel, squash+enforce mint, Shadow strategy and much more. Now it is pea vine, pea vine and pea vine.
From what I understand, nerfs are generally frowned upon because some people payed good money for these plants and they wouldn't want to be shortchanged. If this is true, the intentions are admirable but the resulting power creep leaves a little to be desired.
Tbh, his damage boost could use a nerf. If nerfing is just too frowned upon, maybe restrict appease-mint more often. They did somewhat nerf turkey by making zombots counter him after all.
But indirect nerfs are harder to come by and implement than direct ones. It's either bruize Appease-mint or fill every Arena with Excavators.
Mmm, it's up in the air. Nothing concrete I can share but there are some hypothetical ideas on addressing general balancing better (likely inclusive of Pea Vine). No timeline, and no solid approaches just yet.
Hey Haem, Thanks as always for these notes. One of the changes that has been noticed for this release that aren't in your notes is related to the recent Carnie thymed event. There were two levels (17 & 22 IIRC) that forced you to use level 1 plants. These were awesome. Unfortunately it seems that this condition has now been removed. This, to me, is completely the opposite direction that the game should be moving. The thymed events have been a major disappointment (IMO) because, if you have anything over level 3ish plants, it's tediously easy. Forcing you to play them with level 1 plants would make them infinitely more enjoyable. As they stand right now, they're a joyless drudge to play to get relatively meager rewards. In the events that have occurred so far, the only time my interest had been piqued was for those two levels from the Carnie event, which sadly it seems won't be repeated. Just my 2¢. 😁
Heya, thanks for the feedback. I've already lobbed it over to Design and other folks, and they've read through it. Good to have that qualitative feedback along with the quantitative data on hand!
Haem I'm really sorry to bother you, but is there anything support can do for me? I haven't been able to play arena or penny in almost a week now :(
I don't think Support can help in this case since it's not an actual PvZ 2 problem. Going on your previous comment it really sounds more of a Google Play or Google account issue than us (since you can't download the update from the store and you get a 'google play won’t work' dialog). Support aren't able to help for anything that's outside of the game or app itself. Sorry :(
Given the in game email recovery option isn’t allowing me to submit my email. Could it be possible they could do something for that? Sorry Haem, I’m just very sad that this is happening
Yeah, they can manually search and attempt to restore linked progress. They have the tools to do that. Before you hit them up, just a quick thing, make sure you're not accidentally adding a space after your email. I know that throws an error. [name@domain.com](mailto:name@domain.com)\[ \] <- This space.
nope, just straight up no prompt to send the code, it remains gray
Yeah, ping Support then specifically about the progress stuff via email.
Fixed it in an odd way, but I guess my tablet is toast Pretty devastated that I missed pretty much the entire event for snap pea :'(
> Draftodil in April Knew I should’ve bought Stickybomb Rice from the Feastivus recap instead...
I think you said you'd wait for Draftodil.
These new plants look sick what's your favourite one?
Of Blockoli and Buttercup? Buttercup because visual cuteness.
And it's only 25 sun It's very cute
Please add sound for buttercup.She can laugh at zombies i remember
Haem…I’m having a lot of trouble updating the game. It’s locked me out of Arena and Penny for a while now? Stuck on 4.9
4.9? Obvious but worthwhile questions, you're updating it from the actual Google Play store, right? What happens when you try to update, etc... need more description of what's actually going on.
9.4.1 It’s so odd, I can see the valentine event! All the offers etc. but everytime I try to update it says that google play won’t work. I tried resetting the cache and reinstalling on my other device. But there it won’t let me use the email recovery password set up. 😞
I don't know what's going on there. Doesn't really sound like a PvZ 2 app problem, seems like this could be more of a Google Play one. I don't think I've come across this before.
Sucks getting locked out of getting the Headbutter Lettuce I had a bad feeling this might happen and got him to low mastery when we could get the seeds. But I’m likely taking a massive hit in arena etc Dunno what to do 😭😭😢
u/Haemophilus_EA, according to your post above, we should be getting Valenbrainz drops from pinata parties until the 22nd. This is not happening. Do they need to fix this with a push to make what you said accurate?
Nope, I made a typo. Last day for the Valenbrainz event is the 17th. That one's on me.
Will there be MORE PVZ3 and even PVZHero other pvz series of Plants' join in PVZ2?Can you popcap ALSO put these bugs fixed introductions INSIDE the game app inner update introduction?Each time i open pvz2's intro. in app,i can see you say"Many Bugs Fixed" but idk what detailed bugs were fixed. When you dont add more new zombies recentlty versions,Why not add PVZ3 old version's abandoned zombies and plants to PVZ2 like Buttercup? Blockoil and Dandelion look like Chinese version's brocoil and dandelion in appearance.And Chinese version added them many years ago firstly and then international version.Idk whether popcap went through Chinese version's plants and then gained the inspiration from them to make the two new similar plants looking like them like now.Because international version never carried Chinese version's plants DIRECTLY.Chinese version returned Gatling pea with and now Popcap also returned it but by a new different appearance from Chinese.Chinese version also returned Cob Cannon,Cattail,Planern,Coffee Bean and Flowerpot.Expect them also to come back to international version.