Honestly I am deeply concerned for management in this game

[LN]

I'd rather have pop up notifications on my screen on the left side that I need to click, instead of a bunch of hovering symbols all over my screen.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I feel that Planet Zoo just does management wrong. I say this not to hate or be overly critical, but it is a problem that already affected PlanCo and JWE.

If we take a look at Planet Zoo, there are two often heard complaints:

1) the (exquisitely beautiful) animals do not interact much with the environment and with each other and are therefore kind of static eye-candy.
2) the management aspect is built on identifying problems that consist of statistic bars whose levels need to be improved which makes solving the problem not very satisfying

The unifying problem here is that there are not enough transparent visual hints that inform us what the problem is with the animals or the enclosure which subsequently subtracts from the satisfaction of solving the problem. Interestingly enough, this is where visually "more simple" games like Megaquarium, Parkitect and Two Point Hospital actually do a lot better. Problems are immediately visible on screen in the aquarium/park/hospital itself, not in the UI or in text messages. Solving the problem is thereby also a loy motr satisfying.

Making a good management game is not just done by making it more difficult to succeed and adding tons of parameters that need to be met: it is done by making satisfying gameplay loops.

I fear that once the hype dies down, more and more reviewers will come to realize that this game is an exquisite building game which does not reach the bar set by other management games.

I think you are a bit too harsh..

1) the interaction.. A lot of game mechanics were not implemented in the Beta. We don't know how much interaction was left out atm. A lot of people were expecting limited features but that are 100% ready. We know some features weren't ready yet..They could be right but since we were only shown a beta version, a bit too harsh imo..
2) A bit confused about this one.. Do you mean the statistics bars in the animal screen (animal management) or the star rating system (park management)?

Not sure what you mean with the unifying problem part:
Don't you like the notification system? Do you dislike the rating system? Or do you want a feature which tells you what's exactly wrong with your animal/zoo?
(Haven't played Two Point hospital in a while and the 2 other games are unknown to me)

I don't know how important management is to this game.. My guess would be that Frontier looks for a nice balance in management and animal care..

 

[tobyhine]

this is where visually "more simple" games like Megaquarium, Parkitect and Two Point Hospital actually do a lot better. Problems are immediately visible on screen in the aquarium/park/hospital itself, not in the UI or in text messages

Different is not necessarily better.

You happened to list three games with distinctly cartoon style, which conflicts less with arbitrary floating icons. You can add Parkasaurus, Flotsam, Oxygen Not Included and many others to your list of games that do this kind of thing well - they all happen to be quite markedly stylised. There are examples of non-stylised games that do the visual indicators thing - Cities Skylines does it, for example.
Notably, Rollercoaster Tycoon doesn't use any of your suggested visual indicators, beyond the same kind of stuff done by Planet Zoo/Coaster - tired guests having droopy walks and suchlike. On the UI point, Democracy is a management game that works entirely through UI, and I wouldn't go so far as to go it is 'better' or 'worse' than other ways of communicating the same information - just the decision they made for the game they were building.

The Cities Skylines example is also interesting, since the icons easily distract from the city itself - buildings often less visually important than any floating symbols. Seems odd to me to spend a lot of time making a game look good and then litter it with symbols. Possibly why this is more common with less overtly realistic-looking games.

The furthest I'd go is that UI-only tends to read a little more 'hardcore' than friendly visual indicators, but I'm still sure that different is not necessarily better.

2) the management aspect is built on identifying problems that consist of statistic bars whose levels need to be improved which makes solving the problem not very satisfying

Do you have an example of a game that does this well, for you?

I have to say that playing the beta, only a tiny fraction of my time was spent filling bars - only in the terrain set-up and adding enrichment items when they are researched.
Otherwise, all the time was spent doing cosmetic things to make the zoo look the way I wanted, changing stuff around to optimise travel time for staff/guests/animals, and managing breeding programmes - moving animals around to optimise genetic potential.
I suppose I spent a fair amount of time messing with 'Compare Mates' to make the most of the genetic diversity I had, but this was still a very small part of time spent.

An example would definitely help understand what you're imagining.

 

[alaiksandreis]

Different is not necessarily better.

You happened to list three games with distinctly cartoon style, which conflicts less with arbitrary floating icons. You can add Parkasaurus, Flotsam, Oxygen Not Included and many others to your list of games that do this kind of thing well - they all happen to be quite markedly stylised. There are examples of non-stylised games that do the visual indicators thing - Cities Skylines does it, for example.
Notably, Rollercoaster Tycoon doesn't use any of your suggested visual indicators, beyond the same kind of stuff done by Planet Zoo/Coaster - tired guests having droopy walks and suchlike. On the UI point, Democracy is a management game that works entirely through UI, and I wouldn't go so far as to go it is 'better' or 'worse' than other ways of communicating the same information - just the decision they made for the game they were building.

The Cities Skylines example is also interesting, since the icons easily distract from the city itself - buildings often less visually important than any floating symbols. Seems odd to me to spend a lot of time making a game look good and then litter it with symbols. Possibly why this is more common with less overtly realistic-looking games.

The furthest I'd go is that UI-only tends to read a little more 'hardcore' than friendly visual indicators, but I'm still sure that different is not necessarily better.



Do you have an example of a game that does this well, for you?

I have to say that playing the beta, only a tiny fraction of my time was spent filling bars - only in the terrain set-up and adding enrichment items when they are researched.
Otherwise, all the time was spent doing cosmetic things to make the zoo look the way I wanted, changing stuff around to optimise travel time for staff/guests/animals, and managing breeding programmes - moving animals around to optimise genetic potential.
I suppose I spent a fair amount of time messing with 'Compare Mates' to make the most of the genetic diversity I had, but this was still a very small part of time spent.

An example would definitely help understand what you're imagining.

Thank you for your reply. You make some good points.

I think it is inherently hard to make a visually realistic management game that reflects the gameplay elements of the management compartment in its visual style.

I like the example of Cities Skylines. I know some people play it is a management game, but for me the management part is not as important as the artistic part of making beautiful cities. But what I like about it is that problems are immediately clear. Sewage backup, symbols, abandoned commercial zones, symbols. They are not pretty, but they are necessary.

In the same vein, I think Surviving Mars does a reasonably good job of juggling management and realistic visual style.

To sum-up: it is not easy to do it, but i feel that at least in the beta Planet Zoo partly shows the same deficits as Planco and JWE

 

[tobyhine]

I'm not really arguing with you - I'm just a pragmatist. If the style is cohesive and I can get the information I want, I'm happy. I can understand the need to make information transparent to the player, but am also wary of 'more is more'.

In the same vein, I think Surviving Mars does a reasonably good job of juggling management and realistic visual style.

Funnily, Surviving Mars felt disappointingly shallow to me. I had no problems with UI design, because there was barely any need for a UI.

To sum-up: it is not easy to do it, but i feel that at least in the beta Planet Zoo partly shows the same deficits as Planco and JWE

There are certainly clear swathes of similarity between PZ and PC (I've not played JW:E). My experience with PZ suggests it has a few more layers of management than PC, though - coasters don't need as much supervision as a breeding programme. Beyond a bit too much clicking around (that felt like standard UI polish things) I didn't have much trouble accessing useful information.

That said, the fact I found it pretty straightforward is kinda irrelevant if you didn't. The idea that a UI redesign would bring about a shift in the management core of the game seems a bit off to me, nonetheless.

I'm reminded of the old adage 'Players are almost always right that there is a problem, and almost always wrong about how to fix it.'

 

[NikolaP]

The unifying problem here is that there are not enough transparent visual hints that inform us what the problem is with the animals or the enclosure which subsequently subtracts from the satisfaction of solving the problem. Interestingly enough, this is where visually "more simple" games like Megaquarium, Parkitect and Two Point Hospital actually do a lot better.

Ok I have problem with statements like this.

Currently Steam numbers:

Planet Coaster: 2404 players
Two Point Hospital: 931 players
Parkitect: 140 players
Megaquarium: 30 players

When people say and compare something like you did normally I have a feeling that in this case Planet Coaster (cause PC is already released game) have a problem and it is a bad game. People tends to act like Planet Coaster should follow steps from those games. Now I haven't played any of these 4 games, nor Planet Coaster nor any of rest and I don't know where is quite the problem with game, cause if you read some post at reddit or steam I have a feeling that Planet Coaster no one playing and those like Parkitect and Two Point Hospital are massively popuplar, but I just look at statistics and see numbers.

If I am not wrong Planet Coaster game is from 2016.? And it is still played like double then second let say rival (in your post) and other two games aren't even in comparison. So where is the problem here actually?

 

[daisymayuk]

Personally for me its all about the animals, breading good healthy animals and conservation, funded by the public. I agree there has to be management stuff but if it was all about the money or micromanaging everything it may as well be PlanetTesco....

 

[alaiksandreis]

I think no one is arguing planet zoo is going to be a bad game. Some people are of the provisional opinion (me included) that gameplay wise planet zoo might not scratch the management itch in the same way that smaller less played indie titles are able to do (numbers are imo irrelevant here because indie titles naturally dont have the sales numbers as titles of a big publisher like frontier) . Also planco was not able to shine management wise unfortunately (this assessment was shared by many game journalists in their reviews of planco. Great building game, not a brilliant management game). In what regards planet zoo, i would love to be proven wrong in my worries