Guests should no longer be just a flocking swarm algorithm

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

From reading news of frontier developments, and recently playing both JWE2 and Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection with my boy, i feel strongly enough to suggest that the current nerfed planco ants that function as guests is not good enough for a third game.

Strangely, frontier themselves have implemented a perfectly immersive version of guests in Zoo Tycoon, ultimate animal collection. The guests in this game are impressively human. There are random people, families, groups of friends, couples, kids chasing each other... absolutely perfect!

This is in contrast to jwe2, where as your park gets more popular, they very keenly knock you of out immersion by calling attention to how unnatural they are. They are literally ants.

At very minimum, they should respond to the day night cycle, at night there should be far less guests, and they should be more around the hotels and guest facilities. At minimum any night time tours of real zoos (and probably parks) are nothing like the day versions, there should be a perceivable change in guest behavior from the day night cycle.

.................

Also without guests and park management being the main focus of JWE3, to me personally, i can't see anything else that could justify another major release. Some campaign or chaos theory scenario based on a new movie won't cut it sorry. The only possibility i suppose would be to go fully planet jurassic??!? But please fix the guests anyway. Thank you for considering.

 

[Ceratosaurus]

Also without guests and park management being the main focus of JWE3, to me personally, i can't see anything else that could justify another major release.

Yes yes yes.... this is my literal thinking.

I was underwhelmed and let down by the lack of management updates in JWE2, especially since all we got for DLC was Species Packs and a couple mid Dominion Expansions...
It was obvious that JWE2 was a quick cash grab for Dominion unlike it's predecessor which had more heart put into it imo. Lets just hope JWE3 won't end up the same way.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Well, if they're cancelling the next yearly f1 game and critically dependent on jwe 3 (with some rational basis as both games are the most successful for the company).. yes i hope they make a real game out of it as well.

I think the real challenge is for frontier to learn how to be more than what they know. Before elite made them successful, then during, then after the collapse, frontier have never really changed in how they make games. The real challenge for them is to somehow imagine and execute a full game, not just a skeleton sandbox with impressive graphics and sound and go for underserved markets.

A real game

With guests that are more than a programmers tech demo.