I've written at length about my concerns and issues with the Evolution series' handling of its guests. However, rather than simply acknowledging the problem, I believe I have found a good compromise. It's common knowledge that guests in the Evolution games are mere visual representations of a populated park rather than having any individualized state such as in Operation Genesis. However, in spite of essentially appearing like a fluid particle effect occupying space on the parks many paths, the game does perform some calculations to allow for kill animations. There is where we find our compromise.
The main problem with the guests is they don't feel tangible, so the player has no real concern for their well being, on the contrary, you more likely to want to see them die in the showcase of new grisly death animations. However, if we can translate some of the menu and UI elements pertaining to guest satisfaction to this cloud of nothingness, we bridge the gap that individualized guests occupy. Given the gameplay trailer of JWE3 its clear an overhaul of guest management will not be happening and I can't blame Frontier given how CPU heavy these games already are and having to accommodate consoles.
A New Guest
Therefore, I propose that more in the vein of the kill animations, that to conserve on processing power that an individualized or general representation of an individualized guest be implemented. That is to say, that within the scope of the camera at any given time 1-2 individualized guests, for lack of a better term, are generated within the crowds of guests simulated on screen. This would minimize taxing of the CPU and would allow you to de-spawn and unload from memory these guests when not needed. The restricting of this feature to only where the player's screen is pointed and with an added requirement of appropriate zoom level can alleviate this feeling of detachment between the player and guest.
To go further, I picture the guest only being generated within the densest crowd(s) on screen. This allow Frontier to obscure the guest among the throngs and you'd just have a little UI element pop-up with some auto-generated guest info and a colloquial expression of the general guest sentiment about your park. For instance the little pop-up element would contain their name, guest type, interests, just a little flavor text and their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with your park like treatment of your animals, lack of amenities/facility coverage, etc. Essentially a little bit of the JPOG flare without committing to wholly individualized guest behavior which tended to clutter up the screen with tons of UI elements floating about.
Concerning the Reasons Why
It's always been hard to pinpoint what exactly makes individualized guests so appealing. Articulating it is even harder, but I think detachment is the correct word, if you don't have stakes tied to what your guests feel about your park then you simply don't care. You can penalize me with lawsuits and low star ratings, but I am just going to cheese the system and do the bare minimum without any incentive to care otherwise. That is one of the big problems with JWE2's amenities, you just select what makes the most money and then immediately pick the biggest moneymaker if it slows down a bit. This stems from the fact the guests don't matter, the aforementioned lawsuits don't even last more than 1-2 minutes and you can easily bank a bit of cash and be back to ignoring them like nothing happened.
Why would I care to configure a module in an amenity like a water feature or what is being sold? Its not like we have a visual representations in our cloud of guests when we make changes to our amenities like JPOG where they carried around merchandise if you started selling them at the shop. They are just stat sticks for making money, maybe if guest types mattered I might try to select modules, attractions, amenities, decorations, etc. if the guests had positive or negative responses to them. I thought the purpose of including guest types at all was so you could tailor your parks to a certain type of customer, but the difference is so negligible it doesn't matter and its too hard to even cater to one type or another without feeling they overlap as well.
It is more appealing to place vending machines with actual relevance than holistically as a decorative piece to plug gaps in coverage and if I could manually set shop and admission prices. All of these things are possible and vastly more cohesive with the proposed adjustment to guests to give us that personal connection, to help us develop some sort of investment in not just building but running our park.
In essence, make me care about my guests and not as an afterthought or nuisance to cheese minimum requirements and resume ignoring.
The main problem with the guests is they don't feel tangible, so the player has no real concern for their well being, on the contrary, you more likely to want to see them die in the showcase of new grisly death animations. However, if we can translate some of the menu and UI elements pertaining to guest satisfaction to this cloud of nothingness, we bridge the gap that individualized guests occupy. Given the gameplay trailer of JWE3 its clear an overhaul of guest management will not be happening and I can't blame Frontier given how CPU heavy these games already are and having to accommodate consoles.
A New Guest
Therefore, I propose that more in the vein of the kill animations, that to conserve on processing power that an individualized or general representation of an individualized guest be implemented. That is to say, that within the scope of the camera at any given time 1-2 individualized guests, for lack of a better term, are generated within the crowds of guests simulated on screen. This would minimize taxing of the CPU and would allow you to de-spawn and unload from memory these guests when not needed. The restricting of this feature to only where the player's screen is pointed and with an added requirement of appropriate zoom level can alleviate this feeling of detachment between the player and guest.
To go further, I picture the guest only being generated within the densest crowd(s) on screen. This allow Frontier to obscure the guest among the throngs and you'd just have a little UI element pop-up with some auto-generated guest info and a colloquial expression of the general guest sentiment about your park. For instance the little pop-up element would contain their name, guest type, interests, just a little flavor text and their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with your park like treatment of your animals, lack of amenities/facility coverage, etc. Essentially a little bit of the JPOG flare without committing to wholly individualized guest behavior which tended to clutter up the screen with tons of UI elements floating about.
Concerning the Reasons Why
It's always been hard to pinpoint what exactly makes individualized guests so appealing. Articulating it is even harder, but I think detachment is the correct word, if you don't have stakes tied to what your guests feel about your park then you simply don't care. You can penalize me with lawsuits and low star ratings, but I am just going to cheese the system and do the bare minimum without any incentive to care otherwise. That is one of the big problems with JWE2's amenities, you just select what makes the most money and then immediately pick the biggest moneymaker if it slows down a bit. This stems from the fact the guests don't matter, the aforementioned lawsuits don't even last more than 1-2 minutes and you can easily bank a bit of cash and be back to ignoring them like nothing happened.
Why would I care to configure a module in an amenity like a water feature or what is being sold? Its not like we have a visual representations in our cloud of guests when we make changes to our amenities like JPOG where they carried around merchandise if you started selling them at the shop. They are just stat sticks for making money, maybe if guest types mattered I might try to select modules, attractions, amenities, decorations, etc. if the guests had positive or negative responses to them. I thought the purpose of including guest types at all was so you could tailor your parks to a certain type of customer, but the difference is so negligible it doesn't matter and its too hard to even cater to one type or another without feeling they overlap as well.
It is more appealing to place vending machines with actual relevance than holistically as a decorative piece to plug gaps in coverage and if I could manually set shop and admission prices. All of these things are possible and vastly more cohesive with the proposed adjustment to guests to give us that personal connection, to help us develop some sort of investment in not just building but running our park.
In essence, make me care about my guests and not as an afterthought or nuisance to cheese minimum requirements and resume ignoring.
