Hello there,
With this post, I want to raise awareness for a problem in challenge mode, that already persists (see this thread for a previous discussion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/challenge-mode-no-longer-playable.605991/#post-9894719), but has been getting even worse along the game’s life span.
So, to put it simply: the animal market system in challenge mode is too limited to include a large amount of DLC animals without taking all fun away
I will try to describe how the animal market in challenge mode works for all those that are not familiar with it: In principle, individual animals of all the different species are generated at random, and remain open for adoption in the market for a few minutes before disappearing and being replaced by a new animal of the same or a different species. The quality of the genes and the gender varied randomly between all this individual animals. This means some species don’t have individuals open for adoption all the time. E.g., a male Indian elephant could be offered for 7 minutes, and ,after they have run out, this slot is replaced by a zebra. 10 minutes later, the time on an ostrich runs out, and the slot is occupied by a new female Indian elephant.
There are 80 slots for individual animals, and there are 50 base game habitat animals. That meant the market had a lot of capacity to provide multiple individual animals for all species, and while not all species had individual animals available all the time, the waiting times in between were relatively short as not too many species competed against each other for open slots. This provided a fun system, where you did not always had an individual of every species available, and also had to wait some time to get individual animals.
Now, with the DLCs, a lot of species got added. If my math is right, we received 60 new habitat species ( 8 packs à 4 and 4 packs à 7). This means the total number of species the animal market should provide animals from has more than doubled since the base game.
However, in challenge mode, there are still only 80 slots for individual animals. Considering there are now twice as many species that compete for these slots, the chance of a species getting a slot has halved. Therefore, the average waiting time to get one animal of a certain species has doubled.
As a result, the market can not supply the player with enough animals of all the species once he starts acquiring a larger number of DLCs. You can end up in situations where you can’t acquire a specimen of a new species for your zoo for multiple in-game years, or finding a mate for an already aquired animal takes so long the originally adopted animal is so old it is infertile or close to dying of old age. As a result, challenge mode lost most of it’s appeal to me.
I think it is very counter-productive if the addition of new content (i.e. new species) brings this game mode even more out of balance. Personally, I have not bought the newer DLCs, and I am still lacking some of the older, even though I would very much like to purchase them.
To summarize my point: the animal market in challenge mode only has a limited capacity to provide animals from all the species in-game. As this capacity has never been raised with the addition of DLCs, the market can no longer offer an appealing variety of animals from base game and DLC species within reasonable waiting times.
My suggested solution would be to increase the 80 slots from the base game balance by let’s say 10 per DLC purchased or something along the line. This might be simple to implement, and would definitely help challenge mode players enjoy the new DLCs. I have prepared a ticket for the issue tracker in the hopes of communicating this issue to Frontier.
Thank you for reading so far. If you consider this problem relevant and would like to help, please consider liking this post, sharing your opinions and suggestion, of contribute to the issue tracker ticket I prepared for this topic: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/57860
With this post, I want to raise awareness for a problem in challenge mode, that already persists (see this thread for a previous discussion: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/challenge-mode-no-longer-playable.605991/#post-9894719), but has been getting even worse along the game’s life span.
So, to put it simply: the animal market system in challenge mode is too limited to include a large amount of DLC animals without taking all fun away
I will try to describe how the animal market in challenge mode works for all those that are not familiar with it: In principle, individual animals of all the different species are generated at random, and remain open for adoption in the market for a few minutes before disappearing and being replaced by a new animal of the same or a different species. The quality of the genes and the gender varied randomly between all this individual animals. This means some species don’t have individuals open for adoption all the time. E.g., a male Indian elephant could be offered for 7 minutes, and ,after they have run out, this slot is replaced by a zebra. 10 minutes later, the time on an ostrich runs out, and the slot is occupied by a new female Indian elephant.
There are 80 slots for individual animals, and there are 50 base game habitat animals. That meant the market had a lot of capacity to provide multiple individual animals for all species, and while not all species had individual animals available all the time, the waiting times in between were relatively short as not too many species competed against each other for open slots. This provided a fun system, where you did not always had an individual of every species available, and also had to wait some time to get individual animals.
Now, with the DLCs, a lot of species got added. If my math is right, we received 60 new habitat species ( 8 packs à 4 and 4 packs à 7). This means the total number of species the animal market should provide animals from has more than doubled since the base game.
However, in challenge mode, there are still only 80 slots for individual animals. Considering there are now twice as many species that compete for these slots, the chance of a species getting a slot has halved. Therefore, the average waiting time to get one animal of a certain species has doubled.
As a result, the market can not supply the player with enough animals of all the species once he starts acquiring a larger number of DLCs. You can end up in situations where you can’t acquire a specimen of a new species for your zoo for multiple in-game years, or finding a mate for an already aquired animal takes so long the originally adopted animal is so old it is infertile or close to dying of old age. As a result, challenge mode lost most of it’s appeal to me.
I think it is very counter-productive if the addition of new content (i.e. new species) brings this game mode even more out of balance. Personally, I have not bought the newer DLCs, and I am still lacking some of the older, even though I would very much like to purchase them.
To summarize my point: the animal market in challenge mode only has a limited capacity to provide animals from all the species in-game. As this capacity has never been raised with the addition of DLCs, the market can no longer offer an appealing variety of animals from base game and DLC species within reasonable waiting times.
My suggested solution would be to increase the 80 slots from the base game balance by let’s say 10 per DLC purchased or something along the line. This might be simple to implement, and would definitely help challenge mode players enjoy the new DLCs. I have prepared a ticket for the issue tracker in the hopes of communicating this issue to Frontier.
Thank you for reading so far. If you consider this problem relevant and would like to help, please consider liking this post, sharing your opinions and suggestion, of contribute to the issue tracker ticket I prepared for this topic: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/57860
