Dear Frontier: Please Change the Tropical Biome in New Zealand to Temperate!

[NZFanatic]

I know you said you'd never change the front-end globe again, but this is kind of ridiculous.

I've avoided building anything in New Zealand in the game, despite it being my home country. Largely this is because there is no NZ representation so far, so it's hard to build a realistic NZ zoo in the first place, but it's also because the biomes are just so...nuts.

I can accept 'grassland', though that's also extremely wrong. The temperature parameters are silly and colour palette is terrible for New Zealand, but tropical? No part of New Zealand is tropical. In the very furthest north of the country we have subtropical forest, but only a tiny bit. The rest is firmly within the temperate zone, the same as Britain. It bothers me greatly, because even if we do end up with a kiwi, a tuatara, and a handful of NZ plants, I'm never going to be able to build a proper New Zealand zoo in either of these biomes.

New Zealand often gets the short end of the stick in terms of visibility, but this seems like a change that shouldn't cause much fuss.

Please, please, please!

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Also Kuneku Pig pls, yes thank you.
I honestly would love a 4+1 new Zealand pack and rework not just for Mr Nz, but also simply because it would be nice to have a more or less "complete" area in the game.
Kiwi, Tuatara, Little Blue Penguin, Kuneku Pig and something else + new Zealand foliage and theme would simply be sweet, but also have a nice ripple effect of bekng basicly an oceania extension, adding a domestic petting zoo animal, birds, a great nocturnal house star and an even smaller penguin.

But if they wouldnt fix the biomes even then, that sure would be ironic

 

[Aramar]

I also think we should have the option to play in a temperate map in Oceania.

 

[DarthQuell]

NZ, excluding flying birds (because I really doubt we'll get them. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I just don't see it), what animals would you say are needed for a satisfying representation?

You've mentioned the kiwi and tuatara, both which would be wonderful, and also I keep hearing about the little blue penguin and the kunekune pig...

 

[NZFanatic]

You've mentioned the kiwi and tuatara

Those two would be enough for me, but at this point I'm more concerned with the biome map. I can easily build an implied kiwi house and implied aviaries and such for an NZ zoo, which is what I planned on doing with the Conservation Pack (since basically every zoo here has siamangs, it seemed like a good time to try it), but because my choices are grassland or tropical there's just no way it's going to look or feel like an NZ zoo. I live in a city which exists in the 'grassland' portion of the map, and let me tell you it is not a grassland here. I'm pretty sure Frontier just saw the phrase 'Canterbury Plains' and thought, "Oh, that sounds like a grassland". It's not, it's firmly within the temperate zone.

 

[sockeyejo]

I've never been to NZ (one day but I'm scared I'd never want to leave) and one of the reasons I want to visit is because it's very much NOT tropical!

 

[NZFanatic]

one day but I'm scared I'd never want to leave

Honestly the overseas perception of New Zealand is so ridiculously idyllic that it's almost embarrassing. I feel like there's this idea that we're a nation of super laid-back "go with the flow" people who all live with the beach on one side and the forest on the other, but having been around a few places in the world I can tell you that New Zealand isn't any nicer than any other country.

Anyway, I checked out the new foliage in the Conservation Pack and now this thread has become even more urgent for me, as a lot of it looks like foliage that grows here.

 

[sockeyejo]

Honestly the overseas perception of New Zealand is so ridiculously idyllic that it's almost embarrassing. I feel like there's this idea that we're a nation of super laid-back "go with the flow" people who all live with the beach on one side and the forest on the other, but having been around a few places in the world I can tell you that New Zealand isn't any nicer than any other country.

Hate to break it to you, but if you asked any of my friends who have travelled to numerous and various places round the globe where, of all the places they've visited and got to know (ie not just staying in all-inclusive hotels or whatever) they would choose to live if they had a teleporter, NZ would top the list. Sorry. Though I used to know someone whose g/f is a Kiwi and if you wanted to wind them up, you just had to ask why they're in the UK and not NZ. The Brit wanted to - was desperate to - move, the Kiwi was adamant that she was staying put as long as work and visas allowed.

 

[NZFanatic]

hey would choose to live if they had a teleporter, NZ would top the list.

But why? What exactly about NZ is so attractive?

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

The Shire

 

[NZFanatic]

The Shire

What about it? It's not like it actually exists - there's the insanely expensive tourist trap "Hobbiton" in Wellington but that's all. Lord of the Rings is more important to foreigners than it is to Kiwis.

 

[sockeyejo]

But why? What exactly about NZ is so attractive?

Can't speak for anyone else but for me the appeal has nothing to do with LotR - it's relatively small, like Britain, but the mountains and rivers and valleys and gorges are bigger and more dramatic, though the landscapes are significantly less populated. The wildlife is completely different but not quite as terrifying as your neighbours' residents. And it's not home and therefore familiar and humdrum, which is the reason why humans like to travel and explore new places in the first place.

 

[NZFanatic]

Can't speak for anyone else but for me the appeal has nothing to do with LotR - it's relatively small, like Britain, but the mountains and rivers and valleys and gorges are bigger and more dramatic, though the landscapes are significantly less populated. The wildlife is completely different but not quite as terrifying as your neighbours' residents. And it's not home and therefore familiar and humdrum, which is the reason why humans like to travel and explore new places in the first place.

See, that's where you lose me - those landscapes exist, sure, but that isn't where people live and work. Everyone who comes here ends up in our cities, which are exactly the same as the cities in Europe but smaller. Dirty, polluted, busy, noisy, crowded, etc.

I was born in Scotland and lived there for a year as an adult, and I gotta say the landscapes there are pretty damned dramatic, too, but like everyone I had to live in a city and get a job in order to see the things I wanted to see and that's when it hit me that living in Britain isn't actually any different from living in New Zealand. Which is why, as I said, it feels like people overseas have an extremely rose-tinted view of New Zealand as some pristine paradise, when that is pretty far from the truth.

 

[ElectricMonk]

I know you said you'd never change the front-end globe again, but this is kind of ridiculous.

I've avoided building anything in New Zealand in the game, despite it being my home country. Largely this is because there is no NZ representation so far, so it's hard to build a realistic NZ zoo in the first place, but it's also because the biomes are just so...nuts.

I can accept 'grassland', though that's also extremely wrong. The temperature parameters are silly and colour palette is terrible for New Zealand, but tropical? No part of New Zealand is tropical. In the very furthest north of the country we have subtropical forest, but only a tiny bit. The rest is firmly within the temperate zone, the same as Britain. It bothers me greatly, because even if we do end up with a kiwi, a tuatara, and a handful of NZ plants, I'm never going to be able to build a proper New Zealand zoo in either of these biomes.

New Zealand often gets the short end of the stick in terms of visibility, but this seems like a change that shouldn't cause much fuss.

Please, please, please!

100% agree - while we’re at it Tasmania and maybe Victoria should be temperate too. New Zealand is the priority though since the grassland does look a bit like some areas in summer, even if the temperatures are wrong.

 

[sockeyejo]

See, that's where you lose me - those landscapes exist, sure, but that isn't where people live and work. Everyone who comes here ends up in our cities, which are exactly the same as the cities in Europe but smaller. Dirty, polluted, busy, noisy, crowded, etc.

I was born in Scotland and lived there for a year as an adult, and I gotta say the landscapes there are pretty damned dramatic, too, but like everyone I had to live in a city and get a job in order to see the things I wanted to see and that's when it hit me that living in Britain isn't actually any different from living in New Zealand. Which is why, as I said, it feels like people overseas have an extremely rose-tinted view of New Zealand as some pristine paradise, when that is pretty far from the truth.

Hope you don't work in PR

 

[Bearcat9948]

It would be nice if they changed this since there is a precendent.

 

[markun]

I should state that I don’t care about map locations in terms of the globe. So I use the North American challenge map for most zoos as it is the most neutral one including my Australian city zoo and the (practically no progress made) remake of a ZT2 zoo I made years ago that is set in New Zealand.

But the main thing that this question underlines for me is the lack of versatility regarding the maps. We really do need very basic maps without dramatic backgrounds.

As I have said elsewhere, it is impossible to make a realistic Dutch zoo because the temperate maps have rolling rural hills in the background. It is impossible to make a realistic Finnish zoo because there isn’t a map without dramatic mountains in the background - Finland doesn’t have huge mountains, nor does much of Sweden.

 

[DrBurrito]

Until I find the motivation to work on a second iteration of my scientific accuracy feedback thread, I'll continue my little tradition of linking the front-end globe biome suggestions on various threads talking about its inaccuracies.

Single Source to Fix All Front-End Globe Biome Issues

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