Hot takes for planet zoo

The Aardvark

The Aardvark
Utahraptor Arcanus said:
My unpopular opinion of the week is that people don't care about subspecie level of difference or diversity, This show by how little people mention that the african buffalo or wild boar should be specified considering how different some subspecie are from the animal ingame. The cats and brown bear only get a pass to be split because they subspecies are well know.
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Planet Zoo's subspecies representation has always been kind of weird...
A lot of subspecies seem to be added just to pad out the roster: Siberian AND Bengal tigers, Grizzly AND Himalayan Brown Bears... However, it seems that most of the time, an animal gets a second subspecies in the game when said new sub is different from the one already present. Good examples include:
• the African Leopard, which is very different from the Amur leopard both in appearance and range (being found in entirely different habitats on entirely different continents)
• the American Standard Donkey, which technically belongs to the same species as the Somali Wild Ass but is different both in terms of range, and in terms of interactivity with guests.
• the Arctic Wolf, which looks very distinct compared to the base game grey wolf.

However, subspecies often get problematic in two main ways:
A) The new subspecies is already included in the range map of its other counterpart. Infamous examples are the Arctic Wolf, which is already counted as part of the "timber wolf" range, and the new Bornean Pygmy Elephant, the range of which is already included in the map for the base-game Indian Elephant (which is technically incorrect).
B) an animal that is clearly meant to be of a certain subspecies gets added, but is counted as the entire species.
This is the case for the Dama Gazelle (clearly supposed to be the Addra sub, Nanger dama ruficollis), Takin (which looks a lot like the Sichuan takin, Budorcas taxicolor tibetana),
or the Markhor (meant to be the Tadjik markhor, Capra falconeri heptneri), and the aforementioned wild boar.
The timber wolf is a particularly bad example of this as well, since it's clearly based off of the northwestern grey wolf (at least this is what the animal is called in at least some translations of the game), but it's meant to represent the entire species Canis lupus.

A particular case is that of animals with overly specific subs that don't really matter to anyone, and sometimes come off as pretty baffling. The most infamous example is the Formosan Black Bear, but at least a couple other animals seem to have unnecessary subspecies (such as the West African Lion or the King Penguin, which is listed as Aptenodytes patagonicus patagonicus).

At the end of the day though, I'd say that subspecies are only relevant when it comes to animals with such a wide range of habitats and phenotypes that it would be impossible to include them all in one singular "generic" animal... Which is why I wouldn't be too opposed to having two wolves (let's say, Northwestern and Eurasian?), two brown bears (Grizzly and Eurasian?), or two leopards. Two tigers however seem like too much, and they could easily be lumped into one "generic" tiger (and maybe see the addition of the Sumatran tiger later on)
 
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Stressed Primate

Stressed Primate
The Aardvark said:
Planet Zoo's subspecies representation has always been kind of weird...
A lot of subspecies seem to be added just to pad out the roster: Siberian AND Bengal tigers, Grizzly AND Himalayan Brown Bears... However, it seems that most of the time, an animal gets a second subspecies in the game when said new sub is different from the one already present. Good examples include:
• the African Leopard, which is very different from the Amur leopard both in appearance and range (being found in entirely different habitats on entirely different continents)
• the American Standard Donkey, which technically belongs to the same species as the Somali Wild Ass but is different both in terms of range, and in terms of interactivity with guests.
• the Arctic Wolf, which looks very distinct compared to the base game grey wolf.

However, subspecies often get problematic in two main ways:
A) The new subspecies is already included in the range map of its other counterpart. Infamous examples are the Arctic Wolf, which is already counted as part of the "timber wolf" range, and the new Bornean Pygmy Elephant, the range of which is already included in the map for the base-game Indian Elephant (which is technically incorrect).
B) an animal that is clearly meant to be of a certain subspecies gets added, but is counted as the entire species.
This is the case for the Dama Gazelle (clearly supposed to be the Addra sub, Nanger dama ruficollis), Takin (which looks a lot like the Sichuan takin, Budorcas taxicolor tibetana),
or the Markhor (meant to be the Tadjik markhor, Capra falconeri heptneri), and the aforementioned wild boar.
The timber wolf is a particularly bad example of this as well, since it's clearly based off of the northwestern grey wolf (at least this is what the animal is called in at least some translations of the game), but it's meant to represent the entire species Canis lupus.

A particular case is that of animals with overly specific subs that don't really matter to anyone, and sometimes come off as pretty baffling. The most infamous example is the Formosan Black Bear, but at least a couple other animals seem to have unnecessary subspecies (such as the West African Lion or the King Penguin, which is listed as Aptenodytes patagonicus patagonicus).

At the end of the day though, I'd say that subspecies are only relevant when it comes to animals with such a wide range of habitats and phenotypes that it would be impossible to include them all in one singular "generic" animal... Which is why I wouldn't be too opposed to having two wolves (let's say, Northwestern and Eurasian?), two brown bears (Grizzly and Eurasian?), or two leopards. Two tigers however seem like too much, and they could easily be lumped into one "generic" tiger (and maybe see the addition of the Sumatran tiger later on)
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I think one big factor you didn't take into account might be subspecies adapted to different biomes, which might explain the tigers.
 

Utahraptor Arcanus

Utahraptor Arcanus
SanRazo said:
The whole subspecies mess makes me hope in PZ2 we have a subspecies dropdown or choice after selecting a species like ZT3 or PK that way we can lump them together from there
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Agreed, i have high hopes that PZ2 implement a breed/subspecie selector. This way we can have our hairless boar or red forest biffalo without worring about those taking up a slot on a potential dlc (or anniversary, looking at you African leopard).
 

The Aardvark

The Aardvark
Utahraptor Arcanus said:
Agreed, i have high hopes that PZ2 implement a breed/subspecie selector. This way we can have our hairless boar or red forest biffalo without worring about those taking up a slot on a potential dlc (or anniversary, looking at you African leopard).
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Hopefully this could also affect domestic animals, giving us multiple breeds of the same species... Having only one type of chicken and goat to choose from isn't all that exciting
 

Mjmannella

Mjmannella
This is more of a forum-focused hot take, but the "Animals" category is near-unusable for me because there's so many identical thread that are continuously spammed. I tried to raise the issue last month, but sadly it made no impact. It just feels so stagnant and repetitive while providing very little substantial content because it's just the same idea as the meta-wishlist but unrealistically specific.
 

SanRazo

SanRazo
Mjmannella said:
This is more of a forum-focused hot take, but the "Animals" category is near-unusable for me because there's so many identical thread that are continuously spammed. I tried to raise the issue last month, but sadly it made no impact. It just feels so stagnant and repetitive while providing very little substantial content because it's just the same idea as the meta-wishlist but unrealistically specific.
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I know when those lists came around I noticed that they completely flooded the animals tab. I think they should be in wishlists
 

biggest_dreamer

biggest_dreamer
Maybe there should be a separate subforum for all of the knockoff meta wishlists, excepting perhaps the main one. The original was a very sensible thing to have, and when it was initially getting a handful of offshoots for things like exhibits, aviaries, and aquatics it also made sense, since the original list wasn't really equipped to or interested in handling those. But I've never understood the desire for having dozens of others that invariably get too few responses to provide any interesting data, and just cover niche subsets of the original list anyway. I consider them to be largely just clutter that make it difficult to find the actually new or compelling threads on that forum.
 

DarthQuell

DarthQuell
biggest_dreamer said:
Maybe there should be a separate subforum for all of the knockoff meta wishlists, excepting perhaps the main one. The original was a very sensible thing to have, and when it was initially getting a handful of offshoots for things like exhibits, aviaries, and aquatics it also made sense, since the original list wasn't really equipped to or interested in handling those. But I've never understood the desire for having dozens of others that invariably get too few responses to provide any interesting data, and just cover niche subsets of the original list anyway. I consider them to be largely just clutter that make it difficult to find the actually new or compelling threads on that forum.
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Totally agree. The Habitat meta-wishlist should've gotten revamped, but RG had to step down. Suzie didn't do too bad.
The only other wishlist (not biased) that was important was the Exhibit meta-wishlist, which I ran with ReptoMin for a while, but now it doesn't apply since we haven't gotten exhibits since Eurasia (except the new butterfly, but who knows of it'll be a recurring thing or not)
 

caninesrock

caninesrock
-The Honey Badger should've been in a different pack, like another African or Safari-based pack and they should've chosen a different carnivore like an Indian Mongoose species or Indian Civet species or any other carnivore that's endemic to Asia. The Honey Badger was such an odd choice because every other animal in the pack is found exclusively in Asian countries. While yes the Honey Badger is in India and a few other Asian countries, they have a much more extensive range in Africa, being native to nearly the entire continent, so I associate them much more as being an African animal.

-The game doesn't need subspecies. Keeping things at species level is fine.
 

caninesrock

caninesrock
The Gray Wolf is my favorite animal but really other than hot climate wolves like Arabian wolves and Indian Wolves for example and the dingo, most Eurasian wolves subspecies and North American wolf subspecies don't really look that different from each other except for slight color differences which could be fixed with more color variants. Timber Wolf in the game could easily stand in for the Eurasian wolf subspecies Canis lupus lupus.

Eurasian Wolf
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Northwestern Wolf ("Timber" Wolf)
1750522168181.png
 

Birb（｡･ө･｡）

Birb（｡･ө･｡）
With all this talk of another Africa focused pack I’m wondering if it’s becoming a hot take to say i really don’t want a second zebra or giraffe? Especially not in the same pack? Great free update animals, but taking up 1-2/7 spots in a paid DLC? At least the flamingo came from totally different continents, but two giraffes are pretty much gonna have the exact same use in game.

The grévy’s zebra is marginally better to me with how much more distinct they are (the zoo I used to intern at mixed them with white rhinos, love them irl), but with how many good species there are for an Africa pack (even ones similar to base game animals, cough cough crocodile) it would still feel like a bit of a waste.
 
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