Hiya!
I love Planet Zoo and I love the idea of these Community Challenges. However, the current implementation is not very engaging to me.
But I would like to enjoy these challenges more! And I can imagine a number of different approaches - and I would even be willing to pay a yearly fee for them!
I trust that game designer would come up with something fun, but I want to add something constructive as well, so here are my ideas:
How about you? Would you pay Frontier, let's say, a yearly fee so that they can create/support more engaging challenges? What would your challenge look like then?
I love Planet Zoo and I love the idea of these Community Challenges. However, the current implementation is not very engaging to me.
- The usual rewards are Conversation Credits (CC), which I tend to spend more of for these challenges than what I'm earning from the challenge. So, CCs are not a valid goal for me. (I find it more pleasing to gather them elsewhere anyway.)
- My challenge efforts are rated very low. I'm always at the bottom of this community stair. This makes me feel my efforts are worthless. In the current challenge, I've almost spent every minute of my free time playing Planet Zoo and yet my efforts are rated worthless. It's apparently not enough and I can't quit my job only to play Planet Zoo, sadly. And even if I found the time to play for maybe 8 hours straight, there is simply no progress to be seen anywhere.
- To "compete," I might need to lower the difficulty and increase the game speed to maximum. However, I don't want to. Planet Zoo isn't the game that I want to play at maximum speed.
- There is no real "challenge" I can work on. It's usually only spamming animals in one way or the other.
But I would like to enjoy these challenges more! And I can imagine a number of different approaches - and I would even be willing to pay a yearly fee for them!
I trust that game designer would come up with something fun, but I want to add something constructive as well, so here are my ideas:
- Special Challenge Zoos, which are created by the community itself! (I'm copying this from Trackmania's "Cup of the Day") It works similarly to the career challenges we already have, but a new one for every challenge that needs to be completed within the challenge duration, of course. These zoos are created by everyone who wants to send in a zoo, which is then also rated by the community. The winner's zoo will be used for one of the next community challenges.
- Give me something to spend my CCs on. Offer special animal food or unique toys, which won't become boring but need fuel that can be bought with CCs, or offer me test-tube fertilisations. What about special employees which I would need to pay in CCs?!
- Add an activity to the challenge that is fun but not included in the base game. For instance, give me one or more "challenge animals", which I need to take care of and bring them to a 4-star rating. However, they are much more difficult than normal animals. Maybe they get sick very easily or need some sort of therapy on a regular basis to maintain their health, or whatever. The community part would be to safe a certain number of animals, just like the current community challenges.
- Change or add something to the rewards: Special food and toys, unique fur colours and patterns I can't get elsewhere, or a special award employee who is incredibly effective, fast, special looking, and fluffy (or only a buff for employees).
- Breed animals with very specific characteristics for a higher challenge: small, with white fur and at least silver-rated. Maybe this is too difficult to be fun this way, but I would really like to work more closely with one or a few animals. The community part would be again to breed a certain number of these animals.
How about you? Would you pay Frontier, let's say, a yearly fee so that they can create/support more engaging challenges? What would your challenge look like then?
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