Features that Planet Zoo 2 DEFINITELY needs?

Speculation for a hypothetical Planet Zoo sequel is at an all-time high, many clearly wish for aquariums and aviaries- but other than the completely obvious- what else would the sequel need to truly feel like a new game? So, while Frontier’s still supporting Planet Zoo 1 and we still have time to voice our suggestions for features we definitely want without it being too late, I’d like to hear from everyone what game features we’d definitely need for a sequel, and here’s my own thoughts on some features that have been obviously missing from Planet Zoo that could justify the sequel’s existence:

Zookeeper mode
One feature that we all miss from the old Zoo Tycoon games- zookeeper mode. The ability to actually participate in your zoo’s upkeep- feeding your animals, brushing them, interacting with your physical zoo- this made the game feel much closer, instead of being a bodiless floating soul. This could also be great for giving us more reasons to customize our player characters- that right now just randomly appear in your zoo sometimes and are otherwise barely ever actually seen. Could add a lot to the game by having a much better unlocks and rewards system for unlocking new skins, clothes, etc. for your player, instead of just a few hats. Imagine being able to pet your animals!

Another feature that can finally come back with Zookeeper mode: Golf Karts and vehicles! I’m sure many remember Frontier’s ZTUAC- it had awesome golf karts where you could even play with friends- Much fun can be had crashing around and goofing in a golf kart. It’s a great way to traverse your zoo while in first person mode.

Better time scale
Ever since the beta, people have complained about the game’s quick pacing. Animals die too fast- you don’t even get to feel attached to them. Forget about the game for an hour and hundreds of generations of your exhibit animals have been born and died and been replaced. Your zookeeper struggled to feed your animals before they starved while just running back and forth from the exhibit and the keeper hut. A typical game save can easily reach 200 years of age- that’s ridiculous, especially when a game like planet coaster had even slower time- a game where time doesn’t matter because it’s not focused on animals that die with time. Time should mean more. Age time scale options were added- but they just feel fake considering everything else continues at the same pace. I think the default speed of the game should definitely be slowed down- give your zookeepers time to do nothing. Specially if there’s going to be a zookeeper mode- so that the player doesn’t have to dart from place to place all the time instead of focusing on experiencing their zoo. Make it so reaching 5 years in your save file feels like a great milestone- not something you accomplished in one single hour of gameplay.

Animal market UI improvements
As Planet Zoo expands its roster, the animal trading UI makes less and less sense with hundreds of different animals. If you don’t have the exact animal’s name in mind, you’re going to have a hard time scrolling through the entire list to see what animals you have available. This is why I think the animal trading UI should be reworked. Instead of giving you an 18 pages long list of individuals to buy, start with organizing all the species into categories and tags, and show you the animal thumbnails before showing you the individuals to buy- selecting the animal would show you the available individuals to purchase. Some ideal categories could be:

-Biome (Desert, Tundra, Temperate, etc.)
-Region (America, Europe, Australia, etc.)
-Taxonomic Class (Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, etc.)
-Conservation status (Least concern, endangered, critically endangered, etc.)

So basically, when you click on the animal market, you’d be shown which of these categories you want to enable in your list. By not displaying the individuals’ information, you could use that space to display more species. When the user clicks on one of the species, then they get the individuals on a new section- from which they can buy whichever ones they choose.
Oh, and please, a better franchise storage system because it’s just impossible to manage once you have too many and it forces you to dump them all in one random zoo just to free up space.

Here’s a mockup of a possible new UI with category organization:
lYWEehh.png

We would have categories/tags to enable/disable, a list of species that fit those tags, we could then select a species and it would show us basic but important information, and from there we could select an individual and have it's information pop up to the right like the image.
Obviously this could use a lot of improvements like more tags, and better design, but just to show how we could be able to see a lot more animals than we currently can, and also sort by animal tags.
One other thing is that for sandbox, players will definitely want to be able to place down animals without requiring to send them to a habitat from a trade center, and also customizing the genes, so please add options for that when in sandbox mode, allowing you to place animals directly in the habitat and as many as you want, wherever you want.

Multiplayer/franchise features
Franchise mode as a concept is very cool. Being able to interact with other players gives it an economic sense unlike the other modes- but in that regard it’s actually missing a lot. One big and obvious thing is trading- you can sell your animals to other players by trying to coordinate with them- but it’s pretty difficult and you can easily get sniped. That’s why Frontier should introduce actual trading- and perhaps even a friends list. Enabling you to trade directly with friends, and for example exchanging animals or credits or both for another player’s animals.

Co-op. A mode that could revolutionize fun in Planet Zoo. Using zookeeper mode- imagine if you could buy tickets and visit your friend’s zoos, your friends could give you a tour- or you could goof around and race in golf karts. You could also add the ability to have a zookeeper “third person mode” by adding a drone vehicle- which would allow you and other players to fly around and know where the others are. This could add a lot of new fun to Planet Zoo multiplayer that would truly make it a game to remember.

This could integrate really well with Franchise multiplayer features- you could allow people to allow anyone to visit their zoo- basically like the workshop- and doing so rewards the creator’s franchise zoo. Imagine a leaderboard of popular zoos, where content creators could showcase their creations- Imagine watching a time-lapse and being able to visit them and reward their franchise- Imagine youtubers bringing more people to the game by allowing everyone to visit their zoo. It would bring a lot of new players and fun to Planet Zoo. Visiting popular zoos would be a great place to find zoo ideas and seeing what people can create with advanced building tools.

Zoo Progression
Right now, in the regular modes, there’s barely any progression to be made in a zoo. The only thing limiting you is money. If you place down one animal and wait long enough to get money from it, you can immediately place down a lion or an elephant. You can place down a critically endangered animal even if you’ve never even cared for anything, and have animals with 0 welfare. For that reason, I think we need a new mode of progression- much like the original ZT games, starting with simpler animals and earning permits for the rarer, more popular animals as you progress through achievements in the save file and earn more stars for your zoo. That way earning new stars and improving the quality of your zoo feels like it’s worth it- not that you just… got a shiny star and no actual reward for it. Make Planet Zoo feel more like a GAME.

Sandbox of course would still skip this progression.

Achievement progression
Achievements used to be so much fun to complete on the original Zoo Tycoon games, and Planet Zoo should learn from that- Having several challenges, whether it be specific to that zoo- or global achievements from every zoo you’ve made- they made progression feel real, and they rewarded you for it- any achievement could unlock new scenery pieces, or reward you with more popularity for your zoo.
So we could have per-file achievements and global achievements, both possibly giving out different rewards for campaign/challenge mode zoos.

Better career and unlocks.
Building upon progression- Career mode is often lacking in story and unlocks. All you get is different materials for statues of animal models that barely have any use- and this bores a lot of people who then never even try career. We should have more unique rewards for completing career mode.
Perhaps we restructure missions to be several groups of themed missions- for example, 5 missions centered around an area of Australia- or 5 Missions centered around islands, or 5 missions centered around managing restaurants and gift shops in zoos- and upon completing the final mission of a bundle, you can get a reward that is themed after that bundle. We don't need a LOT of unlocks, what we want is them to be more unique than just alternative materials for animal statues. For example, if you complete the Australia bundle- you could get a themed zoo entrance, or a themed habitat door- things that definitely have alternatives. For completing the missions about managing restaurants, you could get one new restaurant brand- or a gift shop brand (or items), that definitely have lots of alternatives for players who don't do them- but feel unique and worth it to those who do. Could also throw in skins and hats and clothes for the player character.
So to reiterate- we don't need a lot of new unlocks, we just need unlocks that feel unique and worth the effort.


Better challenges
Missions are often ignored and not without reason, they can become boresome, as they are often just things that you were already doing but with X animal. We need real challenges and missions that get you to do new stuff- not just rewarding you for doing well in what you were already doing. ZT2 had many fun missions, like having you enter a photo contest, trying to impress a celebrity in the park, having to take care of an animal that was sent in by another zoo, getting scammed by an animal dealer and suddenly having to take care of a random animal… many fun ways to spice up the gameplay that’s already there, instead of just saying “breed 7 pandas”.

Animal Model Variation
Animals already have some great variation features. The colourmorphs, which add different skin textures such as albinos. The marking system, which randomizes the markings on different sections. The colour variation, which slightly changes the hue, saturation, and brightness of the animal. These are great for changing the texture of the animal, but they’re missing one big thing. Model variation.

Model variation could truly make every animal unrecognizable from each other. We could have animals with different musculature, thicker or thinner bellies, variations in horns, antlers, and tusks. We don’t necessarily need this on every animal, but there are many that would benefit greatly with little effort, like adding tusk variation to elephants, horn variation to rhinos, etc.

But we can do even more- With blend shapes/shape keys, one could simulate animal statuses like pregnancy, making the animal fat if it’s over-eating, making the animal thin if it’s not eating enough. We could simulate growth on juveniles as they grow up by changing their model to resemble the final adult model more closely. These features could easily make the animals feel more ALIVE, and like they actually grew up in your zoo thanks to your management.

Scenery path pieces for indoor construction & blueprints
Many have complained about the pathing system as far back as Planet Coaster’s release. I think there’s one big reason for this: The current system is great for outdoor paths, with the ability to curve easily. But for indoors, it is awful and slow to work with. I believe one easy solution to this that would also introduce one great feature is placeable scenery paths. Basically, modular path pieces that can be placed down just like any other of the regular grid items. Imagine the large exhibit’s path- but just the path part of it, allowing you to place paths that perfectly match the building you are creating. Another important part for this would be staircase pieces- currently, building staircases often feels wonky, so modular staircase pieces would make a great improvement.

One other great thing about this would be that paths could now work with blueprints- instead of forcing players to replace all the path pieces, blueprints could come with in-built path pieces.

Better modular building set selection
Currently, the building menu gets pretty flooded by endless duplicates of the same modular pieces but with a different material. Instead of hundreds of duplicates- why not sort them into one single set- and let us select the materials after we select the pieces? This would heavily clean up the overloaded UI. This also goes for path pieces- they could be far more simplified by having a smaller material selection instead of hundreds of duplicates.

Scenery Scaling
This one’s pretty obvious. This could help advanced builders go crazy with incredibly detailed artworks- and not having to dedicate 5 scenery pieces to different sizes of the same object. If worried about texture quality when scaling up, just add sensible limits, after all if the user wishes they can probably just mod them away.

Modular Exhibits
Currently, besides the large exhibit, all the regular exhibit animals have the exact same exhibit size. Be it a tiny frog, a spider, or a large iguana or snake- same exhibit. To many this is ridiculous. A great solution to this would be to add modular exhibits- Exhibits that start in small units, but that you can expand in any direction- much like the lagoons and aviaries of Jurassic World Evolution 2, but with cubes, or perhaps other shapes as well. Each exhibit unit would come with rest points, where the exhibit animals spawn and play their animations. As for the decorations, perhaps include the option to decorate them ourselves- allowing us to place pieces with pre-set rest points, such as a branch where animals can rest. And also include just default decoration presets that you can select for each unit. This way, exhibiting animals would feel a lot closer to the customization that habitat animals have. One could even use this system to make small aquarium exhibits!

Eggs
Animals that lay eggs should make nests and… lay eggs. Yeah, pretty simple feature but I’m sure people will appreciate it greatly. Right now, it’s pretty immersion breaking that they don’t. Seeing animals build a home, a nest, in their habitat would be great to make your zoo feel real.
The player should be able to designated nests, animals would only make their own if the player neglects to do so. And also we could add incubator facilities for players who want to grow their animals that way.

Foliage Brush
A foliage brush much like the one in Jurassic world evolution is essential to zoo sim games, so we definitely need one. Ideally make it able to select which biomes you want to use for the brush, and set the density/intensity. Maybe we could even make custom brushes, perhaps even make brushes for rocks. A lot of possibilities that would save players lots of time.

Energy Management
People often find energy management annoying and unrealistic- Having to place energy generators all over your zoo, which basically turns them into litter. There is one much better way to handle this while still keeping the same general energy management system- Centralized power. Instead of placing small generators everywhere, place all your generators in one spot that can easily be hidden, and use cables to spread that power. So, you would place generators in one corner of the zoo, and then spread that power to the rest of the zoo with power poles. You can have cheap power poles that might affect the beauty, or you can have more expensive underground cables that stay completely hidden while still providing power.

Also- give the players the option to buy power from the “grid”, instead of generating everything on the zoo. Could be a great option for early game, and would make energy generation an important progression to lower operational costs.

Transferable blueprints
Planet Zoo is a game that attracts a lot of dedicated players- who spend years building one single zoo. I’ve been told that many are concerned they will have to abandon this progress if a sequel is released. Because of this, I think if every scenery piece from Planet Zoo is being ported to Planet Zoo 2, the ability to transfer blueprints would be essential to many players. Simply an ability to perhaps save them as a file, and open them in Planet Zoo 2- this would greatly help players who want to transfer their zoos to the new game. Might be annoying to program if how scenery works changes too much, but I guarantee it would be worth it for the players that want it.
 
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flying birds, fully aquatic animals, remakes of certain animals, as long as there is not a lot of micro management like in JWE2, please no, it's good as it is now. I don't wanna go like; dart the animal with a vet then select a keeper to move the animal.

Overall good options :) I do feel like keeping sandbox as it is, it's good!
 
Better career and unlocks.
Building upon progression- Career mode is often lacking in story and unlocks. All you get is different statues of animal models that barely have any use- and this bores a lot of people who then never even try career. You should be rewarded for completing career missions more- getting pieces that you couldn’t place otherwise, perhaps unlocking gameplay features like certain restaurant brands- many things that could improve a player’s feeling of accomplishment. Perhaps build more upon the career itself- right now it's basically just one chain of missions start to finish, instead maybe make several groups of missions, all focusing on one area of the world or aspect, allowing you to start in any of them and unlock more missions of that group- instead of having one single long chain.
You lost me here, and you'll lose a huge portion of players here, too, because a huge portion of players don't care about being challenged and shouldn't lose access to major features because of it. That's why the statues exist currently - they are a minor thing to throw a bone to people who need that dopamine hit. In the old Zoo Tycoon and sequel days, one of the most popular mods (or 'hacks' as they were known) for both games was "freeform unlock", because so many people don't play for a "challenge" but still wanted access to the challenge-locked content. For example the quagga in Zoo Tycoon 2 Extinct Animals.

The whole reason Sandbox Mode exists is so that those of us that use games like these as a simple expression of art, or recreation, or meditation, or whatever else, can still utilise the whole thing to do so.

Edit: To answer the thread question, however;

I'd like the Sandbox market to be wholly replaced with an animal designer. By that I don't mean "creating a new species" or whatever, but rather choosing the parameters available for in-game species. Perfect genes, exact colour variation or morph, even point of origin and age. I'd also like more variation in foliage; a single tree or bush or whatever could have multiple model designs that are cycled through randomly with placement. A foliage brush would be nice as well, where you could select a palette beforehand and a density to easier fill in gaps in the map with forest or garden.

Another thing I'd like is more realistic social management. For example, if you want to breed tigers, you'd need to have multiple habitats and link them with animal doors. You'd only introduce the male and female until the female is pregnant, then separate them again.
 
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Eggs
Animals that lay eggs should make nests and… lay eggs. Yeah, pretty simple feature but I’m sure people will appreciate it greatly. Right now, it’s pretty immersion breaking that they don’t. Seeing animals build a home, a nest, in their habitat would be great to make your zoo feel real.
Eggs and nest building would do the opposite of making a zoo feel real. I don't know why this keeps coming up. Zoos don't allow reptiles and birds to breed willy-nilly; they're subject to the same scrutiny and management as mammals (unless they're free-roaming peafowl or whatever). Typically they will provide an obvious place for the animals to nest - a mud patch for flamingos to build mounds, an embankment for crocodiles, nest boxes for penguins (or pebble fields) - and then when the eggs are laid they will go in, take them away, and incubate them artificially, or they will monitor the whole thing extremely closely. Especially for reptiles. Birds tend to be either hand-reared or puppet-reared up to a certain point then reintroduced to the parents. Very few exceptions are made.

The way the game currently handles this is actually the most realistic and consistent way; in the same way you have to imagine that baby mammals are born, you just have to imagine that baby birds and reptiles have been incubated and returned to the habitat (to an extent - in reality baby crocodiles, monitor lizards, and tortoises would be put in separate habitats that are smaller, generally exhibit-sized boxes).
 
Eggs and nest building would do the opposite of making a zoo feel real. I don't know why this keeps coming up. Zoos don't allow reptiles and birds to breed willy-nilly; they're subject to the same scrutiny and management as mammals (unless they're free-roaming peafowl or whatever). Typically they will provide an obvious place for the animals to nest - a mud patch for flamingos to build mounds, an embankment for crocodiles, nest boxes for penguins (or pebble fields) - and then when the eggs are laid they will go in, take them away, and incubate them artificially, or they will monitor the whole thing extremely closely. Especially for reptiles. Birds tend to be either hand-reared or puppet-reared up to a certain point then reintroduced to the parents. Very few exceptions are made.

The way the game currently handles this is actually the most realistic and consistent way; in the same way you have to imagine that baby mammals are born, you just have to imagine that baby birds and reptiles have been incubated and returned to the habitat (to an extent - in reality baby crocodiles, monitor lizards, and tortoises would be put in separate habitats that are smaller, generally exhibit-sized boxes).
I agree to an extent having the eggs just sitting around in the habitat would feel weird and pretty unrealistic but egg laying needs to be present because its even weirder that egg laying animals are treated the exact same as most mammals. It should look something like placing nest boxes for the animals to lay the eggs in which staff have to then take and hatch elsewhere like how the do in real zoos. I also would love to see juvenile conflict added as another level of management.
 
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Speculation for a hypothetical Planet Zoo sequel is at an all-time high, many clearly wish for aquariums and aviaries- but other than the completely obvious- what else would the sequel need to truly feel like a new game? So, while Frontier’s still supporting Planet Zoo 1 and we still have time to voice our suggestions for features we definitely want without it being too late, I’d like to hear from everyone what game features we’d definitely need for a sequel, and here’s my own thoughts on some features that have been obviously missing from Planet Zoo that could justify the sequel’s existence:

Zookeeper mode
One feature that we all miss from the old Zoo Tycoon games- zookeeper mode. The ability to actually participate in your zoo’s upkeep- feeding your animals, brushing them, interacting with your physical zoo- this made the game feel much closer, instead of being a bodiless floating soul. This could also be great for giving us more reasons to customize our player characters- that right now just randomly appear in your zoo sometimes and are otherwise barely ever actually seen. Could add a lot to the game by having a much better unlocks and rewards system for unlocking new skins, clothes, etc. for your player, instead of just a few hats. Imagine being able to pet your animals!

Another feature that can finally come back with Zookeeper mode: Golf Karts and vehicles! I’m sure many remember Frontier’s ZTUAC- it had awesome golf karts where you could even play with friends- Much fun can be had crashing around and goofing in a golf kart. It’s a great way to traverse your zoo while in first person mode.

Better time scale
Ever since the beta, people have complained about the game’s quick pacing. Animals die too fast- you don’t even get to feel attached to them. Forget about the game for an hour and hundreds of generations of your exhibit animals have been born and died and been replaced. Your zookeeper struggled to feed your animals before they starved while just running back and forth from the exhibit and the keeper hut. A typical game save can easily reach 200 years of age- that’s ridiculous, especially when a game like planet coaster had even slower time- a game where time doesn’t matter because it’s not focused on animals that die with time. Time should mean more. Age time scale options were added- but they just feel fake considering everything else continues at the same pace. I think the default speed of the game should definitely be slowed down- give your zookeepers time to do nothing. Specially if there’s going to be a zookeeper mode- so that the player doesn’t have to dart from place to place all the time instead of focusing on experiencing their zoo. Make it so reaching 5 years in your save file feels like a great milestone- not something you accomplished in one single hour of gameplay.

Animal market UI improvements
As Planet Zoo expands its roster, the animal trading UI makes less and less sense with hundreds of different animals. If you don’t have the exact animal’s name in mind, you’re going to have a hard time scrolling through the entire list to see what animals you have available. This is why I think the animal trading UI should be reworked. Instead of giving you an 18 pages long list of individuals to buy, start with organizing all the species into categories and tags, and show you the animal thumbnails before showing you the individuals to buy- selecting the animal would show you the available individuals to purchase. Some ideal categories could be:

-Biome (Desert, Tundra, Temperate, etc.)
-Region (America, Europe, Australia, etc.)
-Taxonomic Class (Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, etc.)
-Conservation status (Least concern, endangered, critically endangered, etc.)

So basically, when you click on the animal market, you’d be shown which of these categories you want to enable in your list. By not displaying the individuals’ information, you could use that space to display more species. When the user clicks on one of the species, then they get the individuals on a new section- from which they can buy whichever ones they choose.
Oh, and please, a better franchise storage system because it’s just impossible to manage once you have too many and it forces you to dump them all in one random zoo just to free up space.

Here’s a mockup of a possible new UI with category organization:
lYWEehh.png

We would have categories/tags to enable/disable, a list of species that fit those tags, we could then select a species and it would show us basic but important information, and from there we could select an individual and have it's information pop up to the right like the image.
Obviously this could use a lot of improvements like more tags, and better design, but just to show how we could be able to see a lot more animals than we currently can, and also sort by animal tags.
One other thing is that for sandbox, players will definitely want to be able to place down animals without requiring to send them to a habitat from a trade center, and also customizing the genes, so please add options for that when in sandbox mode, allowing you to place animals directly in the habitat and as many as you want, wherever you want.

Multiplayer/franchise features
Franchise mode as a concept is very cool. Being able to interact with other players gives it an economic sense unlike the other modes- but in that regard it’s actually missing a lot. One big and obvious thing is trading- you can sell your animals to other players by trying to coordinate with them- but it’s pretty difficult and you can easily get sniped. That’s why Frontier should introduce actual trading- and perhaps even a friends list. Enabling you to trade directly with friends, and for example exchanging animals or credits or both for another player’s animals.

Co-op. A mode that could revolutionize fun in Planet Zoo. Using zookeeper mode- imagine if you could buy tickets and visit your friend’s zoos, your friends could give you a tour- or you could goof around and race in golf karts. You could also add the ability to have a zookeeper “third person mode” by adding a drone vehicle- which would allow you and other players to fly around and know where the others are. This could add a lot of new fun to Planet Zoo multiplayer that would truly make it a game to remember.

This could integrate really well with Franchise multiplayer features- you could allow people to allow anyone to visit their zoo- basically like the workshop- and doing so rewards the creator’s franchise zoo. Imagine a leaderboard of popular zoos, where content creators could showcase their creations- Imagine watching a time-lapse and being able to visit them and reward their franchise- Imagine youtubers bringing more people to the game by allowing everyone to visit their zoo. It would bring a lot of new players and fun to Planet Zoo. Visiting popular zoos would be a great place to find zoo ideas and seeing what people can create with advanced building tools.

Zoo Progression
Right now, in the regular modes, there’s barely any progression to be made in a zoo. The only thing limiting you is money. If you place down one animal and wait long enough to get money from it, you can immediately place down a lion or an elephant. You can place down a critically endangered animal even if you’ve never even cared for anything, and have animals with 0 welfare. For that reason, I think we need a new mode of progression- much like the original ZT games, starting with simpler animals and earning permits for the rarer, more popular animals as you progress through achievements in the save file and earn more stars for your zoo. That way earning new stars and improving the quality of your zoo feels like it’s worth it- not that you just… got a shiny star and no actual reward for it. Make Planet Zoo feel more like a GAME.

Achievement progression
Achievements used to be so much fun to complete on the original Zoo Tycoon games, and Planet Zoo should learn from that- Having several challenges, whether it be specific to that zoo- or global achievements from every zoo you’ve made- they made progression feel real, and they rewarded you for it- any achievement could unlock new scenery pieces, or reward you with more popularity for your zoo.

Better career and unlocks.
Building upon progression- Career mode is often lacking in story and unlocks. All you get is different statues of animal models that barely have any use- and this bores a lot of people who then never even try career. You should be rewarded for completing career missions more- getting pieces that you couldn’t place otherwise, perhaps unlocking gameplay features like certain restaurant brands- many things that could improve a player’s feeling of accomplishment. Perhaps build more upon the career itself- right now it's basically just one chain of missions start to finish, instead maybe make several groups of missions, all focusing on one area of the world or aspect, allowing you to start in any of them and unlock more missions of that group- instead of having one single long chain.

Better challenges
Missions are often ignored and not without reason, they can become boresome, as they are often just things that you were already doing but with X animal. We need real challenges and missions that get you to do new stuff- not just rewarding you for doing well in what you were already doing. ZT2 had many fun missions, like having you enter a photo contest, trying to impress a celebrity in the park, having to take care of an animal that was sent in by another zoo, getting scammed by an animal dealer and suddenly having to take care of a random animal… many fun ways to spice up the gameplay that’s already there, instead of just saying “breed 7 pandas”.

Animal Model Variation
Animals already have some great variation features. The colourmorphs, which add different skin textures such as albinos. The marking system, which randomizes the markings on different sections. The colour variation, which slightly changes the hue, saturation, and brightness of the animal. These are great for changing the texture of the animal, but they’re missing one big thing. Model variation.

Model variation could truly make every animal unrecognizable from each other. We could have animals with different musculature, thicker or thinner bellies, variations in horns, antlers, and tusks. We don’t necessarily need this on every animal, but there are many that would benefit greatly with little effort, like adding tusk variation to elephants, horn variation to rhinos, etc.

But we can do even more- With blend shapes/shape keys, one could simulate animal statuses like pregnancy, making the animal fat if it’s over-eating, making the animal thin if it’s not eating enough. We could simulate growth on juveniles as they grow up by changing their model to resemble the final adult model more closely. These features could easily make the animals feel more ALIVE, and like they actually grew up in your zoo thanks to your management.

Scenery path pieces for indoor construction & blueprints
Many have complained about the pathing system as far back as Planet Coaster’s release. I think there’s one big reason for this: The current system is great for outdoor paths, with the ability to curve easily. But for indoors, it is awful and slow to work with. I believe one easy solution to this that would also introduce one great feature is placeable scenery paths. Basically, modular path pieces that can be placed down just like any other of the regular grid items. Imagine the large exhibit’s path- but just the path part of it, allowing you to place paths that perfectly match the building you are creating. Another important part for this would be staircase pieces- currently, building staircases often feels wonky, so modular staircase pieces would make a great improvement.

One other great thing about this would be that paths could now work with blueprints- instead of forcing players to replace all the path pieces, blueprints could come with in-built path pieces.

Better modular building set selection
Currently, the building menu gets pretty flooded by endless duplicates of the same modular pieces but with a different material. Instead of hundreds of duplicates- why not sort them into one single set- and let us select the materials after we select the pieces? This would heavily clean up the overloaded UI. This also goes for path pieces- they could be far more simplified by having a smaller material selection instead of hundreds of duplicates.

Scenery Scaling
This one’s pretty obvious. This could help advanced builders go crazy with incredibly detailed artworks- and not having to dedicate 5 scenery pieces to different sizes of the same object. If worried about texture quality when scaling up, just add sensible limits, after all if the user wishes they can probably just mod them away.

Modular Exhibits
Currently, besides the large exhibit, all the regular exhibit animals have the exact same exhibit size. Be it a tiny frog, a spider, or a large iguana or snake- same exhibit. To many this is ridiculous. A great solution to this would be to add modular exhibits- Exhibits that start in small units, but that you can expand in any direction- much like the lagoons and aviaries of Jurassic World Evolution 2, but with cubes, or perhaps other shapes as well. Each exhibit unit would come with rest points, where the exhibit animals spawn and play their animations. As for the decorations, perhaps include the option to decorate them ourselves- allowing us to place pieces with pre-set rest points, such as a branch where animals can rest. And also include just default decoration presets that you can select for each unit. This way, exhibiting animals would feel a lot closer to the customization that habitat animals have. One could even use this system to make small aquarium exhibits!

Eggs
Animals that lay eggs should make nests and… lay eggs. Yeah, pretty simple feature but I’m sure people will appreciate it greatly. Right now, it’s pretty immersion breaking that they don’t. Seeing animals build a home, a nest, in their habitat would be great to make your zoo feel real.

Foliage Brush
A foliage brush much like the one in Jurassic world evolution is essential to zoo sim games, so we definitely need one. Ideally make it able to select which biomes you want to use for the brush, and set the density/intensity. Maybe we could even make custom brushes, perhaps even make brushes for rocks. A lot of possibilities that would save players lots of time.

Energy Management
People often find energy management annoying and unrealistic- Having to place energy generators all over your zoo, which basically turns them into litter. There is one much better way to handle this while still keeping the same general energy management system- Centralized power. Instead of placing small generators everywhere, place all your generators in one spot that can easily be hidden, and use cables to spread that power. So, you would place generators in one corner of the zoo, and then spread that power to the rest of the zoo with power poles. You can have cheap power poles that might affect the beauty, or you can have more expensive underground cables that stay completely hidden while still providing power.

Also- give the players the option to buy power from the “grid”, instead of generating everything on the zoo. Could be a great option for early game, and would make energy generation an important progression to lower operational costs.

Transferable blueprints
Planet Zoo is a game that attracts a lot of dedicated players- who spend years building one single zoo. I’ve been told that many are concerned they will have to abandon this progress if a sequel is released. Because of this, I think if every scenery piece from Planet Zoo is being ported to Planet Zoo 2, the ability to transfer blueprints would be essential to many players. Simply an ability to perhaps save them as a file, and open them in Planet Zoo 2- this would greatly help players who want to transfer their zoos to the new game. Might be annoying to program if how scenery works changes too much, but I guarantee it would be worth it for the players that want it.
I vaguely agree with most of this except the part where you said animals and scenery will be locked behind gameplay. Some people just want to build without caring about the challenge mode so in sandbox mode every item and animal should be immediately accessible to any player to avoid players leaving because they wanted to build for pandas but dont want to build a whole zoo first. The idea of progression locked items and animals is good in theory and would provide a much needed pace changer to the game but it should be restricted to franchise like modes where people are going into it expecting a challenge not a sandbox.

Also your animal market idea looks good I would add on top of that in sandbox the ability to make custom animals custom stats selectable colour morphs gender and age.
 
PZ2 would need a better computer resources management. It is nearly impossible to build a major zoo without: having performances being beheaded and/or not being able to open your save anymore even in full sandbox mode.

PZ2 would be a shame if you need a NASA computer to enjoy both management and building of the game in decent conditions.
 
flying birds, fully aquatic animals, remakes of certain animals, as long as there is not a lot of micro management like in JWE2, please no, it's good as it is now. I don't wanna go like; dart the animal with a vet then select a keeper to move the animal.

Overall good options :) I do feel like keeping sandbox as it is, it's good!
Oh yeah some of the first animals they made definitely need remakes- updating them to the modern dlc style would make the overall game look much better when it's poster animal doesn't look so silly
 
You lost me here, and you'll lose a huge portion of players here, too, because a huge portion of players don't care about being challenged and shouldn't lose access to major features because of it. That's why the statues exist currently - they are a minor thing to throw a bone to people who need that dopamine hit. In the old Zoo Tycoon and sequel days, one of the most popular mods (or 'hacks' as they were known) for both games was "freeform unlock", because so many people don't play for a "challenge" but still wanted access to the challenge-locked content. For example the quagga in Zoo Tycoon 2 Extinct Animals.

The whole reason Sandbox Mode exists is so that those of us that use games like these as a simple expression of art, or recreation, or meditation, or whatever else, can still utilise the whole thing to do so.

Edit: To answer the thread question, however;

I'd like the Sandbox market to be wholly replaced with an animal designer. By that I don't mean "creating a new species" or whatever, but rather choosing the parameters available for in-game species. Perfect genes, exact colour variation or morph, even point of origin and age. I'd also like more variation in foliage; a single tree or bush or whatever could have multiple model designs that are cycled through randomly with placement. A foliage brush would be nice as well, where you could select a palette beforehand and a density to easier fill in gaps in the map with forest or garden.

Another thing I'd like is more realistic social management. For example, if you want to breed tigers, you'd need to have multiple habitats and link them with animal doors. You'd only introduce the male and female until the female is pregnant, then separate them again.
I definitely did not mean a lot of pieces should require unlocking. If missions were bundled with themes, for example, 5 missions on Australia, upon completing the final mission you could get a decoration related to that theme.

So we definitely do not want to restrict access to items with no alternatives, or lots of items. We just want a substantial reward that is larger than just the animal statues for players to have a reason to complete the career modes.

One other example: a group of missions related to managing restaurants or gift shops can give you access to an alternative brand- out of dozens of other brands, so the player will definitely have alternatives. This is what I meant by gameplay-related, perhaps I exaggerated there.

So other examples will mostly consist of alternative decorations for pieces that definitely have alternatives: Like alternative zoo entrances, restaurant brands, habitat doors, also statues but with more relevant designs to the missions.... just to give a few. But it's fine if there aren't a lot of them- all that I'd want is that these unlocks be unique and not just recolored animal statues.
 
I vaguely agree with most of this except the part where you said animals and scenery will be locked behind gameplay. Some people just want to build without caring about the challenge mode so in sandbox mode every item and animal should be immediately accessible to any player to avoid players leaving because they wanted to build for pandas but dont want to build a whole zoo first. The idea of progression locked items and animals is good in theory and would provide a much needed pace changer to the game but it should be restricted to franchise like modes where people are going into it expecting a challenge not a sandbox.

Also your animal market idea looks good I would add on top of that in sandbox the ability to make custom animals custom stats selectable colour morphs gender and age.
Yes, animals would be unlocked in sandbox mode, I thought it was implied- things that require unlocking like research come already unlocked, I'll clarify it a bit.
 
Honestly don’t even want to think about a sequel. Could be years and years away. I hate the thought of including things we could have and should have received in planet zoo. If true about the idea of adding flying and marine to the sequel to draw interest to said sequel I get it from a business model but crappy thing to do imo. But this is the way of the world nowadays unfortunately I mean the sequel was always going to sell regardless. Anyway I do look forward to seeing what’s been added to PC2 and where there at capability wise as this will dictate what’s possible in a PZ2 and how well PC2 sells. And to the above comment about unlocking animals in sandbox please don’t. This is a very bad idea as many players love the creative freedom the game offers with all stuff available. JWE1 did this and it was a very bad idea it’s a sure fire way of turning away players so I highly doubt frontier would ever do this again.
 
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Eggs and nest building would do the opposite of making a zoo feel real. I don't know why this keeps coming up. Zoos don't allow reptiles and birds to breed willy-nilly; they're subject to the same scrutiny and management as mammals (unless they're free-roaming peafowl or whatever). Typically they will provide an obvious place for the animals to nest - a mud patch for flamingos to build mounds, an embankment for crocodiles, nest boxes for penguins (or pebble fields) - and then when the eggs are laid they will go in, take them away, and incubate them artificially, or they will monitor the whole thing extremely closely. Especially for reptiles. Birds tend to be either hand-reared or puppet-reared up to a certain point then reintroduced to the parents. Very few exceptions are made.

The way the game currently handles this is actually the most realistic and consistent way; in the same way you have to imagine that baby mammals are born, you just have to imagine that baby birds and reptiles have been incubated and returned to the habitat (to an extent - in reality baby crocodiles, monitor lizards, and tortoises would be put in separate habitats that are smaller, generally exhibit-sized boxes).
Then let's take that into account- to clarify, the point is just that egg laying animals shouldn't give live birth.
So the player should be able to place the nesting areas themselves- animals will only make their own nests if the player neglected to do so.
And we could just allow the player to select the eggs and take them to an incubation area. Point is just to add to the immersion.
 
Honestly don’t even want to think about a sequel. Could be years and years away. I hate the thought of including things we could have and should have received in planet zoo. If true about the idea of adding flying and marine to the sequel to draw interest to said sequel I get it from a business model but crappy thing to do imo. But this is the way of the world nowadays unfortunately I mean the sequel was always going to sell regardless. Anyway I do look forward to seeing what’s been added to PC2 and where there at capability wise as this will dictate what’s possible in a PZ2 and how well PC2 sells.
I can agree with that, but that's exactly why I want us to put our ideas out early- game development takes a lot of time, and if they get too deep into development and they didn't think of these, they'd be unable to add them- so we should put these ideas out there early so that it is indeed possible to put them into consideration- and so that we don't regret it in the future and at least can say we tried if the game is basically the exact same but with birds and fish.
 
Honestly don’t even want to think about a sequel. Could be years and years away. I hate the thought of including things we could have and should have received in planet zoo. If true about the idea of adding flying and marine to the sequel to draw interest to said sequel I get it from a business model but crappy thing to do imo. But this is the way of the world nowadays unfortunately I mean the sequel was always going to sell regardless. Anyway I do look forward to seeing what’s been added to PC2 and where there at capability wise as this will dictate what’s possible in a PZ2 and how well PC2 sells. And to the above comment about unlocking animals in sandbox please don’t. This is a very bad idea as many players love the creative freedom the game offers with all stuff available. JWE1 did this and it was a very bad idea it’s a sure fire way of turning away players so I highly doubt frontier would ever do this again.
The reason I think the game needs a sequel is not because of a business model or because that is the way the world works now.
I think the game is reaching the limits of what its foundations / game engine allow it thing like free flying habitat birds, better performance, more interesting gameplay, better exhibits would require so much of what is in the game to be ripped out and started again. Also keep in mind the game is running on the same engine as planet coaster so it is nearly a decade old and is definitely limiting the games potential.
A sequel doesnt always have to be a heartless money grab not saying that doesnt happen alot in the video game industry but if planet zoo does a sequel it wont be like that. Sequels are a chance to improve on the game in ways that are just not possible on the original either because it is physically impossible or would break countless peoples save games and its just not worth it.

I would like to add that a sequal is at least 3 years out and that is if they have already started work a game of planet zoos size would take a minimum of 4-5 years likely closer to 6
 
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One other example: a group of missions related to managing restaurants or gift shops can give you access to an alternative brand- out of dozens of other brands, so the player will definitely have alternatives. This is what I meant by gameplay-related, perhaps I exaggerated there.

So other examples will mostly consist of alternative decorations for pieces that definitely have alternatives: Like alternative zoo entrances, restaurant brands, habitat doors, also statues but with more relevant designs to the missions.... just to give a few. But it's fine if there aren't a lot of them- all that I'd want is that these unlocks be unique and not just recolored animal statues.
Yeah, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's say they lock, I don't know, the doughnut shop behind the challenge, but someone playing Sandbox wants to put it in their zoo. Would you tell them, "sorry, no, you can't have it unless you get good"? That wouldn't fly. Again, the very first thing someone is going to mod in that case is an instant unlock for those features, which would basically just be a muckaround way of defeating the whole purpose anyway. So why would Frontier bother? The reason the statues aren't substantial is because that way the people who don't want to play those modes aren't really missing much.

I mean habitat doors? Zoo entrances? That would never fly. The whole reason Sandbox Mode exists in simulation games is because developers are smart enough to realise that their core market isn't "gamers" in the traditional sense. I would even go so far as to say that the Sandbox Mode is the core of the game; the challenge mode, career mode, franchise mode - these are bones thrown to the smaller group of players who need the challenge to have fun. It's a separate market. Games like this exist as wish fulfilment for the player. "Design your dream zoo". For most people their dream zoo has every animal they want and never suffers from financial problems and has habitats that reflect what they see in real life. Hence the Sandbox Mode (which, I might add, used to be much more restrictive, but the community made its voice heard by asking for more freedom, more customisation, and they still do - we still want to be able to control everything down to the temperature parameters and biome paint palette. Heck, some people are even asking to control the exact position of the sun!).

Plus Sandbox Mode, with everything it brings, is the bread and butter of the content creators. That's typically where they show off their talents, and for whatever reason Frontier does actually care about their opinions on things specifically (I'll never understand why, but there you go).
 
Yeah, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's say they lock, I don't know, the doughnut shop behind the challenge, but someone playing Sandbox wants to put it in their zoo. Would you tell them, "sorry, no, you can't have it unless you get good"? That wouldn't fly. Again, the very first thing someone is going to mod in that case is an instant unlock for those features, which would basically just be a muckaround way of defeating the whole purpose anyway. So why would Frontier bother? The reason the statues aren't substantial is because that way the people who don't want to play those modes aren't really missing much.

I mean habitat doors? Zoo entrances? That would never fly. The whole reason Sandbox Mode exists in simulation games is because developers are smart enough to realise that their core market isn't "gamers" in the traditional sense. I would even go so far as to say that the Sandbox Mode is the core of the game; the challenge mode, career mode, franchise mode - these are bones thrown to the smaller group of players who need the challenge to have fun. It's a separate market. Games like this exist as wish fulfilment for the player. "Design your dream zoo". For most people their dream zoo has every animal they want and never suffers from financial problems and has habitats that reflect what they see in real life. Hence the Sandbox Mode (which, I might add, used to be much more restrictive, but the community made its voice heard by asking for more freedom, more customisation, and they still do - we still want to be able to control everything down to the temperature parameters and biome paint palette. Heck, some people are even asking to control the exact position of the sun!).

Plus Sandbox Mode, with everything it brings, is the bread and butter of the content creators. That's typically where they show off their talents, and for whatever reason Frontier does actually care about their opinions on things specifically (I'll never understand why, but there you go).
I agree with everything here and would like to add another point to further prove your idea and that is even though the only unlockables currently in planet zoo are the statues there is still a reasonably popular mod to allow you to use the statues even without unlocking them because the main audience for this game isnt the hardcore gamers its the builders who dont care about the campaign.
 
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