Small, easy changes for 1.7 (My suggestions list, v4.0)

DarthQuell

DarthQuell
(This may have been mentioned and I missed it. If so, sorry for wasting your time, but if not, then read on)

Another thing: gates.


We have wood, glass, and metal habitat gates, but we should also get metal and glass walkthrough gates to add to the wood one we already have. And as a further request, a null gate for walkthrough and habitat gates.


Also, gates should be adjustable depending on the height of the fence. ZT and ZT2 had gates that can be placed on small fences, so PZ should have short gates as well, because it looks odd to see a panoramic view them all of a sudden a tall gate sticks out of nowhere
 

DarthQuell

DarthQuell
Another idea:

The point of PZ is conservation, right? But we get albinism and other mutated colors. So, thinking about it, I think that animals with mutated colors shouldn't be able to be released into the wild: instead zoos will actually look to take albino and leucistic animals to keep them alive but wouldn't worry about breeding an albino line. (That's up to the players, though)

My point: I don't think albinos should be released to the wild (melanistic wouldn't matter, but I'm sure that it'll be a hassle for the game mechanics probably to separate melanistic and albinism, so for sake of simplicity color mutants shouldn't be able to be released into the wild)
 

MissySanchez

MissySanchez
Bearcat9948 said:
  1. Replace herb scent marker with blood scent marker for polar bears
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I would include tree scatter feeder, tree stump forager and bamboo feeder to this list. It doesn't make much sense for polar bears to forage for food in and around trees and out of small holes like other bears and apes. In place of those it would make more sense to have have the rotation line and restraint feeders or the piñata.
 

macronecu

M
@Bearcat9948 Thank you for adding climbing for pangolins to your suggestions. I have also created a thread for chinese pangolins. There I have shared a video of them burrowing too, didn't know they did that. I thought only ground pangolins do it. Learned this week that they are an in-between species that is both arboreal and burrowing at the same time:
forums.frontier.co.uk

"Climbing", "Hanging Down" animations and "Burrowing" system for Chinese Pangolin

I would like to ask for 3 new animations for this unique animal that is somewhat underrepresented in the game. 1- They can climb well and require climbing structures in their enclosures. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDjXRUX4Big 2- They have a prehensile tail, and can hang upside...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
Later other users mentioned aardvarks should have it too. I don't know if other animals are missing burrowing too, you might want to consider burrowing for your thread. :)
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
macronecu said:
@Bearcat9948 Thank you for adding climbing for pangolins to your suggestions. I have also created a thread for chinese pangolins. There I have shared a video of them burrowing too, didn't know they did that. I thought only ground pangolins do it. Learned this week that they are an in-between species that is both arboreal and burrowing at the same time:
forums.frontier.co.uk

"Climbing", "Hanging Down" animations and "Burrowing" system for Chinese Pangolin

I would like to ask for 3 new animations for this unique animal that is somewhat underrepresented in the game. 1- They can climb well and require climbing structures in their enclosures. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDjXRUX4Big 2- They have a prehensile tail, and can hang upside...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
Later other users mentioned aardvarks should have it too. I don't know if other animals are missing burrowing too, you might want to consider burrowing for your thread. :)
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With burrowing it becomes a case of "where do you draw the line". Wolves also burrow, and they create quite complex burrowing systems. I mentioned once before that the Dublin Zoo had a problem with their wolves burrowing so extensively, but I don't think I'd want the wolves burrowing in the game.
 

SanRazo618

SanRazo618
NZFanatic said:
With burrowing it becomes a case of "where do you draw the line". Wolves also burrow, and they create quite complex burrowing systems. I mentioned once before that the Dublin Zoo had a problem with their wolves burrowing so extensively, but I don't think I'd want the wolves burrowing in the game.
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I feel like the line is with animals that spend most their time in burrows like aardvarks, prairie dogs and meerkats
 

Bearcat9948

Bearcat9948
So here are my thoughts:

  1. I'm not going to do building pieces in this list, but in the 1.8 iteration I will be open to expanding it to that. I've also decided that this will be the last "small, easy changes" version, and next time it will just be "Changes/Suggestions for 1.8" or something. We will be more than a full year after I made my first list by that time, so I think it will be a good time to up the ante and suggest a few bigger changes. I went back and forth on this for a while, especially because I have some ideas of my own, but for now I'm going to leave them out
  2. I'm not going to add any taxonomical changes. I get why they were suggested but I don't think there's any reason to add them when I know they won't be changed. Frontier picked out subspecies or populations specifically and I don't see them changing those. The difference being with the babirusa, they're accidentally displaying info for a subspecies they did not intend to. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing on this, I see the appeal of being able to use the animals with more flexibility. I just don't think it will change. Same reason I'm not bothering to add the removal of walkthrough animals, save the one species that could, you know, easily kill guests.
  3. I also don't see them removing the ability to release albinos and making a new mechanic to get conservation credits for them instead. Does it make the game more realistic? Sure. But at the end of the day it's also a bit unnecessary. Would I like this game to be as realistic as possible? Sure, but does it improve gameplay at all? I would say it doesn't.
  4. Burrowing would be nice for the pangolin and aardvark, but with the way that it's utilized for the meerkats, I don't see it being feasible. I would rather see this system implemented in future animals, such as prairie dogs or black-footed ferrets.
    1. As an addendum to this point, from what I'm reading atm, it seems like most aardvarks in zoos don't exactly burrow as much as their wild counterparts. The forage box in game supplements their behavioral instinct to dig, and zoos usually provide man-made burrows for them to sleep in. Without predators around I don't think they would be creating large, intricate burrows, if a zoo even allowed them to do so.
  5. I don't really see a need to remove any of the 3 food enrichment items from the polar bear. Those items are all about stimulation for the animal and conceivably a zoo could use any of those 3 items to help enrich a polar bear. I will add a bullet point that specifies that the "texture" for food when added should be meat, as I think I remember seeing that for the tree scatter object it's fruit, which makes no sense.
  6. Also, this wasn't in this thread, but someone suggested that zebras need larger herd sizes. I looked it up and according to the AZA guidelines PZ has the correct recommended number right now.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Bearcat9948 said:
  1. I'm not going to add any taxonomical changes.
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I can understand your point with most of them, but I think the wolf isn't so much "chosen for a specific reason" as it is an error in itself. "Timber wolf" relates to North America, C. lupus relates to all grey wolves (as does the distribution map, or at least the American and Eurasian wolves). Whether the chosen common name is a hangover from a prior version of the animal or whether it was chosen for some other reason doesn't really matter, because it's just incorrect for what the in-game wolf is.
 

Bearcat9948

Bearcat9948
Sorry to double post. I switched the order of some things around and did a bit of reformatting for easier reading. Added Darthquell's gate idea and the the meat texture thing for polar bears. I also added a new foliage subsection specifying areas I think are underrepresented in the game, based on how many foliage pieces they currently have.
 

Tobs

Tobs
Bearcat9948 said:
I also don't see them removing the ability to release albinos and making a new mechanic to get conservation credits for them instead. Does it make the game more realistic? Sure. But at the end of the day it's also a bit unnecessary. Would I like this game to be as realistic as possible? Sure, but does it improve gameplay at all? I would say it doesn't.
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Fully agree with this - otherwise, where do you draw the line? Majority of captive bred animals can´t be released in the wild anyway.
 

Bearcat9948

Bearcat9948
NZFanatic said:
I can understand your point with most of them, but I think the wolf isn't so much "chosen for a specific reason" as it is an error in itself. "Timber wolf" relates to North America, C. lupus relates to all grey wolves (as does the distribution map, or at least the American and Eurasian wolves). Whether the chosen common name is a hangover from a prior version of the animal or whether it was chosen for some other reason doesn't really matter, because it's just incorrect for what the in-game wolf is.
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I suppose I probably should add this then
 

ElectricMonk

ElectricMonk
A minor one, but it’s been annoying me since before launch: binomial species names should consistently be in italics…. At the moment they aren’t on habitat boards and the body of zoopedia text.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Tobs said:
Fully agree with this - otherwise, where do you draw the line? Majority of captive bred animals can´t be released in the wild anyway.
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Yeah, and the majority of them aren't in real life. The purpose of captive-bred populations is to have an insurance policy against extinction, on the off chance we ever fix the climate crisis and the various economic crises which largely contribute to illegal poaching. "Release to the wild" isn't an especially realistic function, but I guess it's important to Frontier that it's there so we can feel like we're doing something. I don't begrudge it, in any case.
 

SanRazo618

SanRazo618
Bearcat9948 said:
I'm not going to add any taxonomical changes. I get why they were suggested but I don't think there's any reason to add them when I know they won't be changed. Frontier picked out subspecies or populations specifically and I don't see them changing those. The difference being with the babirusa, they're accidentally displaying info for a subspecies they did not intend to. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing on this, I see the appeal of being able to use the animals with more flexibility. I just don't think it will change. Same reason I'm not bothering to add the removal of walkthrough animals, save the one species that could, you know, easily kill guests..
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I respect your decision but it’s important to point out the elephant and babirusa situations aren’t just subspecies, they’re entire SPECIES that are wrong.
 

Bearcat9948

Bearcat9948
  • Sleeping log/tree limb! One or two variations, perhaps a natural branch and one that's more of a generic log (felxicolor please). This would hang off of the edge of a hill or climbing platform and would provide unique sleeping/resting animations for the relevant animals, being binturongs, clouded leopards, sun and moon (Formosan) bears, jaguars, lions. Super easy way to get animals climbing more often, and for longer.
  • Water slide object that must end in a connection to a body of water, being used by otters. Could be made big enough in case, oh I don't know, a California sea lion is ever added.
Found a notes section I had from a while ago with some enrichment ideas I forgot about. They already implemented natural scratching posts, that was another I had
 
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