Fur Variation excitement!

[Murray]

With not much going on right now I am really looking forward to the fur variation update whenever that may be. This will add a new element to breeding besides just genetics. Having to breed for specific looks is going to be extremely fun and something that will keep me interested for longer. I know frontier said they were working on this but idk when the update will release. I hope it Is as good as they promised.

P.S they need to fix the cartoony look of the male lion adding otherwise it would defeat the purpose of fur variations.

 

[Dinocanid]

I'm excited for variants as well. It will be nice to start to feel connected to my animals when they become a bit more unique.

I doubt the male lion is getting a model edit. It would be nice since it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, but I find the chances of that happening to be extremely low. It wouldn't make fur/color variations useless though, those two things don't have anything to do with each other

 

[Wistala]

Any ETA on it? Did they say next patch or summer etc?

 

[Dinocanid]

There's no specific ETA iirc, they just said it's being worked on for a future update

 

[Wistala]

Boo, this post made me hoped that they had given an ETA XD Very excited for it tho.

 

[Murray]

I meant it would be useless for the male lion because the mane is so cartoony any variations in it would just look awful unless the model was changed. Useless was a bit of an exaggeration to get my point across.

 

[Kaan]

I want it for the most elephants! it's really funny to have the same looking elephants all the time.

 

[VioletGrey]

I'm very much looking forward to this. I'd particularly like color variations on llamas, reindeer, wolves and flamingos.

 

[Swjosdotschka]

I'm excited as well, since especially my llama habitat is terrible boring right now. I just wish we'd have a slight idea on WHEN we'll get variations. One month? Three month? Half a year? Any direction would be cool as I'm litterally holding my breath everytime a community manager posts something.
I'd also love some progress screens. Maybe a new variation showen off once in a while. Just like you'd drop info bits and pieces when a new game launches. Because for me variants will actually be a game changer.

 

[Murray]

I completely agree once fur variations come out it will give me something to do for a while. Things have become dry for me as of late I’m finding trouble finding things to keep me entertained. I love watching my lions but the male lions just look so cartoony and on top of that they are all exactly the same. I wish they would give us a time table as well. Can’t wait !

 

[[VR] Deggial]

Oooookayyy ....
I wanted to post the following for quite a while now. This thread is as good as a new one, I guess.

It’s about fur color, fur pattern and genetics - and how one of them is related and the other (somehow) isn’t.

Right from the beginning, I loved the idea that the animals’ genetics influences their behavior and appearance. Size, fertility, disease resistance ... fantastic! And I would really love, love, love, if parents would also pass their (newly to be introduced) fur colors to their offspring! Fur color variations; how awesome would be this? I am all for it!

However!

However, fur patterns are not part of genetic inheritance!
Well ... of course: A zebra having stripes is obviously encoded in its genome. Whether the stripes are thicker or thinner or how many and where a zebra will have stripes is actually a criterion that defines different zebra species (like the plains zebra vs. grevy zebra).

The pattern’s exact realization, however, is handled differently! How the stripes might fork, how long certain stripes are, where exactly they are placed (in the spectrum of their usual distribution) - all this is not genetically encoded!

These individual characteristics are not located on genes, but are an effect of biochemical mechanisms during the ontogenesis (the development phase of the fetus). It’s almost a random process (well, random in the limits mentioned above) that activates or deactivates genes for melanin (and therefore black stripes). There is a lot more going on, of course. Molecules diffuse, build up thresholds, interact with each other and genes.

The end result is this, though:
Fur patterns are highly random and individual! Like fingerprints, they can be used to identify an individuum and differentiate it from any other individuum of the same species.
But it will not be possible to relate it to any of its parents or recognize its children based on their fur pattern.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens with fur patterns in Planet Zoo!
Animals with patterns will pass parts of these patterns to their children and make them “trackable”.
This must have been a challenge to code and should rightfully be a source of great pride for the executive programmer.

Unfortunately, it was also completely unnecessary and even a wrong representation of real biological mechanisms.
A pure (and easy to implement) random pattern choice would have been way better and I hope, FDev will have the self-confidence to step back from their previous implementation, when they introduce the way more suitable fur color genetics!

So, in conclusion:
Genetically determined fur colors: Hell yes!
Genetically determined fur patterns: No please!

——

Edit: Different animals feature different mechanisms for fur color variations, by the way. The coloration of tricolor cats is located on their sex chromosomes. Where on the cat’s skin which genes are active is random again.

 

[LN]

I'm more excited curious about seeing the responses from the community when they release it, and if they can be pleased with what they get.
I'm sure I'll be having some fun reading that once it comes.

Other than that, fur variations doesn't necessarely get me excited. But maybe I will once I see the result.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I'd also love some progress screens. Maybe a new variation showen off once in a while. Just like you'd drop info bits and pieces when a new game launches.

Tbh, I don't know if this will have the desired effect. Forum will be flooded with comments/questions if their preferred variation will be in-game or when it will be available.

When an update is available, and the variations aren't included or a specific animal variation isn't included, people will spam the forum.
They could even cancel a previewed variation colour because in-the-end it doesn't look that great.

You mentioned Llamas, but maybe that will take even longer because it's the latest DLC animal (and they prioritize base game animals).
Imagine an announcement that 2020 DLC animals will be addressed in 2021 and the backlash they could bestow on themselves.

Or people complaining about Frontier working on coat variations, while they are experiencing crashes/freezing. (I know different teams/people, but a lot of people don't care about the details)

Or when another feature is announced/mentioned, people will constantly ask for updates because last time Frontier did it as well. This also applies to other games of Frontier - I would avoid setting such a standard for upcoming Frontier games. You know how people can react.
I think mentioned this before but I played Star Trek online and they would cancel announced future content to be implemented in another way or just cancel them entirely.
I think that's poor PR.

To give some personal insight, I deal with questions about finance/payments on a daily basis. I never promise anything because it will backfire if you do. There are some parts in the process you can't control and you can cause more problems if you don't pick your words carefully. Even when people are "demanding" a specific answer.

I'm more excited about seeing the responses from the community when they release it, and if they can be pleased with what they get.
I'm sure I'll be having some laughs reading that once it comes.

Not excited but curious what the reactions will be. When the coat variations were mentioned to be a WIP, people already started posting pics about their preferred variations / mutations and even tusk/horn variations. So basically waiting to be disappointed

 

[LN]

Not excited but curious what the reactions will be. When the coat variations were mentioned to be a WIP, people already started posting pics about their preferred variations / mutations and even tusk/horn variations. So basically waiting to be disappointed

Curious, yes, the word I couldn't come up with when I wrote it.

Yes, I'm curious to see what the reactions would be.

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Tbh, I don't know if this will have the desired effect. Forum will be flooded with comments/questions if their preferred variation will be in-game or when it will be available.

As I said, I would treat a huge update that takes longer to make as a new game addition and would drop info pieces just to let players know what I'm working on and get them excited. In my opinion it would be better marketing than staying silent on the topic way too long. It's not even really good communicated outside the forum that they are working on variations, but it's a rather popular reason why people aren't interested in
the South America DLC. And I was only talking about variations that will definately be in game, not the progress of "might be / might not be".
I come from a time where new content was advertised for month in advance and all gaming companies actually survived this time Indeed with less backlash than the often to vague communication with way too much room for speculation forces nowadays. Back then there was even something like "no, this will not be included" in the communication and because of that everybody knew what to expect and in my opinion that made poop-storms happen way less often.

And that's all I will say about preview-communication and fur variations situation to you from now on. We both know we have almost always different opinion on that topic and the "oh, I love to see the backlash" attitude is not something I want to engage with any longer. For me its disrespectful to those who actually care a lot about fur variations for several reasons and no one is superior or inferior because of their wishes for the game.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I come from a time where new content was advertised for month in advance and all gaming companies actually survived this time Indeed with less backlash than the often to vague communication with way too much room for speculation forces nowadays. Back then there was even something like "no, this will not be included" in the communication and because of that everybody knew what to expect and in my opinion that made poop-storms happen way less often.

Haha, same here. But tbh, most older gaming companies I cared about have disappeared or bought by EA.
But outside gaming sites - you really needed to follow the site, join the forum or sign up for the newsletter to receive this news. (a month sounds accurate)
Don't remember much feedback after release from devs back in those days. Basically you bought the game, they provided a 1 or 2 hotfixes/patches and moved on to Part 2.
Still applies to a lot of games nowadays.

I think social media allows for more "Poop-storms" (haha, forgot that term existed) and with Blizzard/Bethesda Studios receiving some really horribly bad press in the last years, I'm more understanding towards less communication. And the backlash some gaming studios receive when they decide to postpone the release can be brutal.

And that's all I will say about preview-communication and fur variations situation to you from now on. We both know we have almost always different opinion on that topic and the "oh, I love to see the backlash" attitude is not something I want to engage any longer. For me its disrespectful to those who actually care a lot about fur variations for several reasons and no one is superior or inferior because of their wishes for the game.

You lost me on that one. Pretty sure noone loves to see any backlash for Frontier. I don't and really sure that my posts supports that !
(Personally I think it's pretty disrespectful to address someone/twist words/create wrong conclusions like this but I don't care that much about passive agressive rants - so I'll leave it at this)

 

[NZFanatic]

I can kind of see both points of view on this. Progress reports are useful to generate hype, but at the same time it's unavoidable that some people will be disappointed if the specific content they requested isn't included. The OP of this thread is a good example - in nearly every post he has made on the subject, he has raised his concerns over the appearance of the male lion, and here he says that unless they change that, adding in fur variations is pointless. Clearly such a comment is an exaggeration, as I'm not sure anyone is as passionate about the way the male lion looks as he is, but the odds of them completely remodelling an animal are fairly slim. With that in mind, it's not hard to see why Frontier would be staying fairly quiet on the subject.

Both DLC received some pretty hefty backlash. Mostly this was in the vein of how much content there was, but that in itself comes from a position of "the animal I wanted wasn't included, if there were more animals maybe it could have been". I expect we'll see a similar sort of criticism with the variation update. I'd rather none of knew exactly what was coming at least until it was near release.

(As a disclaimer, I have no preferences as to what variations are included, so it's unlikely I'll be disappointed; at the moment when it comes to 'variations' I'm more concerned with how difficult it is to acquire a white tiger or black jaguar in Sandbox Mode).

 

[paul78]

I’ve gotta admit when news of the game being developed broke with all the hype surrounding it my first thought was how will the lion look? As in the past most if not all developers seemed to struggle with the realism of this animal. Frontier did a fairly good job on it as it’s certainly not the worst representation I’ve seen. But I admit I was somewhat disappointed with the male in particular and would also love to see a slightly edited version to offer more realism to this animal. Don’t get me wrong from the right angle it does look pretty darn good I just believe frontier was capable of doing a little bit better job that’s all.

 

[NZFanatic]

I’ve gotta admit when news of the game being developed broke with all the hype surrounding it my first thought was how will the lion look? As in the past most if not all developers seemed to struggle with the realism of this animal. Frontier did a fairly good job on it as it’s certainly not the worst representation I’ve seen. But I admit I was somewhat disappointed with the male in particular and would also love to see a slightly edited version to offer more realism to this animal. Don’t get me wrong from the right angle it does look pretty darn good I just believe frontier was capable of doing a little bit better job that’s all.

My point isn't that the male lion looks perfect, just that it's unlikely to be a priority for Frontier to change, as it doesn't seem to be a big issue for people, so it was more to say that no matter what someone is going to be disappointed.

I could be wrong, of course, and they might decide to take another look at the male lion based on feedback from Murray's various posts on the subject (also, that isn't meant to be disparaging at all, it's obviously something he feels strongly about so good on him for bringing it up when he gets the chance), but fiddling with the animal's overall model on top of trying to create new skins for possibly every animal in the game seems like a gargantuan task (any changes to the model would necessitate changing how the animal interacts with its environment, too, after all).

Frankly I'm more concerned about the timber wolf. A lot of people have been upholding various examples of 'coat variation', but several of those seem to be pulled from specific subspecies of the wolf. I worry that adding in too many out-of-the-way variants is going to muddy the game's wolf classification situation even more.

 

[Murray]

I also see both sides of this because I can see some people getting upset if an animal they really enjoy does not have fur variations. It’s going to be this way because many animals only have slight differences so it would not make sense for frontier to spend a lot of time making something slightly different but I can see why people may get upset. Either way I will not be upset if the male lion does not get fixed and I will continue to post about it in every thread hoping one day they fix it because it’s the animal I am most passionate about. No update will satisfy everyone and unfortunately some people will always be unhappy even if the majority of others aren’t.