Guest Leaving for no reason and getting refund

Jileha

J
They definitely changed a lot in the guest behavior and its effects, and there are some bugs - old or new, who knows - as well.

I watched a guest for a while who walked with her hands raised up in the air - presumably in despair because all her needs were low orange/red. She walked from one food/drink booth to the next (in the same food court) and kept crying that she had no money left and couldn’t affort to quench her thirst or hunger, but she still had $150 in her pocket - enough to buy a $9 drink!

She was funny to watch since she stumbled around as if drunk, turning this way, turning that way, and never going anywhere. Finally, she left the zoo.

Since then, I have seen a few angry guests complaining about lack of money when they still had plenty. And I have plenty of free ATMs all over the place.

I also watched numerous guests going into my building with 8 exhibits, looking at the animals, leaving maybe to look at another animal across the path or buy a drink nearby, and then heading straight back into the building to look at the same exhibits all over again. Rinse and repeat. They at least didn’t get upset about it, but it’s rather bizarre behavior when there are lots of animals they havent even seen yet. But I keep losing my observed groups because I have to check on one of the animals. Maybe they do get angry after a while because they didn’t see enough animals. Maybe the many attractive animals in such a relatively small space act as a magnet, although around the corner are Indian elephants, the overall favorite animal of the guests.

It definitely is quite a challenge to create the guest AI with the many options the guests can choose from and have to weigh against each other.
 

marcnesiumHH

M
I cannot reproduce that every guest/ group searches for the identical type of drink/ food shop if the first one is full. At least it's not applying for every guest. The same applied to several other groups.

guest_searching_drink_1.JPG
guest_searching_drink_2.JPG
 

Jaggid Edje

Jaggid Edje
Moosegun said:
If guest waves their hands it means there pathing has been interrupted and they feel trapped / stuck, which you can sort of understand if you have changed the paths around them. Like animals, if you change their habitat, they redo the walkable area, similar thing happens with guests. Something you just have to put up with.
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I'm aware of what it means...read my post that you replied to again. The ONLY change to the path they were on is that I connected another one to it. That shouldn't effect them in that way, as the path under their feet didn't change at all. It didn't previously cause this behaviour prior to the recent patch and now it literally makes all of those visitors leave. Prior to the recent patch, you'd only have this affect if you changed the path that was directly under the visitors, not just by connecting another one to it. It means for a zoo that is still under heavy expansions you end up sending droves of visitors to the gates, constantly.
 

taun

T
taun said:
Something to do with guests as the donations have dropped and refunds have increased a double whammy. But the zoo has not changed and was profitable before.
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Started a new zoo and had one exhibit in and got to 300/400 guest and their thirst and hunger was orange/yellow. I put food and drink stalls in and bang all the guest flock to them! Then start getting issues because the lines are too long. So have they changed it so guest no longer only go to for drink or food when passing them by?

Just means guests that are not green for these stats end up leaving without visiting an animal. Previously you could grow slowly now you appear to need to do a big expansion with all drink and food otherwise you start to lose out.

I really don't know how I fix my zoo with 4500 guests in, I suppose I will have to load, pause it and cover the zoo in food and drink and hope that works.

But the main point is they seem to have changed a big aspect of how the game works but not really communicated it. (y)
 

Adarra

A
I've read two issues so far since my last reply that I'm also experiencing:

1.) Guests not just leaving, but outright disappearing as soon as I change ANYTHING about a path. I'm not talking about deleting a path, no, just 'recoloring' it (choosing another look for the path). The moment I do that guests literally disappear into thin air. I've had my guest numbers drop from 8300 to 400(!) - yes, you've read that correctly! - after I changed the color/material of my paths in one far-away section of the zoo. Almost 8K guests DISAPPEARED in the span of less than 10 seconds! After I noticed this I waited for my guest numbers to stabilize again (around 8K) and did the same. The same freaking thing happened AGAIN. This is hurting my zoo a lot!

2.) My zoo is STILL bleeding money after the latest patch. The cause? INSANE FOOD COSTS. I pay around 350K PER YEAR for my food and yes, I am keeping a very close eye on my populations to make sure they don't grow beyond a certain number. Before the patch my zoo was viable; I was making around 100K a year. But now I'm losing around 150K a year on average and that's after trying everything I can think of, which includes:
  • Creating new work zones to do more with less staff (I realized I overhired and fired more than 30 staff members to reduce staff wages). Staff wages went from 150K a year to around 100K. I also stopped educating them, because their wages increase exponentially every time they 'graduate'.
  • Reducing the amount of 'expensive' animals in my zoo by culling herds. This meant bringing down well-established and healthy herds of elephants, antelopes and other herbivores down to one male/two females instead of one male/five or more females. This also meant culling my pride of lions as well (from around 15 animals to 3 or 4). Furthermore I'm not micro-managing these animals to a crazy extend in that each time they have offspring I go in, see which one are the best to keep and selling/releasing their siblings as soon as they mature to keep the feeding costs under control.
  • I've tried increasing the zoo entrance fee, but my guests wouldn't have any of it; they immediately complained that the prices were too high, so scratch that. I even lowered the prices to attract more guests. That kinda worked (I now average around 8500 guests), but it hardly made a change in my finances.
  • I've stopped my marketing campaigns, but that impacted my guests numbers negatively, so I turned them back on.
  • Instead of releasing/trading animals I'm now selling every single one of them for cash and not even that helps.
  • My entire zoo is running on wind/solar energy to cut costs.
  • I've relocated or sold the shops that performed poorly and fired the vendors.
  • I've even fired several 'expensive' staff members and hired one-star staff members instead.

All this and maybe even more I tried, BUT NOTHING WORKS. My zoo keeps bleeding money. I've gone from 15 million dollar to 11 million dollar. Yes, that's still a lot of money, but if it keeps on going like this there'll come a moment when I will get into financial trouble. Something went seriously wrong after the last patch/update and it's making it impossible for me to break even, let alone make a profit.
 

Orcakat93

O
I'm having the same issue- guests are leaving, upset that they didnt stay long enough to see X animal. I have rides, everyone is happy food/thirst wise (happiness is at 92%). I'm losing so much money and I don't know what to do? I had 4 million, now down to 100k...

Any suggestions?

Edit- I am now down to 10k. I can't play anymore without hemorrhaging money to refunds. What gives? I love this game, but I feel like I cannot enjoy this any more. Has anything changed in the last week? This was not a problem for me previously. Many people are leaving without even spending 20 minutes in the zoo, or visiting a single habitat, regardless of lines at the shops.

Thanks!
 
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Adarra

A
Today I've managed to sort of 'stop the bleeding' of funds. My funds now 'hover' at around 11,2 million, but I'm still not making any money. Right now I have to micro-manage just to make sure I sort of break-even at the end of each year. As soon as I spend large sums of money to create a new habitat or work on new buildings this break-even point simply slides down up until the point I stop building/buying. It's a very precarious balance and it's sucking the fun out of the game. Because instead of having fun and watching the animals and work on beautifying my zoo and improving welfare I have to constantly make sure things aren't broken (because my mechanics hardly ever fix vandalized items), look to see if my rides are still being used (hint: they hardly are), make sure that I have enough shops and vendors, try to figure out why the heck my guests are leaving all the time and are 'unhappy with visit' (so helpful, but not really), etc.
 

daisymayuk

D
Personally I'm blaming the type of people coming to my Zoos. ;) I think they all meant to go to Planet Coaster, or the shops down the road and cant tolerate looking at animals. They are all annoyed when they see the facilities and how dare they be close to a keepers hut or a wind turbine. They complain there are not enough places to feed themselves. They drink loads of energy drinks and go and vandalise equipment. If they see litter on the ground... which they dropped after stuffing their faces with burgers they get fed up and go home and demand their money back.... why didnt they go somewhere else. I want a sign that says please bring a pick-nick and take your litter home with you.
 

KiriONE

K
Made an account for threads like these as I'm in a similar situation and hoping I can find an answer. Long story short, my modest zoo (8-9 habitats) went from the verge of bankruptcy by way of an overbred Gharial enclosure to just shy of $2 million. Post patch, while I've added a few more habitats, I've just been constantly losing money year over year. I'm now just under a million in my franchise. According to my finances I have about 150,000 in annuals ticket sales, and approximately 70,000 in refunds! Yes my food costs have grown with new habitats (added lions and giraffes), but it's the refunds that are out of control.

I don't to just pile on and say it's Frontier's fault as some of this seems self inflicted, but there are some oddities I noticed while attempting to correct course last night. Not exactly scientific but here are some observations I'd like to see if anyone else has noticed:
  • Crowded walkways are problematic, though seem unavoidable in some cases.
    • Even with the widest walkway, groups bump into each other to prevent forward movement or at least slow them down. During this time their needs meters are still dropping, understandable but dangerous in high traffic areas, especially since most guests are not one, but several linked in a group. This causes some major congestion issues and exacerbates a decline in needs.
  • Guests will reprioritize destinations even when their current destination is close, and beneficial to their happiness
    • I followed a guest around who wanted to see my rattlesnakes in my reptile house. He walked in, looked at the gila monster exhibit 2 exhibits down, and walked away because he was hungry to find food (which goes to my next point). He never got to see the rattlesnakes, even though they were right around the corner from my food court.
  • Guests move about the park in a seemingly random way
    • When I think of going to the zoo, I think about how I want to see a particular animal, but I STILL do stop along the way to that animal I want to see (I'm a big Otter guy) at other exhibits. Guests don't seem to do that. Even though I have had successful lines of breeding to many silver and gold appeal animals throughout my zoo, people don't seem to just pop over to see if the Aardvark is out, or if the Snow Leopard is out of its cave.
  • Guests have an extremely low tolerance for lines.
    • This I think is what needs to be tweaked the most, the low tolerance leads to this ping pong effect where a guest who is seeking food hits a long line, will look for the other one, but in that walk over to the next Chief Beef, has to go to the bathroom and now heads a completely different direction to do that. I have bathrooms near all of my vendors, but do put some others around the park. Then their thirst gets triggered, but all the while they are becoming more and more tired and because they are seeking to fulfill their needs, aren't seeking exhibits/habitats
  • Education Boards are super weak, and speakers rule. It can't be understated how important education is as a mechanic, it could be the most important mechanic for guests.
    • I go for a bit of realism in my zoo to the best of my ability but I noticed that education boards seem to barely move the needle for guests. Speakers are really the only thing that increase education by any noticeable amount. I don't have a problem with this, I just don't think having to put speakers on every exhibit animal from a design perspective seems sensible. Zoos certainly have multimedia information dumps, but a speaker on every exhibit blaring in the reptile house? A bit much. What's more is that if you are like me and design your habitats as small paths off of your main path, guests don't go through their zone of influence.
  • Litter is awful, and seemingly difficult to control at times.
    • Caretakers are seemingly unlike just about every other staff member who can be assigned to specific things (similar to Security). Even with hiring a silly amount of caretakers, the timing of litter being dropped and cleaned up can vary greatly. It's a shame you can't assign caretakers to a specific type of "path only" work zone. You have to assign them to habitat-based work zones and have to hope that they are in the right space at the right time because even just a little bit of litter sitting on the ground on a main walkway is going to cause a huge hit to your happiness. I've placed garbage cans in pairs along all major walkways and it still is an issue.
  • Benches/Picnic Tables aren't utilized enough
    • This sort of ties in to the prioritization issue, after I found out that benches and picnic tables are critical to replenishing energy I went understandably bench-crazy. Some sections of my thoroughfares one could walk on the benches along without touching the ground, but again it seems the guests are overly particular about what bench they want to see in, any old bench they seem to pass by won't do. In my very unscientific observation, it seems that they would only sit when other priorities were cleared (food/thirst/toilet)
All of these things have resulted in a huge stream red guests heading to the exit and a ton of "I wish I was able to stay to see X". What is perhaps most frustrating is that in the situation I'm in, I had to lose tons of money while letting the game play out while I meticulously followed my guest-subject around to see what the heck they were doing. I even lost him a few times despite specifically choosing one who had a Waldo-esque outfit on (I have to think that's an easter egg btw, which is a nice touch). Sadly I think this zoo is going to have to be put on ice for now since untangling this mess is probably going to be fruitless.

I've started a smaller, more compact zoo with really only about 3 habitats (Warthogs, Zebra/Ostrich/Springbok, Komodo Dragon) and a few bug and reptile exhibits (~6). This is a post-patch zoo that I'm going to be applying some of the things I've found and people have suggested. Unfortunately though, franchise mode seems so demanding in its design that it actually kind of reduces the incentive to be creative in layout, and focus almost purely on function to make sure the mechanics don't spin out of control.

Love the game regardless though! Hoping to see some more clarity from Frontier about the mechanics at play here, but at the very least I don't think there are enough tools, nor enough feedback (if you can imagine that) to manage larger zoos.
 

Adarra

A
KiriONE, your post sums up a few of the major issues I think could use tweaking perfectly. I really hope Frontier will address this as soon as possible!
 

Adarra

A
I've already seen this issue listed in the issue tracker, but since we have no way of knowing whether or not it's being actively addressed we can only hope they've heard us.
 

Moosegun

Moosegun
daisymayuk said:
Personally I'm blaming the type of people coming to my Zoos. ;) I think they all meant to go to Planet Coaster, or the shops down the road and cant tolerate looking at animals. They are all annoyed when they see the facilities and how dare they be close to a keepers hut or a wind turbine. They complain there are not enough places to feed themselves. They drink loads of energy drinks and go and vandalise equipment. If they see litter on the ground... which they dropped after stuffing their faces with burgers they get fed up and go home and demand their money back.... why didnt they go somewhere else. I want a sign that says please bring a pick-nick and take your litter home with you.
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To be fair, this is a slightly different situation, it sounds like your zoo is not set up to cater for your guests. Keeping your facilities outside of guest radius is a basic part of zoo planning.
KiriONE said:
Made an account for threads like these as I'm in a similar situation and hoping I can find an answer. Long story short, my modest zoo (8-9 habitats) went from the verge of bankruptcy by way of an overbred Gharial enclosure to just shy of $2 million. Post patch, while I've added a few more habitats, I've just been constantly losing money year over year. I'm now just under a million in my franchise. According to my finances I have about 150,000 in annuals ticket sales, and approximately 70,000 in refunds! Yes my food costs have grown with new habitats (added lions and giraffes), but it's the refunds that are out of control.#
.....

Love the game regardless though! Hoping to see some more clarity from Frontier about the mechanics at play here, but at the very least I don't think there are enough tools, nor enough feedback (if you can imagine that) to manage larger zoos.
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This post really echos my thoughts. After losing two large zoos to bankruptcy and focusing big time on happiness on my current zoo I still have issues. That is despite have a pretty solid understanding of how it works. The problem is that the difficulty level of the game is pretty high (what is takes to build a big fully functioning franchise zoo), this would not be a problem is the game worked properly, but the AI does have issues which creates another level of difficulty on top which shouldnt be there. Added to that the fact that it is the AI complexity which is hitting performance and you get a difficult issue.

As i have said before, they should increase the amount each visitor spends, increase the minimum time they will stay in the zoo, relax all the conditions a bit (lower the rate of need decay for example) and then reduce the number of visitors in that come to the zoo. Should sort out a number of issues and allow us to start focusing on the animals a bit more.
 

Jileha

J
Moosegun said:
[...] and then reduce the number of visitors in that come to the zoo. Should sort out a number of issues and allow us to start focusing on the animals a bit more.
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It does seem to me that the amount of guests entering the zoo is higher than what the zoo and its guest facilities can handle. But you can already limit the guest numbers in your zoo. I did that in my tundra zoo where I started having too many unhappy guests due to long lines everywhere, and it brought things backs to normal. Maybe Frontier not just added this option, but linked it in with the management tasks and made it one more thing to keep an eye on and to react to appropriately.

Every food court has a limit of how many people can be served before the lines become to long and guests go from one shop to the next for the rest of their stay. You can do a fair amount to optimize everything, but if you get too many guests, there isn’t much you can do - except limiting the guest numbers. This might help solve all kinds of issues.
 

Moosegun

Moosegun
Jileha said:
It does seem to me that the amount of guests entering the zoo is higher than what the zoo and its guest facilities can handle. But you can already limit the guest numbers in your zoo. I did that in my tundra zoo where I started having too many unhappy guests due to long lines everywhere, and it brought things backs to normal. Maybe Frontier not just added this option, but linked it in with the management tasks and made it one more thing to keep an eye on and to react to appropriately.

Every food court has a limit of how many people can be served before the lines become to long and guests go from one shop to the next for the rest of their stay. You can do a fair amount to optimize everything, but if you get too many guests, there isn’t much you can do - except limiting the guest numbers. This might help solve all kinds of issues.
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My issue is not really with the number of guests, my zoo could cope with probably 12k of guests, my issue is that the GAME cant cope with that number. I need at least 8k guests to generate enough income to break even, need 9k guests to make any profit but the game is pretty unplayable.
 

Jileha

J
Moosegun said:
My issue is not really with the number of guests, my zoo could cope with probably 12k of guests, my issue is that the GAME cant cope with that number. I need at least 8k guests to generate enough income to break even, need 9k guests to make any profit but the game is pretty unplayable.
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We’re talking about two different aspects. I am saying that if you have too many people leaving with getting refunds, you can either reduce the number of guests or increase the number/size of food courts. = gameplay
And by reducing the number of guests and reducing the amount of refunds, you can even increase your income while having less guests in your zoo and without having to stuff shops into every possible corner. Once you expand with more habitats and more shops, you can increase the number of guests again, but still keep a cap of their total number.

You are talking about the game’s technical ability to handle high numbers of guests without lagging or other technical issues. And if you do have a problem with losing too much money due to refunds, you still could try to restrict your guest numbers. Maybe you need less guests than you think you do.
 
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