White faced whistling duck and a masked lapwing? Based as usual my friend.To answer my own question about the 4 birds i thought about it all day and came to a simple conclusion.
As the last 4 birds i want a duck, a pelican, a seabird and a wild card.
The first two were rather easy, we know the song and dance that the white faced whistling duck looks amazing and that a range across africa, madagascar and south america would fill one of africas last holes, throw madagascar a bone and give it finally a third animal type besides lemures and fossa and would give south america a bird and one that perfectly fits into tropical houses and wetland aviarys, fitting for the continent that features the worlds most iconic river system.
The Mallard duck might be the most wide spread and the mandarin duck the most visually striking but imo the white faced whistling duck strikes a great ballance between the two and while maybe not as usefull as a wild stand in as the mallard the fact that it fits perfectly into tropical displays makes me gladly take it over the mallard, atleast if we have to choose just one.
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For the Pelican i just stuck to the great white. Its the most common in zoos and has the largest range of any pelican and helps out africa, india and the south coast of the middle east, aswell as a more sporadic pattern of breeding ranges in south eastern europe and western asia, mostly located around the black and caspian sea. The reason for a pelican itself is simple. They are big and iconic birds, common in zoos, an abc animal most people know and one of the most unique looking things on the planet, being just a smidge away from passing as a pokemon. Its propaply the best generalist bird option left to add and feels allmost wrong as "a bird" slot as it really is among the most iconic animals left that deserves way more talk then just being a token "bird of the pack".
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Now for my most likly hottest take and the animal i havent heard mentioned in these forums even once, the Masked Lapwing.
If you dont know this one, i dont blame ya i also didnt do it conciously till i was looking at seabirds for this slot and damn this one rocks. With 121 holdings its the by far most common seabird i found today on zootierliste and with its striking yellow face mask it stands out well while the rest of its body looks like that of a typical wading bird, making it a perfect base for many mods. Its range is another + as its from not just australia but also new guinea, tasmania and new zealand, living in both salt and fresh water adjacent areas in temperate, tropical and subtropical biomes while also being a common find in grasslands and both rural and urban areas. As the largest member of the Charatiidae, the family of plovers, dotterels and lapwings, with a lenght of ~35 cm and a wingspan of ~80cm it would be a bit larger then the chicken and fit as a habitat animal just fine.
So we got a sea bird that would be a great mod base, is decicivly large enough to be a habitat animal, covers many different biomes and every major island of oceania while also being possible the most common seabird in captivity and looking pretty fire? I think we have been sleeping on this one and it would be the perfect fit for any coastal pack if support should continue, but id also gladly take it for a grabbag pack even if i dont expect it. Its the bird i didnt know i wanted but defenetly would love to have.
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For the last slot we gotta take a south american bird and while id love to take the roseate spoonbill 4 waterbirds would be quite much and theres one very important animal south america is still missing, the rhea, but what rhea?
If youd ask me and i hope you do id say the lesser, for multiple reasons.
First of, we want to max out our differences to this chick here, the female ostrich, measuring in average between 1,75 to 1,9 meters tall.
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And first i gotta say, both do rather good here. The greater rhea (left) measures in average around 1,4 to 1,7 meters tall and the darwins (right) around 0,9 to 1 meter, making it roughly half as tall as the ostrich. Plumage wise both species look actually quite different from each other, with the greater being far more commonly silverish gray with black accents and the lesser coppery brown with white accents, but it should be noted that both species can be found in gray and brown, its just that its vastly more pronounced in one of them each. The other strong suit of the lesser Rhea is its range especally in biomes. Both inhabit primarly grasslands but also shrublands, deserts and marshes, but the greater rhea prefers those tropical or suptropical and the lesser temperate, alpine and colder. Its also of note that while the lesser rhea lives on both low and high alltitudes with a large northern population in the andes, the greater prefers flatland. Regarding how common they are in zoos the lesser rhea has a respectable 66 holdings, allmost all of them in europe in a recent effort to create a stable backup population for them, but the greater rhea wins this category with a landslide win of 545 holdings and being kept on every continent besides oceania. If your not from europe and have seen a rhea in a zoo, chances are they were from the greater variety.
Personally the significantly smaller size and less represented range of the lesser rhea makes it my choosen candidate, but i totally understand swinging the other way around in this surprisingly ballanced and different duo. In another timeline id even be down to get both in the game for their significant differences in size, plumeage, coloration, biome and range but beggars cant be choosers so id rather have 10 more birds before one of them is a second rhea.
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DLC18 discussion and predictions
- Thread starter Leaf Productions
- Start date
White faced whistling duck and a masked lapwing? Based as usual my friend.
final pack speculation:
Geoffrey's Spider Monkey
Hamadryas Baboon
Manatee/Sea Turtle
Secretary Bird
Tree Kangaroo
Walrus
Great Pelican
Golden Lion Tamarin [WTE]
Why the pack is not having 4 birds like speculated:
Planet zoo is not going to have their birds slot filled and even if they add 4 birds people are going to ask for more.
Why I choose the selection:
Spider Monkey and Hamadryas because they are both high and really wanted primates
Manatee/Sea Turtle finally brings a last final feature to the game which I think would be amazing.
Secretary Bird brings a wanted African bird that is beloved
Tree Kangaroo, a final touch to Oceania and imo completes the once filled not at all Oceania roster
Walrus brings a third pinniped and a very wanted one with unique animations to the other pinnipeds
Great pelican, finally brings a pelican into the game for our second waterfowl
Golden Lion Tamarin, a popular primate seen in many zoos and would be a very unique and most used exhibit.
Geoffrey's Spider Monkey
Hamadryas Baboon
Manatee/Sea Turtle
Secretary Bird
Tree Kangaroo
Walrus
Great Pelican
Golden Lion Tamarin [WTE]
Why the pack is not having 4 birds like speculated:
Planet zoo is not going to have their birds slot filled and even if they add 4 birds people are going to ask for more.
Why I choose the selection:
Spider Monkey and Hamadryas because they are both high and really wanted primates
Manatee/Sea Turtle finally brings a last final feature to the game which I think would be amazing.
Secretary Bird brings a wanted African bird that is beloved
Tree Kangaroo, a final touch to Oceania and imo completes the once filled not at all Oceania roster
Walrus brings a third pinniped and a very wanted one with unique animations to the other pinnipeds
Great pelican, finally brings a pelican into the game for our second waterfowl
Golden Lion Tamarin, a popular primate seen in many zoos and would be a very unique and most used exhibit.
I'm kind of looking forward to the end, being honest. At this point the only thing that can reasonably improve the game is a sequel. That might be years away, if it comes at all, but we can't get a sequel without the first game ending. I'm excited to see what Planet Coaster 2 looks like, as it will be a good indication of what to expect in a hypothetical Planet Zoo 2.
I would speculate that it's possible that even Frontier themselves don't know how many packs there will be coming. The financial situation could impact a lot, the release of the new Planet CMS could impact a lot (also depending on when exactly that would be).
I want to believe in two more packs and anniversary gift. We'll se what the next pack is all about and then we'll have more idea if there is anything left after that. If it turns out to be a collection type DLC then we can kiss good bye PZ 1. If it is LATAM or some other random or specific theme i think we could be getting more after it.
If we get a keepers collection or more than 7 habitat animals the game is pretty much over, if Latin America then I think it’s a 50/50, and if it’s something else I think we will probably have more
I mean it’s all plausible, everything is possible at this point. We know support will end, but we don’t know when. It’s possible Frontier may want to keep pumping out dlc, just maybe stop with free updates. Or maybe the next dlc is the last, or maybe we have this one and an anniversary gift, or we have two more DLCs and an anniversary gift.
WHO KNOWS
WE ARE GONNA BE IN A STATE OF LIMBO FOR AWHILE LONGER
The longer i get to think about it the less exciting i get about a South america animal pack. Its most likly gonna be the carnivoran show + some redundant ungulate like a wild camelid or the brazillian tapir, which i like much more then the redundant ungulate choices in for example arid, but still it really doesnt tickle my fancy. This pack will have to pull a grassland with 2 or 3 really amazing animals to ballance out the more whatever half.
If its an animal pack im certain we are gonna see the ocelot, spectacle bear and guanaco/brazillian tapir and while this isnt a bad foundation i dont trust frontier to build of of it well.
Yes rhea, mara, monkey and coati would be a strong second half of the pack, but for that it needs to actually be in the pack and with the obvious omission of the baboon in arid, the blackbuck or any cool grassland bird in grassland, the inclusion of the sloth bear in eurasia above literally anything else and the lack of rodents and non ungulates or even proper breed choices in barnyards make the expectation less then stellar.
Like what if the monkey we get is a wooly monkey? Its still a monkey ofcourse but with literally 20+ better options why would they pick the one thats more or less only kept in south america?
The mara could just be cut and the rhea on its own is still important but really not that exciting.
If we get a less then stellar monkey and lets say the bush dog, tamandua, pampas deer and kinkajou as the second half of the pack it still wouldnt be the worst pack but it would be far from what i would personally want out of a south america pack
If its an animal pack im certain we are gonna see the ocelot, spectacle bear and guanaco/brazillian tapir and while this isnt a bad foundation i dont trust frontier to build of of it well.
Yes rhea, mara, monkey and coati would be a strong second half of the pack, but for that it needs to actually be in the pack and with the obvious omission of the baboon in arid, the blackbuck or any cool grassland bird in grassland, the inclusion of the sloth bear in eurasia above literally anything else and the lack of rodents and non ungulates or even proper breed choices in barnyards make the expectation less then stellar.
Like what if the monkey we get is a wooly monkey? Its still a monkey ofcourse but with literally 20+ better options why would they pick the one thats more or less only kept in south america?
The mara could just be cut and the rhea on its own is still important but really not that exciting.
If we get a less then stellar monkey and lets say the bush dog, tamandua, pampas deer and kinkajou as the second half of the pack it still wouldnt be the worst pack but it would be far from what i would personally want out of a south america pack
Yeah south americas dilemma for me is that there are alot of needed/deserving but ultimately not really exciting animals, and the ones i would be excited about are mostly unlikely additions to such a pack
South America Potential:
- New exciting monkeys: howler, spider, squirrel, and saki
- New habitat birds: spoonbill, ibis, Rhea, flamingo, pelican, WFWD, FWD, etc.
- New rodents: mara, agouti
- New reptiles: tegu, Amazon river turtle
- New Carnivora: coati
Best case scenario: get a South America pack with coati + bird(s) + monkey(s) + rodent(s) + reptiles(s)
Worst case scenario (which is still not bad, just not as good): 13th cat, 8th bear, 10th dog, 5th camelid, 3rd tapir, etc.
Like I said, none of these animals are bad on their own! It’s just about what is new and exciting for South America and the rest of the game, vs. what has been more or less the same since launch. I would love an ocelot, spectacled Bear, and bush dog! It’s just what Planet Zoo needs more are the monkeys, birds, reptiles, rodents, etc.
I mean, while it would be amazing and everything I could ask for, there is no way anything like this is happening. Probably best to not even entertain the thought beyond 1 or maybe 2 habitat birds in the next pack.
So, for fun here is what I think my “best case” scenario would look like:
- White nosed coati
- Black howler monkey
- White faced saki
- Patagonian mara
- Greater rhea
- White faced whistling duck
- Roseate spoonbill
- Not an exhibit animal: Amazon river turtle (tegu is cool but for mods we need the turtle)
Is this likely to happen? No. But like I said South America as a pack can be a world of opportunity, my speculative pack alone does all of the following:
- Gives us the coati, a top meta wishlister
- Gives us another rodent, and with the Rhea gives Patagonia a boost while also giving new mixed habitat opportunities
- Gives us not one, but two new world monkeys
- Gives us a highly usable waterfowl, and a non-flamingo wading bird
- Give us our first habitat turtle, and second turtle species over all.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I would really like the inclusion of the Brazilian tapir.
I'm not only saying this cuz it's the only tapir species keep in my country, but also because unlike the baird tapir, lowland is a actual south america tapir that can be found in a lot more of places than Baird, including the amazon, cerrado, caatinga (locally extinct though), atlantic forest and pampas, meaning three biomes from SA, making it far more versatile than Baird.
Not only that, but the lowland tapir is also the most common tapir species in captivity, being the tapir present in European and south americans zoos, and the only South American one that is in Oceania and African zoos.
On top of all of this, it's the most beautiful and recognizable of the tapirs:
I'm not only saying this cuz it's the only tapir species keep in my country, but also because unlike the baird tapir, lowland is a actual south america tapir that can be found in a lot more of places than Baird, including the amazon, cerrado, caatinga (locally extinct though), atlantic forest and pampas, meaning three biomes from SA, making it far more versatile than Baird.
Not only that, but the lowland tapir is also the most common tapir species in captivity, being the tapir present in European and south americans zoos, and the only South American one that is in Oceania and African zoos.
On top of all of this, it's the most beautiful and recognizable of the tapirs:
I have to disagree. In my opinion avian expansion would improve the game greatly and change the way we play for many of us.
I mean i agree but the statement was about reasonable improvements. And a new aviary system just is out of the question imo, maybe WE birds are in the cards, but thats a very big maybe
It’s crazy we have to say that about a system that has flying animals in it. Like the more I think about the weirder it is. We have a system for bats to fly around on! Do we have any birds for this same flying system? No! Why? We don’t know! We did however get two bat species so who knows!!!!!!
The extra month they got could be used to model and animate the feathers for the birds when they are flying
i could see a possible release date 10 years after the first release date
2029
Yeah. I don't say it much out loud because we do have a "substitute" for it ingame (so is not as much a pressing need) but the lowland tapir is pretty much as essential as the rhea for SA.
Like you said is found in a lot of countries and biomes, from tropical jungles to wetlands.
I hate that zoo games always go for the Bird's tapir first.
I get it, it’s basically like the American black bear. Incredibly common in captivity where you are from, but other “options” exist even if they aren’t as good as what you need.
Still this is a game for a global audience, so it may not be appealing to everyone else, I really get it!
After all I’m a ride or die American Flamingo defender! I’m the best kind of garbage!