Why the lack of habitat birds?

[Antimony96]

Flying birds held in aviaries are and have been for a while the most requested animals in Planet Zoo. We don't quite know what Frontier is or isn't capable of on this front, but we can assume that fully-flighted birds like eagles and macaws that aren't just simple loops like the walkthrough bats/butterflies would be very difficult for them to implement, and even smaller walkthrough-friendly birds like budgies, lories, or hummingbirds could be in a similar boat.

What we know is within their capabilities, because it's already in the game, are the kinds of ground-dwelling birds, waterfowl, and wading birds which can be kept in open-topped enclosures. Setting aside ratites and penguins, we have three of these in game--the red-crowned crane from the Wetlands pack and the greater flamingo and blue peafowl from the base game. For comparison, the Arid Animal Pack announced today has three even-toed ungulates alone. There are more canines alone than all birds in the game combined. Despite a parade of DLC themes which would be perfect opportunities to add habitat birds, we've received a total of two in 2020, one in 2021, two in 2022, and zero in 2023 so far--suggesting that despite Frontier listening to community requests on other fronts, they've ignored us here. We know that Frontier can add storks, ducks, pelicans, swans, ibises, guineafowl, pheasants, or a secretary bird, but they've chosen not to. Why is this?

 

[YesIndeed]

I don't why this is. It's honestly confusing. They left Secretary bird out if Grasslands and then also arid. And bow I don't really want another Africa centric pack so I don't know how it could fit in besides being an anniversary animal. If they are saving it for that it'd be amazing but definitley unlikely.

 

[jcp011c]

I'll be honest, I've been hoping for more birds for habitats for so long, I've tried to make pack ideas up for the future and try to make sure that I get at least one in each pack. I've held out hope for them.

But something's changed now with this pack line up. I feel like the Kiwi aside, it's really possible we won't get any more habitat birds. I don't have the urge to create new pack ideas and try and figure out what I'm wanting even, aside from just the wishlist. Birds are a huge part of that too...and I just feel empty in that part of enjoying the game.

Let's not even talk about exhibit birds. Nothing was ever said they'd make it in, or promised. We did that to ourselves. But habitat birds...RIP hopes for Secretary Bird, Spoonbill, Shoebill , Pelican, Roadrunner, Swan...

 

[Antimony96]

I'll be honest, I've been hoping for more birds for habitats for so long, I've tried to make pack ideas up for the future and try to make sure that I get at least one in each pack. I've held out hope for them.

But something's changed now with this pack line up. I feel like the Kiwi aside, it's really possible we won't get any more habitat birds. I don't have the urge to create new pack ideas and try and figure out what I'm wanting even, aside from just the wishlist. Birds are a huge part of that too...and I just feel empty in that part of enjoying the game.

Let's not even talk about exhibit birds. Nothing was ever said they'd make it in, or promised. We did that to ourselves. But habitat birds...RIP hopes for Secretary Bird, Spoonbill, Shoebill , Pelican, Roadrunner, Swan...

The kiwi probably is the most likely future bird inclusion, which sucks because while it's a very interesting animal it doesn't really scratch the "bird" itch in the way a duck or stork would. You know what I mean.

Anyway I'd like to see if anyone else has ideas on this question. The explanations for why we don't have flying birds just don't, uh, fly here.

 

[Moonfox]

There are so many choices too! Flightless birds/birds that get away with no flight mechanic and are relatively easy to make from existing birds in game:

Secretary bird
Shoebill
Brolga
Black necked stork
Rhea
Pheasant

Even:
Kori Bustard
Pelican
Swan
Burrowing owl
Kiwi

We have had a few bird inclusions, with the crane and emu fairly recently, but I'd love to see many more added in. It does feel like they keep skipping opportunities to give us more birds and it's frustrating.

 

[jcp011c]

We have had a few bird inclusions, with the crane and emu fairly recently, but I'd love to see many more added in. It does feel like they keep skipping opportunities to give us more birds and it's frustrating.

It really does. Part of me hopes that means there's a bigger plan for birds, like a full on expansion pack. But that hope shrinks the longer we go on. When we get the Crane I thought for sure that we'd get more habitat birds that could fly in real life, they just wouldn't in the game. There's still nothing preventing that. Then when we got the bat in the WTE, it seemed a natural fit for exhibit birds that could fly in looped animations, but that still hasn't happened. And the earliest it will happen if at all is the fall, which is a full year after the bat was introduced.

It's just so confusing why they've made some of the choices they have, with the Crane being perhaps the single most confusing animal they put in a pack. I mean, sure they were great on their own, but they haven't revisited that as yet and it will be a full 6 packs later that they do, and that's if we got something like that in the fall. WTE seemed a great transition but I am really fearful that it's not meant to be at all.

I do worry that we won't get any more birds in Planet Zoo now, again with the exception of the Kiwi as a possibility. It'll be the only real disappointment I have with Planet Zoo - I know there's a lack of New World Primates but I'm not personally invested in them; and the handful of mammals I'd really like to see, if we don't get them it's justifiable as "we can't get everything we want" reasoning. But birds...it's just a whole missing piece of the zoo experience and it'll be very highlighted at the end of the game's support.

 

[yoav_r]

Your realistic choices for open habitat birds are extremely limited compared to the mammal options. And are also less common in zoos. I understand why we don't get a lot of them.

 

[Antimony96]

Your realistic choices for open habitat birds are extremely limited compared to the mammal options. And are also less common in zoos. I understand why we don't get a lot of them.

The secretary bird and shoebill are pretty uncommon in zoos, but there are so many waterfowl and other birds (guineafowl, crowned crane, pheasants) which are extremely common in captivity. Don't agree with this take at all.

 

[Marvinb]

Secretary and shoebill get a pass for being hecking cool.
That there is compareably less option for habitat bird than mammals is all the more reason to get some more because you can quickly get a really nice roster without the feeling that there is something crucial

 

[FoxyDee]

I think there are alot of options for habitat birds. I know some people argue that having things like Spoonbills or Ibises in open enclosures are unrealistic, but so is for alot of monkeys, Clouded Leopard and so on, yet we still have them. So these types of birds that can fly, but do not do so regurarly would work well in my opinion. Let the player decide if they want to net their enclosure or not, just as with the clouded leopard.

Of course, I wish we got better mesh pieces to build aviaries easier.

 

[ElectricMonk]

Your realistic choices for open habitat birds are extremely limited compared to the mammal options. And are also less common in zoos. I understand why we don't get a lot of them.

What have ‘open habitats’ got to do with anything?.. it’s easy to enclose a habitat already and several of the in-game mammals are generally kept in closed habitats.

 

[yoav_r]

What have ‘open habitats’ got to do with anything?.. it’s easy to enclose a habitat already and several of the in-game mammals are generally kept in closed habitats.

I meant non-perching ground-dwelling birds. Most birds are arboreal and flying.

 

[RightWhale]

1. Burrowing Owl
2. Secretary Bird
3. Kori Bustard
4. Southern Ground Hornbill
5. California Quail
6. Green Peafowl
7. Grey Winged Trumpeter
8. Whooping Crane
9. Grey Crowned Crane
10. Demoiselle Crane
11. Brolga
12. White Stork
13. Shoebill Stork
14. Wood Stork
15. Marabou Stork
16. Saddle Billed Stork
17. Wild Turkey
18. Ocellated Turkey
19. Bush Turkey
20. Golden Pheasant
21. Reeves Pheasant
22. Silver Pheasant
23. Lady Amherst Pheasant
24. Himalayan Monal
25. Congo Peafowl
26. Capercaillie
27. Mallard Duck
28. Ruddy Duck
29. Wood Duck
30. Mandarin Duck
31. Eurasian Teal
32. Eurasian Wigeon
33. White faced whistling duck
34. Muscovy Duck
35. King Eider
36. Nene
37. Barnacle Goose
38. Canada Goose
39. Magpie Goose
40. Mute Swan
41. Black Swan
42. Atlantic Puffin
43. Tufted Puffin
44. Great White Pelican
45. Brown Pelican
46. Little Blue Penguin
47. Rockhopper Penguin
48. Chinstrap Penguin
49. American Flamingo
50. Chilean Flamingo
51. Red Legged Seriema
52. Great Curassow
53. Crested Tinamou
54. Guam Rail
55. Wood Rail
56. Helmeted Guinea fowl
57. Vulture Guinea Fowl
58. Jungle Chicken
59. Victoria Crowned Pigeon
60. North Island Brown Kiwi

Here is a list of a bunch of birds I think can still work in Planet Zoos current mechanics. I do not understand why Frontier seems to not use habitat birds, if the issue is making new rigs then they can just reuse it like they do with most animals. I don’t care. Give me 5 Duck species, give me more cranes, I would even love another flamingo or birds using the peacock rig. Also this doesn’t even consider domestic species, this is just 60 wild birds I think could work great in game. I tried to make it diverse with birds from all over the world.

 

[BananaLeech]

I hadn't played the game for a long time so I wanted to ask if the flamingoes float in the water like a duck when they are at a deep area? If not then that could explain why we are not getting ducks and pelicans anytime sooner. If so, however it is a shame that we don't have ducks and pelicans yet.

 

[Xificayd]

As an inspiration for what birds we should get, I would like to take a look at the top 50 birds held in european zoos:

Budgerigar (aviary)
Domestic Chicken (ground based)
Golden Pheasant (ground based)
Blue-and-yellow macaw (aviary)
Eurasian eagle-owl (aviary)
Snow owl (aviary)
Cockatiel (aviary)
mandarin duck (aviary or groundbased)
white stork (ground based like a flamingo with clipped wings)
nandu (ground based)
black swan (ground based with clipped wings)
Domestic goose (ground based)
Domestic Muscovy duck (aviary or groundbased)
wood duck (aviary or groundbased)
Silver pheasant (ground based)
zebra finch (aviary)
military macaw (aviary)
indian runner duck (ground based)


These the birds we would primarily need to draw inspiration from, but we should definitely add other birds who maybe arent as common but still very unique and beautiful. However i would like for the popularity sake to get some birds here for sure. I would be amazed by a bird only pack, even if it only included ground based birds and no aviary, or maybe 7 ground based birds and then 5 very similar clones of small birds for the walkthrough exhibit like finches and budgerigars.

 

[Doran]

We don't quite know what Frontier is or isn't capable of on this front, but we can assume that fully-flighted birds like eagles and macaws that aren't just simple loops like the walkthrough bats/butterflies would be very difficult for them to implement, and even smaller walkthrough-friendly birds like budgies, lories, or hummingbirds could be in a similar boat.

 

[Bearcat9948]

I think it's possible that birds and reptiles are significantly more work for the modeling team (perhaps the animation team as well), and so it's easier to make more felids, canids, hoofstock etc. Like if you look at animals like the cassowary or caiman, all of the feathers and scutes are hand drawn (unless I'm waaaaaay off base), but for fur they have a brush tool that makes it way easier.

I find it borderline impossible they have no idea how highly requested birds in general are, so there has to be some kind of technical reason we aren't getting them.

Same reason some people think we aren't getting primates because the climbing system sucks.

 

[SalamAnders]

I think it's possible that birds and reptiles are significantly more work for the modeling team (perhaps the animation team as well), and so it's easier to make more felids, canids, hoofstock etc. Like if you look at animals like the cassowary or caiman, all of the feathers and scutes are hand drawn (unless I'm waaaaaay off base), but for fur they have a brush tool that makes it way easier.

I find it borderline impossible they have no idea how highly requested birds in general are, so there has to be some kind of technical reason we aren't getting them.

Same reason some people think we aren't getting primates because the climbing system sucks.

There might be some truth to this but in the Aquatic pack, they managed to include both a bird and a reptile on top of new complicated diving mechanics and animals that wasn't really within the clone spectrum. Wetlands also came with both a reptile and a bird, and the reptile here was in no way a demanded request. Also, the water monitor wasn't really asked for. It seems like weird choices if they are more complicated to do. Therefor I think it must be possible to include them more often than we have seen in the past year.

 

[Sclurp]

Planet Zoo is Frontier's consistent money maker at the moment. JWE and JWE2 both featured aviaries and complicated flight paths with animals being able to land on structures and objects etc... In JWE2 they refined their feather shaders/textures even more. All of this they could draw on, as well as their years of experience making PZ content so far. Flying and flightless birds are the most requested animals every time some DLC comes out - it's time for a substantial expansion pack akin to Planet Coaster's Ghostbusters DLC and JWE's Return to Jurassic Park, as well as JWE2's Dominion DLC packs.
Heck, Elite Dangerous got huge DLC expansions and that isn't as popular (at least anymore) as PZ. (This is based on data Frontier released in an investor's meeting).

I know Frontier love this DLC model but man, Planet Zoo deserves some new ways to play the game and something bigger than these smaller packs. Don't wait for Planet Zoo 2,Frontier. You never know what will happen between now and then. Give us aviaries. Please.

 

[TheDuckKnight]