Save this game fast... bugs & flawed gamedesign are getting out of control

[peon2t]

As probably everyone with a Zoo of a certain size knows, this game has one major design flaw... and this major design flaws plus the 1000 minor design flaws and bugs are goading each other so that the game gets more and more unplayable, the bigger your zoo gets.

The major design flaw is the amount of micromanagement that's getting out of control. The bigger your zoo gets, the more time you have to spend in Pause in order to fix all the stuff that goes berserk. Currently I'd say I spend 95% or more of my playtime in pause mode (zoo with about 30 habitats).

Now the thing is: Even if you try to manage everything in a way so that it's as self-sustainable as possible, it still doesn't work.
Mainly because of two reasons:
1. Bugs - there are so many bugs afflicting this game, that a major part of your playtime is simply consumed by "micromanaging" the consequences of different bugs
2. Things aren't meant to be in balance/mechanics don't allow balance

Like this the game becomes more and more unplayable.

Just a couple of "issues" that currently consume most of my playtime:

- Checking on dozens of messages about hungry animals... I almost never had a hungry animal for like 70 ingame years... but a few days ago it started all over the zoo... I have no idea why... I always hired new employees to keep up with the growth of the zoo... and now I hired an extra-ton of new employees... it doesn't help. No matter how much employees I put in my Zoo... after some point they just stopped to manage what they managed for 70 ingame hours: Feeding my animals. Now I constantly have messages about hungry animals and manually deploy employees there. Just started from one day to the next. Probably after some "patch" or what do I know...

- Updating the toys in every habitat because recently (again: after 70 years without issues) the toy-ratings in every habitat just started dropping from 100% to like 20%... all of a sudden... yay

- Uboxing animals that suddenly somehow get mass-boxed constantly (again: had the problem with mysteriously auto-boxed animals almost never... until recently where in a couple of habitats the animals constantly started to get auto-boxed

- Tediously selecting fresh adults of a certain species which I breed for CP in order to get them to the market... why tediously? Because the filters in the animal list stopped working! Yes, you heard me. The filters always worked... until today (or yesterday or so)... if I filter for the species among my animals, I get an empty list even if I have a ton of those in my zoo... now good luck hand-picking them among my 250 animals without filters.

- Constantly "balancing" the animals in the habitats because when you have 30 habitats, every minute of unpaused gameplay will give you a new situation in a habitat where some youngsters become adults and the habitat starts riotting or whatever...


etc. etc. etc.

IMHO if those issues aren't adressed quickly, the game will die. I want a game to be fun. I want to build something great. I don't want to spend 95% of my playtime "micromanaging" your bugs & design flaws.

 

[Mctittles]

A lot of good management games start out with more micromanagement and as the game goes on you unlock more automation so you can expand without watching all the small stuff anymore.

 

[peon2t]

A lot of good management games start out with more micromanagement and as the game goes on you unlock more automation so you can expand without watching all the small stuff anymore.

Yep. But this game does not only have no unlockable automation, it keeps adding new bugs which increase the amount of micromanagement overproportional -.-

 

[marcsman]

I totally agree. It's getting worse with every patch. I wish I could play the Beta again. I didn't experience so many bugs in Beta. I'm not concerned about some crashes or something like that, that's quiet normal and if you save regurlarly, the damage stays small.

I'm more annoyed about some simple things that a really easy made, but almost four weeks after release they don't care about. These things are so broken, it's still makes no sense to build a zoo because many of the micromanaging things are not working properly.
Some examples:

- Food costs: It's totally messed up after the last patch... Now I have to pay around 14000$ per feeding for one enclosure with 8 (!) Pandas. Normally they should release a fix within hours because you gonna destroy financially your zoo if you play further. They're many smaller companies on the market which care more about their customers.

- Staff room: It doesn't has any of those effects you can choose like staff training members are faster regaining because the building doesn't saves the settings you make. So in later game phases it's quite important to have those buildings advantages... It's bugged since Beta and should be fixed very easily. But nothing happens. Again: Almost four weeks after release!

- Information boards for the guests (those which gives them the knowledge about the animals) break down very often (sometimes they get destroyed by visitors) but the technical staff is not caring about. You have to fix it by hand. Right now it's not possible to add them to workzones. And the best: You've to choose the kind of content again because it's lost when fix the board - just another useless clicking). The game is designed to micromanage those things. => they haven't learned from Jurassic World Evolution...?

- Technical staff members should interrupt their research for maintaining, this was already mentioned during Beta. But know they are researching and researching and forget to maintain. You have to send them by hand. Again: Useless micromanagement which makes no sense and fun at all (again: haven't they learned from Jurassic World evolution?).

- Staff members which quitting their job should be re-employable (it's even explained somewhere in the game helpsites), but it's not possible. There's no button for re-employ this staff member.

- You need some zookeepers to transport your animals. So, for better working efficiency, I separated them in different work groups. Some shall clean up the area which is used by visitors and some only shall transport animals. So, after a while, those who only transporting the animals start to get bored and after a certain time they quit their job. Here's now the problem withe the other problem mentioned before: You design workzones as they are meant to be but you can't prevent your staff to get bored because the staff room is not saving your settings and you can't re-employ because there's no button for it. That's really annoying and you don't need a degree in atomic physics to fix it.

- The advanced research for animals is absolutely useless. I'm know researching for 90 gameyears with a 5-star medical staff member and nothing happens. There's no end for research and no bonus at all. The staff member is just occupied with research work which is totally useless. So, did they implement something for it or were they just planning about... it makes no sense right now.

- Franchise mode was totally hyped - but it seems they don't have the interest to provide enough servers for it. Luckily, I didn't had so many troubles with it like many other gamers but their treatment to solve was more stepmotherly in the last weeks. These are things which should be planned in advance and not weeks after release.

- You can save your blueprint for enclosures. But I had many times when it wasn't possible to place it like the original enclosure. For example, I saved an enclosure which was totally flat but had some sunken plants in it. The result was when I tried to place the blueprint, it was somewhere up in the air and I had to place it properly with advanced mode. If you do this more than one time, game get's very laggy and it's almost impossible to place this blueprint correctly.

- I saved a blueprint of an enclosure. Very easy and only some feeding and play items where added. I wanted to place this saved blueprint - but it was locked in the building menu although I saved it just seconds before and there're no items in it which aren't researched. So this must be a bug. And an easy to fix one again. So why nothings happens here? It's not even possible to delete this locked blueprint. So the result is that your building menu is filled by things which you can't use because of bugs or poor design.

- Zoo guests are more interested in watching some peafowls than to take look at the tiger's enclosure. Although tigers have a lot more attraction points than peafowls. So, in this game, visitors are acting like "I want to see a tiger, but it's not within the next 100 meters so I prefer to see a common peafowl before I'm leaving again..."

- If you participate at the community challenge you can achieve some rewards like clothings for your avatar or conservation points. I never got those points they showed me for reward. I'm not complaining about the lost points, it just shows me that it's not working - and again: they're not fixing it. And there's no possibility in game to use those digital outfits (or did I miss it?).

- More aesthetically : In financial screen you can see some information about your outgoings. There's a asset named "taxes", there's some money outgoing but the columns of that asset are always 0 although i spent a little amount for it. So I don't know for what it was designed. They don't even care about those management things although it's selled as management game.

I could add a lot more but I don't want to spend more of my freetime than the developers for their job.

So these examples interfere the game fun a lot, in some cases they prevent to build up a financially reliable zoo (and it's not because of your own mismanagement) and could be fixed very, very easily. Right now, for me it's still like playing a Beta and that's ridiculous compared to the hype they making around the release or now for the community challenges. They should fix this game asap as they already charged an AAA+ price for it. But bugfixing service is more a FFF. As mentioned before, there're many companies out there which are a lot smaller but care more about bugfixing, especially after release. At the moment, playing this title feels like playing an early access title. It's really sad, because it could be a great and wonderful game if they would care so much about it like many of us players take care for those (digital) individuals.

At least they should resolve those bugs with feeding prices within hours! They can't be serious that this is the state of the game after four weeks.

 

[Crea_TivELA]

I totally agree. It's getting worse with every patch. I wish I could play the Beta again. I didn't experience so many bugs in Beta. I'm not concerned about some crashes or something like that, that's quiet normal and if you save regurlarly, the damage stays small.

I'm more annoyed about some simple things that a really easy made, but almost four weeks after release they don't care about. These things are so broken, it's still makes no sense to build a zoo because many of the micromanaging things are not working properly.
Some examples:

- Food costs: It's totally messed up after the last patch... Now I have to pay around 14000$ per feeding for one enclosure with 8 (!) Pandas. Normally they should release a fix within hours because you gonna destroy financially your zoo if you play further. They're many smaller companies on the market which care more about their customers.

- Staff room: It doesn't has any of those effects you can choose like staff training members are faster regaining because the building doesn't saves the settings you make. So in later game phases it's quite important to have those buildings advantages... It's bugged since Beta and should be fixed very easily. But nothing happens. Again: Almost four weeks after release!

- Information boards for the guests (those which gives them the knowledge about the animals) break down very often (sometimes they get destroyed by visitors) but the technical staff is not caring about. You have to fix it by hand. Right now it's not possible to add them to workzones. So the game is designed to micromanage those things. => they haven't learned from Jurassic World Evolution...?

- Technical staff members should interrupt their research for maintaining, this was already mentioned during Beta. But know they are researching and researching and forget to maintain. You have to send them by hand. Again: Useless micromanagement which makes no sense and fun at all (again: haven't they learned from Jurassic World evolution?).

- Staff members which quitting their job should be re-employable (it's even explained somewhere in the game helpsites), but it's not possible. There's no button for re-employ this staff member.

- You need some zookeepers to transport your animals. So, for better working efficiency, I separated them in different work groups. Some shall clean up the area which is used by visitors and some only shall transport animals. So, after a while, those who only transporting the animals start to get bored and after a certain time they quit their job. Here's now the problem withe the other problem mentioned before: You design workzones as they are meant to be but you can't prevent your staff to get bored because the staff room is not saving your settings and you can't re-employ because there's no button for it. That's really annoying and you don't need a degree in atomic physics to fix it.

- The advanced research for animals is absolutely useless. I'm know researching for 90 gameyears with a 5-star medical staff member and nothing happens. There's no end for research and no bonus at all. The staff member is just occupied with research work which is totally useless. So, did they implement something for it or were they just planning about... it makes no sense right now.

- Franchise mode was totally hyped - but it seems they don't have the interest to provide enough servers for it. Luckily, I didn't had so many troubles with it like many other gamers but their treatment to solve was more stepmotherly in the last weeks. These are things which should be planned in advance and not weeks after release.

- You can save your blueprint for enclosures. But I had many times when it wasn't possible to place it like the original enclosure. For example, I saved an enclosure which was totally flat but had some sunken plants in it. The result was when I tried to place the blueprint, it was somewhere up in the air and I had to place it properly with advanced mode. If you do this more than one time, game get's very laggy and it's almost impossible to place this blueprint correctly.

- I saved a blueprint of an enclosure. Very easy and only some feeding and play items where added. I wanted to place this saved blueprint - but it was locked in the building menu although I saved it just seconds before and there're no items in it which aren't researched. So this must be a bug. And an easy to fix one again. So why nothings happens here? It's not even possible to delete this locked blueprint. So the result is that your building menu is filled by things which you can't use because of bugs or poor design.

- Zoo guests are more interested in watching some peafowls than to take look at the tiger's enclosure. Although tigers have a lot more attraction points than peafowls. So, in this game, visitors are acting like "I want to see a tiger, but it's not within the next 100 meters so I prefer to see a common peafowl before I'm leaving again..."

- More aesthetically : In financial screen you can see some information about your outgoings. There's a asset named "taxes", there's some money outgoing but the columns of that asset are always 0 although i spent a little amount for it. So I don't know for what it was designed. They don't even care about those management things although it's selled as management game.

I could add a lot more but I don't want to spend more of my freetime than the developers for their job.

So these examples interfere the game fun a lot, in some cases they prevent to build up a financially reliable zoo (and it's not because of your own mismanagement) and could be fixed very, very easily. Right now, for me it's still like playing a Beta and that's ridiculous compared to the hype they making around the release or now for the community challenges. They should fix this game asap as they already charged an AAA+ price for it. But bugfixing service is more a FFF. As mentioned before, there're many companies out there which are a lot smaller but care more about bugfixing, especially after release. At the moment, playing this title feels like playing an early access title. It's really sad, because it could be a great and wonderful game if they would care so much about it like many of us players take care for those (digital) individuals.

At least they should resolve those bugs with feeding prices within hours! They can't be serious that this is the state of the game after four weeks.

You sound angry and sad... that makes me sad, but I understand you.

Maybe it's a bit too optimistic or "blue-eyed", but even with all the issues you explained (very well) they can't do more then work on it and try things to make the game what it should be.
I'm sure it's not that easy like to flip a switch... we don't know how complex the programm was written and how hard it is to change somwthing, they show with every update that they take care and work on it.
I understand why you feel like you bought a full release game and why it feels like early access, since the balancing is not quiet right yet - maybe it was wrong to release it as a full game which is ready, but this is not in the hands of the programmers who surely work on the issues as good as they can - it's more a decision upper part from Frontier. Maybe a Early Access would have been better, but they can't change this anymore. There are many little fires right now, maybe your post helps them to focus on that, but it will take time.
I love the game too and see the potencial, but the programmers need time to figure out how to solve the problems which occure.

I didn't play yet after the new update, because I was scared too of the food cost issue some people decribed - I think this has first priority to them, because otherwise people lose their zoos and they surely don't want that.

Maybe my post don't helps much, but maybe you can sleep a little bit better tonight - Frontier takes care, but they only can do one after the other.

Goodnight @marcsman

 

[marcsman]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm now gamer for over 30 years and I can tell you it's getting down with that industry. Today it's only about hyping your game before release, earn as much as you can and leave the customers widely alone afterwards. I've some knowledge about coding and programming - the things I mentioned are really easy to fix. Sometimes you just have to change the number of the priority of a process. But nothing is done. And they had a public Beta phase with much reports. And you see that many of those things are still left out. It's like buying a new Mercedes but then you realize you can't drive faster than 50 mph, the third gear is broken and the backseats are just visual but not for use. And the trader says he'll take a look after it somewhen in the next weeks or months... than he's fixing the gear, but the other things are still left out and he tells you again that he'll take a look within the next weeks. Are you telling me you would go there again? Same here... no excuses for an industry which is clearly out of its child's shoes.

Goodnight Crea_TivELA ;-)

 

[Eewrie]

I'm with the other posts here they brought out an update and it made more problems or brought back old problems.

 

[sonicmyst]

Sadly most of what you say are true. The proportion of micromanaging each and every aspect of the zoo gets out of control especially for large zoos. I have my first challenge mode zoo filled up to 1/4 of the total map size and it gets this tedious to click, sell, feed, fix, move things. I hope the devs can really fix things asap, especially those breaking some quality of life tools (looking at you, filter and the staff perks that are not saving)

 

[Sclurp]

This is what I posted recently (before the most recent patch):

"I have now encountered a bug/issue every single time I've played PZ since release. I am absolutely fed up with it. I've tried to stay in good spirits about it, submitting bug reports and bringing things up here but I feel like I should just step away from the game and come back in a couple of months. I won't be recommending it to anyone until the game is playable and so far I'm struggling to get Franchise mode to work, I am struggling to get Sandbox mode to work and the career/campaign is worst of all. I said after the beta I felt it was in the best interest of the game to delay it as it had many issues and the response to my concerns about the state of the game in other discussions was that this game was "100% ready".

But there are game breaking bugs. Patches that seem to introduce new bugs. Now I'm getting random crashes.

I don't like to post things that are overly critical as I believe that the Frontier devs are talented and that they do work hard and the decisions that have been made are probably made by individuals who are higher up in the food chain. But at the same time, I paid money for this and it doesn't work.

[This post was edited after going back into the game following the concerns below, only to encounter not one but four bugs followed by two crashes] "

-- Today I thought, as the patch notes were quite extensive, it might be worth taking a quick look to check on whether the game was any better - PZ crashed after twenty minutes. I feel that the state of the game as it is now, reflects the same level of polish seen in the Planet Coaster alpha and not of a title that should have been released when it did, at the price it did. I am not going to continue to play only to be told to keep submitting issue reports (I don't work in QA) nor should this burden be put on players.
I am disappointed to see new bugs introduced with each patch and to not see any apologies from anyone at Frontier. I'm disappointed to see they have not learnt anything from Planet Coaster nor the PZ beta. Someone at Frontier seems to be totally sold on their own ideas/value and that trumps all the feedback we've been trying to throw at them.

The issues, like you all have said, goes beyond bugs but also include how they have designed this game and at its core it needs a major overhaul. It doesn't quite have a game in there - not one that makes sense and not one that is much fun. I don't foresee much longevity in this title once players are bored of hoarding their fortune of CC and participating in the first batch of community challenges. What else is there to come back to apart from what I expect will be a regular stream of animal DLC?

This genre of games has titans that have stood the test of time despite how far we've come with technology and presentation. We go back to those titles again and again because they were built as fun-first games with a very clear way of how you achieve goals and how their design should be communicated to the player. They are not about micromanaging crisis after crisis...Or figuring out your zoo nearly went bankrupt because you hadn't found the right sub-menu that was hidden away behind 2-5 mouse clicks.

I worry (just a bit) if Frontier do not shake up the culture in their company and put gameplay first, that they'll tarnish not just their own reputation (which is quickly becoming: Frontier make beautiful but painfully hollow games) but also the reputation of the Planet series as well. I certainly won't be purchasing any JWE DLC nor PZ DLC in the near future.

I'm reminded of how Planet Coaster was leaving players a bit confused about where the "simulation evolved" aspect of the game was and how Frontier decided to implement new feature after new feature but none of them were brought together to work as a whole. Nothing felt coherent or fun. You just had a collection of half baked ideas that you had to micromanage if you didn't turn them off in Settings altogether. I worry we will see that happen to Planet Zoo.

 

[Indiglow]

I literally cannot play my franchise because of the issues.

The refunds have gone absolutely bonkers and the animal food and breeding is still a major problem.

The economy is broken, the speed is ridiculously too high, and it's dang near impossible to make money in franchise now with refunds eating up 1/3rd of your profits even if your guest happiness is in the 4.5 range.

Unplayable.

Meanwhile, they are doing nothing about the people who are blatantly cheating.

"Put a ticket in"....yeah, I did. Weeks ago. It hasn't been touched.

 

[NL_Mutso]

At the moment, playing this title feels like playing an early access title

At first I was: Yeah, every newly released game has issues but at this moment I starting to agree with this.
Game feels more broken after every update...

Refunds were a big surprise with the last update.. I got 4,5-4,75 happiness and spent a lot of $ on refunds..
Still making a nice profit but I don't get the sudden change in refunds.. Refunds were basically 0-5, now they range from 15-65k

I don't have any issues with hungry animals but my main zoo has become unplayable (infinite loading screen)
The hours I've played this game have drastically decreased in the last 1,5 week.

My biggest frustration is the animal market lag.. Clicking that $#%! button over and over.. Saw a tip to click it once and then hit enter, helps a bit..

 

[Mkau]

Totally agree with most of the points made in this thread.As I already said at the official release: This game was NOT ready for release.It was not 100% finished.I mean,80-90% of the beta bugs and glitches were still in the full game,totally new bugs at release and with every new patch and no day one patch - that says everything.The game is definitely beautiful from the outside,but from the inside..oh boy.The game should have definitely been delayed.

 

[Bluefriend]

Probably the developers have struggled to find the right balance, many players were asking for more management, now there is not even time to enjoy the animals while drinking a cup of tea.

 

[Imagin]

I played beta and saw this coming. I actually asked them to delay the release because it was obvious that they didn't have nearly enough time to fix how bad it was in beta. This is planned in the industry now. They want to get the money coming in as fast as possible so they build up the hype and release long before they should and just do patches afterward. This is possible because everything is digital download now. In some cases perhaps that's not so bad but in the case of Planet Zoo they released way too early. After this last patch I now have more bugs than I did in beta.

The only way to change this industry trend is to stop pre-ordering games and not buy them at all until we KNOW all the bugs have been worked out. There is no excuse for selling an unfinished product other than the hordes of people lining up to give you their money. They've got our money now.

 

[Imagin]

Probably the developers have struggled to find the right balance, many players were asking for more management, now there is not even time to enjoy the animals while drinking a cup of tea.

It's worse than that. Even in sandbox mode there are many issues. It's not a struggle for balance, it's a struggle to finish their game while people are playing it. It was released way to early.

 

[Sclurp]

They've got our money now.

Very this. With PC I knew what I was signing up for with the alpha and was happy to pay more money than most did as I wanted to support its development.

With PZ, I feel duped. As you said, they’ve got our money now and it’s not like these issues are immediately apparent (within the 2 hour refund window) and after the beta we were told this game was ready to launch.

I am going to hold off from buying all future Frontier titles now. Until I know everything works

 

[Imagin]

With PZ, I feel duped. As you said, they’ve got our money now and it’s not like these issues are immediately apparent (within the 2 hour refund window) and after the beta we were told this game was ready to launch.

I am going to hold off from buying all future Frontier titles now. Until I know everything works

Exactly, I remember that post too, they specifically said, "we're ready" but they are still not ready. This isn't just Frontier, this releasing buggy beyond belief games is becoming an industry standard. Frontier definitely pushed the limits with this game though. From now on, I'm not buying ANY game until I know everything works.

 

[marcsman]

I agree with all of you, again. It's really sad, that they're not even try to excuse this desaster. The communication strategy of Frontier is really terrible. They don't read and communicate on steam, force you to sign here and report problems etc. but answering/communicate mainly on Twitter... So you can be really sure, their main interest is getting our money. Well, as others mentioned before, I'm done with Frontier. Making PC a milking cow with its DLC, publishing a better screensaver as an AAA+ title (Jurassic World Evolution) and now this with PZ... and again, 24 hours passed away and nothing happened. It shouldn't be that problem to even fix that problems with food costs, but... nothing. I know games which cost just 1/3 of PZ where I reported bugs and they released a bugfix after 2 hours(!). This happens when you care about your customers.

If one takes a deeper look at PZ, you can see (as many others and I mentioned before) the game is not finished, many things are not even implentened (like staff room advantages or advanced research) and then they make it worse with every patch, instead of fixing this issues. Right now the game is not playable as a management title. Sure, you can design some buildings or breed some animals but because of this gamebreaking bugs, almost four weeks after release of a big hyped AAA+ title, it's still not playable in a way that makes sense.

 

[Imagin]

At this point I would like them to rollback to before 1.0.3 and then slow down and do some serious QC Testing themselves and fix one thing at a time and not release it until they have tested the heck out of it.

 

[marcsman]

...and another thing which I can't understand: They knew about the limits about that cobra engine, that this is the reason why we can't profit from DX12 and what are they doing when releasing a game nearly to 2020? Use that engine again... and oh wonder: Low fps rates again. I really was hopeful that they would care about that this game is more playable compared with PC. But for some short marketing videos you don't need that...

Same with those "individual" animals. It's like in Jurassic World Evolution and I honestly didn't expect more. We have some digital zombie animals which all move with the same 5 animations, there's one eating animation, one getting child animation and further on. There is nothing individual on any of those animals. They even look the same (it wouldn't be that difficult to design at least 10 different 3d-models for each animal). Take a look at an African buffalo enclosure, for example. You see just some digital zombies, which moving in the same way. Maybe interesting when you take a first look, but at least one week later you don't care about them anymore. And then you waiting for that management part of the game again... It's all made for marketing purposes until the product is selled during the first hype.