Guests and Staff Facilities

[Cantina]

Last night, I was building a rather nice exhibition house. After I was done, I noticed there was plenty of space BEHIND the building to place Staff Facilities.

Upon completing the staff area, all you could see from the front of the building was: the staff path and a smidgen of the Keeper's Hut. Over-all -- 98% hidden.

I unpause the game and guests start tricking in.

After about five or so minutes guess what happens?!!?

Their happiness meter goes from green to in the crapper.

Why?

Zoo guests are getting peeved seeing staff facilities,

You. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me!

How the hell can the guests see the Staff Facilities?!!? They are BEHIND the building!! Do guests have X-ray vision!?!?!


It is 100% b.s. you spend MORE time, money and resources in the game to keep guests from seeing the staff buildings then doing other more important stuff!

Hell, its like a game within a game, “Hidey-ho the Staff” from Blamco – from the makers of The Log!”

And it’s not just me complaining bout it. Go to Google. Do some searching and reading.

A serious question, have the developers ever been to a zoo!?!

I’ve been to numerous zoos across the states, and I am more offended by the awful smell at the monkey house than seeing a staff building.

Its called: common sense and normal, when you or I arrive at any workplace inside or out, there will be an employee area, door, path or what-have-you, within eyesight.

Well that does it!

The next time I go into Subway, I’ll throw a tantrum because I can see a door that says, “Employees only.” If my happiness gets low enough, maybe Subway will remove the door and give me a free cookie!

I do not need tips.

I do not need tricks.

 

[HeatherG]

It’s about the radius of the buildings in relation to the guests not if they are or are not visible to the guests. It’s a small radius. If you use the heatmap you can see it’s a tad more than 1 grid-square.

 

[Cantina]

That is NOT the point. There should not even be a radius!

 

[HeatherG]

That is the mechanic works. And if you add a staff only path to your facilities no one would be near them.

——————————-
I enjoy the mechanic

 

[Indiglow]

Yes, it's dumb. It's common sense to me and you that it shouldn't work this way. They can't see the facility, how can they possibly even know it's there?

It's not like programming guests to "see" isn't already in the game, so why is it not implemented for them to see facilities? I don't know.

But as you can see from the replies above, they don't really seem to care about what you think. They "enjoy the mechanic" that doesn't make any sense logically.

 

[SleepyKagouti]

I agree to part of that. I think the only facilities that should have a negative impact radius is the power & water facilities, because they make noise. Those are the only things that would really impact your zoo experience in real life, loud noise while trying to view animals.

 

[TheWetDolphin]

Made a post about this too, its a super annoying issue. I even put my facilities underground in one of my parks, yet they still had a negative impact on guests....

 

[Jellenart]

Agreed. Spent ages making a really amazing building that matched my East Asian themed zoo and you can’t see any of the staff buildings at all, they’re surrounded by scenery, but nope. Guests still unhappy! A ‘line of sight’ and scenery based system would make much more sense, people can still put them far away from the guests but maybe they closer they are as long as there is enough scenery or no direct view the impact should be lowered.

 

[Dr4gon]

It makes things complicated, but you could ignore it and enjoy the animals. No matter how much their money has importance in the game, it's still all about the animals. When I see an antelope running through the field, jumping up and down with all his needs in 100%, I completely forget there are guests.

There is only one problem; When those guests see the facilities that makes them happy, they get unhappy and get a refund.

 

[bamber]

The LAST thing I have problems with is visitors being upset about staff buildings - so easy to put them out of range really is nothing to it. Use the heat map and put 2 or 3 together at the back of a habitat is so easy

 

[Swjosdotschka]

The devs have actually been to many zoos from all over the world to do a great research on animals and create a great game.
Yes, the radius wasn't the best choice to implement the feature with negative impact of staff-buildings. And it is indeed argueable, to what level the negative impact is realistic. Many of us have voiced our concerns in a calm and respectful matter and I'm pretty sure the devs are at least hearing the calm and respectful complain and maybe think about if and when they can change something.

As others have said: Most of the time, the problem is easy to solve. I had to move my staff buildings a few centimeters only.

 

[HelenNikolee]

It’s about the radius of the buildings in relation to the guests not if they are or are not visible to the guests. It’s a small radius. If you use the heatmap you can see it’s a tad more than 1 grid-square.

I think the biggest issue is that when you have a really great idea to build a zoo, those radius margins can become huge if you want all the staff buildings in one place (including energy and water treatments, yes I know about solar power but there are no additional options for the water treatments) especially in the central area. I’ve had to create huge gaps that I did not want. There should be some kind of decoration status changer where the more hidden and decorated you make the staff area the radius becomes smaller. It makes no sense when you’ve created something underground that guests still know it’s there. Do they have super powers?

 

[SaltySweetRen]

I agree. There needs to be something that actively blocks a guest's line of sight when it comes to negative impact. Walls should do the trick- in the real world, I would have no idea there was something to negatively impact my experience if all I could see was a wall. But apparently guests can see through walls?
At the very least, there needs to be some means of decorating that diminishes guest unhappiness. If I were to see a staff room several feet away surrounded by flowers and statues of nearby animals and such, I wouldn't care about seeing the staff room so much as being happy to see the decorations. These things should cancel each other out, realistically speaking.

 

[Forever_Lona]

I understand the way the mechanic works - but I agree with OP in that it is just not a very good mechanic. Its not intuitive for a new player, its not realistic, and it badly hampers creativity. I would love to see it turned into a line of sight thing in the same way that animal viewing is.

 

[Harai]

Its specially counter intuitive because the first tutorial use exactly these words: guests dont like to see facilities so you need to hide them with trees and such, and pretty sure he only talks about the noise of the power station when explaining about the negative impact radius.

 

[zoomac92]

One of a series of poor design decisions that ultimately prevents me from enjoying this game to its full potential and makes me believe the developers fundamentally don't understand me as a player. There is a reason this game need to be modable, and this disagreement about what constitutes "fun" is it. If you think an arbitrary sphere of range detection and xray vision guests that see through walls and terrain is "fun", we don't enjoy the same things mechanically or in gameplay.

 

[MrTux]

My head-canon is that these buildings produce noise and smell.
Tip: you can also hide facilites vertically. Especially power stations and water treatment stations where the length of the path to them doesn't matter as much can be put far enough underground.

 

[Cantina]

Zoo Tycoon had no guests complaining bout staff facilities. I could plot down a breeding center in the middle of the food court and not 1 crap will be given for it.

If the intended purpose was to make the game more challenging by adding such a feature, well it failed. Its not challenging, its annoying.

And I am not talking about the annoying thing that can be easily ignored, this more like a freaking fly that is constantly buzzing around your head.

Then again we are talking about the same developers who think wolves live in couples and not packs.

 

[nosnos01]

It's a game feature, learn to play with it.
I pulled my hair out when security was firstly introduced in PlanCo as I had tons upon tons of problems and issues I could not get right.

Excuse me for meme-ing, but this fits all bills.

 

[AlexVonHumbug]

It's a game feature, learn to play with it.
I pulled my hair out when security was firstly introduced in PlanCo as I had tons upon tons of problems and issues I could not get right.

Excuse me for meme-ing, but this fits all bills.

your negativity is very uncool