Enlighten us (me) what part of the functioning game causes guests to go red, instantly?
Guest Leaving for no reason and getting refund
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Being subjected to litter for too long
Seeing an animal in poor condition
Trying to queue to long / take to long to find refreshment - means they spend too much time looking for refreshment they end up not seeing animals
Over lapping speaker (funnily enough this was one of the biggest reasons for refunds in all the zoos Frontier reviewed)
Vandalism
Poor energy, poor thirst, poor hungry
etc
There are loads of things which can reduce guest happiness, some reduce it far more than others do.
I still think user happiness is on the harsh side, and they getting too salty over minor things, but generally there is a good reason for it.
Litter especially is a big one; it only takes a few full garbage cans to have every visitor walking past that area to go from super happy to ed-off-and-leaving-the-zoo real quickly.
It's easy for this to crop up even in a well designed zoo with good caretaker coverage if the silly AI just has caretakers neglect one little tiny area that has a lot of visitor traffic for too long.
My current main franchise zoo had been running at ~97 to 98% overall visitor happiness yesterday for hours and hours when I noticed it was taking a dive and was down to 90%. Checked the heat maps and I found one spot like this. Should have been fine, plenty of caretakers in the zoo and their work zones covered it, but for some reason at that moment all of the assigned caretakers to that area were clustered elsewhere. I manually moved one to get it taken care of and the problem was solved...and never came up again (at least not yet.
I can see how this kind of problem could even be hard to locate...what if my caretakers had finally gotten over there and cleaned it up by the time I noticed happiness dropping? I'd have had 0 idea what was going on.
It's easy for this to crop up even in a well designed zoo with good caretaker coverage if the silly AI just has caretakers neglect one little tiny area that has a lot of visitor traffic for too long.
My current main franchise zoo had been running at ~97 to 98% overall visitor happiness yesterday for hours and hours when I noticed it was taking a dive and was down to 90%. Checked the heat maps and I found one spot like this. Should have been fine, plenty of caretakers in the zoo and their work zones covered it, but for some reason at that moment all of the assigned caretakers to that area were clustered elsewhere. I manually moved one to get it taken care of and the problem was solved...and never came up again (at least not yet.
I can see how this kind of problem could even be hard to locate...what if my caretakers had finally gotten over there and cleaned it up by the time I noticed happiness dropping? I'd have had 0 idea what was going on.
Being stuck or 'lost'
I have been playing since Beta and my zoos are making money and they have always made money. I have never had a zoo go bankrupt, nor have I had to take out any loans or start over. I have 3 zoos going strong. I manage my zoos very well. But since the patch, I have noticed that I am having a lot more refunds. My zoos are exactly the same as they were pre-patch. I have not added or taken anything away. What I mean is that when I am watching my entrance, I can see guests just appear at the entrance gate, not the spawning pad. And these guest are red and if you click on them, they have already been in the zoo. If they were "stuck" somewhere in the zoo before hand, then I would have seen them jump up and down. Also, the second part means exactly as I said. While watching the guests in the heat map, for no reason(no animals escaping,etc) random groups of guests throughout the park, instantly turn red. I have never complained about the game before. My average guest rating is very high, but some months, so are the refunds. But this refund system and the guests happiness is off. A zoo game should be more focused on the welfare of animals, not having us spend most of the time worrying about the guests.
To be far, animal viewing is the biggest increaser of visitor happiness, and animal welfare ties directly into visitor happiness. So worrying about the animal welfare IS a highly important factor in maintaining visitor happiness.
Like I said, none of these issues that you list are present. Random individual groups around the park just instantly turn red. They were not in the same areas of the park, and it is just 1 group in the area that turns red while everyone else is just find. I paused the game to look and see what the issue was, nothing. Sometimes there really is a programming issue and not anything that we are doing.
Do you have stock in the game? You are defending issue pretty strongly. Like I said, I love the game and have not had most of the issues that others have complained about. But something is off with the guest happiness and refund system. To have a very high(over 80%) average guest happiness but have refunds in the 10s of thousands of dollars in one year, without having anything like and escaped animal, is not right.
I have 10 franchise zoos currently and do not have refunds that go past triple digits, most years in most zoos I'm at 0 refunds. 10 zoos, all a bit different, and no issues. I also keep guest overall happiness numbers significantly higher than "over 80%" though. The zoo I'd been playing yesterday until starting a new one just to breed Aldabra tortoises was running 97 to 98% and if it dipped lower than that there was a problem somewhere that needed addressing.
That being said, I don't disagree that they need to do a better job of making all of the things going on a lot more clear to the players. I think there's a reason for the refunds for the people having problems with them. I don't think it's a bug, based on my own experience playing the game....so what is needed is more work on Frontier's end to make it even more transparant than it already is.
One thing that is a bug that ties into this though is transport rides not being used by visitors like they should be. In larger zoos, the idiocy of the visitor AI in deciding where to go next can tank their happiness because of how far they have to walk to get to their next destination, and a failure to use the rides present to get there. So for people with refund issues in very large zoos, I think this bug is a large contributing factor. It only effects specific visitors, that make bad decisions in where to go next, so you can have decent overall happiness and still get a large number of refunds from this subset of the visitors.
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Ok so you ask me this..... suggesting that you dont think ANYTHING can turn your guests from green to red
I give you a list and suddenly you know all about it????
So one minute you are acting like it is impossible, then you are acting like it is possible but you already know it isnt anything in the list I mentioned? I am confused?
I am not sure what you mean but, what I am saying is that there is nothing wrong in my zoo that would make guests go from green to red instantly. They are not walking by trash on the ground, no animal has escaped,etc. There are just random groups scattered all around the park that just randomly turn red for no apparent reason.
i think it has also has something to do with "alotted time" something they mentioned in the before last update post.
Guest are programmed to leave after, wich i can see, 1 hour. (sometimes little bit longer)
Guest are programmed to leave after, wich i can see, 1 hour. (sometimes little bit longer)
Mine are leaving after 15mins....there was no issue pre patch, after patch they seem to ignore animal exhibits which they have to walk past to get to food and drink stands.
Basically my guest appear to just want food and drink and never see an exhibit and therefore their happiness does not increase. Not to say the zoo was perfect pre patch but now it just loses money. I have never had an issue with money in the game before the patch. So something has changed and all I can put it down to is guest behaviour.
I love the game but I don't see why I should lose hours of game play because they appear to have changed the guest behaviours.
Some of mine are to... completly happy. I hope it is a bug (one of many) and is going to be fixed.... and mayby this time before they put any effort in DLC extra's.
Working on a new zoo today and I noticed that any visitors on path sections that are in any way altered go home immidiately after the alteration occurs.
And by altered, I don't mean like deleting and redoing it, but as in when you connect a path section to another path section...the one being connected to gets all the visitors on it upset and they wave their hands and then leave...simply because of a new path being built that connects to the one they were on.
Seems silly to have all those visitors leave just because I built some more paths near them.
And by altered, I don't mean like deleting and redoing it, but as in when you connect a path section to another path section...the one being connected to gets all the visitors on it upset and they wave their hands and then leave...simply because of a new path being built that connects to the one they were on.
Seems silly to have all those visitors leave just because I built some more paths near them.
If guest waves their hands it means there pathing has been interrupted and they feel trapped / stuck, which you can sort of understand if you have changed the paths around them. Like animals, if you change their habitat, they redo the walkable area, similar thing happens with guests. Something you just have to put up with.
Regarding guest leaving, something that really hold water is the idea of guest putting food / drink ahead of anything else meaning big queues also cause issues. Something Jesus talks about in his video. If a guest is going to a Pipshot Water and the lineup is full, it will then look for another PIPSHOT WATER, not just the next drink stand. So this can mean guests going miles out of their way just to get a drink. Guests put food and drink at the top of their priorities, so they will not visit anything else until they get food / drink, if they cant find f/d in a certain time they leave annoyed about not seeing guests.
I recently added a series of different food / drink stall to the side of my zoo entrance;
I started with a two stalls either side of my entrance, the one on the right slightly closer to the ones on the left, initial set up;
Right - 1 x Pipsot Water
1 x Glupee Energy
Left - 1 x Pipshot Water
1 x Cosmic Cow
Interestingly, because the shop on the right were slightly closer EVERYONE who wanted drinks went right, only those that wanted food went left. Once the queue for Pipshot water got full, people then started going to the queue on the left but only after trying to queue on the right first. Even though there was another drink stall right there, they walked over to the left to get a water. Backing up Jesus' findings in his video
I played around testing different setups for some time and ended up with 4 water on the left and 2 cosmic cow on the right.
This has worked perfectly, here is a thirst heatmap of my entrance;
As you can see, ALL the guests coming into my zoo with thirst needs are sorted straight away, heading left to the water stalls, if the queue is full, they move to the next one beside it, ALL FOUR LINES ARE BUSY. Really shows the need for drinks upon entrance, realistic bearing in mind these people have been travelling to get to zoo. My aim is to get food / drink and if possible education sorted before my guests even move into my main zoo.
And to that my learning zone within my education building at the entrance;
So all guests who enter the zoo and need food or drink MUST walk past loads of education.
Since i have done this I have seen a big knock on effect. My old shops in my entrance, which were always very busy (you can see the queues on the first heatmap) are now quieter, so the roadblocks they caused are not a problem anymore. Just by adding these stalls, I have managed to get both my food and drink from high 60's to mid 70's. Which is hard to do in a zoo my size.
One thing I would say to anyone saying they never had a problem with money until the patch. Pretty much every zoo I have played has had money issue at a certain size. Please dont bury your heads in the sand and blame everything on bugs. There can be loads of 'tipping points' in zoos, which means that zoos that previously worked can start to lose money, it is not just down to 'bugs'. For example, an extra few hundred guests could mean you early zoo f/d stalls get overloaded, this will have a knock on effect for your zoo. Three of your large animals have babies at the same time, this can tip your food cost etc.
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I’ll have odd years in my main zoo where I’m losing 11k to refunds, when generally I don’t even hit 1k a year. There’s always a cause - like mentioned before it’ll be something like a high concentration of litter in a certain area which is getting a lot of traffic (walkthrough exhibits seem to be a common culprit), an animal is unhappy, protestors, certain food/drink shops being too busy and the like. This is especially apparent if there’s a spike in guest numbers. It helps to take some time out and follow a couple of guests around the zoo to see what the “typical” route is like to identify problems, like areas where you may need more maintenance, benches, food etc.
I spend an unhealthy level of time watching my heatmaps, mainly due to I can only run my zoo zoomed out due to size. I have also never found a issue I couldnt solve, some of these are undoubtedly caused by changes in the game and there are some issue with guest AI (leaving after 15 mins etc). I just trying to work inside the games requirements to get my zoo to work.
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I am not burying my head in the sand, I was making a profit of around 20k a year and then they did the update without me changing a thing in game and now making a lost of 40k a year.
Something has changed, it maybe a bug or not but you cannot change something that drastically changes the way the game plays without telling people.
I love the game, but something has happened since the last update.
What has changed though, where has that $60k loss come from?