Did you like that deliciously clickable title? Well it isn't just click-bait. The way guest happiness is described as working in the game is really only a half-truth. I've seen countless videos on the matter that fall into the trap of assumption and fail to take all factors into account. Obsessing over needs and thoughts without taking certain things into consideration is a surefire way to put yourself through the ringer and come out with little to no payoff. In this video I pick apart the system and reassemble the pieces at your feet in a nice, neat little informational packet. Expect nothing less than my usual thoroughness and attention to detail.
Source: https://youtu.be/VkQNPCEP68Q
Everything You Know about how Happiness Works is Wrong
- Thread starter HipsterJesus42
- Start date
I dont normally watch videos (probably why I havent pick up loads of false info) but this one interested me. EXCELLENT work, pretty much backs up everything i have been saying for some time. That happiness issue are not caused by just one thing but an accumulation of various positive and negative influences around your zoo. My current zoo was built from the start with user happiness front and centre. Most people seem to build with animals in mind and then fit their guests needs into it, which causes issues.
LOVE the info on food prioritisation. I duplicate a lot of shopping types, so I am going to check spacing.
On thing that you havent covered though is beauty, it clearly seems to have an effect with queue (for rides etc) does it effect general happiness. You get notifications that beautiful area give positives returns, not 100% sure how and when though.
LOVE the info on food prioritisation. I duplicate a lot of shopping types, so I am going to check spacing.
On thing that you havent covered though is beauty, it clearly seems to have an effect with queue (for rides etc) does it effect general happiness. You get notifications that beautiful area give positives returns, not 100% sure how and when though.
Have the same query myself. My main zoos all have visitor happiness of 90%+ and one of the most common thoughts with green smiley faces is about the scenery, so it surely is an important factor.
It must have an effect because beauty rating is listed on things like shop queues etc.
I think it could have something to do with ride use too, just that a lot of people seem to have an issue with ride use but I dont, my rides are VERY scenic and all travel through multiple habitats.
I have a problem with rides as well and mine are all at 90% scenery rating or higher. They were insanely popular prior to the 1.03 patch, but now they stop getting used entirely eventually.
I say eventually because when I first load a zoo, they get full lines but only those people that head to them when I first load the zoo ride them...so after I've been playing long enough to get through that initial rush, they become almost entirely unused. If I exit the game and restart, the lines fill back up. The queue space is short enough that even with full queues, the visitor thoughts are that the queue times are short...so it's not that. They also think that the price is great...so it's not that. The scenery is maxed, or nearly maxed...so it's not that. Even the station placement is very strategic...each station is near a cluster of popular shops and my most popular animal habitats.
I have two zoos where the transports were actually really profitable prior to the 1.03 patch...something I used to think wasn't even possible (viewed them as loss leaders previously). Now, they are dead and neither of those zoos has had any changes between the changes. Like literally no changes, I was finished with them and only run them to breed animals for other new zoos.
I've reported the issue as a bug.
I say eventually because when I first load a zoo, they get full lines but only those people that head to them when I first load the zoo ride them...so after I've been playing long enough to get through that initial rush, they become almost entirely unused. If I exit the game and restart, the lines fill back up. The queue space is short enough that even with full queues, the visitor thoughts are that the queue times are short...so it's not that. They also think that the price is great...so it's not that. The scenery is maxed, or nearly maxed...so it's not that. Even the station placement is very strategic...each station is near a cluster of popular shops and my most popular animal habitats.
I have two zoos where the transports were actually really profitable prior to the 1.03 patch...something I used to think wasn't even possible (viewed them as loss leaders previously). Now, they are dead and neither of those zoos has had any changes between the changes. Like literally no changes, I was finished with them and only run them to breed animals for other new zoos.
I've reported the issue as a bug.
Last edited:
I have three rides, a long train to three key locations (entrance / Asia hub / Centre hub), monorail around whole zoo and a smaller boat around African zone. All rides get visitors at the start. The monorail is ALWAYS busy, I can play for a few hours and some stations can still have full queues. My train is pretty busy, you can still get some full trains after a few hours. The boat is hit and miss, definitely busier at launch of game and can sometimes be empty but it never stop getting people to ride it. I dont make any money though, losses on all rides but I need them to move people.
@Moosegun @Jaggid Edje
I'll have to look into rides another time. I get the feeling it'd be another drawn out set of experiments. Already running through a list of conditions to test in my head lol.
In terms of scenery, it only seems to have an effect so far as any other positive or negative thought does. I can't speak to rides too much as I didn't test them but there was 0 difference in how full the lines were with shops that had full scenery vs no scenery. If guests needs were at or near yellow they'd start searching for shops with no regard for scenery. Didn't test for choosing higher scenery over lower or willingness to pay higher prices as it wasn't pertenant to happiness.
On rides: In planet coaster the scenery rating played into the overall appeal of the rides which directly caused more people to queue for them and be willing to pay higher prices. There may be some recycled code there but I don't believe there's a (visible) ride appeal system. A pretty queue would certainly have an effect though as their happiness still falls while queueing and the positive thoughts could only help.
I'll have to look into rides another time. I get the feeling it'd be another drawn out set of experiments. Already running through a list of conditions to test in my head lol.
In terms of scenery, it only seems to have an effect so far as any other positive or negative thought does. I can't speak to rides too much as I didn't test them but there was 0 difference in how full the lines were with shops that had full scenery vs no scenery. If guests needs were at or near yellow they'd start searching for shops with no regard for scenery. Didn't test for choosing higher scenery over lower or willingness to pay higher prices as it wasn't pertenant to happiness.
On rides: In planet coaster the scenery rating played into the overall appeal of the rides which directly caused more people to queue for them and be willing to pay higher prices. There may be some recycled code there but I don't believe there's a (visible) ride appeal system. A pretty queue would certainly have an effect though as their happiness still falls while queueing and the positive thoughts could only help.
I'm going to take the time to look at the video asap, because I'm struggling with guest happiness after the most recent patch (before that I had no problems at all). I'd also be interested to see what the mechanics behind using rides are, because I have the same issue that Moosegun describes: when I load the game my guests use the rides, but after a while they don't even queue for them any more and right now I've just closed them to at least save money that way.
The video only shows how the guest happiness system works, there‘s no advice to leveraging on this and refunds aren’t covered at all. And guest happiness is often screwed by the poor pathfinding system, which does make guests walk around almost randomly and not in an order.
Understanding the mechanics behind it is still very useful. Once you understand the system, it becomes far easier to design with it in mind. The franchise zoo I've been running since I watched that video is at 98% overall happiness now, in large part due to me having a keener understanding of the inner workings of happiness gain and loss.
Exactly. I still think my guest happiness could be improved; right now the refunds are the least of my concerns. My biggest financial leak atm are the staff wages and the animal food costs. I also think my zoo could really benefit from trying to see if there's areas that should be redesigned (I already changed the entrance area once to make sure there'd be no stuck guests). I thought I'd placed enough benches, but from what the video showed me there can never be enough, LOL.
Last edited:
I am thinking of doing a similar video but using my large zoo as a working example, I already had a good understanding that guest happiness was not all about one thing (which is often peddled on this forum) and is actually an accumulation of a wide range of things. You need to be getting all of them right.
@Moosegun
Apologies for the incredibly late reply (holidays, eh) but I think people certainly could benefit from seeing these effects on a larger scale. Particularly a demonstration of the heatmaps and plaza spacing/placement could help a lot. Let me know if/when the video goes live and I'll link it from my own.
Apologies for the incredibly late reply (holidays, eh) but I think people certainly could benefit from seeing these effects on a larger scale. Particularly a demonstration of the heatmaps and plaza spacing/placement could help a lot. Let me know if/when the video goes live and I'll link it from my own.
@HipsterJesus42 No worries, I also took a break from PZ over Christmas, a bit stuck at the moment, my main zoo it getting a bit too laggy to play.
As it turns out, I was doing everything right, except for one thing: the pic-nick benches. Will try that as soon as I get home! Overall a good video, bit of a slow start but otherwise great to watch!
Wow, great tutorial!
One question. When the queue is full at Chief Beef 1 and you mention the guest will head for Chief Beef 2, will the guest head for a Chief Beef restaurant specifically, or will they head for any food shop? For example, if there was a Pizza Pen beside Chief Beef 1, and the Chief Beef 1 queue was full, would they choose the Pizza Pen first (because they're just looking for a restaurant), or would they head to a Chief Beef 2 across the park first (because they've decided They Want Hamburgers And Will Settle For None Other)? Thanks in advance!
One question. When the queue is full at Chief Beef 1 and you mention the guest will head for Chief Beef 2, will the guest head for a Chief Beef restaurant specifically, or will they head for any food shop? For example, if there was a Pizza Pen beside Chief Beef 1, and the Chief Beef 1 queue was full, would they choose the Pizza Pen first (because they're just looking for a restaurant), or would they head to a Chief Beef 2 across the park first (because they've decided They Want Hamburgers And Will Settle For None Other)? Thanks in advance!
It seems to depend on how near the next Chief Beef is, my testing shows that if there is another identical shop (Chief Beef) reasonably near, they will try to go to the next Chief Beef, rather than picking a different food shop. If there is not another Chief Beef or it is very far away, they will switch to try another shop. This actually makes a big difference on how you plan your shopping.
Thanks Moosegun!
I realised if I scroll down on one of the tabs on a guest, I can see the whole itinerary they have followed so far! Often there are two food shops or two drink shops listed in a row, revealing they wanted a hotdog but settled for pizza nearby because the hotdog queue is basically always full. (Must build more hotdog shops!) Browsing this has revealed that certain food and drink shops are much more desirable than others, which just pick up overflow.
In my park my guests seemed voracious for coffee (like real life, except at 40 degrees Celsius, wow.) I built four adjacent coffee shops to keep up with demand. The way the guests decide where to queue makes total sense to my software developer brain, but no sense at all to my human brain. They tend to all line up at the same coffee shop until that queue is full, and then the overflow gradually fills up the second queue, and only then does the third, and then the fourth, shop receive any business at all. Anybody who's ever been in a grocery store is left scratching their head, lol.
Separately, another question about habitats. If I have 2+ habitats containing the same animal (like for breeding purposes), will the guests attempt to visit both habitats, or will just one habitat cover the wish? (Are the guests aiming to look at a species or look at a habitat?) Eventually I'll figure this out by looking at the itineraries (like above). But it occurred to me that the answer could lead to very different choices about pathing, zoo layout, and attention to scenery.
I realised if I scroll down on one of the tabs on a guest, I can see the whole itinerary they have followed so far! Often there are two food shops or two drink shops listed in a row, revealing they wanted a hotdog but settled for pizza nearby because the hotdog queue is basically always full. (Must build more hotdog shops!) Browsing this has revealed that certain food and drink shops are much more desirable than others, which just pick up overflow.
In my park my guests seemed voracious for coffee (like real life, except at 40 degrees Celsius, wow.) I built four adjacent coffee shops to keep up with demand. The way the guests decide where to queue makes total sense to my software developer brain, but no sense at all to my human brain. They tend to all line up at the same coffee shop until that queue is full, and then the overflow gradually fills up the second queue, and only then does the third, and then the fourth, shop receive any business at all. Anybody who's ever been in a grocery store is left scratching their head, lol.
Separately, another question about habitats. If I have 2+ habitats containing the same animal (like for breeding purposes), will the guests attempt to visit both habitats, or will just one habitat cover the wish? (Are the guests aiming to look at a species or look at a habitat?) Eventually I'll figure this out by looking at the itineraries (like above). But it occurred to me that the answer could lead to very different choices about pathing, zoo layout, and attention to scenery.
I haven't seen specifically that any one guest (group of guests) will visit the same animal in different habitats but I did see that having more than 1 habitat for each animal can be advantageous. For example: One I did watch to see whether it would work, was to have a one habitat near the entrance ( those that wanted to see that particular animal would go there first) and another a fair distance away accessible via transport. Those that wanted to go somewhere else first and ended up nearer to the distant habitat, would visit that habitat in preference to the one near the entrance ( because it is nearer of course ). So, with that identified.. in theory, you could have multiple habitats for the same animal spread out across your zoo with different attractions near them that could draw different groups to them first. Now, whether they would visit habitat 1, shop 1, exhibit 2, shop 3, toilet 3, habitat 2, shop 5, exhibit 4, shop 6, habitat 3 and view the same animal at 3 different times is unknown but is trackable, and whether they pay donations at all habitats is another thing entirely and harder to prove.