PvZ: Garden Warfare Tactical Taco Party Pack Now Live, Check Out The Latest Patch Notes

The party is pumping over on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 with Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare’s just released Tactical Taco Party Pack add-on.

Much like every other free DLC entry to the wacky third-person shooter, the new update offers a few gameplay changes to go alongside the new content, and developer PopCapHD has just dropped the details.

The latest round of changes “nerfs” multiple character variants. The Fire Cactus now has a slower rate of fire and the Long Bomb skill for the All-Star class has had its splash radius reduced. Those are just a few of the tweaks, however. You can check out the full patch notes below:

Tactical Taco Party Pack Patch Notes

New Features

  • New Team Vanquish/Co-op Maps – Jewel Junction Day and Jewel Junction Night
  • New Game Mode – Vanquish Confirmed!  Yes!  Now you too can collect Crazy Orbs that drop off fallen enemies.  Each Crazy Orb collected tallies a point for your team, grab a fallen teammates orb to prevent the enemy from getting a point.
  • Party Matchmaking – Players can now join a multiplayer sessions together when they are in an Xbox Party.
  • New 8v8 Mixed Mode Playlist – Completely revamped and now includes an 8v8 version of each game mode for a more intimate battle, new modes added to Mixed mode include Gardens & Graveyards, Team Vanquish, Gnome Bomb and Vanquish Confirmed!
  • Welcome Mat Playlist Revisions – For those that love to play in the Welcome Mat playlist we’ve now expanded it to include all team vanquish maps.
  • New Garden Ops Challenge:
    • No Player Damage – In this challenge players can’t take even a single point of damage, but fret not, the minions you face are lacking in the range department, there are however quite a few of them to contend with!
  •  New Garden Ops Special Waves:
    • Weed Whackers:  Landscaper engineer wave.
    • Sky Guys:  Sky trooper soldier wave.
    • Brain Freeze:  Ice themed wave, with ice soldiers.
    • Safety First:  Safety themed wave with Engineers and Coneheads. The engineers have safety sign customizations.
    • Toilet Troubles:  Plumbers, Outhouse Zombies and Newspaper Zombies.  Basically, the best of the best.
    •  Legion of Boom:  Wrestler themed wave.
    • They Hunger:  Food themed wave, all zombies have food themed customizations.

Mode/Map Balance

  • Garden Ops:
    • Waves have been re-balanced
    • Teleports Explode when Zombie Limit is Reached
    • Fewer Zombies spawn from Engineer Teleporters
    • Teleports have Less HP
    • Tombstones have Less HP
    • All boss HP balancing (Yeti was dying too fast)
    • Lowered Imp Damage from 70 to 60
    • Lowered Gargantuar Imp Shot From 80 to 60
    • Fixed tombstones incorrectly clearing after wave complete
    • Increased Overall Disco effectiveness.  (boogie woogie)
    • Disco Sprint chance added between shots
    • Disco Rifle timing and Whirlwind dizzy tuning (stun from 10 to 5)
    • Pots now come back after a special wave during a challenge
    • Added taunt chance for rock throw and lazer (Zombie Rock Throwing +2)
  • Gardens & Graveyards:
    • Garden capture effectiveness & timers have been adjusted (per garden location) to better balance out fairness, some were too hard to capture, some were way too easy!

Bug Fixes

  • Gnome bomb game mode added to manual (Xbox 360 only)
  • Fix for Garden Tour achievement not triggering properly in some cases
  • Fix for Fire Chomper so breath attack will always do damage to AI
  • Fix for First Strike boast sometimes not awarding to the correct user
  • Improvements to UI flow for Split Screen mode  (Xbox One Only)
  • Fix to make revives more reliable in Boss Mode
  • Fix for Perfect Wins not counting towards “Garden Tour” achievement
  • Fixed an issue with team autobalance in Gnomebomb & Team Vanquish
  • Fixed an issue where skip challenge stars were sometimes appearing in an incorrect area of the FE
  • Fixed an audio issue with Garden Ops
  • Fix to allow Good reputation users to invite bad reputation users to a session (Xbox One Only)
  • Fixed a bug related to the cactus drone being destroyed
  • Fixed exploit issues relating to Heal Beam timing for Sunflower
  • Fixed Split Screen issues so that each user now has 3 revives each rather than 3 shared between them (Xbox One Only)
  •  Added a timer to Split Screen death flow to allow players option to retry (Xbox One Only)
  • Fixed an audio issue with the Scientist character
  • Fixed an issue where Bamboo was not doing damage to certain boss characters
  • Fixed issues with Goop visuals
  • Fixed an audio issue with Mystic Flower
  • Fixed an issue with viewing tutorials during end of round
  • Fixed a visual issue with Engineer drone’s decals
  • Fixed a UI issue in Gnome Bomb
  • Plethora of Map fixes for improved quality and removing areas where players could potentially get stuck

All-Star

  • We’ve made a couple tweaks to the Rugby All-Star’s weapon upgrades. With the “Longer Lasting Rugby Supply” upgrade equipped, you would very rarely overheat his gun. This has been tuned back to be more in line with the other All-Star variants. We’ve also increased the damage multiplier on the “Scrum Tested Rugby Balls”. Previously, you would only be able to see the benefits of the upgrade at extremely close range. The new tuning makes the upgraded weapon more useful at any range.
  •  The Long Bomb’s explosion radius has been reduced. The ease at which you could fire it into a crowded garden, and rack up multiple vanquishes made it a dominating ability. This will still be a viable strategy, but more precise aiming will be required.
  • ·We’ve also slightly decreased the damage on the Ultra Tackle. It’s still very powerful, but it’s no longer a one-hit vanquish on Plants with 100 health.

Cactus

  • The Power Cactus’ rate of fire has been increased. Though her electric attacks are great at dealing with groups of zombies in Garden Ops, she wasn’t as effective in competitive play as we’d like.
  • On the other hand, the Fire Cactus was a bit too effective in competitive play. Her rate of fire has been slightly decreased to compensate.
  • We’ve also made some slight reductions to the damage and rate of fire on the Camo Cactus. We intended for her to be powerful in the hands of skilled players, and she definitely still is, but now her performance is more in line with the rest of the Cactus variants.

Chomper

  • The Electric and Toxic Chompers have both received slight increases to their base damage output. We’ve also increased the time to overheat on both weapons. Like the Cactus changes, these were made primarily to bring them closer to the rest of the Chompers in terms of effectiveness across all game modes.

Doom Shoom

·         Based on a ton of feedback, we’ve added a delay to the Doom Shroom’s attack. This includes a new jump animation, visual effects and audio that play when you walk into his attack range. When you see him jump out of his pot, you now have enough time to safely walk out of his explosion radius. No more instant vaporization when walking around a corner.

Engineer

  • We’ve reduced the explosion radius on the Plumber’s weapon. This is another oft-requested change, and rightfully so. The Plumber is still one of the stronger Engineer variants, but it’s no longer as dominating.

Pea Shooter

  • We fixed an issue where you could accidently exit Hyper mode by pressing the button twice on activation. Now, once you activate it, there’s a small delay before an additional input can be accepted on that button.
  • We’ve also increased the mass of the Sombrero Bean Bomb. This eliminates scenarios in which the Bomb could be kicked away by a horde of Browncoats.
  • The Ice Pea Shooter’s freezing rate has been increased. Previously, it was very difficult to successfully freeze a target without vanquishing them in the process.
  • The Toxic Pea Shooter’s base impact damage has been slightly reduced. When his impact, explosion and toxic damage were combined, we found him to be slightly overpowered when compared to the rest of the Pea Shooters.

Scientist

  • We’ve remedied a few issues with the Scientist’s Energy Warp ability:
    • It can no longer be interrupted by The Chomper’s Spikeweeds.
    • It is no longer vulnerable to The Goop Shroom’s attacks.
    • Like the Engineer’s Jackhammer, and the Pea Shooter’s Hyper mode, it can now be prematurely exited by pressing its activation button.
  • The Chemist has seen a reduction to the size of his close-range damage area, as well as his clip capacity. The damage and weapon behavior remain the same, but in close-range situations, more accurate aiming is now required.
  • We’ve also reduced the damage of the default Scientist’s projectile. When combined with his close-range damage area, it was more powerful than intended.

Soldier

  • We’ve found that the Camo Ranger was consistently dominating matchups it shouldn’t be, especially against certain Cactus variants. To compensate, we’ve reduced his rate of fire while increasing per shot recoil. We feel that this makes the Camo Ranger/Cactus matchup more balanced.
  • Much like the Ice Pea Shooter, we’ve increased the Ice Trooper’s freezing rate. It’s now much easier to freeze a Plant without vanquishing them.

Sunflower

  • The Sun Pharaoh’s rapid-fire exploit has been fixed. Big thanks to all of you who reported this one.
  •  The base Sunflower, Power Flower and Fire Sunflower have all received damage boosts. These three Sunflowers were consistently performing poorer than intended in one-on-one matchups. This should help alleviate the issue.

Enjoying Garden Warfare’s latest add-on so far? Let us know in the comment section below.

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