Hi everybody!
I actually wanted to share my thoughts about the game, and at the same time want to know, if they align with the general thoughts of the community.
First and foremost: Thanks to Frontier, thanks to the dev's! Each and everyone of you did an amazing job on this game. I can't remember when the last time was that hooked with a game, and clocked so many hours in that little days.
It was half a year ago, when I wanted to play a zoo tycoon game, and as a fan of the old ZooTycoon franchise I actually started playing ZooTycoon2 a few days before the PlanetZoo Trailer hit the world, and it was like Christmas, Easter and birthday at the same time. The graphics looked amazing, the engine that was already well established in Planet Coaster was promising, so I was hyped when it launched, and you didn't disappoint me.
What I especially like about the game:
+ The graphics: Its amazing - nuff said
+ Interaction between scenery and animals: honestly the possibility to build amazing shelter or viewing galleries with the amazing construction system alone, would have been amazing, but to see your apes climb in the attic of the little house you built in their habitat is simply amazing.
+ Franchise Mode: It's just an amazing idea, trading with other zoo's managing credits, micromanaging the genes and attractivity of your animals is fun, and a completely unexpected twist on that game.
+ Scenarios: The Campaign is super cool, nice little story that you tell, amazing prebuilt scenery, good balance of difficulty.
+ Challenging economics: I love that I can come in danger of going bankrupt in a zoo (I had that happen to me), even though the challenge comes from the wrong factors in my mind (see below).
Things that I don't like (with explanation):
- Refund System: Well i know where the game wants to go with that, unhappy guests should punish the income of the zoo. However I think that balances "money loss" from the wrong direction especially when people become unhappy for reasons that I can't control the larger the zoo gets. My biggest franchise zoo, now has 15 big habitats + 10 exhibits. I have nearly 5000 guests in the park and make 300.000+ income per year and its barely enough the make a small plus every month. Which would be absolutely okay, if money was spent for food or staff, but actually the biggest position of expenses is refunds. I have all the needs of the guests covered with average of over 80% for hunger, energy, thirst and education. Still my happiness value is right around 60-75% and I pay 70.000+ money per year for refunds to guests.
So I took some time to see why people become unhappy and what I figured is: People have allocated time in the zoo, after that they leave, and also they come with a list of animals that they want to see within that time frame. All fine and well, but then PLEASE make them actively tick off the list. I tracked 10 visitors through their whole stay, and none of them was going straight to any of the animals that he/she wanted to see, actually the opposite happend, they became distracted with other habitats "losing" alot of time their. (e.g. staying 3 minutes at a habitat that an npc doesn't want to see, just because he walks by, hurts alot when the average time in the zoo is 20 minutes and the habitats are spread all over the zoo. The further increase the issue: After a very short time (and still no wanted habitat seen) they become hungry and thirsty, forcing them to divert to a store. And the npc doesn't take the next store that is on the way to the habitat they wanted to go... nooo they divert backwards (i guess they take the nearest), setting them even further away from their "i wanna see"-habitats.
This is frustrating, as I can't do anything about it, they just become unhappy. It's not a problem with pathing or anything, the zoo is just too big for them to reach 5 habitats that are spread all over the zoo. I tried transport rides (while at the same time ruining the look of my zoo) but people don't seem to take them into consideration for pathing. And it annoys me, because in real life, complaining about bad experience in a zoo, theme park etc. would certainly not give me any money back.
Suggestion to fix the issue: Personally I don't like the concept of people getting money refunded, I would much rather like having like "bad word of mouth" and less guests coming into the zoo, as a financial punishment for unhappiness. While at the same time: people should be able to regain happiness if they liked exploring a habitat (even though they didn't want to see it in the first place).
-Transport Rides: Well I am just not a huge fan of building rides in zoo's but its okay. But atm they seem a bit bugged. People jump on them randomly it seems. I've seen guests that went with a ride to the other end of the zoo, and then the group was going to visit a habitat that was right next to the station where they entered the ride. And after 5 years of existing of so, people stopped using the ride entirely (even if I make it free of charge), for whatever reason, as the first 5 years it was actually making good money for me.
- Guests beeing overly annoyed by staff buildings: I get the point, that people don't want to see those, and personally I don't want to see them in zoo's too. BUT the NPC obviously has some sort of engine in place, that lets them decide, if they can see an animal well, or something is blocking their view. Why not use that to judge wehter or not they get bad mood from a building or not. That would allow for soo many awesome buildings and habitat complexes if only I was able to hide those buildings behind walls. Or scenery in general.
Things I would love to see in the game
+ Underwater exhibits
+ Water-Habitats for Sharks etc. (don't know if that is in alliance with Frontiers "Animal well-being"-Policy, as there is quite a lot of protest against maritime animals, like whales and dolphins, in zoo's)
+ Refund System overhaul
TL;DR: Game is awesome! But the refund system sucks.
-Mares123
I actually wanted to share my thoughts about the game, and at the same time want to know, if they align with the general thoughts of the community.
First and foremost: Thanks to Frontier, thanks to the dev's! Each and everyone of you did an amazing job on this game. I can't remember when the last time was that hooked with a game, and clocked so many hours in that little days.
It was half a year ago, when I wanted to play a zoo tycoon game, and as a fan of the old ZooTycoon franchise I actually started playing ZooTycoon2 a few days before the PlanetZoo Trailer hit the world, and it was like Christmas, Easter and birthday at the same time. The graphics looked amazing, the engine that was already well established in Planet Coaster was promising, so I was hyped when it launched, and you didn't disappoint me.
What I especially like about the game:
+ The graphics: Its amazing - nuff said
+ Interaction between scenery and animals: honestly the possibility to build amazing shelter or viewing galleries with the amazing construction system alone, would have been amazing, but to see your apes climb in the attic of the little house you built in their habitat is simply amazing.
+ Franchise Mode: It's just an amazing idea, trading with other zoo's managing credits, micromanaging the genes and attractivity of your animals is fun, and a completely unexpected twist on that game.
+ Scenarios: The Campaign is super cool, nice little story that you tell, amazing prebuilt scenery, good balance of difficulty.
+ Challenging economics: I love that I can come in danger of going bankrupt in a zoo (I had that happen to me), even though the challenge comes from the wrong factors in my mind (see below).
Things that I don't like (with explanation):
- Refund System: Well i know where the game wants to go with that, unhappy guests should punish the income of the zoo. However I think that balances "money loss" from the wrong direction especially when people become unhappy for reasons that I can't control the larger the zoo gets. My biggest franchise zoo, now has 15 big habitats + 10 exhibits. I have nearly 5000 guests in the park and make 300.000+ income per year and its barely enough the make a small plus every month. Which would be absolutely okay, if money was spent for food or staff, but actually the biggest position of expenses is refunds. I have all the needs of the guests covered with average of over 80% for hunger, energy, thirst and education. Still my happiness value is right around 60-75% and I pay 70.000+ money per year for refunds to guests.
So I took some time to see why people become unhappy and what I figured is: People have allocated time in the zoo, after that they leave, and also they come with a list of animals that they want to see within that time frame. All fine and well, but then PLEASE make them actively tick off the list. I tracked 10 visitors through their whole stay, and none of them was going straight to any of the animals that he/she wanted to see, actually the opposite happend, they became distracted with other habitats "losing" alot of time their. (e.g. staying 3 minutes at a habitat that an npc doesn't want to see, just because he walks by, hurts alot when the average time in the zoo is 20 minutes and the habitats are spread all over the zoo. The further increase the issue: After a very short time (and still no wanted habitat seen) they become hungry and thirsty, forcing them to divert to a store. And the npc doesn't take the next store that is on the way to the habitat they wanted to go... nooo they divert backwards (i guess they take the nearest), setting them even further away from their "i wanna see"-habitats.
This is frustrating, as I can't do anything about it, they just become unhappy. It's not a problem with pathing or anything, the zoo is just too big for them to reach 5 habitats that are spread all over the zoo. I tried transport rides (while at the same time ruining the look of my zoo) but people don't seem to take them into consideration for pathing. And it annoys me, because in real life, complaining about bad experience in a zoo, theme park etc. would certainly not give me any money back.
Suggestion to fix the issue: Personally I don't like the concept of people getting money refunded, I would much rather like having like "bad word of mouth" and less guests coming into the zoo, as a financial punishment for unhappiness. While at the same time: people should be able to regain happiness if they liked exploring a habitat (even though they didn't want to see it in the first place).
-Transport Rides: Well I am just not a huge fan of building rides in zoo's but its okay. But atm they seem a bit bugged. People jump on them randomly it seems. I've seen guests that went with a ride to the other end of the zoo, and then the group was going to visit a habitat that was right next to the station where they entered the ride. And after 5 years of existing of so, people stopped using the ride entirely (even if I make it free of charge), for whatever reason, as the first 5 years it was actually making good money for me.
- Guests beeing overly annoyed by staff buildings: I get the point, that people don't want to see those, and personally I don't want to see them in zoo's too. BUT the NPC obviously has some sort of engine in place, that lets them decide, if they can see an animal well, or something is blocking their view. Why not use that to judge wehter or not they get bad mood from a building or not. That would allow for soo many awesome buildings and habitat complexes if only I was able to hide those buildings behind walls. Or scenery in general.
Things I would love to see in the game
+ Underwater exhibits
+ Water-Habitats for Sharks etc. (don't know if that is in alliance with Frontiers "Animal well-being"-Policy, as there is quite a lot of protest against maritime animals, like whales and dolphins, in zoo's)
+ Refund System overhaul
TL;DR: Game is awesome! But the refund system sucks.
-Mares123
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