Repost from the 1.1.0 update - I feel it fits better here, sorry for not noticing there was a tread for this. : /
Hello community! Hello developers, hope you had a great x-mas rest!
I'm posting this as an update on bug follow... cause ya... I don't really care about this debate for polar bears and such.... I care more about having a workable (and enjoyable) game, and I had many, many problems starting from patch 1.0.3. I only made a post with a 20 min play test last time and since then I made up a new zoo and played several hours. I’ve been pretty harsh lately… while frontier community leaders still share my creations on planco on their social media... so here’s my payback… a fully classified list of bugs, inconsistencies and defects for the franchise mode over a 1 full day test. ENJOY!
For devs ::: HP = high priority game breaking bug; LP = Low priority annoyance; * = suggestion or bad design) I’ve mentioned the redundancy of it in the description.
For players, I've included the quick ingame fixes when I found one.
This is a long post...
UI / notification:
HP- update 1.1.0 made the management windows more snappy, clicking only once... but now it's back to a unresponsive clicking... you need to click 2-3-4 times to : send to trade center, release in the wild, adopt an animal, sell, etc... This is very consistent throughout all animals and windows but it looks like a single button shape is the culprit - rounded rectangle (button to add a staff member is still very snappy, mini button for trade are good too, green 'move' button works fine as well) (HP).
- Small button for zoopedia animal window close all windows, but sometimes don't open zoopedia.
- I've had few '' parse error '' (1/75 apx = rare) in notification display, seen it for pregnancy and birth, multiple animals, but very random error. We see the line of code creating the error containing the name of the animal and the event. the event being notified happen just fine. It's not systematic to an animal name - next notification for the same animal is ok. I couldn’t pinpoint a pattern. anyway, an parse error/exeption needs management (LP)
- ''Unable to find staffroom = 0'' popup notification open and close... every few min. Same alert comes when placing a shop and even when loading park. This alert is too ''reactive'' and pops as soon as a staff member looks for a room it would seem, instead of ‘if not finding one’ (line too high in the code or something?). This end up being a constant BEEP every 30 sec or so. It made me shut down notification completely, annoying as it was (LP).
- ''release in the wild'' button is taking a few seconds to activate in animal management window (LP).
- Multiple animal release from management or the habitat window sometimes tag animals unavailable (little triangle flag on the confirmation screen). You try to release them one second later, individually, even with the game paused, it's fine, no alert. There seem to be a time during the graphic transition from juvenile to adult (usually a few sec after their status change) that the animal will be in no particular category (LP).
- play/pause 'P' and accelerate 'O' keyboard shortcut sometimes stop working when management window is open (LP).
- Systematic closing of the management window for every action is very annoying, almost looks like a bug but I think it's just bad UI design. It's build for unit testing and not gameplay. Players want to do multiple actions when they manage the game, so reseting everything for every action is not good. Even opening zoopedia while shopping is annoying, windows should stack at the very least. (*)
- New window as confirmation also not needed when it’s a reversible action, like sending to trade center. (*)
- Systematic Reset of habitat animal filters make the 2 previous point worse, since you got to set up the filter all over again (* - it’s a suggestion, but you should make this a priority to make the whole game experience more fluid, less useless clicks, less reloading).
- Behavior of the windows for an animal should be consistent with the exhibit one (same for the trading windows). When you click on the exhibit/animal tab, then select an animal, you switch window to the specific animal. When you do the same in habitat window, you just get a centered view of that animal. It should be consistent, one or the other for both habitat and exhibit animal. I greatly prefer the exhibit behavior, than the habitat one (less click/escape needed to navigate around the zoo) (LP).
- Habitat animal window should also be consistent with the exhibit window and have a return 'habitat' button just like the exhibit animal have a return 'exhibit button' (LP)
- Trade centers also… consistent between habitat and exhibit animals, multiple selection are available only in exhibit, etc (LP).
- Animal appeal badges are inconsistent between animal window, trade center and compare mates window – a gold can become silver in trade center, etc.. (HP)
- Compare mates window sometimes show a single individual as 2 – one infertile and one ok (LP).
- ‘Compare mates’ window sometimes show removed individuals (sold or released) (LP)
- albinos animals icon for animals always appear as the regular animal icon in the ‘release in the wild’ confirmation window (LP).
* quick filter selection should be implemented, something like shift+select one animal automatically select the animal species, or whatever the solution. This could work in trade as well, making navigation easier and the slow refresh less annoying, less scrolling of list, etc. This will become even more necessary as DLCs come out and the list of available animals grows.
*Appeal stats should be more explicit from the management window (like having actual representative stats of the appeal, or just the color of their badge directly view in animal management tab. Animals with different genetics appear as the same, you need to individually open individual animal window to check them out.
Construction :
- Placement axis sometimes goes out of whack, world axis and item axis not working properly. Remind me a bit of the famous X-axis bug in planco (HP).
- 'X' + 'Z' Keyboard shortcut sometimes stop functioning (HP).
- Education placement range is smaller than the guest viewing range resulting in bad placement for educational panels when you build a raised platform (HP).
- It would be great to have the exact same functioning than Planco for placement : ungrouping option, ability to use 'r' when 'i selection' is activated, etc… again, consistency! (*).
Zoopedia (need for a overall revision, there's some editing to do) (all LP, but… still makes the game look sloppy):
- A few of the barrier requirement are in Feet instead of Meter... All measure units should be consistent for the entire game, one or the other, not both.
- Cheetah and gorillas have confusing social requirements (ex, cheetah.... total is greater than the sum of max animals 1-3 (1 male and 1 female)... confusing.
Exhibit/exhibit animals:
- Zombie pregnancy still happening, but it looks as if it only happened when you first place the animal (or reload the game). Some will get stuck with a baby that will never be born (Gila, Iguana....). History studbook show as born, but status is still pregnant, no children in the drop down. Sending to Trade Center and back delete the animal.prengnancy, no new animal added anywhere. Sometimes the trip to the TC will fix it... sometimes a few of those trips are needed. But the bug don't seem to reappear after this little TC dance has worked, until the animal dies (or you reload the game). (some1 can confirm that ?) (HP)
- ‘Call keeper’ button sometimes become unresponsive. No apparent pattern. (HP)
- Dehydrated animal in an exhibit, no apparent pattern, trip to TC and back fixes it. (HP)
- a single starved animal in an exhibit while others in the same exhibit are fine… no apparent pattern, trip to TC and back fix too (HP)
- Add a tab for management of babies, autosend to trade center by sex and by apeal.
- I got to say that the ‘play’ part of exhibit are a bit… well… non-existent… hahaha. Setting temperature and humidity should just be automatic – just like the loading of the biome is. Same goes with implementing layout options when research is done, just make it automatic… I think these play options have no game value, no meaning (*). If there’s no strategy or thinking involved, take it out, it has no room in a game. Humans don’t feel fulfilled acting as a thermostat! Lol !
Habitat/habitat animal :
- Animal climbing too high are set as escaped, Fix (1000$) = Emergency capture, cancel move, move again to habitat (vet call most of the time didn't work. (HP).
- Animals swimming fall trough the ground/water and considered as escaped Both maybe due to the height of enclosure, anyway, you all know that one, same fix as previous (HP) .
- sometimes guest are looking for ''removed specie’’ in guest tought ... species tagging not working when an habitat is repurposed . (LP).
- Starving animals sitting next to food, trip to TC and back can fix it (HP).
Guests :
- View : their judgment on the animal's view is just weird. They can be 2 meters away from a tiger and judge the view bad. Be very far, judge it good. If you build an enclave into a habitat, with the view on animal shelter... it's essentially as close as you can get... guest will ignore that section and look from some bad one. Even in front of a brick wall! (HP)
- Sometimes guest will pass right by an animal they wish to see and not bother to stop (LP – yeah sometimes peeps are idiots in real life too).
* In real life, some peeps do have education before they go to a zoo. Not a bug. But just... overly simplistic. You could make a variance over the guest group (children have little, adult have a lot… something like that). There’s a lot of room for fun an complex game mechanics with that.
Keeper :
Keeper got a little intelligence upgrade, but they are still fools! Keeper working stats don't update, if you look at them work, nothing changes in the appropriate window. Priority of rules are no good.They still pick up poop while animal starve. Anyway I'm not getting into investigation over weird keeper behavior, these tests are way too laborious to do. Someone need to get paid to do this, I'm sure someone is... = have access to multiple games, god mode account and such.
Rides :
- They are just not working properly. Guest stop seeing them after a while. With Multiple stations, one is almost always never seen by guests and they are unafected by the quality and raise in happiness of them, they just ignore the queue. Reloading the game makes the ride visible for about 5min before guest ignore it again. This one is very surprising since plenty of rides work just fine in planco... No permanent fix. (HP)
Issue tracker (it really deserve a place in the bug list) :
It’s bad, clogged, slow, doesnt give feedback and discourage use. Clustering should be automatic at the very least and not left to users. It makes the relaying of non-breaking bug too much of a labor and prevent peeps to report issues. If you want the help of peep tracking bug defects and inconsistency, you really need to give feedback, it needs to be a 2 way conversation otherwise it just not respectful to the community that take over that last part of the production line for free - even paying to have access to Beta.... Issue tracker must be on par with that strategy, state of the art classificator and ingame data collection strategy... or it's just another bug... Just think about how much more efficient would have been my 1 day test with a good ticket system. I let you judge the priority of this one.
* please don't tell me to go fill some issue report...Just give that list to the debugging team. It took me 2 hours to put as a list over a 1 day test play. It would take me 3 days to make it with that aweful issue report system = unreasonable so… issue tracker defeat its own purpose. If anyone has found a fix for a bug where I found none, please feel free to tag me, I'd like to know.
Happy new year everyone !
