So they originally made the entire WE for just the sloth? They couldn't get the sloth to work so they designed the special WE just for it? Actually originally they developed the concept for Egyptian Fruit Bat. And Butterflies. Both are flying species.
No that's not what I'm saying, you're misreading my comment.
People always assumed that the walkthrough exhibit was solely made so they can have flying animals and was an experiment for birds; but the sloth and the dev journal that accompanied it clearly shows that the intent of the walkthrough exhibit was to be a way to have animals in the game they couldn't make with the current habitat system.
Birds
can fit under that system, but that doesn't mean the system
has to have been made for birds to begin with.
It's a completely wasted concept without birds and not at all worth implementing otherwise.
And whilst that's an entirely fine opinion to have; that doesn't change anything about Frontiers intent. Just because some people think it would have been a waste to implement doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to be used for birds.
A small modding team could have made these animals very quickly.
As someone who has been a modder and is a senior dev, I've already made a
post about how modding and actual development in a company is completely different.
Especially given that the whole idea of "they could have done that super quickly" is based on nothing really; because we only know the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the development process behind a pack. We don't know how long it takes Frontier to develop a pack like this in a professional context.
So assuming that this pack took less time is based on nothing but "oh a modder could do this fast", but that is not a good base for comparison as I mentioned in the post linked above.
But if they are in a habit of updating the steam branches at a certain point in their progress, is there any reason why they updated so early this time and just changed their usual operating schedule?
And that brings is to the misinterpretation of the steam branches. People have given their own meaning to it; but we have no actual information on the process Frontier uses behind it. If something isn't like it was before, that might be intentional or that might mean that our initial assumption was wrong to begin with.
All we can really truly know based on the steam branches is whether or not they're still working on the game. All the other stuff? That's been our own interpretation and we have never been able to rule out whether or interpretations were correct. So we could have been right this whole time or we could have just been lucky.
I understand that you want birds and I would really like birds in this game as well. But there isn't really solid evidence that directly points at Frontier working on a bigger pack or on a bird pack at this point in time. There simply isn't. There's ways to interpret certain things so that it might fit your want to have either types of pack; but as long as there are other explanations for those things, there isn't really solid evidence I'm afraid.
And given that we're 4 years in with numerous amount of times were people convinced themselves that "birds were certainly coming next"; resulting in the eventual disappointment and angry reactions, I think it's good to learn lessons out of that. To each its own at the end of the day; but I'd much rather be wrong about this and be happily surprised that we get birds than to be wrong about being sure birds will come and birds not coming at all.
The camel is definitely one of the single most detailed animals in game, how does that make it a reskin/clone?
