Will post my problem here too as there are only franchise players in this thread;
I got a new problem today in Franchise mode. I have bought a bunch of the new animals but haven't put any of them in zoo's yet, as I was focusing on getting the zoo's ready.
But today I was ready to put the new animals in the zoo. The problem is though, that I can't!
Every time I try to put any of them in a zoo I get an Internal error message and get the "you are offline" for a few minutes. This problem ONLY occurs when trying to place one of the new animals from the latest pack. When i move another animal from trading post to a habitat it works just fine, but all of the new ones seem to bug the game out.
Have anyone else experienced this in Franchise?
Edit: I did a verification of the game files and that did not help
For me, the disconnects seem to be pretty random, though maybe they are happening most often when I am building things, placing objects, trying to place animals, or attempting to buy an animal. But no one thing appears to be the poison pill for me.
I have even had it occur when the game is simply running, though. They have been varying between allowing me to play for up to half an hour or so without issue, but at other times the disconnects come every few minutes at best. It has always taken me a while (in spite of having a pretty fast computer and internet) to quit the game and get back into a franchise zoo, so the ratio of play time to staring at that spinning globe isn't worth it. I was away visiting family for a few days over the Christmas holiday and just got home late last night, so I haven't checked yet to see if it's better now that the holiday weekend is over.
Note that occasional, random disconnects from the server (when I am verifiably online) has always been a thing with this game, but it used to be an average of every couple hours overall, with some days better than others. I haven't had such a long run of such bad connectivity to the franchise servers. I can still play in career mode etc. but not in franchise, which is where I prefer to build my zoos. I like being able to transfer animals between different franchise zoos and to breed up some of my lineages over time while being able to obtain good quality animals from other players to keep the gene pool strong, so I haven't really gotten into the sandbox mode (except to create blueprints and so on).
The thing that frustrates me is not that there would be an issue fixing this over a holiday weekend, but that it's been a problem for as long as it has prior to the holiday and that this has cropped up repeatedly over the years (as per the date of this original thread, which was not the first time players have mentioned frequent server disconnects and trade center lag/disconnects in these, and in other PZ forums).
By now they must know that things can get a bit wonky after an xpac/big update launches and plan for this. But yea, I am not a coder or IT expert or anything like that, so I'm sure there is another side to the story. Still, I also understand why folks get frustrated when they hope to spend some free time playing the new content during their holiday break.
One thing I've been curious about is whether or not there is a pattern of some kind re the disconnects. Some have mentioned time of day, with fewer during off peak hours. Are people in certain locations more inclined to have these issues? Are they more or less common for folks in the UK and western Europe, for instance? Is it worse at times when more people are playing, or for folks who live further from the servers, or who play at times when Frontier offices are mostly closed? I haven't noticed that it's better in what might be off-peak hours for me. I live in the western US, so my prime play time (mid to late evenings) would presumably be wee hours of the morning to early morning in the UK and western Europe, which is many hours ahead of me. Is that actually a better time, because more players are in the UK and Europe and presumably asleep then, or worse because the support folks are also mostly asleep at that time?
