Planet Zoo is no doubt the best zoo game ever developed up till now, frontier did an amazing job, and I really appreciate all the efforts that were put in this game, and because its one of my favorite games ever, I reported few things on the issues tracker since the game launched, but unfortunately none of them were fixed or changed, so I thought of making a full list of the suggestions and minor fixes and tweaks, so maybe this way it will grab some attention from Frontier, and they might consider this list.
I will not be talking about any new animals or items, just some small updates or minor changes and fixes that will make a big difference in the game.
Habitats:
1- Building habitats with multiple gates, its more realistic, and would be very beneficial in some designs of the habitats.
2- The ability to specify the number of guests in the walkthrough habitats: All of us are struggling with shy animals especially if they are in a walkthrough habitat, and no matter how many signs you put or foliage you add or even hide places and hidden shelters you build, you will still face an issue of stressed animals, and its really annoying, so maybe its possible for frontier to add a small feature to specify the number of guests that can enter inside the habitat at the same time.
3- More types of gates, with different sizes and material that match more with the fence height and material.
Exhibits:
1- To have more sizes for the exhibits, currently the size of the exhibit in the game is 4x4x4 which is not suitable for some species, we need a bigger size to contain large snakes and big lizards, and also we need a smaller one for the insects, it doesn't make sense to keep couple of spiders or small insects in a 4 meter size exhibit.
2- To have other shapes of exhibits such as cylinder or a square with round angles instead of the current sharp angles, etc.
3- More customization within the exhibits, the current features are good, but still not enough, or maybe the option to build the whole exhibit from scratch if possible.
Animals:
Regarding the animals as I said before I will not be requesting to add any new animals, just some enhancements to the current animals roster:
1- Since the introduction of the color variations, the white llamas were removed so please can we have them back?
2- Adding more color variations to the Timber Wolf, or at least just add the black color to the current collection, because its the most obvious missing one.
3- More herding or grouping for some animals within the habitat, if you look in the game at the animals that form a herd or big groups, you will see them scattered all over the habitat, while in real life you will see them forming closer groups, this applies on so many animals such as the buffalos, gazelles, reindeers, antelopes and even the flamingos.
4- Keeping juveniles closer to their mothers, juveniles should stay more than 80% of their time next to their mothers, while in the game you can't see this kind of bond between them.
5- Reduce the running and walking for most animals, if you look closely at the animals you will see them running and walking a lot within the habitats, while in real life you will find that most of their time they are either sitting, sleeping or eating.
6- Lower the depth requirements for diving and removing the need for 4m deep water diving for the Giant Otter and Caiman, because you can see in zoos that otters and caimans can dive in 1 or 2 meter ponds.
Enrichments:
1- The animation is broken for the "Tree Scatter Feeder" when its used by the elephants (both Asian and African), either they don't use it at all, or they use it with weird animations.
2- The "Suspended High Grazer Feeder" doesn't show that its filled with food anymore, while I remember when the game first launched, I used to see green leaves coming out of it when the keeper fills it with food.
3- Some animals that came later in the game can't use some enrichment items, and some new enrichment items can't be used by the animals that were introduced earlier in the game, that's why frontier should make a full review on the enrichment items, and add the proper enrichments for each animal (Maybe we can prepare a list in another post later on)
Items:
1- Add the missing wall pieces for all the walls - Every wall shape for every set (round window, half arch, etc.)
2- Add non grid pieces for every wall set (We have them now for some sets only).
Paths:
1- Enable to build a 2m or 3m width paths for both the normal and staff paths, the same as the existing queue path.
2- The option to remove the kerb from elevated paths.
3- Have a fix or a proper underwater path.
4- Each path type has its own fence, why can't we select the fence that we need to combine it with the path, so it would be awesome if we can mix and match the paths and fences.
5- Add flexi-color to some path types such as the "Craze Mosaic" path, and the "Palace Tile" path , etc.
Rides:
1- Adding a feature to make the tracks invisible for the safari jeep ride and the boat ride.
2- Ability to build a one side station only, instead of having 2 sides, especially for the boat ride.
Blueprints:
I have downloaded lots and lots of blueprints from the workshop, but after some time it becomes very confusing and hard to find an item that you are searching for in the menus, when every single menu is filled with blueprints, I know that there is a filter to switch them off, but still its annoying to click it every time you open a menu, so I want to suggest the following:
1- Add an option in the game settings for the blueprints to decide whether they are visible or hidden.
2- Add an option in the game settings to decide if the blueprints will appear in all the menus or just the blueprints menu only.
3- Add an option to the filter to distinguish the prefabs from the workshop blueprints, now you can just switch all the blueprints on or off.
UI:
1- Sort the dropdown list of the work zones alphabetically when you need to assign a staff to work zone, its really time consuming to find a work zone when the list is very long.
2- The animals timeline doesn't match in the game, in some animals if you go to the timeline tab you will see that the animal became elderly, but on the animal overview tab or in the zoo animals list it will show it as adult, so there is something that does not match, can you please look into this bug, its really confusing and annoying.
3- No matter how much bedding you add for the Flamingos, it won't be calculated and displayed properly in the bedding section when you select the habitat.
Notifications:
I have noticed that there are some different notifications that has the same icon such as the Offspring, Conceived Offspring, and Maturation plus all the notification icons are grey, so why not to make these notifications color coded.
For example:
New Animal: Purple Icon
Conceived Offspring: Orange Icon
Offspring: Green Icon
Maturation: Blue Icon
Traded: Yellow Icon
Fight: Red Icon
Death: Black Icon
and after the color coded icons add a filter to select which type of notifications you would like to see, this way you can easily read through the notifications especially if you have a big number of animals.
Sandbox Mode:
1- Research is always completed in sandbox, but it would be cool also to have the option to do the research in sandbox mode, I personally enjoy doing the research.
2- Each biome has its own terrain paints, we need in sandbox mode to have all the terrain paints from all biomes no matter in which biome your zoo is located.
3- Add the Orange\Red sand to the terrain paints.
4- In sandbox mode you can decide if you want to disable all the animals welfare, but it would be amazing if there is a way to select for which animal species you want to keep it off, and also if possible to select even which category of the animal welfare (for example you want to switch off the animal temperature for a polar bear that you want to place in a hot biome, or maybe switch off the cleanliness of the peafowl since they produce a lot). I know its maybe a bit complicated but it will open a lot of freedom in playing the game.
5- Add an option to disable the water temperature regulator.
Zoopedia:
1- Add some filters to the zoopedia (List animals by continent, by biome, and by enclosure type (Habitat or Exhibit)) .
2- The African Lion map displays the locations of all lion species - African and Asiatic - while it should display only the location of the "West African Lion", so this should be corrected to have only the countries of west Africa, which are mentioned correctly in the page.
3- The population of the Western Lowland Gorillas in the wild is up to 100,000 while in the zoopedia it shows 150,000 to 250,000 which is wrong.
4- The name of the Capuchin monkey is very long in the zoopedia, so why it won't become only "Capuchin Monkey" and keep it in the description as "The Colombian White-Faced Capuchin Monkey", the same as frontier did with the Dhole and Babirusa.
Misc.
1- More control over the tegidcam.
2- Wires & Pipes system, a system like this would be very helpful and realistic for the electricity and waterflow, we all hate the negative effect of the water pump and electrical motor and how sometimes they take a lot of space because of their negative effect radius, plus its difficult sometimes to find a proper place for them. So it would be a cool new feature to have it in the game.
So what do you think guys? If you have anything else in your mind I would gladly add it to the list above.
I will not be talking about any new animals or items, just some small updates or minor changes and fixes that will make a big difference in the game.
Habitats:
1- Building habitats with multiple gates, its more realistic, and would be very beneficial in some designs of the habitats.
2- The ability to specify the number of guests in the walkthrough habitats: All of us are struggling with shy animals especially if they are in a walkthrough habitat, and no matter how many signs you put or foliage you add or even hide places and hidden shelters you build, you will still face an issue of stressed animals, and its really annoying, so maybe its possible for frontier to add a small feature to specify the number of guests that can enter inside the habitat at the same time.
3- More types of gates, with different sizes and material that match more with the fence height and material.
Exhibits:
1- To have more sizes for the exhibits, currently the size of the exhibit in the game is 4x4x4 which is not suitable for some species, we need a bigger size to contain large snakes and big lizards, and also we need a smaller one for the insects, it doesn't make sense to keep couple of spiders or small insects in a 4 meter size exhibit.
2- To have other shapes of exhibits such as cylinder or a square with round angles instead of the current sharp angles, etc.
3- More customization within the exhibits, the current features are good, but still not enough, or maybe the option to build the whole exhibit from scratch if possible.
Animals:
Regarding the animals as I said before I will not be requesting to add any new animals, just some enhancements to the current animals roster:
1- Since the introduction of the color variations, the white llamas were removed so please can we have them back?
2- Adding more color variations to the Timber Wolf, or at least just add the black color to the current collection, because its the most obvious missing one.
3- More herding or grouping for some animals within the habitat, if you look in the game at the animals that form a herd or big groups, you will see them scattered all over the habitat, while in real life you will see them forming closer groups, this applies on so many animals such as the buffalos, gazelles, reindeers, antelopes and even the flamingos.
4- Keeping juveniles closer to their mothers, juveniles should stay more than 80% of their time next to their mothers, while in the game you can't see this kind of bond between them.
5- Reduce the running and walking for most animals, if you look closely at the animals you will see them running and walking a lot within the habitats, while in real life you will find that most of their time they are either sitting, sleeping or eating.
6- Lower the depth requirements for diving and removing the need for 4m deep water diving for the Giant Otter and Caiman, because you can see in zoos that otters and caimans can dive in 1 or 2 meter ponds.
Enrichments:
1- The animation is broken for the "Tree Scatter Feeder" when its used by the elephants (both Asian and African), either they don't use it at all, or they use it with weird animations.
2- The "Suspended High Grazer Feeder" doesn't show that its filled with food anymore, while I remember when the game first launched, I used to see green leaves coming out of it when the keeper fills it with food.
3- Some animals that came later in the game can't use some enrichment items, and some new enrichment items can't be used by the animals that were introduced earlier in the game, that's why frontier should make a full review on the enrichment items, and add the proper enrichments for each animal (Maybe we can prepare a list in another post later on)
Items:
1- Add the missing wall pieces for all the walls - Every wall shape for every set (round window, half arch, etc.)
2- Add non grid pieces for every wall set (We have them now for some sets only).
Paths:
1- Enable to build a 2m or 3m width paths for both the normal and staff paths, the same as the existing queue path.
2- The option to remove the kerb from elevated paths.
3- Have a fix or a proper underwater path.
4- Each path type has its own fence, why can't we select the fence that we need to combine it with the path, so it would be awesome if we can mix and match the paths and fences.
5- Add flexi-color to some path types such as the "Craze Mosaic" path, and the "Palace Tile" path , etc.
Rides:
1- Adding a feature to make the tracks invisible for the safari jeep ride and the boat ride.
2- Ability to build a one side station only, instead of having 2 sides, especially for the boat ride.
Blueprints:
I have downloaded lots and lots of blueprints from the workshop, but after some time it becomes very confusing and hard to find an item that you are searching for in the menus, when every single menu is filled with blueprints, I know that there is a filter to switch them off, but still its annoying to click it every time you open a menu, so I want to suggest the following:
1- Add an option in the game settings for the blueprints to decide whether they are visible or hidden.
2- Add an option in the game settings to decide if the blueprints will appear in all the menus or just the blueprints menu only.
3- Add an option to the filter to distinguish the prefabs from the workshop blueprints, now you can just switch all the blueprints on or off.
UI:
1- Sort the dropdown list of the work zones alphabetically when you need to assign a staff to work zone, its really time consuming to find a work zone when the list is very long.
2- The animals timeline doesn't match in the game, in some animals if you go to the timeline tab you will see that the animal became elderly, but on the animal overview tab or in the zoo animals list it will show it as adult, so there is something that does not match, can you please look into this bug, its really confusing and annoying.
3- No matter how much bedding you add for the Flamingos, it won't be calculated and displayed properly in the bedding section when you select the habitat.
Notifications:
I have noticed that there are some different notifications that has the same icon such as the Offspring, Conceived Offspring, and Maturation plus all the notification icons are grey, so why not to make these notifications color coded.
For example:
New Animal: Purple Icon
Conceived Offspring: Orange Icon
Offspring: Green Icon
Maturation: Blue Icon
Traded: Yellow Icon
Fight: Red Icon
Death: Black Icon
and after the color coded icons add a filter to select which type of notifications you would like to see, this way you can easily read through the notifications especially if you have a big number of animals.
Sandbox Mode:
1- Research is always completed in sandbox, but it would be cool also to have the option to do the research in sandbox mode, I personally enjoy doing the research.
2- Each biome has its own terrain paints, we need in sandbox mode to have all the terrain paints from all biomes no matter in which biome your zoo is located.
3- Add the Orange\Red sand to the terrain paints.
4- In sandbox mode you can decide if you want to disable all the animals welfare, but it would be amazing if there is a way to select for which animal species you want to keep it off, and also if possible to select even which category of the animal welfare (for example you want to switch off the animal temperature for a polar bear that you want to place in a hot biome, or maybe switch off the cleanliness of the peafowl since they produce a lot). I know its maybe a bit complicated but it will open a lot of freedom in playing the game.
5- Add an option to disable the water temperature regulator.
Zoopedia:
1- Add some filters to the zoopedia (List animals by continent, by biome, and by enclosure type (Habitat or Exhibit)) .
2- The African Lion map displays the locations of all lion species - African and Asiatic - while it should display only the location of the "West African Lion", so this should be corrected to have only the countries of west Africa, which are mentioned correctly in the page.
3- The population of the Western Lowland Gorillas in the wild is up to 100,000 while in the zoopedia it shows 150,000 to 250,000 which is wrong.
4- The name of the Capuchin monkey is very long in the zoopedia, so why it won't become only "Capuchin Monkey" and keep it in the description as "The Colombian White-Faced Capuchin Monkey", the same as frontier did with the Dhole and Babirusa.
Misc.
1- More control over the tegidcam.
2- Wires & Pipes system, a system like this would be very helpful and realistic for the electricity and waterflow, we all hate the negative effect of the water pump and electrical motor and how sometimes they take a lot of space because of their negative effect radius, plus its difficult sometimes to find a proper place for them. So it would be a cool new feature to have it in the game.
So what do you think guys? If you have anything else in your mind I would gladly add it to the list above.
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