Australian DLC Pack

[paul78]

I got a feeling will get another 4 pk plus building pieces in this content also which honestly I’m ok with. I think like in planet coaster when they did ride packs they’ll do packs with more animals eventually if the same pattern applies. So my top four would be
1 red or grey kangaroo
2 Australian pelican
3 koala bear
4 wombat

 

[ElectricMonk]

Hmmm, if I was limited to just 4 (and thinking about what I think stands a decent chance of actually being included) I’d go with Red Kangaroo, Tasmanian Devil, Southern Cassowary, and platypus as an enclosure animal (if they introduce larger enclosures at some point)

 

[Kai]

These things are not mutually exclusive. Game developers don't focus their entire team on a single thing at once - DLC will be developed at the same time as updates to the base game, as demonstrated by the Arctic Pack (they didn't churn that out in the short time between 1.0.5 and 1.1, after all).

Had this argument before. At the moment it seems like their entire texture team is working exclusively on DLC, and they can't improve the base game if they're always working on the next DLC. Not seen improvements to the coat variation of the original animals to prove otherwise. Not had any feedback from the devs on if they're happy with coat variations and/or if they plan to improve them. The coat variation in the new DLC is was just as poor as the base release, and our zoos continue to look like they're full of cloned animals. Extremely disappointing.

Spoiler: Quote from the Arctic DLC thread

I always take issue with the statement that the DLC team is not the same as the team working on fixing the game; I know it's not just you, I've seen it posted time and time again. Surely that is a semi-truth at best, as the people doing the texture work for animals in the paid DLC, could just as easily be working on improving the base game.

The person that made that Arctic wolf skin? They could have been making more black, brown, white, etc, skins to vastly improve the timber wolf. Honestly, I didn't want another wolf species until they fixed the timber wolf; having one coat pattern for a wolf is almost criminal. Same thing can be said for the polar bear. Whoever was working on that texture could have been working on adding more variations for any of the current bears. They told us we would have skin variations for each animal, but in practice it's severly lacking.

While the people making new scenarios and scenery are probably exempt, at least some of the people working on paid DLC animals are not. Now for sure, I can't say if they've moved everyone that works on animal textures over to the DLC team. That said, we haven't seen any improvement in animal skins since launch, but we have certainly got a paid DLC - what's the verdict there? Will we ever get any improvements to the base animals coat variations? When will they get time to fix the current animal roster if they're always working on the next DLC?

I really hope I'm wrong, and they do have some people working on improving the current animal rosters coat/skin variations.

 

[NZFanatic]

Had this argument before.

It's not really an argument. You're basing your assumption on the fact that we got DLC instead of new skins (when nothing was promised). I'm basing my assumption on the fact that we got base game improvements (1.1) at the same time as DLC. And again, no development team can churn out DLC in the space of a few days, so it's pretty obvious they've been working on this for at least a little while, which again implies that one team was working on the Arctic Pack while others were working on the updates.

Frontier hasn't said a single word about whether they'll add more variant skins to animals. Of course everyone would like that, but just because they didn't do it doesn't mean they couldn't.

 

[yoav_r]

It's not really an argument. You're basing your assumption on the fact that we got DLC instead of new skins (when nothing was promised). I'm basing my assumption on the fact that we got base game improvements (1.1) at the same time as DLC. And again, no development team can churn out DLC in the space of a few days, so it's pretty obvious they've been working on this for at least a little while, which again implies that one team was working on the Arctic Pack while others were working on the updates.

Frontier hasn't said a single word about whether they'll add more variant skins to animals. Of course everyone would like that, but just because they didn't do it doesn't mean they couldn't.

The arctic DLC especially was probably long time coming, as the game has was obviously released just in time for a christmas DLC. Had it not been for the holiday season, we probably would've gotten the game later with far less bugs on release.

 

[markun]

If we are limited to 4 species I’d say:

Red kangaroo - I find it more striking than the grey kangaroo.

Emu - so common in zoos around the world and easy to animate.

Koala - an iconic Australian species.

Tasmanian devil - an important conservation message.

Others I’d love to see...

Southern cassowary - easy to animate, a stunning and unusual bird but still relatively common in zoos internationally.

Common wombat - I think this would be very cute in game.

Red-necked wallaby - very common in zoos so a useful addition to the game.

Brolga, Australian pelican, cape barren goose, black swan and other Australian wildfowl would also be amazing but as we haven’t had any ducks, swans or geese yet I won’t make a detailed list. I’ve also left out any birds that would need to be housed in aviaries for obvious reasons.

I love platypus but I tend to agree with those who have pointed out that it wouldn’t really work with the limitations of the game as it stands now and I’d rather see other animals which could be more impactful in the game as we know it.