Excessive use of the Temperate Biome in the latest two DLC Packs

[Ursidae]

Why? The African Bush Elephant lives in many Biomes which also include Rainforests and Swamps.
I assume 2 different People worked on it and the second one deleted it without checking Facts

I guess whoever removed it thought bush elephants only live in semi-arid to arid environments and forest elephants in rainforests, which couldn't be further from the truth. But the good news is, the latest IUCN Red List update has finally included both species separately, and it is clearly visible there that both species dwell in forests.

I had included this argument on my thread about biome feedback that aims at adding more biomes to animals. You are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

Biome Recommendations for the Entire Roster

I have been in preparation of this post for a while now. In fact I started gathering information and resources since last spring. However I was also highly influenced by some other amazing threads on this forum, props to the creators. I will be linking those threads below. Some of the comments...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[macronecu]

what I am saying is this; labels are just that, labels. Maps are only maps. They are always inaccurate. They are human tools, not laws of nature. Look at it this way; you cannot define a coastline in hard numbers and you can find website after website, book after book that does. These are only approximations and can only ever be approximation.

Yeah who cares about accuracy and consistency in a zoo sim? Totally irrelevant. Let's just purposefully make everything inconsistent and inaccurate because it is a game.

At this point you are either twisting words on purpose or not following the discussion properly:
1) It was 6 tropical animals from the base game, not 1, including one habitat animal, which had their temperate biome tags removed.
2) A total of 3 habitat animals were mentioned in the discussion which had at least one biome tag removed.

I think it is the former. He just wants to justify his existing malayan tapir habitat that has Russian and Japanese foliage and expects the world to suit him. The tapir should just be special, different to all other animals in the game just because he wants that. It is difficult to understand some people. The things they'd do for convenience and selfishness.

 

[DrBurrito]

Here's an update. Apparently education boards had the same forest-rainforest confusion, which was later corrected.

Whatever's gone wrong with the methodology that was fixed later has resurfaced with some of the newer DLC animals. I think it's just a matter of time before the same corrections are made to the Colombian White-Faced Capuchin, Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman and Malayan Tapir.

 

[DrBurrito]

Update 2: Online version of the Zoopedia has the same problem with the forest-rainforest distinction affecting biomes.

 

[Leaf Productions]

i’m fine with temperate for a lot of animals. a lot of zoos fall into this geographic category and it’s a lot better for foliage design to keep them happy. there comes a point where realism should be ignored and allow for ease of life for gameplay

 

[Urufu1997]

i’m fine with temperate for a lot of animals. a lot of zoos fall into this geographic category and it’s a lot better for foliage design to keep them happy. there comes a point where realism should be ignored and allow for ease of life for gameplay

As I've mentioned earlier in this Thread, it wouldn't change much. Animals can still get 97-99% Happiness with wrong Plants. So I would prefer it if they would remove the Biome where it doesn't fit. Players will still be able to build Enclosures in the same Way

 

[DrBurrito]

i’m fine with temperate for a lot of animals. a lot of zoos fall into this geographic category and it’s a lot better for foliage design to keep them happy. there comes a point where realism should be ignored and allow for ease of life for gameplay

It would actually be realism if the game followed what you just suggested. I also prefer designing realistic zoos using foliage native to the region said zoo is located at. The issue here is consistency more than anything. In real life you'll see cross biome foliage in most enclosures, but since by design the game chose to add restrictions as a game mechanic, those rules should apply to all animals on the roster consistently. They should also be consistent across different platforms. Having different information in the online and offline versions of the Zoopedia (or on education boards) damages consistency.

The main reason I shared the online Zoopedia and older education board screenshots was to show Frontier actually knows about this consistency issue and that they have been fixing it for a while now, when a user's claim was people on this thread were trying to see things in a certain way to "support their desired outcome", but in reality this is the direction developers were already taking before this thread.

 

[Ursidae]

It would actually be realism if the game followed what you just suggested. I also prefer designing realistic zoos using foliage native to the region said zoo is located at. The issue here is consistency more than anything. In real life you'll see cross biome foliage in most enclosures, but since by design the game chose to add restrictions as a game mechanic, those rules should apply to all animals on the roster consistently. They should also be consistent across different platforms. Having different information in the online and offline versions of the Zoopedia (or on education boards) damages consistency.

The main reason I shared the online Zoopedia and older education board screenshots was to show Frontier actually knows about this consistency issue and that they have been fixing it for a while now, when a user's claim was people on this thread were trying to see things in a certain way to "support their desired outcome", but in reality this is the direction developers were already taking before this thread.

Well said. Pretty much summarizes the whole discussion.

 

[NL_Mutso]

Well said. Pretty much summarizes the whole discussion.

Personally I'm not bothered by this at all
But i'm not against changing/updating some things in this area but I agree with IloveyourZoos:

I really hope that they don't take away any biome tags that are already in the game, because players have relied on this information to build their existing habitats across multiple zoos.

 

[sympatrick]

Personally I'm not bothered by this at all
But i'm not against changing/updating some things in this area but I agree with IloveyourZoos:

Each to their own, I am for instance bothered by such inconsistencies in games more than anything. A game should be balanced consistently across the board. It shouldn't look like different people followed a different set of rules to balance different animals. It isn't fair to this amazing project. I hope they'll continue fixing the inconsistencies in the game like they have in the past and do not shy away because some people would rather have the errors stay. All due respect, but I think it is a bit selfish to think that way.

 

[NL_Mutso]

All due respect, but I think it is a bit selfish to think that way.

I think you are thinking wrong about that one. But wrong assumptions are very common here.
Also never seen the translation : not bothered by it -> rather have errors stay.

I think a lot of people will be angry if you change the biomes for animals, maybe some people have a few zoos but having 10-20 zoos and that might be a problem.
If Frontier should address this, they should rethink all biome changes and not just 1 and just add all changes in 1 update.

 

[Bearcat9948]

I agree that it's fine as is, because of the way they've chosen to implement biomes. I would someday like a large biome update, with them ideally adding scrubland/Mediterranean, alpine, freshwater and coastal/salt water biomes to the game. Heck, I'd really love a dry tropical forest biome too.

 

[iloveyourzoos]

I'm not opposed to fixing in-game inconsistencies, such as when zoopedia doesn't match the tagged biomes, education boards, or animal panels. I'm just saying that those inconsistencies can always be solved in multiple ways, and they should use one that doesn't punish players (even incrementally) who have relied on the game's rules up to this point.

Similarly, if they have an in-game biome that they've used inconsistently compared to their real-world counterparts, they always have a choice to either limit or expand what they mean by that in-game biome. I'm not opposed to making those more consistent with real-world experiences if they are going to retroactively expand to create consistency (such as adding aquatic to all animals that have water capabilities, or including temperate for all animals that have forests, so that they're the same across the platform). I'm only opposed to fixing those inconsistencies by retroactively taking away something that the game allowed -- nay, encouraged and promoted -- before.

A note that I'd also be fine with a fix that corrected the biomes for animals, but added tags to all of the plants in a way that doesn't hurt any player who placed that plant in the previous system. (Although I suspect that this has its own realism concerns from a botanical perspective). So if they want to take away the temperate from some animals that only live in the tropics, but add the tropical tag to all the plants that had previously been allowed as temperate, I wouldn't complain. Or if they've really messed things up beyond what can be solved, then they could add another additional biome for "forests" or any of the other mixed biome categories, as suggested above, to allow for this cross over for certain animals, but not all.

I get a bit nervous when people start throwing around words like "selfish", since none of us come from a place of 100% altruism and we all have distinct and different interests. I'll just say again that some players have worked very hard and put in hours of work to construct habitats that meet the rules set out by the game exactly while producing 100% happiness, and the responses to those players has been a combination of:
1. Our interests and hours of work are less important than someone else's (selfish?) focus of realism/education value.
2. Other players have (selfishly?) been ignoring or going outside of the in-game foliage and coverage rules all along, and we should start doing the same.
3. The punishment to the rule followers isn't too large (a value judgement in itself. and highly dependent on how you play and in what mode/difficulty level), and therefore shouldn't matter, because it's something that other players don't (selfishly?) care about.
4. The punishment is somehow deserved for not playing or caring for the game in one of the other "right" ways -- as if we are responsible for having written the rules instead of merely following them precisely! (This one is more implicit than explicit, but comes through in some of the value judgments).

Again, I think there are multiple ways that frontier could fix the inconsistencies without hurting players who have relied on their past information/misinformation. (all of the options in the first three paragraphs above). So it seems strange to insist on an approach that we know will impact other players, when there are other options available that could solve the inconsistencies but that wouldn't have this impact.

 

[Urufu1997]

I'm not opposed to fixing in-game inconsistencies, such as when zoopedia doesn't match the tagged biomes, education boards, or animal panels. I'm just saying that those inconsistencies can always be solved in multiple ways, and they should use one that doesn't punish players (even incrementally) who have relied on the game's rules up to this point.

Similarly, if they have an in-game biome that they've used inconsistently compared to their real-world counterparts, they always have a choice to either limit or expand what they mean by that in-game biome. I'm not opposed to making those more consistent with real-world experiences if they are going to retroactively expand to create consistency (such as adding aquatic to all animals that have water capabilities, or including temperate for all animals that have forests, so that they're the same across the platform). I'm only opposed to fixing those inconsistencies by retroactively taking away something that the game allowed -- nay, encouraged and promoted -- before.

A note that I'd also be fine with a fix that corrected the biomes for animals, but added tags to all of the plants in a way that doesn't hurt any player who placed that plant in the previous system. (Although I suspect that this has its own realism concerns from a botanical perspective). So if they want to take away the temperate from some animals that only live in the tropics, but add the tropical tag to all the plants that had previously been allowed as temperate, I wouldn't complain. Or if they've really messed things up beyond what can be solved, then they could add another additional biome for "forests" or any of the other mixed biome categories, as suggested above, to allow for this cross over for certain animals, but not all.

I get a bit nervous when people start throwing around words like "selfish", since none of us come from a place of 100% altruism and we all have distinct and different interests. I'll just say again that some players have worked very hard and put in hours of work to construct habitats that meet the rules set out by the game exactly while producing 100% happiness, and the responses to those players has been a combination of:
1. Our interests and hours of work are less important than someone else's (selfish?) focus of realism/education value.
2. Other players have (selfishly?) been ignoring or going outside of the in-game foliage and coverage rules all along, and we should start doing the same.
3. The punishment to the rule followers isn't too large (a value judgement in itself. and highly dependent on how you play and in what mode/difficulty level), and therefore shouldn't matter, because it's something that other players don't (selfishly?) care about.
4. The punishment is somehow deserved for not playing or caring for the game in one of the other "right" ways -- as if we are responsible for having written the rules instead of merely following them precisely! (This one is more implicit than explicit, but comes through in some of the value judgments).

Again, I think there are multiple ways that frontier could fix the inconsistencies without hurting players who have relied on their past information/misinformation. (all of the options in the first three paragraphs above). So it seems strange to insist on an approach that we know will impact other players, when there are other options available that could solve the inconsistencies but that wouldn't have this impact.

Would 1% lower Welfare really be that bad?

 

[iloveyourzoos]

Would 1% lower Welfare really be that bad?

I guess I'd ask if 1% inaccurate biome tags would really be that bad.... Assuming that they fixed everything else that wouldn't negatively impact previous game play, including the exhibits and adding appropriate biomes as suggested in these forums (which I support), but simply avoided the step of deleting biomes from the few habitat animals that are in question. What do we truly gain by those particular deletions that is so game breaking or reality breaking if we leave those few as they are? Are players (or science itself) really relying on zoopedia or the in-game biome tags as if they were unimpeachable educational guideposts? I'm not sure that guests even take information at real zoos that seriously or read that closely. Informative and entertaining, yes. A good intro to get you to go home and learn more, yes. But the type of thing that you'd cite as evidence or rely on? I don't think most people use them that way in real life, and even fewer would rely on a biome tag in a video game for that.

But to answer more directly, I think the impact really depends on how people play, and what choices they've made in reliance on the existing rules/guidelines. If you've worked hard and prided yourself on building habitats that truly maximize animal welfare (not just get them moderately happy or even extremely happy, but truly are always searching out ways to get them to 100%), then yes, having a retroactive rule change that undoes that work seems like a bit of a deal. And if the game is truly about conservation and animal welfare (as some claim), then making a decision that knowingly hurts animal welfare in the game -- even by a small percentage -- seems to be counter to the developers' stated aims and the goals that some players have been faithfully trying to achieve. Why should players continue to care how happy their animals are in-game, if developers decide to go out of their way to intentionally make them less happy after the fact? Why spend time trying to make animals happier, if the attitude is simply that "well enough is good enough", or that the percentages don't matter?

Similarly, I imagine that there are people who are on the other end of the spectrum -- not trying to get them at 100% happiness, but instead working on their own designs -- who have made compromises to their creativity so that they get their animals just barely into the green (or just into the orange/yellow, or just above the red), for whom a 1% difference is enough that it could bump them down.

Or people who have constructed fully themed zoos based around the biomes, using only the animals, plants, and decorations appropriate to each. A change would mean that they either have to remove those animals from the zoo, redecorate in a way that ruins their motif, or take a hit to welfare (including welfare's impact on breeding and donations). This could be true not only of multiple zoos, but of multiple sections of different zoos. Like if you designed your zoo not around continents, but rather around biomes. Imagine going into the temperate section of the zoo, and suddenly every third habitat is off theme. After all, people use the in-game information not just to build their habitats one by one, but to make larger decisions about how they've designed their zoos and sections.

Imagine someone playing on hard difficulty franchise mode, complete with refunds, who doesn't read the update notes and can't figure out why their functioning zoo is suddenly going bankrupt. A fall of 1% animal welfare could drastically impact guest happiness and lead to financial problems that reverberate for quite some time. Or someone in the middle of one of the challenges, where you have to get animals up to a certain level.

I fully recognize that these are all hypotheticals, and that they definitely won't impact every player. I suspect that many won't even notice. There are probably even habitats of mine where I won't really notice! But that only begs the question: How badly are we willing to hurt the 1% of players who followed the rules and for whom it would matter? How bad are they that we need to lobby so hard to make sure they get punished, even when other non-punitive solutions have been suggested?

 

[MissySanchez]

Reading the entire discussion, I'd say consistency > convenience, so I do support the 3 corrections mentioned in this thread. I think what people are missing here is that the suggestion does not involve anything new or major that changes the way biomes have been handled in the game up until this point. If Frontier has already fixed 10 exclusively tropical animals with the temperate biome, that means those 3 are also not intentional, just a simple tagging error due to some kind of oversight, like someone mentioned here about sun bears having aquatic on their education boards. The number of corrected animals will simply be 13 instead of 10, if they were to fix the same issue with the new DLC animals that they had a year ago with base game animals.

I can see that they have already changed their system of using temperate biome for all tropical forest animals based on those screenshots shared, as non of those animals have the tag anymore. Therefore if they were to make an exception to the tapir, capuchin and caiman, then that wouldn't be consistent with the rest. The best choice at this point would be to remove the tags from the 3 animals and try to avoid making similar mistakes in future DLCs to avoid similar confrontations in the future. I even started removing temperate plants from those three animals after reading this thread, it wasn't much of a time consuming task.

Another misunderstood point I think, is the fact that this suggestion doesn't involve all tropical animals. Many of them like the mentioned clouded leopard, sun bear and binturong are fine with the temperate biome as their range includes those regions. It is just to fix those other 3 so it doesn't contradict the 10 animals that were already fixed.

 

[sympatrick]

I get a bit nervous when people start throwing around words like "selfish"

I'm really sorry to make you feel that way, that wasn't my intention at all. I was nervous myself, from the provocative language someone used earlier. I would never judge anybody's opinion, each to their own like I said. I just thought it would be selfish to oppose to obvious corrections with the remaining few animals that do not match the current method of classification Frontier chose to use, but of course you are entitled to your opinion. Sorry for making you feel that way. I've always respected your point of view on this thread, my response was to the aggressive approach some other user had.

I think a lot of people will be angry if you change the biomes for animals

There has been no backlash about the dozen or so corrections they've made in this past, that involved removal of biomes, so I don't think it would be a problem now with those additional five or six corrections to make habitat requirements more consistent.

 

[iloveyourzoos]

Had an interesting brainstorm last night that might solve both problems.

There are many animals in the game where the "social and reproduction" section on the left side of the third zoopedia panel is about their real-world life patterns, but then the info on the right side tells players what is possible in-game, acknowledging that the two are different.

I wonder if a similar compromise is possible with the proposed biome deletions? Here is where they actually live (with all the scientific accuracy y'all can muster), and here is how the in-game animals will react when placed in a habitat with in-game foliage types (for in-game welfare considerations).

Just a thought I had as I drifted off to sleep.....

 

[sympatrick]

Had an interesting brainstorm last night that might solve both problems.

There are many animals in the game where the "social and reproduction" section on the left side of the third zoopedia panel is about their real-world life patterns, but then the info on the right side tells players what is possible in-game, acknowledging that the two are different.

I wonder if a similar compromise is possible with the proposed biome deletions? Here is where they actually live (with all the scientific accuracy y'all can muster), and here is how the in-game animals will react when placed in a habitat with in-game foliage types (for in-game welfare considerations).

Just a thought I had as I drifted off to sleep.....

I reckon that would involve more changes than currently proposed? Because at the moment we are just suggesting to fix the ones that do not fit in with the game's current method.

 

[ReptoMin]

I agree that it's fine as is, because of the way they've chosen to implement biomes. I would someday like a large biome update, with them ideally adding scrubland/Mediterranean, alpine, freshwater and coastal/salt water biomes to the game. Heck, I'd really love a dry tropical forest biome too.

If Frontier should address this, they should rethink all biome changes and not just 1 and just add all changes in 1 update.

I think it is too late into the game to ask for a complete overhaul of the biome system. I personally think the simplistic biome system they have adopted for the game works just fine and I don't think there's anything wrong with the concept. Plus why bother with 100+ animals when you can achieve the same fix with 3-5? There are only a few animals that contradict their own system of biomes. The rest they have already fixed as far as I can tell from the screens above, either before the game's launch or right after. It seems only a few dropped beneath the radar when they were reviewing for quality assurance.

The biggest problem, I think, with leaving wrong biome tags is that it also affects the temperature range the animals are given. For instance, Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman had a perfectly suitable temperature range before, but they did update its lower limit just so that they don't get low welfare on the temperate map. Right now we have caiman that are perfectly happy at temperatures as low as 3-4 Celsius. In terms of the game's educational value, this is very misleading. Therefore I do support 100% that the remaining few overlooked tags should be fixed, regardless of its implications.

I kindly ask the developers to remove these irrelevant biomes from said animals for a more immersive experience, as well as to maintain the game's educational purpose. You would be surprised to see how seriously some people take the information in the game.

On top of that, you are wrong that those tags do not affect the climate or temperature requirements. In the game, suitable temperatures are determined by the very tags the animals have. Normally a gorilla wouldn't have 100% welfare in a 42 degree Celsius environment, but they have their temperature requirements determined based on the tags they have.

I had tried to bring this to the attention of the developers in context of the Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman particularly, since I do specialize in reptiles. However this thread is much more comprehensive as it has a greater scope that involves several other animals with the same issue. I had argued that, giving Cuvier's Dwarf Caimans such a low temperature suitability would even cause real life implications, as they are a popular species in the pet trade. I think it is a big responsibility as it concerns the welfare of real animals at this point.

Zoopedia Errors: Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman

The recent changes made to Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman's temperature suitability range prompted me to prepare this post. The lower limit even before the change bothered me for being too low, however, now that the figure has dropped to 6 Celsius, it is even more concerning. Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman...

forums.frontier.co.uk

I think I have found the root of the problem - what caused this whole temperate-tropical forest confusion for tropical animals in the first place. Many sources like seen here will list "forest" and "rainforest" separately to distinguish between the amount of annual precipitation between the two types of moist forest. I believe this distinction is the cause of the confusion that lead to the addition of 'Temperate' to so many tropical animals, which were later removed, without the need of any feedback from the users. For it to be consistent, they'd have to do the same for the Malayan Tapir, Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman and Colombian White-Faced Capuchin.

Tapirus indicus (Malayan tapir)

animaldiversity.org

View attachment 226715

Paleosuchus palpebrosus (Dwarf caiman, Cuvier's smooth-fronted caiman)

animaldiversity.org

View attachment 226716

Cebus capucinus (white-faced capuchin)

animaldiversity.org

View attachment 226717
As you can see, there's the exact same classification for the tropical animals that had their 'Temperate' tags removed:

Iguana iguana (Common Green Iguana)

animaldiversity.org

View attachment 226718

Here's an update. Apparently education boards had the same forest-rainforest confusion, which was later corrected.

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Whatever's gone wrong with the methodology that was fixed later has resurfaced with some of the newer DLC animals. I think it's just a matter of time before the same corrections are made to the Colombian White-Faced Capuchin, Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman and Malayan Tapir.

Update 2: Online version of the Zoopedia has the same problem with the forest-rainforest distinction affecting biomes.

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I think you have nailed it with those examples. It appears that at first, during the closed beta, they have made a mistake of categorizing the two types of tropical moist forest separately as temperate and tropical based on how "dense the coverage is", but then immediately noticed how wrong that is and fixed them for the existing 10+ animals, but the planned or future animals missed that particular quality review, which brings us to the current situation. Just like the source defines, the distinction between forest and rainforest is about coverage, not biome or climate. Here's what that source has to say about the two:
"Forest: Forest biomes are dominated by trees, otherwise forest biomes can vary widely in amount of precipitation and seasonality."
"Rainforest: rainforests, both temperate and tropical, are dominated by trees often forming a closed canopy with little light reaching the ground. Epiphytes and climbing plants are also abundant. Precipitation is typically not limiting, but may be somewhat seasonal."

In terms of gameplay, this means, you are basically placing the same types of plants, of the same biome, but further apart to avoid a closed canopy, resulting in less coverage. That's why for instance the tortoises have low coverage despite having tropical tags (0-50%). A strictly rainforest animal on the other hand would only have a very high coverage range (e.g. 40-100%), for instance any animal from Western Canada or the Amazon Basin. And then, an animal that is present in both rainforests and regular forests would have something like 20-100%, which is what the Capuchin Monkey, Malayan Tapir and Grizzly Bear have I think. The coverage already deals with this distinction, so an additional biome tag with inappropriate temperate zone plants hurts the game. More so if 10+ animals were already changed, but only a few remain. Without consistency it gets even more confusing. They should just fix the remaining few that they've missed in the first review.