So, let's get done with this since it’s bigger than expected.
This is a user experience detailed analysis based on 50 hours of this first month after official launch focused on reporting big and minimal disturbances that compromises the gaming experience immersion in any level, critical or minimal, which I should report though the Issue Tracker but they are just so many and I already lost very much of my time doing someone else’s job instead actually enjoying the game as I should, so please understand. I’m a senior Game UI/UX designer and I hope my feedback may improve this title we were all so excited about and have all the potential and resources necessary to be the greatest of its kind.
Resume:
Despite the game structure being mostly functional (and dont get me wrong, it IS fun even with the many problems along the way so we have a huge potential here to make the truly best of its genre), it’s clear that the game was released with hurry and without the proper polish. The onboarding lacks user preparation, especially for players unfamiliar with the franchise or genre. The UI present several problems. The carrer missions are quite repetitive and misses the opportunity to introduce the game's various contents with a more joyful and dynamic way.
*Note: This forum just accepts 10 attached images so the references here will me missing
Main Gap of Disinterest:
Overlooking all the minor problems along the way, the first worrying gap appears in Carrer>Chapter 1>”Natural Attraction” where the paths and terrain presents MANY disturbing errors while trying to edit or make new paths on the ground.
Here, the player also begins to feel the repetition of the carrer missions, making the gameplay a bit tedious and missing the feeling of apprenticeship and unpredictability.
General Disturbances:
This is a user experience detailed analysis based on 50 hours of this first month after official launch focused on reporting big and minimal disturbances that compromises the gaming experience immersion in any level, critical or minimal, which I should report though the Issue Tracker but they are just so many and I already lost very much of my time doing someone else’s job instead actually enjoying the game as I should, so please understand. I’m a senior Game UI/UX designer and I hope my feedback may improve this title we were all so excited about and have all the potential and resources necessary to be the greatest of its kind.
Resume:
Despite the game structure being mostly functional (and dont get me wrong, it IS fun even with the many problems along the way so we have a huge potential here to make the truly best of its genre), it’s clear that the game was released with hurry and without the proper polish. The onboarding lacks user preparation, especially for players unfamiliar with the franchise or genre. The UI present several problems. The carrer missions are quite repetitive and misses the opportunity to introduce the game's various contents with a more joyful and dynamic way.
*Note: This forum just accepts 10 attached images so the references here will me missing
Main Gap of Disinterest:
Overlooking all the minor problems along the way, the first worrying gap appears in Carrer>Chapter 1>”Natural Attraction” where the paths and terrain presents MANY disturbing errors while trying to edit or make new paths on the ground.
Here, the player also begins to feel the repetition of the carrer missions, making the gameplay a bit tedious and missing the feeling of apprenticeship and unpredictability.
General Disturbances:
- There’s no Portuguese Voice Dub anymore. This is a downgrade compared to PC1 and Planet Zoo and breaks the magic of the previous experiences. Plus, the game news in the main menu and website are shown only in English. Even some ingame content didn’t have the proper language localization like some attractions and builds with english names. (Noticed today, Dec 01, that SOME news in the main menu are now showing up in portuguese, still is not enough)
- Talking about this main menu news ui, let’s talk about this outrageous pop up with a typed link instead a click-n-open button:
- Frontier Intro video do not support ultrawide screens properly (black bars)
- On Carrer>Prologue, it can compromise onboarding to allow the new player to start at the water park, since there is no teaching of basic mechanics there. At least put some advice for the player about it.
- Character portraits edges are pixelated:
- The tutorials seem incomplete compared to planet zoo... I suffered from the lack of some visual cues. Some cues occur at the wrong time.
- For the first time opening a shop, is not clear the player must click on it twice and manually activate it.
- For the first time putting a water slide, there’s no explanation about the paths connections to it. It’s like a shop? It’s like an attraction that needs a queue path? It can be very confusing when somehow people in the park are not entering the water slide stairs.
- The park hours system can be a little confusing for the first time, since the passing time indicator, sunset/sunrise configuration, park opening and closing hour are in different places.
- Employee lounges and similar facilities do not have decorated interiors as those at Planet Zoo, which is… sad.
- After listening a new chapter introduction by entering a new chapter, the player may press to listen again due to a lack of adequate signaling that the button has already been automatically viewed.
- The mission difficulty system looks like a joke in this title. There’s no way to select a main difficulty for the experience, you must open this difficulty popup EVERY TIME before starting a new mission and it can’t even remember your last selected one for the next mission. Plus, the difficulty choice looks like to mean not rewardable as is expected to be since you can change anything at any time except the initial capital. It’s not like you can be proud of seeing you completed a hard level since the game even shows the difficulty level of a park in the UI.
- When naming facilities, it is not possible to type many words, even if the native name breaks this rule. For example: In "Maquina de vendas da viva la vegan 1" you can't simply remove the "1" from it because the game will not accept it. This is very common for Chinese titles but this is not the case and still, unacceptable.
- Why exactly the facilities/attraction window have two buttons for the same function (open/close) instead a single alternative one?
- Starting chapter 1, the player already knows about the need of trashcans and benches. Still, in the first mission, you are unable to put any of them in the park. (Just later)
- When connecting paths or queues to paths, the connection becomes pretty strange if you don't hold down "Z". [Apparently this problem has been fixed]
- Also, there’s no indication about this Z button in the game tool subs.
- There is no easy way to find employees around the park using the Heat Map. Ride maintenance is behind schedule and I can't see where the nearest mechanic who was called by the emergency services is stuck or having difficulty on route.
- In carrer>chapter 1> A Shore Thing: Probably all facilities already in the park when you begin are using english names instead the language of choice [portuguese]
- Also, the coasters names and models in Create a custom ride screen are in English, turning the immersion and reading very confusing.
- In this same screen (Create a custom ride), this text is not align well:
- when a ride's employee is resting, the ride's info says "no employee assigned" instead of "resting" and mentioning who is resting.
- When opening the employee roster through an attraction, it does not display the filters correctly, making it impossible for you to quickly manage other employees or going back to the general roster screen. It is as if there is a hidden filter attached to the attraction but it does not inform you of this anywhere.
- The heatmap subcategories are very poor for making an accurate choice. You have to go through several filters until you find what you want and if you alternate between the main categories right there, it will not remember your last choice.
- In the park entrance>energy tab: when you click the location icon for the energy distributors nothing happens.
- In the main menu, while logging into the Frontier account and forgetting the password, it gives a QR code for recover that is useless for PC players. The link doesn't work.
- When logging in with the Frontier account the game asks for a "Câmera de Exibição” which maybe should be “Display name (Nome de Exibição)”. Prob translation problem.
- Some visitor have problems to fit in the attraction base
- When creating a franchise, In the intro message is insistently mentioned that you cannot change the location chosen for the park. Too much.
- While configurating a store as just a memento, it is very impractical to have to open item by item to deactivate them from sale. Its bad to make change in general like the food shops.
- When you put a pool set with lifeguards, they don't disappear if you undo it.
- In the navigator, the item you are holding in the list is not visually indicated (selected button effect), making it difficult to know where it was so I can continue trying new items in line
- Visitors are presenting a mood “Conteúdo” which I don’t know what it means. Prob translate problem.
- when viewing visitor status, need icons could have mouse-over text attached to them to make easier discover what they are.
- In the park management: attractions and stores > in the list of stores, you can access the menu of restaurants and eating machines but not of store items and customer service
- clicking in a pool>filter rate tab: clicking on the location icon does not take you to the location of it.
- In the navigator, when typing to search something there is no button to quickly delete this search without selecting the text and deleting it letter by letter.
- river trek test cart disappears in first person view (seems to be fixed!)
- [critical] for some reason, while next to star trek, when clicking on a visitor and going to the thoughts tab, there is instantly a clicking sound one after the other and the fps drops considerably. Just stops if you get out the thoughts tab.
- in the navigator, when selecting an item and hovering over another, the item name popup no longer appears. (seems to be fixed now with the navigator closing when you select an item)
- [critical] when entering the franchise > settings of an open franchise > edit tags: several sections appear multiplied and when opening the language selection, the game crashed and closed. (Seems to be fixed now)
- in the main menu, the CONTINUE button does not give you the idea of where it will take you. The visual reading here is a bit confusing. Planet Zoo does it better.
- The animation of the cleaner cleaning up vomit starts with one type of broom and suddenly changes to another. The animation lacks fluidity from the end to the beginning. Very abrupt.
- in park management> employees: the tick function only serves to increase the salary and dismiss employees synchronously. Neither the location nor the schedules work in this case and this makes the interface confusing as to the real use of the sticks.
- Fired employees also cannot be rehired and remain on the list until they leave the park. You can even access the employee roster and make changes even if they have already been fired. The button should be hidden.
- Some "visitors in distress" notifications don't give any idea of what exactly they're trying to communicate. You cannot understand the problem.
- in stores, make it easier to edit the value of items without having to go into settings of each item.
- when selecting a store without employees: when opening the employee scale, should be a button where it is possible to quickly hire an employee without having to close the window, open the browser and manually enter.
- In carrer, chapter 1: The park and reconstruction mission can become VERY difficult, if not practically impossible if the player has the Russian counter collision active in the game configs since some parts of the incomplete coasters somehow cannot be connected.
- In the employee roster, when assigning a specific attraction and returning to the scale interface, all filters disappear and you have to select all filters again to continue working on the x employee roster.
- In Main Menu>Profile>Edit Profile: its hard to understand which color changes what in the UI. Some of the color options really don’t change nothing.
- when entering a 5 star park in the franchise challenge the game crashed on loading
- There is no easy way to find employees linked to a specific work zone around the park using the Heat Map
- The bathroom does not have a financial tab, which makes it difficult to understand the impact of the amounts charged when making profit is my goal instead kepping it clean more easily.
- You put the cleaner in front of the full trash can and they ignore it even if there is nothing other than trash cleaning activated. You can't call the garbage man to attend a specific object like you call a mechanic, for example. May work calling a new worker and, with luck, they will clean the trash can. Firstly I thought it was a worker zone matter but it’s not.
- The heat map does not remember your previous choice and every time you change tabs you will have to choose the subcategory again.
- when creating paths, there is no option to draw to delete.
- From the employee zones, it is not possible to use the employee locate icon to quickly find them as expected.
- While playing in Portuguese, when finishing a carrer stage, the "continue" button has an ambiguous meaning that confuses the player. Is it to continue in the park or to continue the career and move on to the next challenge? While the other button, "exit to menu", seems to exit the game.
- When creating a pool, while using the drawing tool, the limit is very short and it is difficult to finish a figure.
- While ingame, in employee zones>create new: it would be more practical to be able to give the zone a name right in this creation window. Also, the demarcations of the three-dimensional painting are difficult to understand regarding the accuracy of the determined area.
- In create pool>pool tools>selection: the selected area is too short, making it impossible to close the pool. Also, when going to the removal tab and returning to another tab other than the first, the removal tool remains active.
- When copying a pool style, the customization brush is not applying the outline. only the tiles at the bottom of the pool.
- When creating path and pool, place the color picker in the first window.
- In the employee scale, it requires 4 clicks to assign an employee to a machine which is not practical.
- In the carrer, chapter 1, island stage: the buildings all came with names in English instead the language of choice “Portuguese”
- Water slide platform>customization: The color of choice is not changing at all in the first slot.
- There is no way to lock the camera of interest to the visitor while continue monitoring their information.
- Cable car attraction: the energy does not increase as it should when increasing the speed of the toy. Doesn’t seem right.
- When sending a friend request, I got stuck on an eternal loading screen.
- You can't assign a lifeguard to the chair of another lifeguard who is taking a break.
- When moving a water slide platform, its current position is counted as occupancy and you cannot move it properly.
- in the carrer, chapter 1, island: suddenly several messages started to appear saying that visitors wanted to leave the park and could not, but it is impossible to locate the source of the problem.
- In the add path window, when copying a texture, it also copies the handrail from the other tab, making the visibility of what is going to be copied impaired. Everything linked to the customization should be presented in the same tab.
- It is not allowed to build a pool where you are not allowed to enter, only to leave (such as pools with exclusive water slides)
- In a water slide platform, the selection of platform and slide is confusing to understand what is being selected and how you can extend the platform.
- It is not possible to assign zones to employees to delimit where they look for work without compromising the entire schedule.
- In the game sound settings, there is no mute while in background option
- The cost of building paths, queuing, and modifying terrain is absurdly cheap, even on the highest difficulty, killing the management immersion.
- The employee building does not appear on the heat map that is related to employees, making it difficult to easily locate in the park without accessing the attraction and store management.
- The weather button could very well be integrated into the weather symbol in the bottom center of the screen.
- In the navigator, would be useful a “colorpick” tool that allows you to find a scenery item in the world more easily. This feature already exists in the advanced configuration of a object in the world.
another solution is attaching it to the first item-details window to find similar itens more easily: - In employee schedules, what the hell is “overwriting (”? Even reading the help topic is very difficult to understand. Planet Zoo's help guides are much more detailed and efficient.
- Some scenario move axes such as "Buxo – Arco grande" are not centered, making positioning difficult. Maybe a function to change the move/rotantion center point?
- The cable car installation is not working as it should. testing in sandbox and campaign. when installing the entire structure, the test button does nothing, nor does the toy camera because the cars ONLY APPEAR when exiting the saved game and reloading it.
- ‘Cable car’ cars dont appear after the cable car complete installation and cannot be tested nor open. This happened in both campaing and sandbox. After going back to the man menu and reloading the levels, the cars reappear.
- cable car camera is on the wrong seat (turned back)
- cable car: in the operations tab, the number of cars option is not displayed correctly and sometimes it simply does not exist on the UI. When it does appear as “30 cars” changing this value is even worse, bugging the cars and making the option disappear again.
- when putting a new mechanic in the park, he immediately after the thought "removed toy broke. I'm going there", even though no attraction has been removed
- When modifying the ‘monsoon chute’ sequence, there is no warning that this will cause the ride to close, compromising the experience of visitors who are already on the ride and in the queue.
- When double-clicking on the ready-made path, you have to mimic its size, otherwise you have to adjust it manually instead automatically copied.
- In the Create an Attraction/Ride window: The filters lack options to filter by the attraction effects like nausea, fear, etc
- In the park management, attractions/installations tabs: there are cleaning and mechanical (cable car) signs on attractions/building that doesn’t actually have a use for that and this can be a little confusing to visually read the information since they do not have such functions. The player can easily be scared by thinking they are broken/dirty.
- In the park management, while multiselecting many attractions/building the button to localize them doesn’t actually show ALL of them (which could be done by heat map indications). In this case, the proper UI reaction could be just disenable when many itens are selected from the list.
- In Carrer>Chapter 1>”Natural Attraction”(the eco park): the paths and terrain presents MANY disturbing errors while trying to edit or make new paths on the ground making me insane along all the level.
- Visitors sitting at the eating table consuming food doesn’t actually show the food in their hands making difficult to know if they are actually consuming there or just sitting on the banks.
- in the game settings, when opening a list option, the highlight option is not the one currently selected making difficult to see if there’s a better option above the selected without having to read the whole list.
- in the career>chapter 1> eco park: the advertising plan "fans of quiet roller coasters" is not meeting the requirements even putting many many coasters with the requirements:
- There’s no “light force” option in the objects emitting lights. It may also be applied to the camera light.
- If you close the park, people will simply leave happy without it affecting them by taking them out in the middle of the ride. (Why would you close the park, tho? To make money. Once you kick out people who paid the entrance fee, the park will empty out and as soon as it opens you will start making more money and score better park scores more easily)
- When placing a park entrance gate, the game does not remember the path design options already selected and places a different floor than expected.
- In the franchise mode, Rank Challenges by accumulated money along the time doesn’t seem fair, specially when competing for rewards. I’ve actually lost interest in the franchise mode because of that.
- When placing a bench with a custom color, the same colors are not maintained for the next bank. You have to duplicate the item placed for that.
- This Powered Rotating Ride is a mistery for me since I’m not familiar with and it takes ages to be tested and people immediately complained about the attraction time when opened. Maybe a demo already builded ride may help to understand this ride. The real problem its not autolinking with the station in the end.
Also, may happen that after the installation using the autocomplete button the ride does not display any cars and the test button does not work. When you exit the toy selection, the cars appear. - You have to go through an entire process to group pieces together instead of simply holding CTRL, needing to use the multiple selection tool.
- When changing the color of a piece of scenery, you need to type #. (Looks like this fix is coming in the next patch on Dec/24)
- In many career scenarios, you are unable to move or delete scenario projects, but you are allowed to delete facilities within them, making it difficult to adapt these buildings to new facilities. Ideally, you would be prevented from modifying the entire structure to maintain the difficulty.
- To remove the impression of career stages being too repetitive, would be good to show the specific environment challenges and advantages of the scenario more objectively, such as: “you will not be able to modify buildings, too much raining days, visitors will be less willing to spend money, etc.”
- While building a new water slide the platform height is only shown when you already put it down, making difficult to build a specific size platform.
- The impulse coaster's laps can't be adjusted.
Did I miss something? Please, use the text search to search problems you guys had (If you don't have the time to read it all. no judgements. I wouldn't read it either) and let me know so I can attach in my doc to keep track of the game improvement.
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