I always wonder what people mean with potential. I see this comment with a lot of games but never an explanation to what potential.
Great question! For me, part of the reason it's hard to quantify is that it's really about the potential for player discovery and the potential for player innovation.... All things that are hard to pin down ahead of time. (Indeed, in a way, if you can pin them down ahead of time, then you may have inadvertently limited that potential for discovery and innovation!). It's a bit like asking what an artist, musician or scientist is going to create or discover before they've done so.
But listening to the community when they ask for something is important, because often players can "feel" where that potential could take us, even if we can't affirmatively "prove" it ahead of time. A few examples:
People have asked for more animals. Some want 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 per pack. But I haven't seen many demands for
fewer animals. I don't see a lot of threads asking that the 4+1 animal packs should be reduced to 2+1 or 3+1. That's not just people wanting more for free -- We've said we're happy to pay more and do so more often! Rather, I think it's about players recognizing the combinations we could make with more possibilities. We're saying that we think there is a point where our potential for discovery/innovation/creativity/replayability expands not just incrementally or additively, but exponentially!
For me personally, I also tie this to some of the other types of requests we've seen, including some that initially seem small or specific. Smaller space requirements for polar bears, or smaller diving requirements for caimans allow us to use them in different ways, and incorporate them into our zoos in lots of different places. Walk-through possibilities for reindeer or kangaroos or other animals where this does actually exist (whether commonly or just in a few places or even only historically), so that we have options for how we build those habitats. Listing all of an animal's real-life biomes instead of only their most common, so that we can choose to decorate them differently -- suddenly there are three biome options instead of just one! More animals that can share enclosures in different combinations. Adding realistic building pieces like mesh or animal gates or backstage props etc. which can be used in many different ways. Things like different sized exhibit boxes, recolorable pieces, null paths and invisible exhibits, fish, birds, and smaller "filler habitat" animals, petting zoos and animal interactions, different maps and modes and scenarios -- all seem like ways of players asking to be able to
combine existing game systems in new and creative ways -- not just adding one extra thing to a list.
It's absolutely true that
some content creators will still finish their "product review" videos in a week, regardless of whether there are 4 or 6 or 10 animals in them, and regardless of what type of scenery, props, construction items, or game mechanics get added. And I'm sure that some players will do that too. That's just a part of frontier's
silence-
HYPE-
silence business model, and
some of those content creators' click-bait business model. They feel like they have to finish everything at once, before the hype slows down, or they'll miss out.
But I also think there will be at least a few content creators -- and a lot of players -- who would take advantage of that exponential potential possibility -- building different combinations for different zoos, etc.
I hear the call for exponential creativity in a lot of the different requests on these forums: from custom billboards, to null paths, to realistic mesh and building tools, to TMTK, to more animals, to modding. And I also hear in the forums a lot of discussion which is kind of about the hopes/optimism/expectations that those various exponential possibilities could bring versus the fear/realism/history that those things will be treated additively or not at all, rather than exponentially. And the warning that hoping for those will only lead to future discouragement when they arrive.
But imagine if the educators actually were the new, integrated, aspect of the game that they had the possibility to be and that players had suggested (an exponential game play change), instead of just a post to place down (an additive approach), and a series of notifications about how they aren't working (adding insult to injury). Or if the new vending machines didn't break down constantly. Or imagine how much more longevity the diving mechanisms and aquatic pack might have had if they had done small, regular updates to which animals could dive (which they've said were coming, but which we haven't seen yet). The conversation would be so much different right now if they had rolled out diving to the gharials in January, and diving to the polar bears in February -- following up on the mechanism that they'd already introduced in December, and giving both players and content creators alike a chance to re-visit and re-imagine what they'd done before.
I'm not a computer expert, so I don't know exactly what each of these would entail technically, or which ones would work either in-game or from a business model perspective for the company. Maybe some in these forums are right that six animals would only have an additive impact, and that you'd need ten or twelve to have it feel exponential. Maybe all the work of adding flying birds or swimming fish would just lead to them flying/swimming through walls. Maybe everyone would build one habitat made of mesh with animal gates and a realistic backstage, and then move on.
But what I hear in each of those requests isn't just a request to add one more thing to a list that can be easily forgotten a week later. And if they get approached using an additive model then they quite rightly won't satisfy and will only lead to more complaints. What I hear instead is a desire for exponential creative and managerial possibilities, and an inkling (however undefined) of what those requested changes
might open up for us, if they came to the game. Whether we're right about that or not -- and whether they are implemented in a way that makes that possible or not -- is still to be seen. And, I think, part of the answer to the original question of "Do developers really know what we want?"
