Allow Herbivores to Eat Foliage Inside Habitats

[john010]

I've been thinking about ways to make the habitats in Planet Zoo feel more natural and immersive, and I believe one small but impactful feature would be to allow herbivores to eat the foliage placed inside their habitats. Currently, we add plants for aesthetics and environment enrichment, but it would be fantastic if those same plants could serve as a source of food for our animals.

This could not only add realism, since herbivores would naturally graze on the vegetation around them, but also make habitat design more strategic and fun. Players would need to balance aesthetics with practicality, ensuring that they don't underfeed or overfeed their animals or strip habitats of plants. It could also add depth to animal care, as different species might prefer different types of plants. I am not saying that feeders should be completely removed for herbivores, you could still use them to feed animals that don't have foliage they like, or use them to feed animals in habitats with not enough foliage.

Additionally, I think this feature would make the zoo feel less like a controlled environment and more like a natural, wild space. It would be very fun to create zoos that appear more organic, giving players a way to build habitats where animals seem to live freely rather than in captivity. It would really enhance the immersive experience.

I think this would make habitats feel more alive and dynamic. And I would love it if this could be implemented in future updates.

 

[NZFanatic]

make the zoo feel less like a controlled environment and more like a natural, wild space.

But zoos aren't natural, wild spaces. They are controlled environments. One aspect of that control is, quite specifically, nutrition. Some zoos allow herbivores to graze, but not many. There are several reasons for this; if feed is freely available at all times, it becomes too hard to manage how much the animals are eating; if they eat too much, it becomes too challenging and expensive to replace. There's a reason a lot of zoo habitats appear quite bare compared to the animals' natural habitats. Elephants, for example, are rarely in fully-planted habitats, and where there are plants they are carefully placed out of reach to give the illusion of a lush environment.

I'm not trying to dump on your idea, but it's so weird to me how things like this so often come up. It's a zoo building game, yet a small yet significant portion of the community wants it to be not that. Requests pop up all the time for ways to turn this game into a wildlife sanctuary simulator or simply an environment simulator. You're supposed to be building a zoo, which is why the tools don't exist to do some of the things you want to do (and nor should they exist).

Honestly I'd love a modern take on games like SimPark and SimSafari - those super old CD ROM games where you'd build game reserves with lodges and try and balance animal populations with ecotourism, deter poaching, and control disasters - but I wouldn't think to try and do that in Planet Zoo, because neither of those concepts is a zoo.

In any case, the next major update is certainly our last, and I feel pretty safe in saying it's not going to include a total overhaul of the feeding system.

 

[john010]

But zoos aren't natural, wild spaces. They are controlled environments. One aspect of that control is, quite specifically, nutrition. Some zoos allow herbivores to graze, but not many. There are several reasons for this; if feed is freely available at all times, it becomes too hard to manage how much the animals are eating; if they eat too much, it becomes too challenging and expensive to replace. There's a reason a lot of zoo habitats appear quite bare compared to the animals' natural habitats. Elephants, for example, are rarely in fully-planted habitats, and where there are plants they are carefully placed out of reach to give the illusion of a lush environment.

I'm not trying to dump on your idea, but it's so weird to me how things like this so often come up. It's a zoo building game, yet a small yet significant portion of the community wants it to be not that. Requests pop up all the time for ways to turn this game into a wildlife sanctuary simulator or simply an environment simulator. You're supposed to be building a zoo, which is why the tools don't exist to do some of the things you want to do (and nor should they exist).

Honestly I'd love a modern take on games like SimPark and SimSafari - those super old CD ROM games where you'd build game reserves with lodges and try and balance animal populations with ecotourism, deter poaching, and control disasters - but I wouldn't think to try and do that in Planet Zoo, because neither of those concepts is a zoo.

In any case, the next major update is certainly our last, and I feel pretty safe in saying it's not going to include a total overhaul of the feeding system.

I want to clarify that I'm not suggesting turning Planet Zoo into a wildlife sanctuary or environment simulator. But it feels strange to me that grazers, like antelopes, don't feed from the grass in their habitats. Maybe it's a difference in perception, but the zoo closest to where I live uses the habitats as a primary source of food for their animals. And only uses feeders if it is not feasible to let them eat the foliage. It's still controlled, the zoo chooses which foliage is accessible, but it's more realistic.

The example of elephants only reinforces my point. In reality, it's unrealistic to have a fully-planted elephant habitat because they would destroy the vegetation. So why should that be possible in the game? It would add more strategy if players had to design habitats that look lush but ensure certain plants are out of reach of larger animals like elephants.

It's true this wont be in the next update, but there is no doubt there will be another version of this game in the future.

 

[Mjmannella]

I've been thinking about ways to make the habitats in Planet Zoo feel more natural and immersive, and I believe one small but impactful feature would be to allow herbivores to eat the foliage placed inside their habitats. Currently, we add plants for aesthetics and environment enrichment, but it would be fantastic if those same plants could serve as a source of food for our animals.

This could not only add realism, since herbivores would naturally graze on the vegetation around them, but also make habitat design more strategic and fun. Players would need to balance aesthetics with practicality, ensuring that they don't underfeed or overfeed their animals or strip habitats of plants. It could also add depth to animal care, as different species might prefer different types of plants. I am not saying that feeders should be completely removed for herbivores, you could still use them to feed animals that don't have foliage they like, or use them to feed animals in habitats with not enough foliage.

Additionally, I think this feature would make the zoo feel less like a controlled environment and more like a natural, wild space. It would be very fun to create zoos that appear more organic, giving players a way to build habitats where animals seem to live freely rather than in captivity. It would really enhance the immersive experience.

I think this would make habitats feel more alive and dynamic. And I would love it if this could be implemented in future updates.

This would be a great feature, and one that might actually give gameplay incentive for careful foliage selection because non-native plants might be toxic to those animals. Plus, this was a feature in ZT2, and one that added just that little bit of immersion.