DLC 19 Speculation

[FoxyDee]

Eurasian Brown Bear is the only bear from Europe (not including Polar Bear, which only just about counts)! So offers something completely different to all other bears geographically.

Yet no one seems to want my poor boy

Little bit offtopic, but regarding EBB....Anyone from Europe heard of Slovakia wanting to kill of around 500 bears becuase they think they are getting out of hand ? (and basically because some guy that went to a forest alone apparently got killed by one). I was devastated by the news when I heard their goverment ordered that.

It is always the same...People complaying that our local wildlife is going extinct in the area --> Wildlife makes a recovery in the area ---> People freaking out that the area is getting too dangerous ---> Kill the wildlife that we have previously complained about not being there anymore...

Same thing always happens with wolves too.

 

[Iben]

I would actually argue that because of the inconsistencies of the current meta wishlist format ie new ones coming out every year that frontier no longer views them as valuable anymore.

Oh yeah, for sure. The whole point of the meta-wishlist was to have one single source of truth, having multiple threads of them kinda defeated its entire purpose.

Which is also why a fanmade wishlist might not have been strictly taken into account.

Exactly! Especially given that with the console release they now have an even bigger amount of metrics to go on than before. We might see some animals as oddballs but according to their metrics they might just be the animals that make the most sense.

May not remember how 95% of the replies during those two weeks were about how it obviously was a highlands pack, and any mention of a zookeepers/player selection style pack was ignored or instantly discredited...until the name announcement. Meet you in another life, very evident Tibet scenery pack lol.

Yeah no that's exactly how it went hahaha. I don't know, to this day I never saw it as a highlands/mountain pack; the key-art was way too ambiguous to be one.

 

[The Aardvark]

Little bit offtopic, but regarding EBB....Anyone from Europe heard of Slovakia wanting to kill of around 500 bears becuase they think they are getting out of hand ? (and basically because some guy that went to a forest alone apparently got killed by one). I was devastated by the news when I heard their goverment ordered that.

It is always the same...People complaying that our local wildlife is going extinc in the area --> Wildlife makes a recovery in the area ---> People freaking out that the area is getting too dangerous ---> Kill the wildlife that we have previously complained about not being there anymore...

Same thing always happens with wolves too. It really get on my nerves...

Italy is also contemplating the extermination of bears, which were reintroduced to the Alps after going basically extinct here.
Every now and again some guy gets attacked and of course it's the bears' fault, so they either end up behind bars in some less-than-adequate cage, or are straight up killed... Often, the bear responsible for the attack is a mother with cubs, and when she's killed (because "deemed too dangerous") the cubs are simply swept under the rug and ignored.

 

[FoxyDee]

Italy is also contemplating the extermination of bears, which were reintroduced to the Alps after going basically extinct here.
Every now and again some guy gets attacked and of course it's the bears' fault, so they either end up behind bars in some less-than-adequate cage, or are straight up killed... Often, the bear responsible for the attack is a mother with cubs, and when she's killed (because "deemed too dangerous") the cubs are simply swept under the rug and ignored.

It is so horrible. And people have the nerve to call animals "pest", while the biggest pest is humans...

 

[Milurian]

Oh yeah, for sure. The whole point of the meta-wishlist was to have one single source of truth, having multiple threads of them kinda defeated its entire purpose.


Exactly! Especially given that with the console release they now have an even bigger amount of metrics to go on than before. We might see some animals as oddballs but according to their metrics they might just be the animals that make the most sense.


Yeah no that's exactly how it went hahaha. I don't know, to this day I never saw it as a highlands/mountain pack; the key-art was way too ambiguous to be one.

what I truly wish that frontier would just do their own survey like have a popup in the main menu that lets all players submit their own wishes but I do also understand how much work sorting those lists are.

 

[Artemisya]

Man I only know about 1 out of 4 of these animals. Also I feel that Encanto probably helped with making them known, even if it was just by a little bit.

thats one more than me

 

[Artemisya]

Italy is also contemplating the extermination of bears, which were reintroduced to the Alps after going basically extinct here.
Every now and again some guy gets attacked and of course it's the bears' fault, so they either end up behind bars in some less-than-adequate cage, or are straight up killed... Often, the bear responsible for the attack is a mother with cubs, and when she's killed (because "deemed too dangerous") the cubs are simply swept under the rug and ignored.

what no way they going to do that right?? please

 

[FoxyDee]

what no way they going to do that right?? please

Unfortunately yes. They have already done that to wolves too. Animals rights groups were protesting, but that did nothing, since it was ordered by government and most people just do not care. They see the animals as something limiting them to go to the forest safely. In their mind, humans have the right to go everywhere safely, no matter the costs of animal lives. Not surprising, but still...people wanted these animals back in our nature for bragging reasons "look we have bears and wolves" but now that it is inconvinient - the best solution they have came up with is to cull so many of them? What the heck.

"We can't live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods,"

If anyone is interested to read about this ridiculous and cruel case:

Slovakia backs plan to shoot 350 bears after man killed in attack

Around a quarter of the country's brown bears will be culled after a man was attacked in a forest.

www.bbc.com

 

[Iben]

what I truly wish that frontier would just do their own survey like have a popup in the main menu that lets all players submit their own wishes but I do also understand how much work sorting those lists are.

On a technical level that isn't really hard, they can make surveys that are less open-ended and still get a similar result... buuuuuuut, they probably get a lot more metrics from the actual game than what they would get from a survey that 85% of the user-base would ignore. Users always want input but never want to give it, it's a tale as old as time I'm afraid.

 

[Artemisya]

Unfortunately yes. They have already done that to wolves too. Animals rights groups were protesting, but that did nothing, since it was ordered by government and most people just do not care. They see the animals as something limiting them to go to the forest safely. In their mind, humans have the right to go everywhere safely, no matter the costs of animal lives. Not surprising, but still...people wanted these animals back in our nature for bragging reasons "look we have bears and wolves" but now that it is inconvinient - the best solution they have came up with is to cull so many of them? What the heck.

"We can't live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods,"

If anyone is interested to read about this ridiculous and cruel case:

Slovakia backs plan to shoot 350 bears after man killed in attack

Around a quarter of the country's brown bears will be culled after a man was attacked in a forest.

www.bbc.com

Was it the new government that applied those measures? Spain is having the same issue with wolves in the north, but not even because of people, it's due to cattle that isn’t secured properly. Then they cry wolf (when most of the time, it’s actually stray dogs). Even some shepherds came to the defense of the wolf, but it didn’t change their minds. On a positive note, Portugal just registered its first bear in centuries

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Regarding the Meta-Wishlist discussion: Random Goats structured. exceptional work brought us where we are right now and without them we weould have a much different animal roster - and definately not so many favourites. THAT Meta Wishlist was a useful Tool for Frontier.

I'm sorry, but every other Wishlist that was created after random goat stopped lacked structure, rules, validation and reliability. All those meta wishlists are not useful at all and are just random background noise for Frontier. If you can't even set a rule on how many animals every player can name and if they are within the current technical limitation or not, how the eff SHOULD Frontier use them?

 

[SanRazo]

Regarding the Meta-Wishlist discussion: Random Goats structured. exceptional work brought us where we are right now and without them we weould have a much different animal roster - and definately not so many favourites. THAT Meta Wishlist was a useful Tool for Frontier.

I'm sorry, but every other Wishlist that was created after random goat stopped lacked structure, rules, validation and reliability. All those meta wishlists are not useful at all and are just random background noise for Frontier. If you can't even set a rule on how many animals every player can name and if they are within the current technical limitation or not, how the eff SHOULD Frontier use them?

I agree I think everyone making Wishlists after was just pointless. I never saw the point. RG already fulfilled that purpose.

 

[Chris1983]

I'm obviously not going to go back to every pack, but North America Animal Pack was a very clear example of animals that were all on the list and high on the list as well. And had other animals that could have been both easier for them to develop and were probably more well known.

Well, especially the North America animal pack was one with ABC Zoo animals: Sea Lions, Cougars, Prarie Dogs, a beaver, a moose... I don`t think to look in the meta-wishlist to have a lot of matches, if the theme was already determined to be North America after they gave us Asia, Africa, Australia and South America already. So for me defintely not a proof or a good example, they were ever using the Meta-Wishlist.

Uhm, I don't know where you're going with this. The saki is one of the animals that deviates from the desert motive. I think you might have misread it?

Maybe I got you wrong here.

Again, I feel like you're reading stuff that isn't there. Obviously zoo nerds are still playing this game, and I never said they weren't. But zoo nerds are not as big of a niche as we'd like them to be, we'd have far more zoo games than we have today. The point is that the game currently still sells well enough that it also targets people outside the zoo nerd niche; aka people who care much more about animals in general and really just want to watch these animals in the game rather than building the zoo of their dreams.#

I would still say, that zoo nerds or at least people who like to visit zoos are the majority of costumers who buy a zoo game. But may be we are on different sides here. And in my world these people may know what a coati ist.

A difficult assumption to make without having actual sales data though. No matter how obvious an assumption might seem to us, without data to back it up we could be completely wrong. There's tons of examples of that all over the world, like how weight doesn't impact the rate of free falling objects. We'd assume that it does, but it ends up not.

So I won't go and make that assumption, especially given how their business model doesn't force you to buy all the DLCs.


Part of teasing animals means that there's always multiple interpretations, I don't think they ever intended us to believe we were getting a South America Animal Pack to begin with.

This might just be my perception, but I had the feeling several times, that they wanted to "surprise" us, so they made us speculate in a very specific direction or at least played with our speculation and the common sense what the next pack should be, to give us something else.

Again, I don't think that was their intention either. Heck, if they wanted us to think it was a mountain pack then I'm sure as hell their key-art would have represented a mountain area much better with something that looked like this.

Sometimes the fanbase here gets really carried away with what they think it's going to be and part of teasing your packs is giving up that control. That can go really well, or backfire massively


Because we as a community simply voice what we want without looking at the practical side of things. They have to think about deadlines, budgets, team capacity, etc. etc. Wishlists are just wishes, but reality sometimes demands other approaches I'm afraid.

On top of that, I'm fairly sure they have a lot more metrics than we do. They used to post these kind of metrics one the anniversary showcasing what the most common animals were etc.; so I think they have very good insights on what people like and don't like. The fact that we got so many bears might just be because their metrics show that loads of people have bears in the zoos they build. Same goes for canids.

They might just go "hey people like this type of animal, we should give them more", and to them that makes a lot of sense but to us here that might not. Because they have data we don't have.

Would only make sense to me, if we would have the same number of every animal group in game, but if we only have a handful of non-flying birds or monkeys in game instead of 10 cats or canid species, of course players would probably build more exhibits for cats and canids. If I only have 2 otter or sea lion species in game, I could probably not build more than two exhibits for them. Would that give Frontier the hint, that I don't want more semi-aquatic animals in game?

 

[NachoB]

I agree some people are overestimating how well known coatis are to members of the general public outside of Latin America, but calling them "one of the most obscure" animals is pretty wild when there's things like my boys Sumatran hog badger, orange-headed Pilbara planigale, Cameroon scaly-tail and Ruwenzori otter shrew. They're at least decently well-known among animal nerds and, from what I hear, pretty widely recognised within their native range.

They sound like Made up animals from Avatar: TLA.

 

[NachoB]

Regarding the Meta-Wishlist discussion: Random Goats structured. exceptional work brought us where we are right now and without them we weould have a much different animal roster - and definately not so many favourites. THAT Meta Wishlist was a useful Tool for Frontier.

I'm sorry, but every other Wishlist that was created after random goat stopped lacked structure, rules, validation and reliability. All those meta wishlists are not useful at all and are just random background noise for Frontier. If you can't even set a rule on how many animals every player can name and if they are within the current technical limitation or not, how the eff SHOULD Frontier use them?

You are all ignoring Suzie's hard work with her Metawishlists. She took the baton from RG and did a good job and she does have rules, structure and puts time and effort on it. I think RG original list ended up outdated with so.many new animals coming out and taking the spot of similar but requested species that were falsely up high in list after it. Making a new Metawishlists after every year makes dense since priorities chance after every pack adds more and more. And specially now that Frontier releases just 2 packs per year.

 

[FoxyDee]

You are all ignoring Suzie's hard work with her Metawishlists. She took the baton from RG and did a good job and she does have rules, structure and puts time and effort on it. I think RG original list ended up outdated with so.many new animals coming out and taking the spot of similar but requested species that were falsely up high in list after it. Making a new Metawishlists after every year makes dense since priorities chance after every pack adds more and more. And specially now that Frontier releases just 2 packs per year.

No doubt Suzie did amazing job, but when there is a new list every year, you will loose significant number of voters, which kind of makes the list less useful.

 

[Milurian]

Regarding the Meta-Wishlist discussion: Random Goats structured. exceptional work brought us where we are right now and without them we weould have a much different animal roster - and definately not so many favourites. THAT Meta Wishlist was a useful Tool for Frontier.

I'm sorry, but every other Wishlist that was created after random goat stopped lacked structure, rules, validation and reliability. All those meta wishlists are not useful at all and are just random background noise for Frontier. If you can't even set a rule on how many animals every player can name and if they are within the current technical limitation or not, how the eff SHOULD Frontier use them?

I for the most part agree but I think the bigger problem ultimately is numbers random goats list is only good because it has a large sample base that extends beyond the fourms attracting new people to participate simply because it is the metawishlist. Every other wishlist including suzies which in my opinion is formatted better just doesnt have the player base to form any usable data. This means that even though random goats wishlist has been discontinued for a while now its data is still more accurate than suzies whose list is just as functionally good but due to the constant reset does not reliably sample the playerbase.

 

[Milurian]

You are all ignoring Suzie's hard work with her Metawishlists. She took the baton from RG and did a good job and she does have rules, structure and puts time and effort on it. I think RG original list ended up outdated with so.many new animals coming out and taking the spot of similar but requested species that were falsely up high in list after it. Making a new Metawishlists after every year makes dense since priorities chance after every pack adds more and more. And specially now that Frontier releases just 2 packs per year.

as much as I love suzies list it isnt reliable data because the sample sizes is significantly smaller both since they started it fairly recently and since it resets all the time. Part of the reason random goats was so good was because it was consistent and built a name for itself.
To put in perspective why suzies list isnt as good I just realised yesterday that I hadnt moved to this years list and im on the forums all the time people are not going to comeback yearly to resubmit their lists and new forum members dont often find suzies list first random goats still gets submissions even with a clear label saying its no longer updated.

 

[Tinou97]

Regarding the Meta-Wishlist discussion: Random Goats structured. exceptional work brought us where we are right now and without them we weould have a much different animal roster - and definately not so many favourites. THAT Meta Wishlist was a useful Tool for Frontier.

I'm sorry, but every other Wishlist that was created after random goat stopped lacked structure, rules, validation and reliability. All those meta wishlists are not useful at all and are just random background noise for Frontier. If you can't even set a rule on how many animals every player can name and if they are within the current technical limitation or not, how the eff SHOULD Frontier use them?

I agree and disagree at the same time. I don't think the current wishlists are useless for Frontier. They still should be a source of inspiration for them. I agree that everyone submitting a list should name the same amount of species though. I also think that 50 is way too much at this point. My opinion is that everyone should give a list of like 25 to 30 species at the beginning of the year and let it as it is until next year.
I think most of people respect the technical limitation of the game. I mean most of the species in the list don't seem to be a big challenge for dev teams. And if some are, then devs can just ignore them and I think that's what they're doing

All of this being said, I made a wishlist this morning because I never submitted one. I had the feeling while doing it that a lot of the species I was including are definitely not necessary. I could ask for like 60 more animals that I love but the truth is that 20, maybe 25 of them could be considered as essential additions for animal lovers.

 

[Tinou97]

No doubt Suzie did amazing job, but when there is a new list every year, you will loose significant number of voters, which kind of makes the list less useful.

Yeah but player's needs change with each new DLC. I can totally understand why we need to make a new list every year.