Am I the only one who doesn’t care about the enrichment rotation?

[Lea_G]

First of all, it took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to manually exchange the enrichment items from time to time. In terms of realism, that makes sense of course, but it is too much management for me. And in more than 150 hours of playing the game, I have just ignored the whole thing without considerable consequences. I always put a variety of feeders and toys into the habitat, as soon as I have researched them. And the animals are fine. They get slightly bored over time, but the overall welfare is still close to a maximum for all species that I have kept so far, I don’t get negative notifications and the guests enjoy the animals and donate a lot. Even after years and decades.

I would like to have an option to automate the rotation (assign the keeper to do it or a menu related to the item or something like that), but currently I just can’t be bothered and it doesn’t seem to be an issue (which is good). Has anyone else been equally pragmatic? I’m curious to hear about your experiences with that!

 

[B1aderunner009]

I do occasionally but I tend to stop expanding my zoos at around 10-15 habitats so it’s not as bad. However, animals seem to get bored with enrichment items too fast. I have had issues where I’ve switched everything and the points for enrichment are only at half still from the previous rotation. Also there are too many species that don’t have enough items to rotate with in the first place.

 

[goldelpack]

I find that rotating enrichment items never seems to be something I remember to do. As they become available I drop them and occasionally go in and "reset" them. I think it would be something that the keeper would do and agree that an option to have them do it would be awesome. When they come to de-poop they could re-enrich enrichment. Even make that something the keeper can have training on..

 

[jrolson]

Should be removed.... to much micro management...

 

[bhutch]

Agreed. I didn't even know it was a thing until people started commenting on it on the forums. And I have no intention of ever rotating any enrichment items, to be totally honest.

It's one of those features where I imagine the devs got really excited about this cool, super realistic, super detailed feature and thought surely everyone else will be just as excited as them--but unfortunately, in their excitement and eagerness to be as realistic and detailed as possible, kind of missed the mark. I see where they were going with it, and in a smaller game (focusing only on a handful of animals, perhaps) it WOULD be really neat. But this game is too big for that, I think.

 

[VioletGrey]

You're supposed to rotate the enrichment items?
WAAAYY too much micromanagement. There's already too much micromanaging in PZ.

 

[Garyd73]

I like it as I am sure animals must get bored out of there heads in a tiny enclosure, however maybe an alert that comes up when it needs replacing would be nice if there isn't one already. There was a number of comments that PC didn't have enough management so it is very difficult to please everyone.

 

[Nioell]

I actually made a topic related to this a while back: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/not-enough-toy-enrichment-items.534036/

For now I gave up trying. I just can't be bothered to do it manually anymore with 30+ habitats and not even enough items available to actually make it work. I would love to give my animals the perfect exhibit but as it is now I guess my giraffes, elephants and all the others will have to make do with 80% welfare instead of 100% -.-

If only they gave us an option to set an item rotation schedule for the habitats and at least twice as many items to work with...

 

[Adarra]

I can only agree with what people are saying. I'll add that this intentional rotation doesn't even come into play for several species. Some animals are perfectly content with their enrichment items and you never have to rotate them. Some get bored (too) fast and their wellfare never rises above a certain percentage. Then there's animals that have ONLY ONE ENRICHMENT ITEM available to them, so rotating items literally isn't possible. It comes across as an idea that was sort of implemented, but then sort of forgotten, which again is a sign of this game having been published way too soon.

 

[Klinn]

A potential problem with automatically replacing enrichment items is the way that some of them require a circle of flat terrain around them. So auto-placement could muck up your carefully sculpted habitat, or even fail entirely if it's too close to a path or fence which prohibits terrain modification.

What if animals became bored with an enrichment item after a while and stopped using it, but after ignoring it for a month or whatever they became interested in it again? If you had a number of items in the habitat (full research) they could go through a natural interest/disinterest cycle all on their own and kind of balance out the average enrichment.

 

[Chris Simon]

It's always a matter of balance. And Frontier probably can't win this, no matter what they do. "Damned if they do, damned if they don't"

With JWE they chose to keep the micromanagement to a minimum, in PZ they gave us incredible freedom and depth.
Personally, I keep my zoos small. (Translation - I suck at management in general and keep failing the big ones) so I don't have a problem taking care of my animals on individual basis. In fact, I'd say it's probably my main enjoyment in the game.

But with bigger zoos, there's a problem. Even in real life a zoo manager doesn't micromanage everything. They'd go mad in a month. Delegation of responsibilites is a thing and I think the game, if it were striving for realism, should reflect that in the automation of some of the proceses that just get too tedious over time.

The problems is - different people enjoy different levels of micromanagement. How much is too much and where do you draw the line differs.
So unless we want two hundred sliders and tick boxes in the options menu, I don't see how this could be balanced for everybody.

 

[Annageckos]

It is a pain, and my current zoo only has three habitats. There really isn't a big enough variety to be switching all the time, the animals get bored of the enrichment way too fast. I also have a hard time finding some of the little markers for the items to change them out, I do tend to make my habitats pretty large and well planted. Then having to deal with the auto flatten of the terrain. I see where they were going with it, and it is a good idea in concept but it doesn't really work well in practice. For now I more or less ignore it and switch things now and then when I remember and can find the toys to do so.

 

[Lea_G]

It's always a matter of balance. And Frontier probably can't win this, no matter what they do. "Damned if they do, damned if they don't"

With JWE they chose to keep the micromanagement to a minimum, in PZ they gave us incredible freedom and depth.
Personally, I keep my zoos small. (Translation - I suck at management in general and keep failing the big ones) so I don't have a problem taking care of my animals on individual basis. In fact, I'd say it's probably my main enjoyment in the game.

But with bigger zoos, there's a problem. Even in real life a zoo manager doesn't micromanage everything. They'd go mad in a month. Delegation of responsibilites is a thing and I think the game, if it were striving for realism, should reflect that in the automation of some of the proceses that just get too tedious over time.

The problems is - different people enjoy different levels of micromanagement. How much is too much and where do you draw the line differs.
So unless we want two hundred sliders and tick boxes in the options menu, I don't see how this could be balanced for everybody.

I totally agree - this also applies to almost any other aspect of the game.

And just to be clear: I didn't mean to criticise this in general. I enjoy many aspects of the micromanagement a lot, f.ex. I don't mind keeping track of the offspring and put them into the trade center manually and so on. So this thread was not meant to point out the enrichment rotation as an issue that should be changed - I was just curious what your guys' experiences are and how you deal with it. Because it does not seem to do MUCH harm when you just ignore it. Which in this case is fine because it allows player who do want to rotate the items to do so, but doesn't "punish" me for leaving it be.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I don't rotate the enrichment items at all.. Just like OP, when research is done - i add them.

That's the micromanagement i really don't like and luckily without any consequences
(wellfare still good)

 

[Arrakai]

I usually replace them when I get an inspector, I use that as a sign that it's time to replace the items. But that still means switching everything once every 40min, wich becomes tedious after a while, especially when you have over 20 habitats. I don't really mind it too much, but three big things have to happen for it to become way better!
1. Make it so that the animals don't get bored of them so damn fast! Switching once every 2 hours would be much better than once every 30-40min
2. Make it so that you can auto-select the enrichement items from the animal page (like the foliage) and deleate all of them with one button (or one button for each). The worst part of changing them to me is that you have to find every single thing and delete them manually(so darn tedious with blodscent and herb things, and sometimes you can't even find them!)
3. More items! some animals have lots and don't recuire more than one or two at a time, so then it's easy. But then you have animals like the monkeys of Giraffes where it's very hard to even impossible to get the enrichement to 100%

 

[Nioell]

A potential problem with automatically replacing enrichment items is the way that some of them require a circle of flat terrain around them. So auto-placement could muck up your carefully sculpted habitat, or even fail entirely if it's too close to a path or fence which prohibits terrain modification.

What if animals became bored with an enrichment item after a while and stopped using it, but after ignoring it for a month or whatever they became interested in it again? If you had a number of items in the habitat (full research) they could go through a natural interest/disinterest cycle all on their own and kind of balance out the average enrichment.

The placement problem could easily be avoided if you can decide where the items will go once they're placed in the habitat, just like you do now. Like if you place the sprinkler on a rock that'll be where it goes everytime it circles back in, nothing random about it and no problems regarding terrain or paths or whatever.

And I like your idea as well. We'd probably still need a LOT more items for that to work as well, though...

 

[Bobble2017]

Nope , never bothered rotating enrichment items , I have enough problems going round stopping the animals fighting because of too many in habitats and seeing to everything else , to even bother swapping them about , None of my animals are unhappy because of it so to heck with doing it

 

[FoxyDee]

I am fine with rotation of smaller items or items that are not fixed, however I agree that some larger fixed things like waterfall frame or mud bath should really be able to stay in the habitat without the need to rotate them. Maybe make them expensive so it would be at least little balanced.

Also certain animals, like giraffes or okapis needs more items, since currently they have like 3.

 

[Sclurp]

I choose to ignore this aspect of the game and just take the hit to the animal's overall welfare. There are some animals, like the flamingos, that are not able to use many enrichment items. In a habitat I have for my flamingos, they haven't even gone near the waterfall frame and yet they're bored of it. What can I do? There's nothing to swap it out for.
Also, does boredom pass down generation after generation or will offspring be satisfied with the enrichment items in the habitat?

I agree with FoxyDee about having permanent fixtures cost more money rather than eventually having a negative effect on the animals. There are just some fixtures that would not be replaced.

So another flaw in the game design creeps up on us as it is the job of zookeepers to distribute enrichment items in real zoos and the game really needs to have a menu to designate a keeper to cycle through small enrichment items that can be placed in a habitat rather than the player having to mico-manage this. We should be fitting in larger items into our designs and leaving keepers to place small objects/food enrichment (we've given the go ahead for) in the same way they place food.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I choose to ignore this aspect of the game and just take the hit to the animal's overall welfare. There are some animals, like the flamingos, that are not able to use many enrichment items. In a habitat I have for my flamingos, they haven't even gone near the waterfall frame and yet they're bored of it. What can I do? There's nothing to swap it out for.

This has become more Obvious with the current challenge… I got +180 flamingos but it's basically impossible to raise that value.