Franchise Mode Maintenance and Community Challenges

[Bo Marit]

Hello Zookeepers!

We've been looking at all of your feedback regarding the Community Challenges and have made some changes to the reward system as a result. We have implemented these changes as of tomorrow's Community Challenge.

First of all, we're planning weekly maintenance every Monday from 9AM - 10AM UTC - during this time, the game servers will be unavailable, which means any online aspect of the game, mainly Franchise Mode, will be inaccessible. We will use this time to perform essential system updates to the database and to set up the next Community Challenge. Please note that we will not be posting this every week on the forum; we will be planning in a regular social post, but unless stated otherwise, Mondays from 9AM to 10AM will be in place (we will make a pinned post in General Discussions tomorrow).


Now, regarding the Community Challenges!

As you may be aware, the Community Challenges run from Tuesdays to Sundays. You can earn rewards from participating in the Community Challenges, such as the avatar costumes. There are two different types of rewards: personal contribution awards (that are awarded during the challenge) and community contribution awards (that are awarded after the challenge finishes). Both have multiple tiers, depending on how much you contribute to the shared end goal of the Community Challenge.

For the community contribution awards you will be rewarded with a “Gold” animal. Finishing in Bronze will get you one Gold animal, Silver will get you two, and Gold will get you three. These can be any animal in game, but for Silver and Gold you are more likely to get a higher appeal animal. We are also increasing the size of the catchments for the Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers:

• Bronze – Top 75%
• Silver – Top 35%
• Gold – Top 10%

For the personal contribution rewards, you will continue to receive:

• Conservation Credits
• Avatar Costume Parts - hat, shirt and shorts.

We hope this is a bit clearer in terms of what you can expect from the Community Challenges. We'll hopefully soon also have a better in-game message system so we can update players ahead of time regarding maintenance and new Community Challenges. We're always happy to hear your feedback and will continue to make changes where necessary so that as many of you as possible can enjoy these activities.

Thanks for all of your brilliant support; we'll have the next update ready for you soon!
❤ Bo

 

[Imagin]

Is any aspect of Sandbox mode affected by the game servers being offline?

 

[TheGaijin87]

so still no meaningful rewards? ridiculous low amount of cc that is basically worthless to most, costumes for an avatar that you basically never see yourself and animals that are usually worse than the stuff i would just buy on the market. yay. you really know what this game is about. prime example of a dev not understanding its playerbase.

 

[MsRedNebula]

I have to say, I love the game and am enjoying playing in Franchise mode, something I was very unsure of at first as I tend to be more sandbox than management.

However, I can't help but feel disappointed with the Community Challenges - they feel far more like a race to wildly farm as many as possible of the animal in question. It's nothing like how real conservation works. The creatures are mere numbers, ticks on a scoreboard. I hope in future there can be a little more variety, challenges that actually feel like the community coming together to help a species thrive and adequately rewarding all participants. The current challenges reward inbreeding and cynical puppy farming, which is honestly rather depressing.

 

[Vigilante]

There are no glasses in the costume rewards. I'd love to run around in one of those huge Flamingo sunglasses that were so popular in the 70s.

 

[Paul_Crowther]

Is any aspect of Sandbox mode affected by the game servers being offline?

Hey there. Sandbox will be unaffected by Franchise Mode sever maintenance. This work should only affect accessing Franchise Mode.

so still no meaningful rewards? ridiculous low amount of cc that is basically worthless to most, costumes for an avatar that you basically never see yourself and animals that are usually worse than the stuff i would just buy on the market. yay. you really know what this game is about. prime example of a dev not understanding its playerbase.

The animals you receive are gold tier animals, so pretty good animals to have in your zoo but if you have suggestions for what you would feel would have greater meaning to those taking part then we're always happy to hear them!

I have to say, I love the game and am enjoying playing in Franchise mode, something I was very unsure of at first as I tend to be more sandbox than management.

However, I can't help but feel disappointed with the Community Challenges - they feel far more like a race to wildly farm as many as possible of the animal in question. It's nothing like how real conservation works. The creatures are mere numbers, ticks on a scoreboard. I hope in future there can be a little more variety, challenges that actually feel like the community coming together to help a species thrive and adequately rewarding all participants. The current challenges reward inbreeding and cynical puppy farming, which is honestly rather depressing.

This is an area we are aware of and are reviewing.

 

[Paul_Crowther]

There are no glasses in the costume rewards. I'd love to run around in one of those huge Flamingo sunglasses that were so popular in the 70s.

Of all the 70's fashions to try and bring back

 

[TheGaijin87]

Hey there. Sandbox will be unaffected by Franchise Mode sever maintenance. This work should only affect accessing Franchise Mode.



The animals you receive are gold tier animals, so pretty good animals to have in your zoo but if you have suggestions for what you would feel would have greater meaning to those taking part then we're always happy to hear them!



This is an area we are aware of and are reviewing.

for example blueprints for stuff would be helpful for many of those that cant or dont like to build nice stuff. maybe even take a community vote for the best blueprint of members and chose those as rewards. or some decoration like a statue of the animal in question. maybe some cool path texture or similar. or different entrances for the franchise mode etc. or finally some non flat franchise zoo terrain maps.

any of those could be rewards. and i said it elsewhere, id prefer it if you would reward tokens for the top spots and then set up a store where you can redeem said tokens for prices that you like that contain either good animals or stuff i mentioned above. that way you dont feel the need to take part in every challenge and can still get stuff that has been given out early like the tiger cloths. otherwise it sucks for those that started later or cant take part all the time due to time

 

[marcnesiumHH]

The animals you receive are gold tier animals, so pretty good animals to have in your zoo but if you have suggestions for what you would feel would have greater meaning to those taking part then we're always happy to hear them!

In several threads some people agreed having new building items as a reward could be a possibility. Imo, this could be a statue or just a (small) new prefab blueprint, which is accordingly themed to the challenge e.g. a Grizzley statue, shelter or cave. I guess that you still have some "leftovers" from designing the game or just copying from Planet Coaster.

 

[avietar]

Thank you for this update. I think it's a good addition to the community challenge!

 

[Just_Ralph]

In several threads some people agreed having new building items as a reward could be a possibility. Imo, this could be a statue or just a (small) new prefab blueprint, which is accordingly themed to the challenge e.g. a Grizzley statue, shelter or cave. I guess that you still have some "leftovers" from designing the game or just copying from Planet Coaster.

I don't think rewarding people with exclusive items would be fair.
I haven't been able to play this game as much as I'd like, and haven't been able to participate in any of these community events.
This would mean that people with less time wouldn't be able to get these exclusive items.

I think the rewards as they are now are just right.
They are cosmetic and don't impact the game with an unfair advantage for people who have less time to play.

 

[Nescio1]

Well I am much more a sandbox player then a Franchise player, but for the competition I created a franchise zoo, but when looking at the animaltrading I was shocked by the greed there. Not much of a communion feeling at all. So closed Franchise and went quickly back to sandbox mode, as long as this greed thing isnt solved, you wont see me back in franchise....

 

[Arletario]

First of all, I'm not complaining about the community challenge itself, I really like the idea behind it. I have participated in the last three ones, however I just dont have any incentive to take part in another one for now. And don't get me wrong, winning an animal with a golden rating is nice for a beginner zoo. That starter zoo should be able to win at least the bronze tier, but I doubt that such a zoo will win the silver / golden level due to the investment required. So my thoughts:

I think, the "problem" is the ratio between challenge and reward. For example, the last challenge was the breeding of Grizzlies. To reach the golden tier, you had to breed ... let's say 100 Grizzlies. For 100 Grizzlies you had to buy 10 breeding pairs from the franchise market. The math would be.:

20x 200-600 CCs to start breeding = investment of 4,000 - 12,000s CCs

100x 400-700 CCs for selling the offspring or releasing it to the wild = 40,000 - 70,000 CCs "reward"

So you've already made 28,000 - 66,000 CCs profit during the challenge. If you bought Grizzlies at a more favorable price (or for cash from Frontier Zoo), bought less or breed more, you even made more profit. As a reward for the challenge, I won 25 CCs for bronze, 50 CCs for silver and 125 CCs for reaching the golden tier. Thats kind of... not so worth it, sorry guys . In addition, I won three golden animals as well, a male Nile Monitor (worth 25 - 45 CCs), a male Black Wildbeest (worth 40 - 2,000 CCs) and a female Sable Antilope (worth 40 - 4,000 CCs). The last two animals are only so valuable, because there are almost none on the market. Okay, in the "not so good" case, you've won rewards worth less than 1,000 CCs and, at best, 6,245 CCs. That's just the same amount of CCs you had to invest to win the golden tier rewards, or even way less. And you've just earned tens of thousands of CCs for releasing the offspring to the wild so you can buy even better animals on the market anytime.

So where is the incentive to take part in the challenges? Because of the animals? Well, they are beautiful animals - no doubt. But they will die in about 1 hour of gameplay because of the fast time. The community itself? The in-game community is just a bunch of random players, as there is neither an in-game friendlist nor a list of your favorite zoos or something like that. You also don't see how many players are currently participating in these challenges - it's just a progress bar that is slowly building up. The avatar items? Okay, I see my avatar in his own zoo now and then, but I have no time to look at what my avatar is wearing, because I have to breed 100 Giant Pandas now.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I think the rewards as they are now are just right.
They are cosmetic and don't impact the game with an unfair advantage for people who have less time to play.

The problem is the current reward system, which is already rewarding grinding players and/ or players with just mass breeding zoos the most not what prices you get.

 

[Dienstbier]

Google Translator:

Hi, I once participated in the Challenge, so I also tried to release a lot of gorillas. I was massively disappointed with the profits and had to release so many at once. Then you had to release more to keep his rank. Absolutely madness. Especially the feed costs of the animals ate up all my profit. I was at almost 100,000 Taler plus. After that, I was down with the same amount. I can not do a big zoo because my computer can not manage the number of guests. I would find it better if only a certain number of animals per player must be released / bred. For example, 30-50 animals and they are the fixed target, without falling back from his rank. And that the rewards should be better. A shirt for my avatar, which is also pretty pixelated / blurry, in contrast to the other T-shirts, that is very weak for me. (Anyway, mean that the thicker avatar has so much less choice) The leaves did not interest me as a profit, because I would not have participated, I would have spent much less. I would also like to see something special, a statue, building plan or something similar. The animals are uninteresting for me, because I get any (The values of which were not sooo great) and then I would have to bring to others first. Maybe it would be a consideration that you can choose animals .. and which ones you could actually use. Maybe a new picture as background for the FranchaisePark would be nice.

Original:

Hallo,
Ich habe EINMAL bei der Challenge mitgemacht, da habe ich auch versucht ganz viele Gorillas freizulassen.

Ich war massivst entäuscht von den Gewinnen und das man so viele auf einmal freilassen musste.
Anschließend musste man noch mehr freilassen um seinen Rang zu halten. Absoluter Irrsinn.
Vorallem die Futterkosten der Tiere fraßen meinen ganzen Gewinn auf.

Ich war auf fast 100.000 Taler im Plus.
Danach war ich mit dem gleichen Betrag im Minus.

Einen großen Zoo kann ich nicht machen, da mein Computer die Gästeanzahl nicht schafft.

Ich fände es besser, wenn pro Spieler nur eine bestimmte Anzahl an Tieren freigelassen/gezüchtet werden muss.
Zum Beispiel 30-50 Tiere und die sind das feste Ziel, ohne das man von seinem Rang wieder herabrutscht.

Und das die Belohnungen besser sein sollten.

Ein Shirt für meinen Avatar, das auch noch ziemlich verpixelt/verschwommen, im Gegesatz zu den anderen T-Shirts wirkt, das ist für mich sehr schwach.
(Ist sowieso gemein das der ere Avatar so viel weniger Auswahl hat)

Die Blätter haben mich als Gewinn auch nicht interessiert, weil hätte ich nicht mitgemacht, hätte ich deutlich weniger ausgeben müssen.

Ich würde es auch gerne sehen etwas besonderes zu bekommen, eine Statue, Gebäudeplan oder ähnliches.

Die Tiere sind für mich uninteressant, da ich da irgendwelche bekomme (Die Werte von denen waren auch nicht sooo toll) und mir dann zu denen erst andere dazuholen müsste.
Vielleicht wäre es ne Überlegung das man sich Tiere aussuchen kann.. und zwar welche die man selbst tatsächlich gebrauchen könnte.

Vielleicht wäre auch ein neues Bild als Hintergrund für den FranchaisePark was schönes.

 

[Bäry31]

That with the rewards is a fine thing, if you could get them too.

Since November 7th, 2019, the welcome field with the daily 100 bonus conservation points is either not displayed at all or, if it appears, the 100 points will not be credited after clicking.
Likewise with the community tasks Tiger, Gorillas and Grizzlys no bonus - conservation points were credited.

 

[Averalorax]

Thank you for the information on the Challenge rewards and the warning of weekly updates.

I am not complaining about the rewards or the ranking system. I did have an idea on a community challenge, but not sure if it would work.
Instead of going for breed x number or release x number, how about breed "animal" and release your BEST for reward, with certain quality of animal receiving rewards? This would allow participants to get rewards, but put less reward on inbreeding to achieve the goal?

 

[Sheep]

Thinking of possible future rewards for those wanting more than CC... maybe in-game bronze/silver/gold trophies you can place in your zoo? Something for people to collect?
I don't play franchine myself, so, naturally I'm not a fan of exclusive assets, I'd go mad if I missed out on the precious building tools<3

 

[Amasaur]

Hi there ! I am planning to buy the game next month, and would like to know if i will be able to participate in the challenges that i missed ? or is there a way to get their respective rewards. I have no problem if i don't get the conservation credit parts or the gold animals, but i definitely would want the collectibles for my avatar.

 

[ShadowLilly]

Will there also be other types of challenges in stead of only bread/release X animals?

Also i would like to ask if the rewards (like the tiger outfit) will come back in others challenges?