Franchise Mode - Community Challenges seem to be failing a lot.

[Rowlie]

Hi. I was wondering if you guys know why the community challenges keep failing? I really wanted to succeed at this one and I'm in the top percent of contributors to the challenge. I setup a zoo to breed specifically maned wolves as they produce a lot of offspring and I had a good bloodline of them already. I've not seen a community challenge succeed since getting the game and it's been a few months now. I really want to see what the rewards are like though and I've never had the chance.

What do you think might be the reason we keep failing to succeed at the challenges? You'd think canids would be an easy challenge as the game contains a lot of canid species. It seems strange to me we don't have this one in the bag.

Canids include:

• African wild dog
• Arctic fox
• Arctic wolf
• Dhole
• Dingo
• Fennec fox
• Maned wolf
• Red fox
• Timber wolf

You'd think these species would be very popular in zoos so I don't know why we aren't succeeding.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I was wondering the same thing. Made a franchise zoo with maned wolves, timber wolves, wild dogs, fennic, and red foxes. Bred lots if the little beggars, nearly all gold star. Got a high rating within the challenge, but it's failed. Sometimes it makes sense, when they want you to breed a bunch of five star rated critters that have low reproductive rates or take a very long time to get to five star with guests. But gold rating status is something animals are born with, and canines are nothing if not fertile, so no idea why this one failed, except maybe that the developers made a very high success requirement, or maybe it's that almost no one played much over the holidays.

 

[Rowlie]

Possible reasons I've considered people keep failing the challenges include:

• The challenge requirements are set too high.
• There isn't a large enough player base on Franchise mode.
• There isn't enough time to complete these challenges.
• Nobody cares about the challenges due to the "lacklustre rewards". (I've never seen the rewards, but have seen people on reddit talk about them this way.)
• The challenges might be bugged and not representing the communities efforts properly. (Unlikely but who knows?)
• The constant failure of previous community challenges has demoralized players from taking part in future challenges.

You have to ask yourself how many other people are out there like us, who are noticing the challenges are constantly failing? These people may very well not bother contributing to the next community challenge as they don't want to waste hours breeding animals in dedicated zoos without reward.

Either way it's clear that something isn't right. People just aren't completing the challenges and there are people like us who will dedicate entire zoos and several hours a day to breed these animals. I wish we could see the statistics of how many people are actually playing franchise mode and for how long. Also I wish I could know the species populations in every active zoo over the past week... That would give us so much important info... I wonder if the devs have the ability to see these statistics and if they could ever tweak / fix the challenges after analysing the data.

 

[jcp011c]

Possible reasons I've considered people keep failing the challenges include:

• The challenge requirements are set too high.
• There isn't a large enough player base on Franchise mode.
• There isn't enough time to complete these challenges.
• Nobody cares about the challenges due to the "lacklustre rewards". (I've never seen the rewards, but have seen people on reddit talk about them this way.)
• The challenges might be bugged and not representing the communities efforts properly. (Unlikely but who knows?)
• The constant failure of previous community challenges has demoralized players from taking part in future challenges.

You have to ask yourself how many other people are out there like us, who are noticing the challenges are constantly failing? These people may very well not bother contributing to the next community challenge as they don't want to waste hours breeding animals in dedicated zoos without reward.

Either way it's clear that something isn't right. People just aren't completing the challenges and there are people like us who will dedicate entire zoos and several hours a day to breed these animals. I wish we could see the statistics of how many people are actually playing franchise mode and for how long. Also I wish I could know the species populations in every active zoo over the past week... That would give us so much important info... I wonder if the devs have the ability to see these statistics and if they could ever tweak / fix the challenges after analysing the data.

Those are some good theories, but I also think another may come into play. Many of the players simply have their own plans they're already working on, and three years in, the challenges simply aren't a priority for them any longer. I think I stopped paying attention to challenges less then a year in as I was already working through plans for nearly a dozen zoos, and didn't want to invest time in the challenges that would take me away from those plans. Add two more years of them on, and that more and more players are probably playing an increasing number of zoos sporadically, and it just isn't as of much importance any longer.

Just to edit to add. Nothing's wrong with that, and nothing's wrong with working towards completing the challenges either. It's not right or wrong priorities or a way to play, it's just different.

 

[Nioell]

There's also the fact that franchise is still bugged (especially the market and connection issues) and let's be real: those challenges are just boring like hell. It's been three years and all the can come up with is breed x, release y. That is not something that helps keeping players engaged, more like the opposite. At least that's what it was like for me about half a year in, I really didn't feel up to adding yet another breeding zoo and just ignored them from then on until I quit playing franchise all together.

I really think the whole mode could use an overhaul to make it way more interesting and engaging tbh but I doubt that'll ever happen. They could however try to add different challenges like photo challenges or something that involves building etc. anything that isn't a constant rinse repeat of breed/release tbh.

 

[Laura_91]

I just don't have the same time I used to have. Last year I moved in with my boyfriend so dont thinks it's fair on him if I sit on my computer all night. Now have more responsibilities. Where as when I lived with my dad I had more free time.

Also as said above, the challenges have been the same since the start. It would draw me in more if there was something different

 

[SanRazo618]

I really wish franchise mode had similar story based challenges like zt2 challenge mode it made our zoo in that game feel so alive. Like having to repair from an earthquake, having a celebrity come to your zoo, having to take pictures for an ad, or receiving a world famous animal from another institution, or having workers go on strike. It was such a cool mode.

 

[FoxyDee]

I really wish franchise mode had similar story based challenges like zt2 challenge mode it made our zoo in that game feel so alive. Like having to repair from an earthquake, having a celebrity come to your zoo, having to take pictures for an ad, or receiving a world famous animal from another institution, or having workers go on strike. It was such a cool mode.

Agreed, I loved the unexpected quests where you got a random animal and had to make a space for it and if you finished the quest you could keep the animal(s). It was really a random element which made you change plans you had for the zoo. I really miss something like this in PZ, together with the star system that made sure you could not get rare animals right from the start but had to actually improve your zoo.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Franchise is boring, buggy and generally a snoze fest that doesnt really change how to play the game apart of having to deal with all the annoying stuff and an grossly inflated market.
Its not challanging but cheeseable and tedious, so i wouldnt be surprised at all if most people swap to sandbox with the things they want to keep enabled just switched one once they figure out that it is customisable

 

[sleepy_sloth]

I usually don't participate because i gave up after the first 3 weeks. Its just too many challenges that change to quickly for my taste, and they are so repetitive.

 

[abigenius]

Franchise is boring, buggy

Nah, it isn't really, at least in my personal experience my last and my first bug was around 3 months ago

Franchise mode is OK, i have a very big and detail zoo in franchise mode, i like the challenges, that's the reason why I have all the gold carrier scenarios in Hard difficulty, i like franchise more also for the breeding and the animals zoo change, and the color morphs are more common to find them than sandbox mode, you can't share animals with other zoo that you have
there, franchise does, I play the game since one year ago exactly, and in franchise mode i have 2,5 million of CC and all the 153 animals researched

 

[ShadowLilly]

Nobody cares about the challenges due to the "lacklustre rewards".

This... What is the point of gaining a few cc when you have millions, in the past avatar outfit which you will never use in your zoo, and free animals? I can buy all the animals I want..

And the fact that you need to make breedingfarms to achieve the goals....

 

[iloveyourzoos]

Another possible factor may be the interaction of the challenges with the new dlc/updates. I finished in the top level of this challenge because I had both maned wolves and black morph timberwolves in my Grassy Knoll zoo, but got there mostly accidentally because I was working on breeding all the new dlc and new color morph animals. Had the same challenge happened later this January, I would have given it more focus and attention. (Although I'm not sure that even I could have made up that full 35% that we missed it by.)