Frontier really drop the ball on planet zoo

monsterparty

monsterparty
I love the planet zoo it beautiful graphic and sound, but as dig deeper into the game you start more seeing flaws over time with animal behavior, AI, and even texture glitch's with stuff. It's like you bought a new car with it being beautiful on the out but finding your missing the engine and all rust underneath with this be like planet zoo similar feeling.

If they release an early access I think a lot people under all the bugs and glitch's because you know what get into when buy them. However a full release title it feels like you being scammed and lie to after you buy it with all stuff missing and problems. I was just watching YouTube and they were complaining about a lighting bug after save they don't work when you reloaded your save file. I mean stuff like this should not happen in a full release title.
 

Virgel

V
Aiste said:
PZ still has "Very Positive" reviews on Steam...
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A big problem on steam is, that people review a game without playing it. Most reviews for PZ are written after 10 hours.
With my own expierience i can say, that the most game-breaking issues in PZ are visbile after 40 - 60 hours / depends on how fast you play.

For example -> When i placed arround 12 exhibits, the game starts to get unbearable ennoying. So unbearable ennoying, that i decided to stop breeding for animals in exhibits. After 60 Minutes i checked the exhibits again and they where empty. All animals died. First 3 times i bought new animals and after that i decided to remove all exhibits out of my zoo. In the end the exhibits where more work then fun. Now where i have 15 habitats the game gets unbearable ennoying again. But to get there it took me 100 hours (mostly in pause mode, because of ennoying messages when playing with normal speed. So yes, the first 10 - 20 hours ingame where enjoyable, then the game starts going crazy. 😉

As you can see (on my 100 hours playtime), i really try to give this game a chance, but my patience knows limits too. 😊
 

Garyd73

Garyd73
This is the way of game development now, a game has to hit a release date almost without question that may be decided by people outside of those developing the game. When I was young before the internet and games came out on cassette tape there was almost no advertising of games and certainly no way to patch them so they had to work from day 1 but there was not so much pressure around release dates.

However, in relation to PZ more specifically, I think there is so much going on with it and they have aimed very high I think it will take a while to get everything resolved as most people would want. I will say I have had almost zero problems myself so feel lucky in that point of view and the step up from problems in the Beta to launch was pretty big for me.

I would much rather a game aims to do things that haven't been done before and take a bit of tweaking/patching on release rather than go for a standard copy/paste of other games and just be average. I do realise it is easy for me to say this having had little to no issues.
 

NL_Mutso

NL_Mutso
The lag is the most annoying part. I'm able to play almost every game on the highest setting but PZ becomes too laggy when your zoo is big. (30+ habitats/6k-8k visitors)

The lighting bug was a new one after update 1.03, but that's a minor inconvenience.. Minor stuff like this, is acceptable for a game - which was released a month ago.

When the game doesn't lag, the game runs fine/no crashes for me.. (reading stories on this forum, I'm Lucky not having that many issues)

There are just some bugs, that are frustrating at times.. Which feels like its more broken than the first weeks. Maybe because playing it longer, you'll notice some other flaws (like almost every game)

To me and others users on different forums, losing progress due to an corrupted save-file is one of the biggest issues/bugs. Spending +100 hours on 1 zoo, and suddenly unable to play it anymore..
And even worse, people who have to deal with constant crashing, which has been improved on. Not able to play the game more than 1 hour/or not at all.. Even if you meet the required spec..

Playing the game not that much atm, waiting for improvements..
 

Sweet Rainbow

S
Agreed!! So many promises that was not delivered.
Promised unique animals and smart AI, yet animals look exactly the same (albino being the only variation yet super rare), herd animals do not herd, babies do not nurse or follow mama, little interations between individuals (only mating and fighting), there is animations still not available but already showcased on trailers like the peafowl opening his tail, and animals still collide and go inside other animals.
 

NL_Mutso

NL_Mutso
Sweet Rainbow said:
Promised unique animals and smart AI, yet animals look exactly the same (albino being the only variation yet super rare), herd animals do not herd, babies do not nurse or follow mama, little interations between individuals (only mating and fighting), there is animations still not available but already showcased on trailers like the peafowl opening his tail, and animals still collide and go inside other animals.
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Promised/unique animals and smart AI is somewhat debatable.. Sometimes multiple males cause a problem and some males don't have the alpha fight.
There are some pattern variants and diffrence in size - but agreed : at first glance - not unique
Herd animals do herd, a few people mentioned seeing their animals showing slight herding (after a update)
Babies nursing was not a promised feature, people assumed it because ZT2 had this
There are more interactions than mating and fighting only, there's an entire topic dedicated to positive interactions between animals. Offspring playing with their parents etc.
Peafowl animation is missing, they confirmed that they are looking into this.
 

Dr4gon

Dr4gon
Imagin said:
I'm old enough to remember when Dad bought us Pong (Atari) in the early 70's. We've certainly come a long way since then :)
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I still remember buying the books with the programs. You don't buy the super mario game, you buy a book. And you type the program yourself from that book. It was nice, because you learned a lot and could make your own variations on the game. No stress for release dates and bugs. Just a few weeks behind your monitor typing the computer language. :)
And if there was a bug, you had to read it all over again and see what went wrong. 99% chance that the bug was your own doing.
 

Dr4gon

Dr4gon
Yes, I remember. Those were the fun days. Bugs were a challenge these days :)
BASIC knowledge :)

Yes, I am to old.
 

Imagin

Imagin
Dr4gon said:
I still remember buying the books with the programs. You don't buy the super mario game, you buy a book. And you type the program yourself from that book. It was nice, because you learned a lot and could make your own variations on the game. No stress for release dates and bugs. Just a few weeks behind your monitor typing the computer language. :)
And if there was a bug, you had to read it all over again and see what went wrong. 99% chance that the bug was your own doing.
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Oh I had forgotten about that! I didn't do the type-in programs but I had a brother who did. I remember him spending hours searching for his typos to make it work. That was why DOS was such a big thing. A disk operating system meant we didn't have to type in programs anymore. For the nerds - DOS was initially QDOS which actually stood for quick and dirty operating system. Bill bought when it was 86-DOS and it became MS DOS (Microsoft) sometime in the early 80's I think. He didn't actually invent DOS as most people think, he didn't actually invent windows either :)
 

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
Dr4gon said:
Come on, everybody was begging for a release, and many didn't care that is needed some more ironing. It's getting better, you will see :)
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I agree with you.. but i also agree with the other person.. There just seems to be so many problems on top of the promises that have been made.. The game is a complicated game.. I also think that the developers need to figure out which direction they are truly looking to take the game.. to many people fighting for one thing when it seems like the game is pointed in a different direction. The game seems to look as if it is pointed in the direction of conservation but it still seems to be based off your typical zoo animals.. So there is a lot of things the developer to decide..
 

Dr4gon

Dr4gon
Kiwolf said:
I agree with you.. but i also agree with the other person.. There just seems to be so many problems on top of the promises that have been made.. The game is a complicated game.. I also think that the developers need to figure out which direction they are truly looking to take the game.. to many people fighting for one thing when it seems like the game is pointed in a different direction. The game seems to look as if it is pointed in the direction of conservation but it still seems to be based off your typical zoo animals.. So there is a lot of things the developer to decide..
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We all have our wishes. I personally expected the landscape more wilt with lakes and mountains. I don't think the direction is changing. Do you have the feeling they follow the direction given by the loudest screamers in the forum?
 

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
Dr4gon said:
We all have our wishes. I personally expected the landscape more wilt with lakes and mountains. I don't think the direction is changing. Do you have the feeling they follow the direction given by the loudest screamers in the forum?
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I am starting to wonder if that is not where this will head.. to answer your question. I think it is going to be a wait and see on exactly how they approach everything.. i have seen many good suggestions but I also have a feeling they are trying to expand from the Zoo Tycoon games.. Zoo Tycoon never had conservation in the game.. Many people want normal animals and then you have those that want animals that are not seen in many zoo atmospheres (i am one of the conservation type, I want more of the animals that we need to bring more awareness to). It is hard when you have people fighting over just about everything.. you have people fighting to bring in dino's and extinct animals.. but like i said, everything is up in the air as we don't know exactly how they are going to format the complete game or the DLC's they are going to add.. We just know what is being promised and what the game is currently showing..

There are other issues like mechanics.. The deeper you dive into the game, the more people want to see the correct mechanics.. So far in this game, the mechanics to the creatures we currently have is in some cases completely incorrect. and it leads to misrepresenting the animal itself..

Just has a lot of work to do.. and i get that the game is still in it's start stages.. but still..They have taken on a project with many things to take into consideration..
 

LN

LN
Dr4gon said:
We all have our wishes. I personally expected the landscape more wilt with lakes and mountains. I don't think the direction is changing. Do you have the feeling they follow the direction given by the loudest screamers in the forum?
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No, They follow their own direction.
All we are doing is giving them extra options they haven't thought off.

The loudest screamer will only get louder, and in the end will be completely ignored by Frontier (and other forum members).
Plenty of examples on the Planco side of the forum.
 
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