Guys, you cannot be serious.
Quokka: Basically a shrunken down wallaby.
Tree kangaroo: Requires a whole new set of climbing animations in a climbing system Frontier clearly tries to avoid dealing with.
The quokka did not "replace" the tree kangaroo. Every single pack is mostly clones and Oceania is no different. Kiwi, quokka, penguin. The special one was the devil, and they didn't even put that much effort into it (sounds). They chose the quokka because it's a meme and it was easy and that's all there is to it. The tree kangaroo was probably briefly considered and then thrown into the "Too Hard" basket.
I thought that was based on the quokka having some chimp climbing files?
Nah, the tree kangaroo and quokka are similar enough body style-wise that it's a possibility. Frontier has used weirder rigs as bases for other things. And yes, people found artifact chimp climbing animations in the quokka. Doesn't confirm it by any means but makes it seem a bit more likely.
But whether they scrapped it and adapted it to the quokka
or considered it and scrapped it, starting something new from scratch? Looking at the roster it's pretty undeniable that the quokka took the slot that
could have otherwise gone to the tree kangaroo. I couldn't see them swapping anything else out for it. So in that way, yeah, it replaced the quokka in terms of its spot in the pack.
So I understand this question is just as broad as asking what the next dlc will be, but what do y’all think the next free update will be? Usually the free updates relate to the dlc, but I think it’s likely the free update may give us any of the features we have been asking for awhile.
My current thinking:
- Hotels: It was in PlanCo and will be popping up again in PlanCo2. I would imagine it could work in a way quite similar to the restaurants. You place down a lobby and attach rooms (~3 different sizes each with 3-4 different decor options you can select). Guests walk in the lobby and appear in the rooms they've booked.
- Scaling: See below. Feasible to implement. And would be a nice way to make the game infinitely more flexible without new scenery.
- Additional flexicolor options for base game pieces: Weirdly, this feels the least likely between these three because it could have happened ages ago and haven't... But I could see them updating a number of the base game and early DLC assets to be flexicolor. For example: Arctic, Australia, breeze block, dry stone, and sandstone wall sets as well as a bunch of the earlier roofs. In hindsight, seeing how quickly Frontier addressed these concerns about thatched roofs for the Oceania pack I really wish we had kicked up some dust about this earlier in the game's development. LOL
I like Charlie's idea below for the classrooms too - and think it might be a possibility too! And one that I'm rooting for.
Similar to how we got the multi select recolouring by group tool a bit back, I think the mirroring tool is a possibility. I don’t know how complex it would be to make though.
If I had to name 3 features (cause that’s the amount we usually get) we get next update I would say:
- Drinking Fountains. I feel like their plan is to choose things that are wanted, but wouldn’t be that great in advertising for a sequel, hence why stuff like playgrounds and hotels aren’t on this list. I would love if guests actually brought water bottles to the zoo or have a shop to buy them, then when they run out they can fill them up with water stations throughout the zoo, resulting in their happiness scores going up.
- Camp Tour Groups. A nice add on to the guided tours we have now, it would be cool to see like a camp group of 20 kids and 2 adults (councillors) be toured around the zoo. They could be recognizable by having the same colour of shirt to each other. A lot of zoos have zoo camp so I feel this would be a realistic feature and a fun extra to the educational state of the game.
- Classrooms. We know from the giftshop that frontier is willing to add new buildings this late in the game so why not add the classroom? Place a classroom building down, assign an educator to it, do a bunch of drop down menus to choose what the classroom looks like, choose times it’ll be open, and there you go. Another add on to the educational side of the game.
- Bonus one, Telescopes & Binoculars. My main prediction last time, I still think these would be pretty easy to implement. It’s just like the vista points, only difference is you need an animation where a guest inserts a coin and looks through it.
All of these ideas are great but... Classrooms and educational props would be
so awesome!
New update feature..who knows. Mirroring would be nice and definitely multitudes easier than scaling, but my goodness scaling would be amazing. I just don't see it happening though, not at this point in the game. Just getting scaling for fonts and signs though? That I could see.
Scaling wouldn't be as challenging as people think. Frontier wouldn't need to go back in and re-work each item. The way they've applied scaling for PC2 isn't the same way it's done in PK. Basically, you can shrink/enlarge things based on a % of size (and there's a limit; I think it's shrinking down to 60% of the original size and increasing to 200% bigger). You can't extend the X-axis but keep the Y-axis the same length. The full item gets enlarged by the same size.
It's the same approach that modders have sorted out (though, obviously, Frontier would be able to build a better UI for it)...
These are cool! I’m gonna add some of my own starting off of your list:
- New signs based more on the current style, especially for some of the base game animals.
- More interactive educational props, like the paws, giraffe, and gorilla. I would love to be able to make a little children’s area with them. But I think I would need a couple more before I could do that.
- Once again I will sing it to the heavens. But some educational props would be nice. Give us nests, wings, pelts, skulls, horns, tusks, antlers, I want everything. It’s all very useful and can help make parts of the habitats feel more alive. (Think near an elephant habitat you can place some elephant skeletons and some ivory)
All of this would be fantastic but
especially the new signs and educational props!
www.thedodo.com
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