I'll address some of the other stuff, but this first. I also think PZ is a great venue for "keeping" animals that have no place in captivity in RL. I'm actually a big fan of zoos, safari parks, aquariums, etc. and believe they are overall a force for good. But some animals -whales- don't belong in a captive situation at all. (Okay, maybe a huge marine reserve out in open ocean, but good luck getting every country to both agree on and abide the boundaries and rules.) So, I'm 100% in favor of adding animals that are controversial in RL precisely because this is a game, and no actual animals are harmed.
Planet Zoo 2 or big update on Planet Zoo 1
- Thread starter KoenZoo
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I strongly disagree; I believe any species can be held in captivity with proper resources, research, and care. That includes whales of all strides. The "belongingness" is entirely subjective for literally any species from vaquitas to a pet dog.
Have to agree with you on this, whales as well as sharks for me. And those are the species that it seems people are more against adding than any other marine animal, with a few specific species excepting.
Sorry, but I really want the Great White Shark if we get marine species in PZ2. It's iconic. I'm fully aware of it's horrifically abysmal captivity history. Doesn't matter, still want them in the game. Whales and sharks are the icons for me, along with rays and dolphins though the whales I want are on the smaller side (Narwhal, Beluga). doesn't mean I don't want things like the Oceanic Sunfish or sea turtles, but Sharks, rays, whales and dolphins would be at the top of my want list.
The diving board is always what I imagined. As far as full aquatic animals in a dry habitat, couldn't it also be like Zoo Tycoon 2 where the animals start flopping and suffocating on land? Now that I think about it, that might be a bit harsh for the simplified family friendly vibe that Frontier goes for.
The best way to handle full aquatics is a dedicated Planet Aquarium. That's the only way fishes could get the amount of variety they deserve. In order to build proper aquaria, you would ideally need a good amount of saltwater bony fish alone. More than Frontier would likely give aquarium species of all groups combined across the entire lifespan of a Planet Zoo title. Realistically we'd get... what in the base game? A single sirenian, a single sea turtle, a few sharks, a couple rays, and if we're lucky a grouper + a few exhibit fish? As a Planet Zoo 1 DLC that's a fair enough compromise roster. But if Frontier were to try to pass that off as a selling point for Planet Zoo 2, don't even bother imo. Especially if the precedent of aquarium species not getting much DLC focus carried over from Jurassic World Evolution 2.
Bottlenose dolphin and beluga are needed at least. Frontier can make them require absurd space like the polar bear and hippo.
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Sorry; but I really think that train has left the station. A quick Google finds " The oldest magazine still in print is believed to be "The Scots Magazine," which was first published in 1739. It has been published continuously since then, making it one of the longest-running magazines in the world". https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-oldest-magazine-still-in-print
I, for one, believe it's perfectly normal -and desirable- to go right on paying for goods, services, and media that are consumed and enjoyed. IMO, the problem starts when we fail to cancel subscriptions to things we no longer want, and don't get me started on companies that make it difficult.
That's a good point. I already can't run the latest versions of Blender and a few other programs, but am not ready to make the plunge for a new computer system yet.
Okay; IF they can be provided for properly, I will probably change my mind. But, today, that doesn't seem feasible or practical and I don't want to contribute to animals being neglected or harmed by those who wish to keep them in captivity without all the required resources.
I find this actually rather helpful for my point. Sure, you can run newspapers for 300 years, but it's still going to be newspapers at the end of the day. It was always be held back by the constraints of its origin. Its parent company, DC Thomson, has since expanded its purview to websites. That's something that requires a fundamental overhaul from the tried-&-true newspaper.
Respectfully, you're contradicting yourself. It was "always newspapers" until a practical alternative arrived, and now it's expanding to websites. This, I believe, is the inherent way of things. Planet Zoo will always be a video game, requiring some form of payment to continue running...unless or until another practical vehicle becomes available, and then it will likely expand or replace the current model.
(rambles) Who knows? Maybe someday each "guest" will be a fully realized AI personality, and each animal will be a little biological organism, and it will not only be unethical but illegal to allow the animals to become sick or die...and there will arguments about the implications of signing up to make oneself responsible for their little lives...and I'm sure some will happily PAY to do it!
(/rambles)
Are sharks a controversial thing to keep in aquariums? whale sharks due to their size sure, but i have never heard of sharks in general being critized before
My point is that a sequel would be that vehicle to expand on something else, while our current game is the same newspaper that's been running since 2019. A sequel doesn't even have to specifically be about new mechanics, it gives them the liberty to completely overhaul the art-style too. We can have ground-up animal models that match the aesthetic of PZ's guests, for example. Sky's the limit when you look anew.
For great whites (and several other pelagic sharks), they tend to fare quite poorly in captivity. The longest holding lasted less than 10 months AFAIK, and mainly since the means to get them feeding are so resource intensive due to how sharks function.
And from overseeing community dialogue on Zoo Tycoon: The Board Game, there's a bit of debate on how some more commonly held shark species like sand tigers and blacktip reef sharks do in captivity. That's why they ultimately settled with zebra sharks.
Ahhhha! Okay; I understand, and I agree. But I don't think there's a "cure" for having to continually pay for updates and upgrades, as there's no real-world way to make the sales of new copies pay for the ongoing work. Eventually everyone who wants to own it does own it, but the need for changes of some kind never stops.
Animals run down climbing frames. They do not climb down them. They jump off just before the ground, as if they were on a ledge. They run along random paths to change the climbing platform. They don't run down low platforms, like this thick tree stump, they run diagonally in the air.
I agree that aquaria would be neat but not feel like a fully “huge new feature” without the addition of megafauna like whales and large sharks. I personally want them, I know the debates I know the history and irl examples, but they’re so iconic and it would be amazing roleplaying to be the zoo that gets it right in game or something. I love cetaceans and seeing them made by frontier would be awesome and building for them would be amazing. Without those huge ticket animals aquaria would feel as a neat add on, besides a couple sharks and manatees, and not something fully worth a whole sequel. IMO
I think manatee, sea turtle, sharks, rays and other big salt and freshwater fish would be enough to warrant aquariums as a feature.
Personally i dont really care either way for cetaceans, nothing im probably going to use often if ever tbh, but i wouldnt be bothered if they added 1 or 2.
As long as they dont make aquariums a seperate game im down
Personally i dont really care either way for cetaceans, nothing im probably going to use often if ever tbh, but i wouldnt be bothered if they added 1 or 2.
As long as they dont make aquariums a seperate game im down
Generally I feel like you need more fish to represent them satisfyingly, than you do megafauna to represent land animals. I've tried my hand at making a Planet Aquarium roster before, and it's difficult to balance it within the scale of Planet Zoo's base 53 launch habitat species. Megaquarium has over 90 saltwater animals in its base game without touching freshwater, and even then that base game has big gaps of which not all have been filled by full-blown expansion packs.
The difference between me and others here may be that I really like fish on their own merit and prefer aquariums over land zoos. Most people here probably have the opposite preferences. But for me, I will genuinely be sad if (let's be honest - when) Planet Zoo 2 is launched with a half-baked aquarium feature. Because I know we'd be lucky to launch with more than 10 aquarium species in that situation, and that number wouldn't be substantially improved post-launch if we go off of JWE2. Maybe a couple DLCs would add an aquatic each, maybe there would be one dedicated animal pack. But that wouldn't take aquatic rep to where it would need to be for variety. Frontier and Planet Zoo players might think "you got aquariums, good enough" at that point, but the thing is that it wouldn't be good enough, and all it would do is lock us out from getting a product that actually does celebrate the diversity of the world's waters by giving aquariums the center stage.
Hopefully I'm not too hard-line in how I come off about this. The best comparison I can think of is if JWE3 were cancelled and a handful of Jurassic dinosaurs were tacked onto PZ instead, that might disappoint fans because it'd mean that the potential that a Jurassic game would never be lived up to. Aquarium builders have a similar potential, and they are much more untapped than dinosaur park builders. The only one we've ever really had is Megaquarium. Everything else is either focused on home aquariums, or only fantastical or marine park species ala Marine Mania. We have plenty of zoo games in comparison, including plenty that mix in aquatics, yet no alternatives to Megaquarium.
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I agree that planet aquarium is a horrible idea and should just be in PZ. Rays would be great if touch tanks were allowed which I expect it would be, personally I see the sea turtle as something that can work with the game as is rn so that’s why I didn’t add it.
But just manatees and sharks and rays and small fish wouldn’t be the headlines that cetaceans would be. I could agree that at launch just a Beluga and Dolphin would be nice, but I would be disappointed if we didn’t get porpoises, whale sharks, and dare I say: narwhals, orcas, great whites I just feel like they’re almost too iconic to be left out
I think PZ2 is inevitable. Too much need to be added and fix. I just hope, ALL the existing roster will be ported and keep adding DLC with air and sea animals. So my biggest concern is the roster.
Not sure if you mean the entire roster in base game. If so, that is not realistic. And it would also lead to a lack of quality.
If you mean the entire roster be ported back throught the life span of the game and with DLCs, then I am on board with it.
I agree that a PZ with aquatics is unlikely to have more than 10-12 species in the base game. But I disagree that there wouldn't be much in the way of DLC interest. I find marine animals much more marketable than birds, for example. An aquatic DLC with a Hammerhead Shark as headliner is still going to be popular among general players even with a Great White, Tiger and Mako sharks already in game. Could you say the same for a Harpy Eagle once we already have Bald, Golden and Sea eagles? It would be cool, and many on the forums would love it - but it's not the big draw of a big fish species.
I actually think bird DLCs would be limited to 1-2 dedicated ones, and then they will add more in 1s and 2s after that.
I could see at least 3-4 dedicated DLCs of 8 aquatic species that would sell well, including fish sprinkled in to other general DLCs to boot. Also remember that aquatic DLCs can also include popular animals like Walrus, Sea Otter, Leopard Seal, etc. that will boost their appeal.
I assume based on PC2 it’ll be through the lifespan of the game