A while ago, I posted a tier list made by Narwhaler that ranked every animal model in the game. Recently, I decided to make my own tier list based on both:
Objectively quality of the animal model, texture, rig, animations, etc.
Subjective feelings or observations I personally made with animals and observations made by others
So let me explain these rankings.
Pretty Much Perfect
These are animals that I have no real qualms on. They're pretty much all great and, IMK, they're the standard that Frontier should hold themselves too. While this rank is very biased towards new animals, there are two base game species here: the red ruffed and ring-tailed lemur.
Minor Tweaks Needed
These are the species that, while still really well made, could benefit from Frontier going back and cleaning up some small details here and there. These include things like the white rhino having canine teeth, certain species I feel need some more variants like the dingo and red river hog, etc.
I'll fully admit right now that this was the hardest rank to make as I did not want to come off as needlessly harsh on the Frontier artists but I also wanted to be honest with myself.
Mixed and Mid
Simply put, these are animals that aren't good enough to appear in the higher tiers but not poor in quality enough to end up in the lower tiers. Many of the base game species are here for the simple reason that Frontier has greatly improved their ability to do fur and sculpted skin.
Consider the African buffalo compared to the wild water buffalo. They're both large wild cattle but the texturing workflow on the newer water buffalo has produced a much higher quality animal than the older African buffalo whose fur lacks that feeling of texture the water buffalo has.
This flat fur texture is a problem with pretty much every base game species such as the Western lowland gorilla and Japanese macaque.
Flawed
These are animals whom I found quite poor but, for various reasons, I couldn't find it in myself to put them in the bottom.
One particular example I wanted to talk about here are the base game birds The base game birds are all here as the flamingo and peafowl have quite bad clipping with the wings and the ostrich uses the fur shader where there should be feathers, especially on the tail, which looks like a big pom pom that should really look like a feather duster.
Heavily Flawed
These are the animals everyone says when you ask "What animals should be remastered" and for good reason. One thing I noticed was that all of these were base game species such as the lion, Bactrian camel, and Himalayan brown bear. That is, all except for the Malayan tapir. I sincerely do not understand why Frontier can't have 1 animal artist make some adjustments to the tapir.
Some notes
Most of the better animals are newer ones and most of the weaker ones are in the base game. So I think we should congratulate Frontier for improving their work.
Most of Planet Zoo's animal roster is actually quite good with far less animals I considered mediocre or bad than those I thought were good.
If you'd like to ask me about my reasons for adding specific species in various tiers, I'll happily answer any questions you have.
Objectively quality of the animal model, texture, rig, animations, etc.
Subjective feelings or observations I personally made with animals and observations made by others
So let me explain these rankings.
Pretty Much Perfect
These are animals that I have no real qualms on. They're pretty much all great and, IMK, they're the standard that Frontier should hold themselves too. While this rank is very biased towards new animals, there are two base game species here: the red ruffed and ring-tailed lemur.
Minor Tweaks Needed
These are the species that, while still really well made, could benefit from Frontier going back and cleaning up some small details here and there. These include things like the white rhino having canine teeth, certain species I feel need some more variants like the dingo and red river hog, etc.
I'll fully admit right now that this was the hardest rank to make as I did not want to come off as needlessly harsh on the Frontier artists but I also wanted to be honest with myself.
Mixed and Mid
Simply put, these are animals that aren't good enough to appear in the higher tiers but not poor in quality enough to end up in the lower tiers. Many of the base game species are here for the simple reason that Frontier has greatly improved their ability to do fur and sculpted skin.
Consider the African buffalo compared to the wild water buffalo. They're both large wild cattle but the texturing workflow on the newer water buffalo has produced a much higher quality animal than the older African buffalo whose fur lacks that feeling of texture the water buffalo has.
This flat fur texture is a problem with pretty much every base game species such as the Western lowland gorilla and Japanese macaque.
Flawed
These are animals whom I found quite poor but, for various reasons, I couldn't find it in myself to put them in the bottom.
One particular example I wanted to talk about here are the base game birds The base game birds are all here as the flamingo and peafowl have quite bad clipping with the wings and the ostrich uses the fur shader where there should be feathers, especially on the tail, which looks like a big pom pom that should really look like a feather duster.
Heavily Flawed
These are the animals everyone says when you ask "What animals should be remastered" and for good reason. One thing I noticed was that all of these were base game species such as the lion, Bactrian camel, and Himalayan brown bear. That is, all except for the Malayan tapir. I sincerely do not understand why Frontier can't have 1 animal artist make some adjustments to the tapir.
Some notes
Most of the better animals are newer ones and most of the weaker ones are in the base game. So I think we should congratulate Frontier for improving their work.
Most of Planet Zoo's animal roster is actually quite good with far less animals I considered mediocre or bad than those I thought were good.
If you'd like to ask me about my reasons for adding specific species in various tiers, I'll happily answer any questions you have.
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Especially since we got the Malayan tapir upgrade 
