Optimization
This game is quite notorious for having rather underwhelming optimization that even the most capable of PCs have a hard time running the game when parks are filled to the brim with objects. The biggest frame-killers are particle effects and park guests. When facing any object that generates particle effects, the frames take a hit. The more guests walking around in your park, the more the game has a hard time. These kinds of things really hinder players who want to go big in their builds, especially those with less capable PCs. This is a must have for Planet Coaster 2. If Frontier repeats the same mistake, that’s going to be a major deficit for the overall reception of the game.
Water Effects
Planet Coaster’s water effects are quite notorious since water in the game is actually a silhouette layer instead of, well, water. This was improved in Planet Zoo as water is now an actual physical thing, so this should end up in Planet Coaster 2. Although, the developers should implement some waves and rapids physics to provide river rapids experiences and also have better aesthetics for coastal environments. Players should not have to rely on the water special effects to get these results. Same goes for waterfalls. Like in RCT3, if we make a dropoff from a pool of water, it should automatically create a waterfall. Also, let us make oceans instead of large lakes so that our islands will look more remote. RCT3 had this feature where water would engulf everything outside your island. Kinda weird that PC didn’t have this feature, especially for the tropical environment preset.
Lighting
The lighting in Planet Coaster is extremely weird. When you go inside of an unlit building in the daytime, the inside should be pitch black dark, but in PC, indoor areas still show light. Even at nighttime, since the moon is always out, some light still can be seen in unlit interiors. This is a major hindrance for players who want to create dark rides, as the only way to create a proper dark ride without natural lighting is to build it underground and switch to nighttime. Even in the daytime, light still can be seen underground. It’s so weird and definitely something that needs to be tended to in PC2. Lighting from objects can also be very weird at times. Spotlights don’t interact with objects and can be seen piercing through buildings. Also, area lights often leave light spots on reflective objects, even when they are put behind the object in order to simply provide area light. LIghting is another aspect that needs some serious work in PC2.
Pathways
Creating paths has been a notorious aspect of Planet Coaster. If you try to mix up different types of pathways, they constantly notify you that your path placement is obstructed. A lot of times when you do manage to connect pathways, the path creates an unorthodox shape that can look very ugly. Of course, there are ways to make pathways easier to manage, such as attaching them to a grid, but making freeform paths can get very wacky and annoying. Pathways should not be this tedious to work with in PC2 as they are one of the primary aspects to building in the game.
Weather
I find it confusing how the first PC didn’t have this. RCT3 at least had rain. While weather effects can be made artificially in the game, there are still heavy limitations on the placement of them. Without a doubt, PC should’ve had natural weather effects. Rain, heavy clouds, snow, wind, heat, cold - simply weather from all 4 seasons should’ve been in the game. These also should cause effects to the environments of the game. If there is high winds, you should be able to see trees and flags blow frantically with the wind. If it’s freezing one day, lakes that you create should freeze solid naturally. Guests should also react to weather conditions. If it’s a summer day in 100 degree heat, most guests should love being at waterparks and on water rides, and they should also want drinks more often. If it’s raining, most guests will want to get indoors or be underneath some shade. If it’s cold, most guests are going to want a hot drink and spend some time inside of a warm area. Guests would also be wearing appropriate clothing for different weather. Also, PLEASE LET US ALTER THE WEATHER WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT IN REAL TIME. Give us that freedom, please.
Waterparks
I don’t care if the game is called Planet Coaster. For the love of God, PC2 absolutely needs waterslides and waterparks. Why wasn’t this DLC? Waterparks were such a fun feature in RCT3, and it would be right at home in Planet Coaster. Let us make custom pools, waterslides, wave pools, lazy rivers, and other aspects from waterparks. Please don’t waste this opportunity.
Coaster Smoothing
The coaster smoothing tool is… decent. It’s not horrible, but it could be much better, especially for beginner builders. You still have to manually align track pieces so that they’ll smooth out correctly. Coasters can still be janky if they’re not built a certain way, even when using the smoothing tool. This needs improvement.
Coaster Supports
It goes without saying that the auto supports for coasters are god awful. Yes, I said god awful. They’re so tacky it actually hurts. In fact, I can be very sure that Frontier knew this, or else they wouldn’t have given players the option to create their own custom supports for coasters. Please make auto supports better than this. Like actually try looking at real life coaster supports and implementing them in the auto support feature, instead of us having to spend an extra 8 hours on 1 coaster just to create better-looking supports.
Guest Intelligence and other features
Guests are pretty basic when it comes to how they behave. The game may have certain “traits” for individuals, but everyone seemingly acts the same and they say the same things. Feedback for parks is always the same, and guests actually don’t care how organized parks look. AI accurately judging scenery in parks might be an extremely difficult thing to implement in the game, especially since the best builders mix up pieces from different themes without losing the initial aesthetics of their parks as a whole, but the fact that I can just spam a thousand of the same tree in an area and guests will call it “good theming” is laughable. There’s no point to security guards and cameras since guests very rarely ever do anything dumb. Breaking stuff is not the only thing guests should be able to do. They can get in fights with others, they can cut in line, they can steal things from shops. This feature should be much more interactive in PC2. Guests holding their bladder while waiting in a coaster line for hours is goofy to look at. Have them either choose to leave the line or pee their pants. Guests should more often want to sit down at tables and eat large foods like burgers and pizzas. Smaller foods like ice cream and churros, they more often walk while eating them. There’s other aspects to guest AI that do need improvement, but I can’t think of them all right now.
Shows and Events
This would be a very cool feature to have. Most amusement parks have events and shows that happen all the time, so having this feature in PC2 would be extremely cool. Give us the option to create shows, events, and parades at our parks. An idea that I had would be to let us create an event, and then when the season for the event comes around, it will be automatically implemented in the park. For instance, I’ll create a Halloween “event folder” for my park and I’ll place halloween decorations all around my park, maybe even retheme some of my rides. I’ll set the time of the event to October, and when that season comes around in real time, my park automatically implements all of my modifications. When the season is over, it goes back to the normal look. Same thing for parades and shows. When I make a special parade for my park, I can choose the pathway the parade goes around, make custom floats, music, effects, and add mascots to dance and do other fun things while guests gather around the area to watch it. I could also set the dates and times the shows will occur. This feature is a great way of keeping finished parks from getting stale for players and can keep them coming back to their previous builds.
Shops and Buildings
I’m kinda tired of shops being “stands”. Let us create custom indoor shops with merch, food, and other stuff for guests to view, grab from, and purchase at a table with a staff member standing behind the table scanning the guest’s item for purchase. Restaurants should also have the same features. Let us make custom restaurants that guests can actually walk into, sit down at a table with a waiter walking up to them to take their orders, and have cooks make the food, serve it to the guests, and finally guests provide a 1-5 star rating for the service. This adds so much immersiveness to the game, and honestly should’ve been added a long time ago.
Time
With all of these extra features, I think time is a very important talking point. I think the time cycle should be slowed down a bit more, or even better, let the player control how fast days go by, even let us be able to alter it to real world time. Another cool feature would be to let us decide whether or not the time would still be running in our park even when we’re not playing the game, so if you stopped editing the park in April, but come back to it in December, the Christmas decorations you applied to that season would show up.
Parking Lots and Transport Outside the Park
While I don’t personally do this, I do see a lot of players like to create parking lots in their builds. I think this is a basic feature that should be added to the game. Give us some road and lot pieces to put outside of our parks for guests to drive on and they can pay to park their cars in lots. Let us build parking structures for guests to drive in, and make the road feature similar to creating pathways in parks. Maybe let us have drop-off areas if guests decide to take an Uber to the park. Also, let us add trams and buses that guests can ride in case they park far from the park. Also, the environment outside the park should include roads that guests drive on to get to the park, instead of the park being in the middle of nowhere. Take some example from Cities: Skylines, where you see people enter the area of your city from a highway. Guests should enter the property of your park from a road, highway, or nearby premade city or town. For islands, they could appear by boat, cruise, or maybe even a plane.
Custom Coaster Trains
There was a game called Theme Park Studio that had this (the developers abandoned that game for some reason). It would be awesome if PC2 had a tool where you can create custom coaster trains. Also let people upload their custom train creations on the Steam Workshop for other people to use on their rides!
Please post what all of you want in the game as well! I want to see what ambitions can be made for the potential sequel!
This game is quite notorious for having rather underwhelming optimization that even the most capable of PCs have a hard time running the game when parks are filled to the brim with objects. The biggest frame-killers are particle effects and park guests. When facing any object that generates particle effects, the frames take a hit. The more guests walking around in your park, the more the game has a hard time. These kinds of things really hinder players who want to go big in their builds, especially those with less capable PCs. This is a must have for Planet Coaster 2. If Frontier repeats the same mistake, that’s going to be a major deficit for the overall reception of the game.
Water Effects
Planet Coaster’s water effects are quite notorious since water in the game is actually a silhouette layer instead of, well, water. This was improved in Planet Zoo as water is now an actual physical thing, so this should end up in Planet Coaster 2. Although, the developers should implement some waves and rapids physics to provide river rapids experiences and also have better aesthetics for coastal environments. Players should not have to rely on the water special effects to get these results. Same goes for waterfalls. Like in RCT3, if we make a dropoff from a pool of water, it should automatically create a waterfall. Also, let us make oceans instead of large lakes so that our islands will look more remote. RCT3 had this feature where water would engulf everything outside your island. Kinda weird that PC didn’t have this feature, especially for the tropical environment preset.
Lighting
The lighting in Planet Coaster is extremely weird. When you go inside of an unlit building in the daytime, the inside should be pitch black dark, but in PC, indoor areas still show light. Even at nighttime, since the moon is always out, some light still can be seen in unlit interiors. This is a major hindrance for players who want to create dark rides, as the only way to create a proper dark ride without natural lighting is to build it underground and switch to nighttime. Even in the daytime, light still can be seen underground. It’s so weird and definitely something that needs to be tended to in PC2. Lighting from objects can also be very weird at times. Spotlights don’t interact with objects and can be seen piercing through buildings. Also, area lights often leave light spots on reflective objects, even when they are put behind the object in order to simply provide area light. LIghting is another aspect that needs some serious work in PC2.
Pathways
Creating paths has been a notorious aspect of Planet Coaster. If you try to mix up different types of pathways, they constantly notify you that your path placement is obstructed. A lot of times when you do manage to connect pathways, the path creates an unorthodox shape that can look very ugly. Of course, there are ways to make pathways easier to manage, such as attaching them to a grid, but making freeform paths can get very wacky and annoying. Pathways should not be this tedious to work with in PC2 as they are one of the primary aspects to building in the game.
Weather
I find it confusing how the first PC didn’t have this. RCT3 at least had rain. While weather effects can be made artificially in the game, there are still heavy limitations on the placement of them. Without a doubt, PC should’ve had natural weather effects. Rain, heavy clouds, snow, wind, heat, cold - simply weather from all 4 seasons should’ve been in the game. These also should cause effects to the environments of the game. If there is high winds, you should be able to see trees and flags blow frantically with the wind. If it’s freezing one day, lakes that you create should freeze solid naturally. Guests should also react to weather conditions. If it’s a summer day in 100 degree heat, most guests should love being at waterparks and on water rides, and they should also want drinks more often. If it’s raining, most guests will want to get indoors or be underneath some shade. If it’s cold, most guests are going to want a hot drink and spend some time inside of a warm area. Guests would also be wearing appropriate clothing for different weather. Also, PLEASE LET US ALTER THE WEATHER WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT IN REAL TIME. Give us that freedom, please.
Waterparks
I don’t care if the game is called Planet Coaster. For the love of God, PC2 absolutely needs waterslides and waterparks. Why wasn’t this DLC? Waterparks were such a fun feature in RCT3, and it would be right at home in Planet Coaster. Let us make custom pools, waterslides, wave pools, lazy rivers, and other aspects from waterparks. Please don’t waste this opportunity.
Coaster Smoothing
The coaster smoothing tool is… decent. It’s not horrible, but it could be much better, especially for beginner builders. You still have to manually align track pieces so that they’ll smooth out correctly. Coasters can still be janky if they’re not built a certain way, even when using the smoothing tool. This needs improvement.
Coaster Supports
It goes without saying that the auto supports for coasters are god awful. Yes, I said god awful. They’re so tacky it actually hurts. In fact, I can be very sure that Frontier knew this, or else they wouldn’t have given players the option to create their own custom supports for coasters. Please make auto supports better than this. Like actually try looking at real life coaster supports and implementing them in the auto support feature, instead of us having to spend an extra 8 hours on 1 coaster just to create better-looking supports.
Guest Intelligence and other features
Guests are pretty basic when it comes to how they behave. The game may have certain “traits” for individuals, but everyone seemingly acts the same and they say the same things. Feedback for parks is always the same, and guests actually don’t care how organized parks look. AI accurately judging scenery in parks might be an extremely difficult thing to implement in the game, especially since the best builders mix up pieces from different themes without losing the initial aesthetics of their parks as a whole, but the fact that I can just spam a thousand of the same tree in an area and guests will call it “good theming” is laughable. There’s no point to security guards and cameras since guests very rarely ever do anything dumb. Breaking stuff is not the only thing guests should be able to do. They can get in fights with others, they can cut in line, they can steal things from shops. This feature should be much more interactive in PC2. Guests holding their bladder while waiting in a coaster line for hours is goofy to look at. Have them either choose to leave the line or pee their pants. Guests should more often want to sit down at tables and eat large foods like burgers and pizzas. Smaller foods like ice cream and churros, they more often walk while eating them. There’s other aspects to guest AI that do need improvement, but I can’t think of them all right now.
Shows and Events
This would be a very cool feature to have. Most amusement parks have events and shows that happen all the time, so having this feature in PC2 would be extremely cool. Give us the option to create shows, events, and parades at our parks. An idea that I had would be to let us create an event, and then when the season for the event comes around, it will be automatically implemented in the park. For instance, I’ll create a Halloween “event folder” for my park and I’ll place halloween decorations all around my park, maybe even retheme some of my rides. I’ll set the time of the event to October, and when that season comes around in real time, my park automatically implements all of my modifications. When the season is over, it goes back to the normal look. Same thing for parades and shows. When I make a special parade for my park, I can choose the pathway the parade goes around, make custom floats, music, effects, and add mascots to dance and do other fun things while guests gather around the area to watch it. I could also set the dates and times the shows will occur. This feature is a great way of keeping finished parks from getting stale for players and can keep them coming back to their previous builds.
Shops and Buildings
I’m kinda tired of shops being “stands”. Let us create custom indoor shops with merch, food, and other stuff for guests to view, grab from, and purchase at a table with a staff member standing behind the table scanning the guest’s item for purchase. Restaurants should also have the same features. Let us make custom restaurants that guests can actually walk into, sit down at a table with a waiter walking up to them to take their orders, and have cooks make the food, serve it to the guests, and finally guests provide a 1-5 star rating for the service. This adds so much immersiveness to the game, and honestly should’ve been added a long time ago.
Time
With all of these extra features, I think time is a very important talking point. I think the time cycle should be slowed down a bit more, or even better, let the player control how fast days go by, even let us be able to alter it to real world time. Another cool feature would be to let us decide whether or not the time would still be running in our park even when we’re not playing the game, so if you stopped editing the park in April, but come back to it in December, the Christmas decorations you applied to that season would show up.
Parking Lots and Transport Outside the Park
While I don’t personally do this, I do see a lot of players like to create parking lots in their builds. I think this is a basic feature that should be added to the game. Give us some road and lot pieces to put outside of our parks for guests to drive on and they can pay to park their cars in lots. Let us build parking structures for guests to drive in, and make the road feature similar to creating pathways in parks. Maybe let us have drop-off areas if guests decide to take an Uber to the park. Also, let us add trams and buses that guests can ride in case they park far from the park. Also, the environment outside the park should include roads that guests drive on to get to the park, instead of the park being in the middle of nowhere. Take some example from Cities: Skylines, where you see people enter the area of your city from a highway. Guests should enter the property of your park from a road, highway, or nearby premade city or town. For islands, they could appear by boat, cruise, or maybe even a plane.
Custom Coaster Trains
There was a game called Theme Park Studio that had this (the developers abandoned that game for some reason). It would be awesome if PC2 had a tool where you can create custom coaster trains. Also let people upload their custom train creations on the Steam Workshop for other people to use on their rides!
Please post what all of you want in the game as well! I want to see what ambitions can be made for the potential sequel!
