Animals still don’t interact with one another

[Moonfox]

Constructive suggestion: decrease the frequency of how often an animals moves from place to place or item to item (50% decrease), and massively increase the frequency of social interactions (at least 90% increase).

I’ve just spent twenty minutes (real time) watching the red ruffed lemurs in the tutorial. They have never interacted with one another.

This is hugely disappointing to me as we were told that these interactions were switched off for beta. Social animals spend most of their time interacting - touching, grooming, vocalising, playing, sleeping curled together, squabbling, etc. This is especially true for mothers and offspring. I haven’t seen a single interaction whatsoever in twenty minutes.

Instead, the animals constantly move from place to place, thing to thing. That’s not how animals act in real life. All of the planet zoo animals look agitated. Watching the bonobos for ten (real life) minutes - again with no social interaction between any animals - they look like a group that have been thrown in together that morning. No bonding, no social actions, just constantly running and jumping all over the place like popcorn in a pan.

Could this please be a top priority patch item? The animals lack personality, character and realism. It’s pretty devastating.

 

[Mkau]

And here we are again with the same issues and thread like in the beta..and that is quite disappointing.I couldn't agree more with you,because all of the above mentioned things were promised.Some people already consider the whole thing as pure lying by the devs.Frontier really needs to address these issues asap.

Edit: Especially young animals need an increased frequency of social interactions.They spend literally 60-70% of their day in reallife with playing (with other youngsters,with adults,alone) and investigating their environment,the rest of the day is spent bonding with the mother/parents/family members and sleeping.

 

[FediSinter]

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Animals look cool in graphics but they behave like...I don’t know, objects? They just wonder around the habitat, they glitch into each other but they never seem to interact except for breeding. They lack personality, they lack uniqueness and realism. I mean, they stated and stated how much work they put into the animations to make them look real and now all I can see is animals walking, sometimes running and then lay down to go to sleep. I feel pretty betrayed as by now I think that all this excitement and realism was just a big money grabber, because who wants to buy a game where animals behave like a bunch of strangers put together in a habitat? Even the cubs just wonder around with no interactions with the mother. I think I’ll go back playing zoo Tycoon and wildlife park as for now this game is pretty messy and absolutely boring after 20 minutes.

 

[WLeonhart]

I have seen a couple of new interactions between mothers and offspring, which is cute and all, but none between adults. I was especially hoping for things like grooming, wolves howling together, etc. I would have rather had a small number of well-made animals with DLC once in a while than a huge number that more or less ignore each other.

 

[Silhouette]

I was playing yesterday and went to go look at my bison habitat, only to find no animals in the large expanse of plains. I was confused for a moment until I looked over at the feeder.

There, all four adult bison, plus their two calves, were eating together at the same feeder. I got way too excited over that and while it could have just been a coincidence, it made me realize that's the kind of thing I'd love to see happen way more. It makes sense for herd animals to gather and eat at the same time, and it actually looked like they had some kind of herd mentality.

Makes me wish there was way more of that.

 

[Llamadrama]

I was playing yesterday and went to go look at my bison habitat, only to find no animals in the large expanse of plains. I was confused for a moment until I looked over at the feeder.

There, all four adult bison, plus their two calves, were eating together at the same feeder. I got way too excited over that and while it could have just been a coincidence, it made me realize that's the kind of thing I'd love to see happen way more. It makes sense for herd animals to gather and eat at the same time, and it actually looked like they had some kind of herd mentality.

Makes me wish there was way more of that.

And they actually DO have a herd algorithm developed for JWE, which is what's most upsetting. So it's either in but bugged or not at all, according to reports. I'm letting the dust settle and keep myself busy with RDR2 for the next month or so (But then there's also the Star Wars game coming out...) before I buy Planet Zoo, but I'm not holding my breath. I think it'll come good but come Christmas, just in time for the Artic DLC.

 

[JamieCA]

I have seen a couple of new interactions between mothers and offspring, which is cute and all, but none between adults. I was especially hoping for things like grooming, wolves howling together, etc. I would have rather had a small number of well-made animals with DLC once in a while than a huge number that more or less ignore each other.

Completely agree. 25 species with fully fleshed out behaviors would have been much better than 70+ with minimal social behaviors. Fortunately, they can still fix this.

 

[Agathorn]

Completely agree. 25 species with fully fleshed out behaviors would have been much better than 70+ with minimal social behaviors. Fortunately, they can still fix this.

Many of the species we have in the game now are going to be simply retargets anyway. IE the animations and behaviours for one ungulate can be easily retargetted to all the others.

 

[KaoRu]

I noticed my Cheetah Cubs and Zebra babies were following their mothers but would rarely interact with them. RARELY. But besides that and when the animals mate there's nothing.

 

[Remira]

The animals lack personality, character and realism. It’s pretty devastating.

Devastating is a pretty good word. In the end, this is a video game, but it could've been something great. Here's hoping that we'll get the game we wish for post-launch.

 

[Grayyy]

Really sad, since they promised us these interactions between animals would be in the full release. Feels like we've been lied to

 

[Mkau]

Seems like they spend way too much time with animal poop mechanics,animations,visuals and physics and forgot the way more important stuff haha

 

[JamieCA]

Watched a Thompson's gazelle be born and immediately flee mom, run half way across the exhibit, and swim around the pond today. I'm having a hard time being engaged knowing that when I look at my animals they aren't even superficially engaged. Was hoping we'd see a response on this issue from Frontier by now but at this point I'm concerned they just plan to ignore it. I guess it's too late for a refund since I spent so much time watching the animals and hoping my first impressions were wrong.

 

[Mkau]

Watched a Thompson's gazelle be born and immediately flee mom, run half way across the exhibit, and swim around the pond today. I'm having a hard time being engaged knowing that when I look at my animals they aren't even superficially engaged. Was hoping we'd see a response on this issue from Frontier by now but at this point I'm concerned they just plan to ignore it. I guess it's too late for a refund since I spent so much time watching the animals and hoping my first impressions were wrong.

That's how it was during the beta,too.They answered this topic near the end of the beta.As you might know,the answer was that these interactions/behavior etc. was just turned off during the beta,but will be in the full game.That answer gave hope to a LOT of people.The full game is out now and people are starting to think that this answer was not the truth.People are complaining on the steam forums,reddit,discord etc. and not only on this forum and people are already refunding the game.
Frontier needs to make a statement regarding the whole animal topic ASAP.

 

[MrTrimium]

I agree with most of the posts in this thread.
After going back and forth, I've requested a refund for the game. Not sure if this was just false advertising, but if they are able to fix the issues and give us the features they said the game was going to have then I'll buy it again.

I don't really understand why Frontier don't make a thread and explaining if the issues/features will be fixed/added. A post saying that the game just launched and that they are still working on the game is not acceptable. They should have had the beta earlier so they had the time to fix issues and make sure the game is ready to be launched.

No offence to the people who made the game, but I'm just very disappointed. If you are reading this then please come with a statement to the players asap, they deserve it.
Peace.

 

[JamieCA]

That's how it was during the beta,too.They answered this topic near the end of the beta.As you might know,the answer was that these interactions/behavior etc. was just turned off during the beta,but will be in the full game.That answer gave hope to a LOT of people.The full game is out now and people are starting to think that this answer was not the truth.People are complaining on the steam forums,reddit,discord etc. and not only on this forum and people are already refunding the game.
Frontier needs to make a statement regarding the whole animal topic ASAP.

Yeah I played the beta and completely trusted Frontier when they said the behaviors were just turned off. Very dissapointing to see that either a) the behaviors were never intended to be a major aspect of the animals or b) Frontier needs more time to really make those work AND has not been upfront about it.

 

[JamieCA]

I agree with most of the posts in this thread.
After going back and forth, I've requested a refund for the game. Not sure if this was just false advertising, but if they are able to fix the issues and give us the features they said the game was going to have then I'll buy it again.

I don't really understand why Frontier don't make a thread and explaining if the issues/features will be fixed/added. A post saying that the game just launched and that they are still working on the game is not acceptable. They should have had the beta earlier so they had the time to fix issues and make sure the game is ready to be launched.

No offence to the people who made the game, but I'm just very disappointed. If you are reading this then please come with a statement to the players asap, they deserve it.
Peace.

At this point I would like a refund but I've played more (hoping hoping that there was some explanation for the missing interactions) than the limit for getting a Steam refund, at least if I understand Steam refunds.

 

[MrTrimium]

At this point I would like a refund but I've played more (hoping hoping that there was some explanation for the missing interactions) than the limit for getting a Steam refund, at least if I understand Steam refunds.

Open a refund ticket and give it a try if you are sure you don't like the game. Steam is very customer friendly and still do give refunds even though you have been playing more than 2 hours. Make sure to note the features that are missing and/or bugs so they understand why.
Going pretty off topic, so let's get the thread back on track about the animal interaction. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions not related to this topic

 

[JamieCA]

Open a refund ticket and give it a try if you are sure you don't like the game. Steam is very customer friendly and still do give refunds even though you have been playing more than 2 hours. Make sure to note the features that are missing and/or bugs so they understand why.
Going pretty off topic, so let's get the thread back on track about the animal interaction. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions not related to this topic

Thanks for letting me know that I'm going to give it a week but not play until Frontier addresses this. The potential for positive interactions is there, I've seen just a sliver of it so I'm holding on to hope.

 

[KaoRu]

Open a refund ticket and give it a try if you are sure you don't like the game. Steam is very customer friendly and still do give refunds even though you have been playing more than 2 hours. Make sure to note the features that are missing and/or bugs so they understand why.
Going pretty off topic, so let's get the thread back on track about the animal interaction. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions not related to this topic

I tried refunding ARK after around 20+ hours (about 3 days play - I was playing with friends and time went by so fast....) bcuz it was laggy as hell plus other problems which was making it difficult to play but Steam were like "Nah, too much play time" so now I'm stuck with a game I can't even play and at the end of it didn't even really like that much. They should give you an option to sell your games to the community for cheaper than what you bought it (if you can't get a refund). So I got ARK on offer for around £11...So I would be able to sell it for a bit cheaper at say around £5-£8.

They're a bit more open to refunding games that have been played over the limit that are around say 5 hours I think.