I don't think Banyard pack was that much quality rushed.
We might not see into the process as much as we see 'meh' animals for somebody.
-The most work was given to the chicken, we must all agree. Feathers moving, bird movements, little details, wings... it's the star of the pack.
-Sheep and alpaca might look like clones but I believe there was a lot of science going on to make their fur look like wool. It's the first wooly animal we've got and after I saw how they tried hard to give aardwolf the erecting fur, I got the assumption the fur is not that easy as I thought (because I know how this fur is done). It's a simple png of a drawn fur put on a 3D model and you have to put as many as possible to look like actuall hairiness. But how in the Hayo they made the WOOL? It looks so real, you must give them credit for that, really.
-The pig might have the pig rig but it's a brand new species with it's own anatomical features and they had to adjust the model a lot. Even though it was a horrible breed choice due to it's lack of colormorphs, still they had some work to do. Same for the goat. Yes, we got goats and goat rigs but it's a small goat which needed to add a LOT of textures for their colormorphs.
-The highland cow must have been a challenge as well. We see on it's fringe that they know how to make detailed fuzzy fur but then something happened they've decided to not put such detailed fur on the rest of the body. Was there not enough time? Was it too heavy for the FPS? Was it too glitchy? Do we want extra details or do we want it to work on player's computers? Every dev has to question this. I watch a progress of a game where the dev shows how many details they had to get rid in only to make it accessible for more players and not forcing them to buy Nasa computer.
-The only easiest animal they could have was the donkey. And maybe they didn't want the donkey but plenty of people, counting me, wanted to get a domestic donkey into the game at some point. So it was the pack relaxing choice to slightly adjust and recolor the wild donkey. Be not fooled, this donkey also got FUR compared to it's wild countrepant. The african has visually no fur while domestic one is known for it's fluffiness. So that was also not just a recolor and they got some color variations too. The only mistake was the lack of donkey cross which they quickly and I mean VERY QUICKLY added.
-And also, some people don't realise that animals are many times being the easier parts of the pack compared to the work and research that goes through what kind of build pieces they gonna add to the theme. There must be a lot of brainstorming and delicate work modelling those tiny pieces to satisfy the building player base. They most likely wanted to add more animals but they knew people expec farm-themed build pieces too. But with only 5 animals it couldn't be also called the farm pack. So they made this brand new compromise to be sure they don't dissapoint both player bases.
So I get plenty of people find it not that interesting because of lack of exoticity although it is a standard for a real zoo,
but I wouldn't call this pack to be absolutelly 'lazy'. Yes, it might look underwhelming but as somebody was saying around here, I like to believe there is something bigger going on and that is why there is one underwhelming pack in between.
It happened in one hunting game recently that they've made a DLC map with the same animals and people were calling them lazy copypasters and how the game goes to crap and devs don't care, only for them to release huge bomb of a DLC after in totally new beautiful area with plenty of new animals and two older animals remake.
So I wouldn't raise the black flags just yet...
