Franchise Mode - Why do we only have 200 Storage Slots in the Trade Centre when we paid to breed 130 different habitat animals?

[Rowlie]

There is currently 130 habitat species within Planet Zoo. With every DLC the game adds even more animals. This causes an issue as every Franchise mode player is only permitted 200 storage slots in the trading centre. You cannot even have a breeding pair of every species you've paid for in your storage.

If you're a player such as me who wishes to breed good bloodlines of EVERY species in the game that you have paid for... You find yourself in a tough spot. You've spent hours selectively breeding animals in order to get the best stats possible (often from very limited stock as some species are never sold in the marketplace). All your hard work is reflected in these superior bloodlines that you have produced, especially the perfect stat animals with 100% stats around the board. During the selective breeding process you often find your storage slots fill up fast. That 200 slots of free space can easily be filled up if you take on less than 10 species breeding projects. Once those 200 slots are full you find yourself in a dilemma...

Do you decide to discard an amazing bloodline in favour of breeding a new one? Once you sell your animals they basically fall into the void. You might never see anyone selling good ones again in the future... Perhaps you store your animals in a specially designed zoo? Just a path, enclosure and dozens of animals stored in crates on paused? That's efficient sure, but time consuming to set up. The animals are not easily accessed for future breeding either.

You just find yourself in a situation where in order to get new slots you have to make room. Good bloodlines might get deleted or stashed in storage zoos. You basically have to either delete your hard work or fiddle around to make a storage zoo because Planet Zoo cannot give a fair and proportionate amount of storage slots for the amount of species in the game.

Even if Planet Zoo gave players 50 extra storage slots for every DLC they purchased it would make a massive difference to mine and many other players quality of life. I am so sick of having to make designated storage zoos to box up my animals on paused.

Please Planet Zoo, throw us a bone once and a while! You keep putting more animals into the game for us to purchase, but you're not upping the storage in franchise mode to coincide with that. I just want to have fun breeding the animals I've paid for.

 

[Speerbauch]

Thank you for opening this thread, I was about to post something simular.
I feel, I miss out on something in the game, because we are encouraged to breed animals and trade them. But because of the limited space I can hardly do so, at least nor for more than a handfull of species. And I would happily sell bronze or silver rated animals for a small amount of CC as well for the sake of a balanced market, but I release them instead, because of the limitation in the tradecenter. The solution with more zoos is not working for me, I loose track of my breedinglines and who is who and where.
But other players don`t seem to be too bothered, I didn`t find many threads in the forums. Therefore I think, I`m doing something wrong perhaps...
As for now, breeding my own bloodlines in franchise is impossible for me. The micromanagement of buying and selling is taking to much time, because it all has to be done more or less at once. If animals are not sold imidiatly, they take up the space I need. I am constantly at the limit.
Sandbox surely is sort of an alternative, but then, why is there a online mode with trading options? And I like the dynamik of the market, and the kind of communityfeeling...
So, yes. I strongly support your request and hope, Frontier will do something about that matter.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

I would actually strongly disagree.
In my opinion, the ability to store animals in the trade center is one of the main flaws of the management side of the game.
I understand the quality of life that freezing animals in no time for no cost has but exactly that makes alot of infrastructure obsolete.
For 2 examples:

• Baechlor enclosures: Many animals have strict group limits for atleast one gender, so in real zoos whats done is to keep "extra" animals in additional enclosures either additionally, backstage or instead of a normal mixed group, something the game covers with groupsizes for baechlours but which is not used due to the storage
• Backstage enclosures: Same as above, temporary holding for animals is completly unnessecary as there is way to much storage

Storage and management of animal is simply a peace of cake as you can just lock whatever animal you want in time as a backup or to save money.
BUT theres imo a good solution for both sides.
Each trade center has 50 storage spaces, so to increase storage you could just increase the number of trade centers.
If you dont want it, build one and be done but if you do want more slots just build as many as you need.

 

[Calleo]

I would actually strongly disagree.
In my opinion, the ability to store animals in the trade center is one of the main flaws of the management side of the game.
I understand the quality of life that freezing animals in no time for no cost has but exactly that makes alot of infrastructure obsolete.
For 2 examples:

• Baechlor enclosures: Many animals have strict group limits for atleast one gender, so in real zoos whats done is to keep "extra" animals in additional enclosures either additionally, backstage or instead of a normal mixed group, something the game covers with groupsizes for baechlours but which is not used due to the storage
• Backstage enclosures: Same as above, temporary holding for animals is completly unnessecary as there is way to much storage

Storage and management of animal is simply a peace of cake as you can just lock whatever animal you want in time as a backup or to save money.
BUT theres imo a good solution for both sides.
Each trade center has 50 storage spaces, so to increase storage you could just increase the number of trade centers.
If you dont want it, build one and be done but if you do want more slots just build as many as you need.

I lean on this fence too. Franchise to me is meant to be like running a working zoo. One of the challenges of running breeding programmes in zoo is animal storage, and I mean genuine animal housing not a magical animal 'locker. You either get creative and build new enclosures (be they on or offshow) or you transport animals to other institutions (which why franchise let's you have multiple zoos and trading is a thing). The trade centre being a magical time-freezing storage box basically just seems to insentivise people to manage their zoos like some sort of battery farm, breeding hundreds of a species, tossing out the less than perfect individuals, and stashing them in a box before mass selling them. It takes away from a lot of the management side of the game, significantly reduces the number of animals in the trade centre (because they're all in magic storage), reduces the value/rarity of unique colour morphs by promoting intense mass-breeding with no hindrance on resources (don't need to feed or house all the 'rejects', nor maintain staff to care for them).

Imo the trade centre would be best abolished or reduced to a small limit like it used to be. The worst thing they could do is make it a bottomless pit of animal storage. The solution to your problems is to actually play your zoo, and house the animals you breed in your zoo or trade them. If you want to house 35 white tigers and 25 albino Giant pandas, then build for that, or else, play like a normal zoo and have a breeding pair or two and trade your offspring to other institutions. But I honestly don't get the obsession with getting 100/100/100/100 albino or leucistic or whatever animals. Improving genetics is meant to be a gradual thing incorporated into your zoo management. Solid genetics are fine, you just don't want absolutely crap ones flooding your breeding programme. But people play franchise like they're trying to breed 6 100iv competitive shiny pokemon for some reason and that in term ruins the market for everyone else, because they suck up any good animals and dump them in their own trade centre while they're breeding, leading to a drought of said species on the market, and then flood the market with all their massively interelated rejects in one go when they're done. More storage just makes that worse.

 

[Moorwiesen]

I would agree if we could trade animals while they are in their habitat. But since we have to trade via Trade Center and animals are not always bought right away, we need storage. If I get 4 Clouded Leopard cubs and can advertise them for sale right away like a real zoo would and they get transfered when matured, I would not need the storage. But this is not how this works, so I need storage. It is not soo much a problem with animals that give less or less frequent offspring, as we can build them a little maturing habitat that splits them from their parents. But as mentioned is it very problematic with those that get a lot of offspring in a small time frame. At the end without the Trade center, the trading would die because we all are forced to release the offspring.

 

[Rowlie]

Right now there isn't even enough slots in the trade centre to have 2 of every animal that you've paid for in the base game and DLCs, never mind having "35 white tigers and 25 albino Giant pandas". I would feel so lucky to have the room or be able to get my hands on 35 white tigers and 25 albino giant pandas... I'm lucky if I can even have 2 of any species right now in the trade centre because I've paid for all the DLC and want to breed all of the animals.

If you had a multimillion dollar franchise zoo, with facilities across the world and money is no issue you would 100% have the storage to store all these animals anyway. It's just the sheer amount of time taken to make all these zoos isn't fair on the player, especially when your PC is gonna explode if you have too many animal enclosures. The easiest way around this is to make more storage zoos to store the animals. An issue with this though is that once animals are placed into a storage zoo they're easily lost / forgotten. I cannot view what animals I have in the storage zoo without loading them up, but once I make too many new zoos I forget what's in the old ones or what I was doing in those old zoos anyway. You talk about the trade centre being a "magical time-freezing storage box", but that's exactly what storage zoos are. Animals in the storage zoo are magically frozen in time while you play in other zoos, they don't get old there, but you don't see anyone here saying they wish they would age in a zoo when they're not playing.

A real zoo runs within a longer time span, so if you had let's say 12 zebras, and some breed you'd have ages to shift them to other zoos. In planet zoo the animals age quicker because if they didn't people would get bored fast. You also cannot sell the babies until they're at breeding age. The trade centre ensures these adult bred animals have a place to go while you're trying to shift them or a place the player can store them for a future breeding project. I guess you can compare it to how some people freeze animal eggs or semen in order to use them for artificial insemination on a later date breeding project.

As for the battery farming: Rare colour morphs, 100/100/100/100 stat obsession. Planet Zoo created this by adding a stat chart to every animal. They gave players genetic perfection to aim towards. They encouraged battery farming animals because that's how you make money to afford other animals. If you breed red or orange stat animals nobody wants to buy them, so you breed almost perfect animals and they sell instantly. It's not hard to understand why so many players perfect their bloodlines. With the market as dry as it is I simply could not rely on it to get new breeders for my bloodlines when I need them. My animals would mature and die before I find a good breeder of certain species so of course I'm going to make the bloodlines myself. It's not always possible to outsource good genetic animals for breeding purposes so I will need to rely on the trade centre storage animals I already have. Even when I bred perfect stat animals I still had more than enough good stat animals to sell to the market and would sell them regularly. I'd say I sold some of the best quality animals on the market and they always sold out immediately when I put them up for sale.

 

[Jileha]

The worst thing they could do is make it a bottomless pit of animal storage. The solution to your problems is to actually play your zoo, and house the animals you breed in your zoo or trade them. If you want to house 35 white tigers and 25 albino Giant pandas, then build for that, or else, play like a normal zoo and have a breeding pair or two and trade your offspring to other institutions. But I honestly don't get the obsession with getting 100/100/100/100 albino or leucistic or whatever animals. Improving genetics is meant to be a gradual thing incorporated into your zoo management. Solid genetics are fine, you just don't want absolutely crap ones flooding your breeding programme. But people play franchise like they're trying to breed 6 100iv competitive shiny pokemon for some reason and that in term ruins the market for everyone else, because they suck up any good animals and dump them in their own trade centre while they're breeding, leading to a drought of said species on the market, and then flood the market with all their massively interelated rejects in one go when they're done. More storage just makes that worse.

The worst thing they could do is limit the many different ways different players like to play. Nothing is preventing you from not making use or only extremely limited use of the trade center. That’s an admirable challenge, but a challenge that is not everybody’s cup of tea. Everybody should be able to play PZ in their preferred way, even if you cannot understand why they would prefer to play that way. I am grateful for people who spend the time breeding some of the rarer variants so I can enjoy them in my zoo without having to spend my time to do so.

”They suck up any good animals…” - You don’t even know how many people buy nothing more than one or two animals of a species at a time. With so many players, that in itself would also result in few animals available. Some species are widely bred for CC such as lions and tigers, others such as elephants that take years to mature are much more rarely bred and therefore causing a “drought”. It takes patience to find good animals in the market - which is a pretty realIistic aspect of the game, so you should actually appreciate it. I don’t think having more storage would have any major impact on the market. It didn’t when Frontier increased our storage space in the past.

In order to allow every player to play PZ just the way they would like to play it, there should be as little limitation as possible. You can always impose any type of restrictions on your own playing style. I sometimes like to browse the market because some animals are often very hard to find. When I spot some good ones, I store them until I have enough decent animals for a pair or a herd or for breeding purposes. I currently have one zoo where I store gold animals in quarantine centers since I don’t want to sell or release animals I spent a fair amount of time on searching for or breeding them just to make space for another species I want to use in my zoo at that moment. It is possible to do, but very cumbersome since you often have to jump back and forth between zoos and shuffle animals around since you always depend on the trade center for moving animals. So, yes, I would love having much more space in the trade center.

 

[Softino Zoo]

Whats this breeding all about? And breeding lines, ive got a 2000 hour franchise zoo full with maaaaaany gold animals but nvr heard from this....

 

[Milurian]

I would actually strongly disagree.
In my opinion, the ability to store animals in the trade center is one of the main flaws of the management side of the game.
I understand the quality of life that freezing animals in no time for no cost has but exactly that makes alot of infrastructure obsolete.
For 2 examples:

• Baechlor enclosures: Many animals have strict group limits for atleast one gender, so in real zoos whats done is to keep "extra" animals in additional enclosures either additionally, backstage or instead of a normal mixed group, something the game covers with groupsizes for baechlours but which is not used due to the storage
• Backstage enclosures: Same as above, temporary holding for animals is completly unnessecary as there is way to much storage

Storage and management of animal is simply a peace of cake as you can just lock whatever animal you want in time as a backup or to save money.
BUT theres imo a good solution for both sides.
Each trade center has 50 storage spaces, so to increase storage you could just increase the number of trade centers.
If you dont want it, build one and be done but if you do want more slots just build as many as you need.

My problem is the fact that it actively discourages people trading their animal is they only have 200 slots they arent going to fill it with mid tier animals that will take days to trade out they are going to release them essentially ruining any chance of mid tier animals within the market. Also the fact that the limit extends into sandbox mode I once wanted to make a zoo with all the baby animals but couldnt simply because there was no way to store them and the fact that there are 4 animals with max group sizes higher than the storage cap is annoying especially for testing.

I do like the idea of more trade centers equals more storage and think this would be a good compromise. Another way would be to keep the age freeze but make it so that the animals actively cost money while in storage as if they are being cared for.

bachelor enclosures are not the saving grace you think they are because in total there are 6 animals that have a higher single sex grouping then mixed so habitats usually stay the same size and since about half the animals have a max group size less than 10 you need a ton of exhibits to house them on mass. In franchise mode all of this incentivises one thing storage zoos zoos whos entire purpose is to have as basic as possible habitats to store mass amounts of animals which in my opinion ruins the spirit of the game.

 

[Clockwork Turtle]

I think the problem no one is touching on is the sheer timescale difference between real life and the games. One of the main arguments against increasing zoo storage is that it's "unrealistic" to be able to freeze time on these animals. Well, in a REAL zoo, I have 25+ actual, physical years to find a mate for my amelanistic zebra. In PZ I have like an hour, two TOPS if I play on the slowest setting, or turn up the animal ageing slider. THIS is unrealistic. We NEED to be able to freeze time because for some ungodly reason they decided the game should only be able to be scaled around the tortoises and the elephants, and everything else should just die the second you slap it down. So when I find a good animal I need to be able to store it and keep it until I find a proper mate for it, or I'll just lose it to old age before it ever gets to breed. If I sit on this albino hippo, I can eventually some day breed it, and get it's babies on the marketplace, if I just set the hippo down and pray and hope someone puts another, reasonably priced albino hippo onto the market in the next hour or two, at 1am PST then there's a good chance NOBODY gets ANY albino hippos and it just dies of old age instead.

The SECOND argument I hear from people who are against increasing the storage is that "it will discourage people from trading their animals and just sit on them all." Right now I am sitting on a ton of perfectly, breed-able, albino animals that I CAN'T get breeding and into the zoo because there is no space to move anything around. I WANT to breed these albino giraffes, I WANT to get their babies out there and on the market, but I can't bring myself to open and play that zoo right now because the storage is a mess, there are overpopulated habitats full of gazelle and gembok that need to be rotated out to the next generation, but I don't have the space, I can't fit them in, there's no where for them to go. I haven't opened that zoo in MONTHS for lack of space in the trade centre.

In fact, come to think of it, EVERY time I've gone to load up the game in the past 6 months, I've closed it again almost as soon as I hit the main loading screen because I look at all of my zoos and think "yeah, I don't feel mentally prepared to deal with sorting this out today" and just close the game again. If I'm feeling this way, then I cannot be the only one. Lack of storage is going to be what kills this game's servers. I think having separate storage per zoo, so I can keep relevant animals in proper places while still having room for babies to sell. I'm at a point where most of my not-as-marketable species are just being released to the wild, and that's not great for the economy to just be tossing out gold stars because they're "a waste of storage space" to have up for potentially a whole hour. How are new players supposed to get their gold* albino warthogs and peafowls at the start of their first franchise?

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

I think the problem no one is touching on is the sheer timescale difference between real life and the games. One of the main arguments against increasing zoo storage is that it's "unrealistic" to be able to freeze time on these animals. Well, in a REAL zoo, I have 25+ actual, physical years to find a mate for my amelanistic zebra. In PZ I have like an hour, two TOPS if I play on the slowest setting, or turn up the animal ageing slider. THIS is unrealistic. We NEED to be able to freeze time because for some ungodly reason they decided the game should be scaled only around the tortoises and the elephants, and everything else should just die the second you slap it down. So when I find a good animal I need to be able to store it and keep it until I find a proper mate for it, or I'll just lose it to old age before it ever gets to breed. If I sit on this albino hippo, I can eventually some day breed it, and get it's babies on the marketplace, if I just set the hippo down and pray and hope someone puts another, reasonably priced albino hippo onto the market in the next hour or two, at 1am PST then there's a good chance NOBODY gets ANY albino hippos and it just dies of old age instead.

The SECOND argument I hear from people who are against increasing the storage is that "it will discourage people from trading their animals and just sit on them all." Right now I am sitting on a ton of perfectly, breed-able, albino animals that I CAN'T get breeding and into the zoo because there is no space to move anything around. I WANT to breed these albino giraffes, I WANT to get their babies out there and on the market, but I can't bring myself to open and play that zoo right now because the storage is a mess, there are overpopulated habitats full of gazelle and gembok that need to be rotated out to the next generation, but I don't have the space, I can't fit them in, there's no where for them to go. I haven't opened that zoo in MONTHS for lack of space in the trade centre.

In fact, come to think of it, EVERY time I've gone to load up the game in the past 6 months, I've closed it again almost as soon as I hit the main loading screen because I look at all of my zoos and think "yeah, I don't feel mentally prepared to deal with sorting this out today" and just close the game again. If I'm feeling this way, then I cannot be the only one. Lack of storage is going to be what kills this game's servers. I think having separate storage per zoo, so I can keep relevant animals in proper places while still having room for babies to sell. I'm at a point where most of my not-as-marketable species are just being released to the wild, and that's not great for the economy to just be tossing out gold stars because they're "a waste of storage space" to have up for potentially a whole hour. How are new players supposed to get their gold* albino warthogs and peafowls at the start of their first franchise?

The main things i get ftom this is
1. Time should be much slower
And 2. Animals up for trading shouldnt take up storage space and yeah i agree on both

 

[Clockwork Turtle]

There are just SO MANY animal species now that even if you're not hoarding, and have just one breeding pair set up for the next generation, you STILL don't have enough space for everything. That's why now there are SO MANY species that nobody bothers to touch, and the market is completely empty 99% of the time. No one is buying and breeding because they can't afford the space for aardvarks or meerkats when that same space could be used for leopards and gorillas, and you have to pick and choose so carefully what is financially viable.

It would also help if we stopped normalising just max pricing everything, people wouldn't have to stick to high value species for credits if every good animal didn't cost 10k by default. Why are people like this?

 

[Annie_konik]

There are just SO MANY animal species now that even if you're not hoarding, and have just one breeding pair set up for the next generation, you STILL don't have enough space for everything. That's why now there are SO MANY species that nobody bothers to touch, and the market is completely empty 99% of the time. No one is buying and breeding because they can't afford the space for aardvarks or meerkats when that same space could be used for leopards and gorillas, and you have to pick and choose so carefully what is financially viable.

It would also help if we stopped normalising just max pricing everything, people wouldn't have to stick to high value species for credits if every good animal didn't cost 10k by default. Why are people like this?

I agree with what you said about normalizing selling most good animals for 10k. Unless they're super unique I find it quite annoying and I try to avoid buying them. I also try to set my prices reasonably. But, annoyingly, some players seem to hunt for ok-priced gold quality animals only to sell them for 10k a minute later.

Last week I had a giraffe male with 100% on all genes, put him up for sale for 4k and a few minutes later I see someone selling this exact same giraffe (plus a couple others) each for max price. Way to earn quick credits I guess but also ruin the fun for others.

 

[marrmalade]

I really do agree animal storage needs to be increased, plain and simple. I agree with all points mentioned here advocating as to why they think they need to be increased.
The skewed market is really irritating. I rarely like selling my animals reasonably priced solely for what Annie said above, not to mention people who do adopt them will just price gouge the hell out of any offspring that's produced. There should be some sort of cooldown for animals in trading posts, like you cannot resell an animal for CC that you've bought within 24 hours. I also strongly dislike the people who sell gold quality / albino once they are too old to be bred, max priced. Like, seriously?

 

[ElectricMonk]

Storage is already a mechanism which virtually destroys the already limited management challenge of the game. In any case, it’s easy to create additional storage (effectively) by just transferring animals from storage to a perpetually paused storage zoo.

As for why everything is max price - that’s the market…. If it were at all difficult to get cc or $ then prices would be meaningful - as it is both are so easy to get that the max price is generally the price because the currency (cc or $) is worthless.

 

[marrmalade]

To be honest, I wouldn't imagine really many people are playing Planet Zoo for the management aspect. I like playing for the cute animals, building, and getting good bloodlines is just a really fun way to get myself motivated to continue playing. (Albino, gold rated animals of every of my favorite species would be my goal). Perhaps it could be some sort of unlockable achievement, maybe something like 5 or so consecutive star inspector reports you can have an option to research and create more storage slots in the trade center.

(If you switch to a new zoo or one that doesn't have unlocked slots, perhaps the animals that go over cap can be greyed out / unable to be touched - but still viewable - unless a zoo that has the research done is active/playing.)

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

To be honest, I wouldn't imagine really many people are playing Planet Zoo for the management aspect. I like playing for the cute animals, building, and getting good bloodlines is just a really fun way to get myself motivated to continue playing. (Albino, gold rated animals of every of my favorite species would be my goal). Perhaps it could be some sort of unlockable achievement, maybe something like 5 or so consecutive star inspector reports you can have an option to research and create more storage slots in the trade center.

(If you switch to a new zoo or one that doesn't have unlocked slots, perhaps the animals that go over cap can be greyed out / unable to be touched - but still viewable - unless a zoo that has the research done is active/playing.)

1. Its a Management game, it is marketed as such so just cause its a really really bad management game without stakes doesnt mean it shouldnt improve on that to get worthy of that title

2. Locking any major gameplay mechanic like that behind an achievement is an awful idear. This could only work in a non frustrating way if the entire game was more caterd to unlocking stuff and growing that way, but with the game refusing to even implement something like zoo star rating influencing what animals you can buy i cant see them locking anything behind achievements

 

[Annie_konik]

Yeah, I think having enough storage to keep at least one pair of each available habitat species, would only be fair. As others said, it's understandable that after paying for additional animals most players would like to try out all species. Once you build for them, it's reasonable to have a spare pair after the current ones die.

Why create the need to build those boring storage zoos and just waste time on them? It doesn't even add to the challenge either, it's just mundane, I see no point.

The main things i get ftom this is
1. Time should be much slower
And 2. Animals up for trading shouldnt take up storage space and yeah i agree on both

I agree with both points too!

As for why everything is max price - that’s the market…. If it were at all difficult to get cc or $ then prices would be meaningful - as it is both are so easy to get that the max price is generally the price because the currency (cc or $) is worthless.

I admit the credits (or especially dollars) aren't too hard to earn after a while. But for new players or very casual players, they really can be. I would say, let's not make it more difficult for others, just because "that's the market rule". Can't we be more friendly in the virtual world?

 

[marrmalade]

1. Its a Management game, it is marketed as such so just cause its a really really bad management game without stakes doesnt mean it shouldnt improve on that to get worthy of that title

2. Locking any major gameplay mechanic like that behind an achievement is an awful idear. This could only work in a non frustrating way if the entire game was more caterd to unlocking stuff and growing that way, but with the game refusing to even implement something like zoo star rating influencing what animals you can buy i cant see them locking anything behind achievements

I wouldn't consider extra storage space a "major game mechanic".. There are several actual in game items that are locked behind vet / mechanic research, so no I don't think my idea is too completely "awful" or too farfetched. I was simply proposing an alternative. Straight up calling my idea awful without a counter solution is not productive, or very friendly for that matter.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

I wouldn't consider extra storage space a "major game mechanic".. There are several actual in game items that are locked behind vet / mechanic research, so no I don't think my idea is too completely "awful" or too farfetched. I was simply proposing an alternative. Straight up calling my idea awful without a counter solution is not productive, or very friendly for that matter.

Sorry that it came of as rude, i gotta admit just researching for more space is a pretty good solution