Winter DLC Speculation

[MarcB096]

I'm tempted to search these names up, but I'll be scarred for life , I'll keep my common house spiders in Scotland whatever they call them. That's about what I can handle

I rescued a few orb weaving spiders today....they always somehow wanted to cross exactly the hiking trails ...

 

[MarcB096]

I dunno. Grounded seemed to have made my arachnophobia worse, plus all my stress and anxiety

I would never play it....although I have no real phobia for most insects (I just don't need them inside the house )
Grounded seems to me as it's more a horror game than something to get the possibility to overcome a phobia

 

[paul78]

@jcp011c heres what I heard from a content creator I believe it was Evolution Square on why the latest jwe2 pack was a smaller pack and kind of surprising in choice. She seemed to think it all had to do with Christmas and marketing a more complete pack around Christmas makes more sense business wise. Our first Xmas was the arctic pack but it was the first pack for a game that technically released over a month earlier. Next was the aquatic of course and we all know that generated a lot of hype. I believe there doing the same with the next pack as well. Maybe a aviary dlc or some type of pack featuring highly requested animals. That was their theory tho.

 

[MarcB096]

@jcp011c heres what I heard from a content creator I believe it was Evolution Square on why the latest jwe2 pack was a smaller pack and kind of surprising in choice. She seemed to think it was all had to do with Christmas and marketing a more complete pack around Christmas makes more sense business wise. Our first Xmas was the arctic pack but it was the first pack for a game that technically released over a month earlier. Next was the aquatic of course and we all know that generated a lot of hype. I believe there doing the same with the next pack as well. Maybe a aviary dlc or some type of pack featuring highly requested animals. That was their theory tho.

I don't think we will get an aviary DLC around christmas...maybe next year around summer . Like I said, I guess that the bats are just a first test if it's worth it to keep working on a real flying mechanic (or if there are some unexpected bugs, they maybe can't solve without a lot of work....)

 

[Colehunter35]

I don't think we will get an aviary DLC around christmas...maybe next year around summer . Like I said, I guess that the bats are just a first test if it's worth it to keep working on a real flying mechanic (or if there are some unexpected bugs, they maybe can't solve without a lot of work....)

the bats were SUCH a surprise tho

 

[jcp011c]

@jcp011c heres what I heard from a content creator I believe it was Evolution Square on why the latest jwe2 pack was a smaller pack and kind of surprising in choice. She seemed to think it was all had to do with Christmas and marketing a more complete pack around Christmas makes more sense business wise. Our first Xmas was the arctic pack but it was the first pack for a game that technically released over a month earlier. Next was the aquatic of course and we all know that generated a lot of hype. I believe there doing the same with the next pack as well. Maybe a aviary dlc or some type of pack featuring highly requested animals. That was their theory tho.

That makes sense. The European pack may have been more standard than the Aquatic pack but at that point they needed to do it to finish out the continents. The new exhibit may preview how flight could be handled (or possibly not). I really think now with Conservation and Twilight both being scenery pack they're working extra hard on the December pack to really wow us.

 

[Colehunter35]

I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE 25TH! on the 25th i get to by the twilight pack and the australia pack!

 

[MarcB096]

the bats were SUCH a surprise tho

I always hoped for them (basically since I bought the game in 2020)..because I visited the bat cave at Munich Zoo (which unfortunately was demolished last year) and standing between houndrets of bats was such an impressive experience....
I just don't get it why we don't get for example the Greater mouse-eared bat or Seba's short-tailed bat instead of the large fruit bats, which are, if I'm correct actually more flying foxes than bats(I remember that Munich Zoo has some in the tropical house).

 

[PnGLINNyo]

View attachment 326302
Siamang brachiation structure?

They didn't name it brachation structure, it's a metal climbing frame. But who knows, maybe there's more in patch 1.11

 

[Captain Callum]

They didn't name it brachation structure, it's a metal climbing frame. But who knows, maybe there's more in patch 1.11

Maybe orangutans ?!

 

[Colehunter35]

i just watched hocus pocus 2 as a celebration for the twilight pack annoucement

 

[PeppyPepp]

I always thought I was the only one finding a birds pack to specific/niche, where did you hide all that years?
I could see them do an animal pack just with birds now though, to be honest. Not that full blown 30 species thing some players want. Just a regular animal pack, with the option to add more later.

What the twilight pack does show to me, however, is that they might go the "easy" road for a lot of new stuff. Looped flying, a "nighthouse pack" without nighthouse mechanics and so on. And in all honesty? I don't mind. I still would trade 20-30 climbing items that function like a single enrichment item and looped animations on them with the buggy free climbing. Any time.

No no, it's been here all the time, don't worry haha!

Yes, the new exhibits definitely open possibilities of nighthouses. And I agree, I would also trade!

 

[biggest_dreamer]

I think the new "large exhibits" answer our every need for aviaries, as we could decorate them however we want.

I disagree, because customizing the exhibits is only part of the problem. Potential issues still include:

• Not every aviary is, or should be, walk-through. It's bad enough that bats seem to be limited to just walk-through instead of having the option to build in-the-wall exhibits, but there's so many birds that just won't work for walk-throughs. Birds of prey are the most obvious ones, but I've also never seen walk-through aviaries feature several other super popular species such as toucans and hornbills.
• The current large exhibit is massive. If you wanted to keep an exhibit for, say, finches or budgies or Bali mynas, they'd get utterly lost in there.
• On that note, what does this mean for mixed species exhibits? Mixed bird aviaries are perhaps just as common if not more common than single-species ones, particularly in bigger zoos. The current exhibit setup doesn't allow for species mixing, and I'm not sure how it would even work with the birds potentially being on predetermined loops. Additionally, this makes the prospect of aviary and non-aviary mixed exhibits seem especially unlikely. It's not a deal breaker, but it's going to be very disappointing if we get scarlet ibises and can't stick them in with capybaras, or ground hornbills or crowned cranes that can't join the rest of the savannah crowd.

There are absolutely accommodations that could be made for each of these points while still using the new large exhibit idea, likely fairly easily (aside from the mixed aviary/non-aviary one). But I don't feel remotely comfortable saying these new boxes are equipped to answer our "every need" until I see more than what we're getting for the bats.

 

[Markiz]

South American Tropical Hall, a winter getaway DLC.

Linnaeus's Two-toed Sloth
Black Howler
Golden Lion Tamarin
Ocelot
Geoffroy's Spider Monkey
Scarlet Macaw
Keel-billed Toucan
Green Anaconda

I have to say I really love this idea the most.

The contrast to Winter as opposed to going in theme, the slow introduction of birds that would then continue to happen throughout the next DLCs, the animal chocies. Even the Green Anaconda that I would be opposed to before now could work with the bigger exhibit system.

And if not, it could easily be changed for ET Boa or Basilisk or something

 

[peafowl]

For a dedicated pack of exhibit animals i'd prefer species that from now on can be handled. Like..... i dont know......, birds.

 

[Captain Callum]

I'm not entirely sure we would get birds if the whole bats thing is a testing phase. Saying bats is testing out flight mechanics - why would frontier then go all in making a massive bird dlc , it just doesn't make sense. A more experimental phase of introducing walkthrough bird exhibits like say budgies/parrots as a soft release would make sense to again test out how do birds react well to gameplay.

A full walkthrough aviary which I would love to have could be complicated for the next dlc even the likes of huge birds of prey. We haven't exactly got a huge feature like such considering I doubt we get any sort of nocturnal system with the twilight dlc. Developing new mechanics that could flop when half the player base is rampant about Tasmanian devils is a risky move

 

[PnGLINNyo]

I'm not entirely sure we would get birds if the whole bats thing is a testing phase. Saying bats is testing out flight mechanics - why would frontier then go all in making a massive bird dlc , it just doesn't make sense. A more experimental phase of introducing walkthrough bird exhibits like say budgies/parrots as a soft release would make sense to again test out how do birds react well to gameplay.

A full walkthrough aviary which I would love to have could be complicated for the next dlc even the likes of huge birds of prey. We haven't exactly got a huge feature like such considering I doubt we get any sort of nocturnal system with the twilight dlc. Developing new mechanics that could flop when half the player base is rampant about Tasmanian devils is a risky move

I do agree, perhaps only at a potential "Planet Zoo 2" they'd introduce large flying birds just as in the Aviary mechanic in JWE and JWE2

 

[TheYeti]

I don't really get the whole "bats is a testing phase" thing. While I do think that this is the first case where they experienced with flying stuff for Planet Zoo, it doesn't make sense to see their release as part of testing. That would be like saying the Aquatic pack was a test for diving behaviours. It's not. It's the product that was released after a long process of behind-the-scenes testing. I'm also sure that these bats have been tested for quite a long time before release, perhaps even before we got the Conservation pack. For all we know they've already been testing full flying behaviours since last Christmas. If we get birds for December, they have well planned this in advance and are probably pretty far with testing the behaviours already.

 

[Captain Callum]

I don't really get the whole "bats is a testing phase" thing. While I do think that this is the first case where they experienced with flying stuff for Planet Zoo, it doesn't make sense to see their release as part of testing. That would be like saying the Aquatic pack was a test for diving behaviours. It's not. It's the product that was released after a long process of behind-the-scenes testing. I'm also sure that these bats have been tested for quite a long time before release, perhaps even before we got the Conservation pack. For all we know they've already been testing full flying behaviours since last Christmas. If we get birds for December, they have well planned this in advance and are probably pretty far with testing the behaviours already.

Yeah that's the other side of the argument and maybe why we haven't seen much major gameplay additions in the last 2 dlc at least. It's entirely speculation about bats and flight testing as I know actual testing is done by frontier development teams. Maybe it's a tease of what's to come but I doubt free flying anytime soon

 

[becks474]

Yeah that's the other side of the argument and maybe why we haven't seen much major gameplay additions in the last 2 dlc at least. It's entirely speculation about bats and flight testing as I know actual testing is done by frontier development teams. Maybe it's a tease of what's to come but I doubt free flying anytime soon

We got the brachiation system with the last pack. I could imagine that its Integration was not as easy at all as it perhaps seems.