Guest Leaving for no reason and getting refund

warning: wall of text incoming
Thanks for sharing your results and conclusions. I almost read the whole text :cool: I can second your findings as well the ones by Moosegun.

I can contribute that one cannot really rely on the game's 'outputs' (e.g. guest thoughts) while trying to manage a zoo.

1. unreliance of guest thought windows
Here the guests ran past several exhibits and the komodo habitat in order to get some drinks while the guest thought says 'next stop Iguana exhibit'. This also means that the need for a drink keeps them away from visiting animals, which lead to less guest education and less donations.
guest_weird_pathfinding_1.JPG


2. will to visit animals that never have been in the zoo

This particular guest also has the wish to visit the Indian Elephants, which never had been in the zoo. I even did not build a habitat for them. I just bought some and had them in my trading center.

guest_weird_pathfinding_2.JPG
 
Yeah, some guests run all over the place and keep changing their minds about where to go. I actually had some that changed directions at least five times within a minute and kept going back and forth on the same path because of that. Their needs were all in the green and they always wanted to go to a different habitat or exhibit, no shops. The paths were fine since all the other guests used them without any problems so it seems not all groups are like that...maybe every guest in the group wanted to see something else and that's why they kept changing their mind and going in circles.

And yes, as soon as an animal lands in the trading center of a zoo it actually counts as living in that zoo, whether it's in a habitat or not, which then results in guests wanting to see them. No idea if that's intended or some kind of bug, though. Would make way more sense if the guests only had the animals on their lists after you actually placed them in the zoo.
 
My issues with this started yesterday. Out of no where guests started flocking to one of three food plazas I have. Prior to this guests spread out and used the zoo in its entirety. Now everywhere is empty and I am no longer making a profit. I decided to add more stalls to my front plaza to compensate but the issue is still there. Everything was totally fine until I open my zoo yesterday, right after I downloaded the Arctic Pack. So it seems the issue is not fixed unfortunately.
 
How long before the devs realize they need to pull the pin and remove this till they fix it?

This is not an early access game. We know the bug is not intentional, but it is a bug big enough to stop people playing the game.

A friend of mine already stopt playing because of the unrealistic guestneeds and the non stop animal dying because the keepers won't feed them, even though the only thing in the workzone are 2 exhibits, 1 keeperhut, 2 keepers, 1 staffroom ... AND they are next to the exhibits... same with his monkeys.. but still every animal keeps dying because of starvation because the keepers refuse to give them food, or the animals just don't eat...
 
but it is a bug big enough to stop people playing the game.

I'm sure the developers know for sure. They know what is perceived as a problem by players for the simple reason that it is a company that must carefully worry about its
economic balance of costs and revenues. If we take a look on steam db chart (https://steamdb.info/app/703080/graphs/) we can check in last 3 months peaks players (if we consider that the data are from this source are correct, honestly I don't know for sure) there are fewer and fewer players, Nov 17: 27.000, Dec 22: 12.000, Jan 12: 10.000, yesterday: 6.000.

Be positive, let's give the company time to make all the necessary corrections and balances because I have no doubt that they know that releasing new dlc cannot be the only solution to increase the players.
 
My Challenge park has been open for a while now and although there are some refunds, It's never more than $ 1000-1500 per year.

None of my animals are starving, all staff is just doing it's thing (not even trained to full level).

I'm confused by all the reports here.

Is everybody working with new zoo's or are they zoo's from before the patch?

The only serious bug that I have, which thankfully does not affect gameplay, is the constant messages of staff room's not being available. (This message can be ignored, because there always is, and the message disappears when a free staff room has been found.

*People should also try when a update comes out to see if things fixed. Saying you haven't touched the game for multiple weeks, isn't helping with this matter.
 
I'm confused by all the reports here.

If you don't have any problems, then good. I'm happy for you, I honestly am. But if you've read all the comments about this issue - not just here, but spread across this forum and the internet - you'll probably know by now that it's an issue that has been persisting through saves, through patches and has even cropped up in new zoos. Sadly it's not about people not knowing how to manage their zoos - several people posted that their zoo, which ran perfectly fine before a certain patch, suddenly lost money after the patch (me included) - but it's a bug that for some reason affects a lot of people's zoos, while other people (thankfully!) don't experience this.

This, along with the 'suddenly one of my franchise zoos won't load anymore' is one of the main issues that people have stopped playing the game. I only play my 'second zoo' now, which ironically was my first franchise zoo, which refused to load for well over two months, and now my other zoo is unplayable and I went back to this, which meant having to accept that I lost several new habitats I created back then and being faced with an overcrowded trade center.

Right now I think that Frontier should 'man up' and compensate every player that's been having serious problems from the start and compensate everyone for the fact that we're essentially beta-testing their game. It should NEVER have been released in this state, they should've waited at least another six months before even daring to put this buggy mess of a game on the market.
 
Same here, most of this is fixable/adjustable. (at least for me)

I haven't played one of my earlier zoos in quite a while. Was laggy/made some mistakes.
Refunds were 25-30k per year when I started playing this zoo again.

Added more shops, changed the pathing, moved some exhibits, sold a few animals and increased overall happiness - i only have 2-3k refunds, which seems fine.

With my newer zoos, it's 0.. Even if people haven't seen all their favorite animals. But those zoos are planned out much better...

I tend to believe that the current AI for visitors was intented that way, the visitors were easier to keep happy before the latest updates. People need to adjust their zoo to satisfy the needs of their visitors. I fully agree that food/drink demand is way too high (you shouldn't be needing a shop every 20m)

Just saying; maybe feeding doesnt have to be a bug.. (Could be for some?)
I've seen some screenshots (most people don't do this - so you can't see if there's something wrong)
Elevation/incorrect food tray/no workzones or exhibit not added to workzone, seems to be an issue to a lot of people.
(experienced this myself as well in beta, made a nice lemur exhibit with a mountain/hills - would not fill the tray - changed it, they filled the tray)

This, along with the 'suddenly one of my franchise zoos won't load anymore' is one of the main issues that people have stopped playing the game. I only play my 'second zoo' now, which ironically was my first franchise zoo, which refused to load for well over two months, and now my other zoo is unplayable and I went back to this, which meant having to accept that I lost several new habitats I created back then and being faced with an overcrowded trade center.

I recently started playing some more but losing 2 zoos because of 'infinite loading' was something that kept me from the playing the game. Couldn't motivate myself to start a new one again. I know some people on this forum don't see this as a problem (they haven't encountered yet) but if you spend several hundred of hours on 1 zoo and lose all progress - you ignore the game temporarily and focus on other stuff.
 
If it is much longer, I'm afraid I'll lose interest completely.
Same for me, i am afraid that if it takes more time you won't see me back until the Marine DLC and even then if there are no Orca's in it because the "Blackfish drama" you won't see me back at all.
Which is a shame, i think all gamers who played Zoo tycoon where dreaming about a game like Planet Zoo, just like with Roller Coaster Tycoon and Planet Coaster, but also with this game there are little things Frontier decided to do or not do that it ruined my fun in playing the game. (double stations, slow entering and leaving de rides etc....)
 
I would be thrilled if they got rid of the guest refund aspect of the game. Not only is the game too focused on what the guests want, it is not at all a realistic aspect of any zoo. No zoo would give a family a refund if they were unable to see a certain animal or if there was a bit of litter on the ground. I think that this is a case of "more is not better" as far as management goes.
 
*People should also try when a update comes out to see if things fixed. Saying you haven't touched the game for multiple weeks, isn't helping with this matter.

Maybe they don't wish to try the patch with their zoo that they have spent countless hours build to see it get financially wiped, especially when you have multiple people stating that has happened to their zoo.

Also we are not beta testers. We should see if the patched worked, seriously, are you being serious?!?

What is not helping is people making excuses for a game with well known bugs and basic flaws in design.
 
I'm slowly loosing interest in this game my play time has drastically reduced since the artic pack.

I buy games for fun and having to restart all your hard work because the game changes how it wants to work with each new patch is not a rewarding experience. Since November I have encountered countless bugs and issues. reported all them as requested but every update brings a new problem to the table. The refund system and the constant need for shops have been issues since release but since 1.1 they punish you so much more cause they stupidly tied happiness to how much they donate and refunds.

I cannot understand how they hyped this game up so much with developer journals and videos.

Its such a mess and yeah they are working hard no doubt but all the updates since release are either things people mentioned during beta eg animal aging,

Or a bug they introduced or didnt fix before release.

Eg guest using staff paths, animals dehydrating or starving to death, staff getting stuck in one place. Or when they fixed refunds an animals started to register escaped even when inside their habitat.

This game has been a let down just because of the bugs alone. Till this day the animal market is lag fest.

This game is now 3 months old and still a hot mess. My friend ask me if he should buy pz i told him right now no because it not a complete game.
 
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