One needs to imagine they are an average person on the steam store to understand because the name alone sets an expectation before one even sees what animals are featured. There's 2 scenarios for this person on the steam store, 1 is they see an oceania pack and clearly sees unique animals and fun looking animals from oceania. They have not been misled by the name allowing for a good chance of a purchase. The second scenario is they see the name of arid, they imagine all the possible unrepresented arid regions of the world yet to have any chance of being included and they are met with a north African pack in disguise. There's a good chance they won't buy that pack and voices their opinion on social media.
Fall DLC 2023 Speculation
- Thread starter Leaf Productions
- Start date
I feel the same, great pack with amazing scenery and plants. Animals roster is not for me because of like what you said, very few holdings in zoos outside of Oceania. Funny how they aren't happy with three-toed sloth because of only one zoo outside SA keeps this sloth iirc, yet they're happy with this new pack.
Makes sense
I see the situations as being very different. To my knowledge (I could of course be wrong), there isn’t a large player base active on this forum who live in the sloth’s native range.
In contrast, I know of a number of players who are active here on a regular basis from Australia and New Zealand and they have been keen from the start to be able to build realistic zoos set in their home countries.
As I have said before, Australia and New Zealand zoos have to work within an extremely strict and limited framework when it comes to animal imports. You simply can’t build a realistic zoo set in the region with an African penguin enclosure because there are no African penguins in those zoos and they cannot be imported.
And then of course you can’t build a New Zealand zoo without a kiwi or appropriate foliage.
(Incidentally, apart from my general interest in Australia and New Zealand fauna, I like building zoos set in the region because it adds a structure and places limitations on what is possible to include and is therefore less overwhelming).
Also there is a big difference between the sloth which is kept in one zoo outside its range and under possibly allegedly dubious circumstances and something like the Tasmanian devil which thrives in multiple collections outside the region. All in all, there is no comparison.
This wrong in so many ways that is even hard to comment on that.
Lets us never come back to the supremacy of the majority
@markun explained it best. Had the Arid pack been called something else, like the Saharan pack, it would've been more liked. But it was called the Arid pack, so a lot of people were disappointed that a biome-themed pack had only African animals. It totally makes sense. The newest pack does the opposite: it chooses a region with animals specifically found in said region but that also have a much larger captive presence and brings them to us. The devil is found in various zoos worldwide, while the rest are found in many local zoos.
The sloth is literally found in 1 zoo. That's the difference and that's why Markun makes complete sense
Come on...This wrong in so many ways that is even hard to comment on that.
Lets us never come back to the supremacy of the majority
No one says anything about supremacy, it makes perfect sense that reception of the packs on forum will be heavily influenced by the background of users. And that's what you were asking about.
Not at all. More like hypocrisy
Having barely known and super rare species from Australia and New Zealand is cool. But having the same from Central America, North Africa or Indonesia - bad and so not on point. Simple as that.
Also Oceania doesn’t end on AU and NZ so we can easily say that this pack is far from being complete and represent the region well.
I don’t wanna argue but what you all say is super biased and not at all inclusive for all regions and cultures. World doesn’t end on western culture countries and we often seem to forget about that.
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Good lord guys the report told us nothing we didn’t know already, we should be focusing on either
a) The new pack we spent forever speculating on (and got it wrong).
b) Winter DLC, something we know is actually going to happen.
I’m not trying to stop this current discussion, but we won’t know how many packs we get next year, no matter how much we discuss it.
a) The new pack we spent forever speculating on (and got it wrong).
b) Winter DLC, something we know is actually going to happen.
I’m not trying to stop this current discussion, but we won’t know how many packs we get next year, no matter how much we discuss it.
If we had same amount of users from North Africa like we have from other places, reception of Arid pack would look differentNot at all. More like hypocrisy
Having barely known and super rare species from Australia and New Zealand is cool. But having the same from Central America, North Africa or Indonesia - bad and so not on point. Simple as that.
Also Oceania doesn’t end on AU and NZ so we can easily say that this pack is far from being complete and represent the region well.
I don’t wanna argue but what you all say is super biased and not at all inclusive for all regions and cultures. World doesn’t end on western culture countries and we often seem to forget about that.
Everyone wants to see in game what's around them - be it local zoos or local wildlife and for the same reason have reservations towards packs that are completely opposite
I have yet to see user here that claims to stand for equal representation of all zoos worldwide. If that fictional user were playing favorites, he would then be a hypocrite
It's fine to push for what you feel like your area is missing, but it's completely natural that of select number of people, there will be majority that shares similar opinions
The western world also said that the sloth was an unrealistic addition. Don't try to make it sound like those in NA, Europe, and Oceania don't care about other continents. SA is technically the western world.Not at all. More like hypocrisy
Having barely known and super rare species from Australia and New Zealand is cool. But having the same from Central America, North Africa or Indonesia - bad and so not on point. Simple as that.
Also Oceania doesn’t end on AU and NZ so we can easily say that this pack is far from being complete and represent the region well.
I don’t wanna argue but what you all say is super biased and not at all inclusive for all regions and cultures. World doesn’t end on western culture countries and we often seem to forget about that.
This isn't a simple: "common or uncommon in worldwide zoos".
The sloth is in 1 zoo. Just 1. Tassies are in various, kiwis are in various. Heck, even the proboscis monkey is in far more zoos than the sloth.
Also, nobody said that Oceanian feels complete, they just said that it is way better. Plus, our own members from that area stated themselves that they are pretty much satisfied with their home region, even though they could wish for 1 or 2 more species
You are completely right. But let’s not forget about the huge wave of criticism that discriminated another regions which don’t have such a huge support in the player base or members at this forum.
Those are just double standards to me.
Frontier seems to treat every region equally so let’s do the same.
i agree with all your other points but i want to say eastern europe (where im from) and south america being part of the western world/civ is questionable
they are usually regarded as their civilisation of their own
Western world - Wikipedia
East–West dichotomy - Wikipedia
Arguments about east vs west world is one fast way to summon a mod, I would just drop the issue whatever it is.
Tassie and kiwi are not common zoo species. They are present in far more institutions than sloth but still not common and often even called a real rarity outside AU/NZ.
Great example is the platypus. No one seems to have a problem that is present only in one zoo outside Australia.
There's key differences, the Oceania Pack just doesn't fall under any of the main criticisms of the Arid Animal Pack. Let’s take a look:nutrit said:
Regional Pack disguised as Biome Pack - I love regional packs, probably just as much as biome packs, but I also like them being called what they are. I said before the pack was announced that I really hoped this would just be called the Oceania Pack rather than an Islands Pack, because despite how much I loved the foster that would also be really silly and the pack would not be a good representation of the islands of the world. You may be asking “why does the name of the pack matter?” But let’s put it another way.
Say Frontier announced an Americas Animal Pack - but while you’d expect such a pack to contain animals from both South America and North America, it focuses exclusively on the latter. Would criticising the pack for giving the false expectation that it was meant to cover all of the Americas not be justified? It’s the same thing with the Arid Animal Pack for most of us - it presented itself as a biome pack, so it had the expectations of a biome pack, and failed to deliver on those expectations by focusing on a specific part of the world instead.
Lack of taxonomic diversity - Another big criticism of the Arid Animal Pack was that it was both undiverse, being 5/8 ungulates, and brought very little new to the table taxonomy wise aside from the porcupine. The Oceania Pack on the other hand includes the same number of different orders despite being a scenery pack, with each species being in a distinct order, and two of these being in entirely new orders that hadn’t been represented in the game beforehand. It included no species from groups that were already very well represented in the game like antelopes and felids (or ungulates and carnivorans as a whole), while also including two birds, a first for the usually mammal-dominated packs.
As everyone has continuously said, if the Arid Animal Pack had a more appropriate name and perhaps replaced two of the ungulates with something like Hamadryas baboon and the African spurred tortoise, people would have far less of an issue with it. We don’t hate North Africa, we just dislike some elements of the way the pack was put together.
The species in this pack cover Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and some of the islands of western Wallacea - which essentially only leaves the smaller eastern islands of Melanesia and much of Polynesia left out, so it would cover about +95% of the land area of Oceania. And sure, while I’d really love species from the remaining areas, there isn’t much on offer for habitat animals aside from the kagu and nene (which would still be great to see). A scenery pack is inherently small so properly covering the entire region it encompasses can be difficult - but this just gives the Arid Animal Pack even less of an excuse.
And of course, as an Oceanian obsessed with Oceanian wildlife, I probably want more species for the region than anyone else on this forum, and it's far from complete. But I do think the Oceania Pack finally brings it to some semblance of representation comparable to other continents (besides SA of course, which still needs serious help) for the very first time.
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sort of what i tried to imply by saying questionable and unique
agree we need to avoid such topics here
they are not as hard to keep as three toed sloths i believe? just rare for other reasons?
Wow, really? I always thought that the western world was South America, too. Interestingi agree with all your other points but i want to say eastern europe (where im from) and south america being part of the western world/civ is questionable
they are usually regarded as their civilisation of their own
Western world - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
East–West dichotomy - Wikipedia
Yes Captain
Maybe so, but you're missing the whole point. People aren't mad about if an animal is or is not found in various zoos worldwide. What bother people is when a highly specific animal is added when there was clearly a better option. The sloth could've been a 2-toed sloth and the complaints wouldn't have been as bad. The proboscis monkey is found in a select number of zoos in their range, but had it been a more common species, it would've made sense.
In the case of the Oceania pack, saying that people are hypocritical for liking animals that ARE found in many zoos, whether worldwide or not, is not a double standard. Oceania already had many common zoo animals that are found in international collections. Having 3 more locally found species works. You could say the same about the skunk and raccoon: I've never visited a zoo with a skunk and I've only been to 1 zoo with a raccoon, which was in Mexico