You're not the only one, its just some method to make the game even harder
Am I the only one who doesn’t care about the enrichment rotation?
- Thread starter Lea_G
- Start date
I occasionally rotate out a ball or cardboard box (100 dollars lmao) for another toy. If I’m doing any maintenance or just observing my animals in between building new things, it’s fine. But some things like sprinklers, jets and waterfall stay in forever because they are nice ambient decorations, and some animals have like 1-3 enrichment items total, so it’s too tedious to switch these out. The welfare hit is negligible if all other needs are met.
Eventually, having the same toys for ever will have the same effect as having none at all. This affects the animals’ wellbeing number quite a bit. This in turn will impact the guests’ happiness and their willingness to donate and buy souvenirs and your zoo’s bottom line. The guests love seeing animals at or close to 100%, which you can only achieve with fully effective enrichment items. So neglect those toys at your own risk!
It doesn't make sense to swap out certain ones anyway. In a real zoo, the feeding pond, waterfall, and mud pool would all be permanent features of the exhibit. The keepers wouldn't go in after a year, dig the whole thing up, drain it, cover the ground, and put something else in its place, only to reverse the process the year after.
Swapping enrichment in real zoos usually means changing around the basic toys, adding new things to the enclosure to stimulate curiosity, or feeding the animal in a new way.
Swapping enrichment in real zoos usually means changing around the basic toys, adding new things to the enclosure to stimulate curiosity, or feeding the animal in a new way.
I slightly disagree - I don't get the impression that my guests are unhappy with the animals' happiness, the ones with the lowest rate are still well over 80%. This seems to be okay enough to make them donate and stuff.
Hi all,
Posting again after having a break from PZ (a new game came out that stole my attention for a bit). Coming back and remembering this discussion, I find myself frustrated again with this system (especially as my zoo is in Sandbox mode)...above and to the right you'll see information for the Mirror Mobile item. It was used just once over 12 months and perhaps that's because the flamingos were already bored of it but the habitat feels fairly new to me as I haven't finished building it. So while I may be in year 29 of my zoo (which isn't even open yet), my animals are already becoming bored of items I'm placing down in my work-in-progress habitat.
Looking at the information given in that window, I'm having to guess the meaning behind some of the data. Novelty (accompanied by a percentage) is fairly self-explanatory. Quality though? 150 out of what? Is it a degradable item? How do animals respond to "quality"? What is its impact? I don't know.
I would love to see this facet of the game replaced with something else (as I mentioned before, a spot you can have your keeper plop down swap-able enrichment toys would be most ideal. With larger and more expensive items being permanent).
I try to remember to rotate them, but it feels so pointless when some animals simply don't have enough enrichment items to begin with.
Perhaps there could also be a staff member you could hire that could deal with animal enrichment needs/ rotating items? Those who don't like doing the job themselves could hire that staff member, and those that do like it don't have to. Or perhaps just make it an option on keepers.
Perhaps there could also be a staff member you could hire that could deal with animal enrichment needs/ rotating items? Those who don't like doing the job themselves could hire that staff member, and those that do like it don't have to. Or perhaps just make it an option on keepers.
How to switch enrichment item? I delete the old enrichment item and replace the new enrichment items but there is no use.
in the release-version you didnt need to rotate them, it was in the first or second patch, when they changed it. i do it, but i dont like it.
You need to replace the old one with a different item that you haven't used in a while
I also think this feature is a bit flawed… Some animals highly prefer their own toy and don't get bored with them.
I don't know about zoo animals but my own pets are very picky about some.
1 of my cats will actually destroy the package just to get his favorite looking toy (over the years, I bought several of the same one and still loves it after 10 years)
And 2 of my cats only play with grey mouse toys (somehow they ignore the same toy in a different color)
Even when i buy different toys - they always play with their favorite ones.
I know some want to play with different toys all the time but I'd love to see this as a personality trait. Gives it a bit more challenge to find the right balance in enrichment items.
I don't know about zoo animals but my own pets are very picky about some.
1 of my cats will actually destroy the package just to get his favorite looking toy (over the years, I bought several of the same one and still loves it after 10 years)
And 2 of my cats only play with grey mouse toys (somehow they ignore the same toy in a different color)
Even when i buy different toys - they always play with their favorite ones.
I know some want to play with different toys all the time but I'd love to see this as a personality trait. Gives it a bit more challenge to find the right balance in enrichment items.
Agreed. One of my cats loves his Christmas bauble, a rat soft toy, and old cardboard boxes (I'm sure he'd love one of those old gulpee boxes the animals on planet zoo are given!). The other loves his climbing tower! Same species, but different preferences, and they sure don't get bored of those preferences!
I'm sure that just cause a cat is 50 times as heavy, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a similar personality when it comes to toys!
What would be really awesome is if a real-life zookeeper could chime into this discussion...
I'm sure that just cause a cat is 50 times as heavy, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a similar personality when it comes to toys!
What would be really awesome is if a real-life zookeeper could chime into this discussion...
Always appreciate insight from real keepers but I am also a little frustrated by players wanting absolute realism when this is a videogame and it needs to be fun
I have an African Grey so I understand how important it is for some species to be challenged by new toys as often as possible. Plus I would like Franchise Mode to get a bit more challenging but, manually changing the enrichment items out for a whole zoo is a game mechanic I really don't like and I never do this. The Animal Welfare is around 90% for my animals, all without changing the enrichment items and most with grade 1 food quality.
I think the larger items like the Waterfalls and Mud Baths shouldn't degrade at all( like others already mentioned above) and for the smaller items it would be better if, for example, you could assign a flattened spot where the Keepers change the toys once per year or at a time you can change like you can for routine visits.
I think the larger items like the Waterfalls and Mud Baths shouldn't degrade at all( like others already mentioned above) and for the smaller items it would be better if, for example, you could assign a flattened spot where the Keepers change the toys once per year or at a time you can change like you can for routine visits.
Not a zookeeper, but I have worked in zoos a lot and I know a lot of zookeepers.
As I said in other posts, animals get their enrichment from all sorts of different things in their enclosure, and keepers do have to fight an uphill battle with ensuring the animals remain curious and stimulated, but it isn't with big grandiose changes to the habitat that this is achieved. Some enrichment items in the game aren't even necessarily enrichment items - the mud wallow, for example, is something a lot of animals literally need to behave naturally and remain healthy (elephants use mud as a natural insect repellent). But enrichment is usually defined as something that allows an animal to behave naturally (so enrichment is used to stimulate natural behaviours, not to give them a toy to play with, though that is part of it).
As an example, technically speaking in a real zoo the basic giraffe tall feeder (the food container) would be considered a form of enrichment, because it allows the giraffe to eat like it would in the wild. Blankets and boxes are given to primates because in the wild primates often use plant debris to make 'nests' that they sleep in. Things like the xylophone aren't often used, because they're easily destroyed by inquisitive animals and the small parts involved can be hazardous.
The items that are most often swapped out tend to be really basic. Cardboard boxes, burlap sacks, blankets and fitted sheets. The bigger and more complex items typically remain permanent fixtures, or at least remain in place for a lot longer than they do in-game.
I'd say the most realistic way to solve the in-game problem would be to assign a value to each enrichment item. More basic toys get boring more quickly, more complex toys last a lot longer, and animals never get bored of food enrichment (because they don't - as long as there's food involved animals don't tend to stray very far from whatever is producing the food, hence why the territories of carnivores in the wild always correspond with where grazing herds live, or the territories of primates correspond with where trees produce fruit and nuts) or bored of the bigger, more permanent things like mud wallows and waterfalls. I mean, really, if a hippo is getting bored with a mud wallow then why isn't it getting bored with a swimming pool? They need both to be hippos.
Great post.
I will just add that I also find it frustrating that animals are getting bored of items they're not even using. So long as they're in the habitat, the clock is ticking.
How did I not realise this befor?!? For the longest time I placed down just enough toys for every animal to get to 100% happiness and then after about 30-40 min (when the inspector came over) I changed them. This got annoying as hell after a while so I just stopped switching them entirely and let the animal have lower happiness.
But right now I'm working on the zoo I will use for next weeks challenge, and since I know that I will loose big big money when starting it (plan to have almost 100 lions in the zoo), I thought "why not just place down all the toys as I wont have any money to switch them anyway". And soon I realised that when using all the toys at once, most animals will have a pretty high happiness rating for all their life (overall above 90%) even when they get bored of all of them, since no toy ever goes down to 0. This will of course not work for all animals, since some of them have very few toys or very high demand (looking at you monkeys and girafes!), but it seems to work really well for many
And some animals will even stay att 100% toy happiness all their life if they have enough toys to chose from and the group is small enough; Have a group of three lion males, the oldest is 16 years old. Have all the toys avalible in the habitat, haven't switched them once and the happiness is still at 100% for them.
HOW.. DID.. I.. NOT... REALISE... THIS....!
But right now I'm working on the zoo I will use for next weeks challenge, and since I know that I will loose big big money when starting it (plan to have almost 100 lions in the zoo), I thought "why not just place down all the toys as I wont have any money to switch them anyway". And soon I realised that when using all the toys at once, most animals will have a pretty high happiness rating for all their life (overall above 90%) even when they get bored of all of them, since no toy ever goes down to 0. This will of course not work for all animals, since some of them have very few toys or very high demand (looking at you monkeys and girafes!), but it seems to work really well for many
And some animals will even stay att 100% toy happiness all their life if they have enough toys to chose from and the group is small enough; Have a group of three lion males, the oldest is 16 years old. Have all the toys avalible in the habitat, haven't switched them once and the happiness is still at 100% for them.
HOW.. DID.. I.. NOT... REALISE... THIS....!
That's probably why I never had a big issue with enrichment boredom. I've always just thrown in almost every item I can at once, since I first started playing.
