More Animal variety in DLCs...

[Dracornis]

I guess and can imagine that I am probably not the first coming up with this.. but I feel like the focus of the DLCs is too much on the buildings...
Sure.. all the decorations are beautiful, fine and I would want them... but only 5 animals from each continent we got DLCs for so far?

For some animals that couldve been in DLCs by now, like a narwhal from the arctis, I still hope some marine mania-type expansion in the future..

But Australia has such a wide variety on animals that only live there, that picking only 5 seems far too less..

It would be nice to see more animals in the DLCs... even if that means that we get less decorations or less buildings in general.. but a zoo-game should be focused more around the animals... people who want to have a focus on decorations and buildings and theme parks have Planet Coaster....

But in the end I am not even sure... does Frontier read this forum and react to such things?

 

[FunnyLiz]

Thats the Point i said a long time ago. This is a Zoo-simulation game !! Not a Building Simulator... This is one of the big Things is dont like in this game.. So we get 5 Animals and 250 Building stuff. Waht abaout 7 Animals and 150 Building stuff. This also would be okay. This is a ZOO Game!! So lets focus on Zoo and not only on architecture!!

 

[Indoraptor27]

Well keep in mind, they probably could have made several similar wolf species in the time it took to design a kangaroo. It's quality vs quantity. That being said, a wombat, emu, and Tasmanian devil would have been nice. I'm extremely curious about the next pack. The Arctic pack was a "region" pack, not really a single continent, but a lacking region nonetheless, and SA was also very animal short. Australia was sort of inevitable, but what now? I'm betting on either NA or Europe. Asia has a decent amount of animals, and Africa is a low priority.

 

[Dracornis]

Well keep in mind, they probably could have made several similar wolf species in the time it took to design a kangaroo. It's quality vs quantity. That being said, a wombat, emu, and Tasmanian devil would have been nice. I'm extremely curious about the next pack. The Arctic pack was a "region" pack, not really a single continent, but a lacking region nonetheless, and SA was also very animal short. Australia was sort of inevitable, but what now? I'm betting on either NA or Europe. Asia has a decent amount of animals, and Africa is a low priority.

Sure, quality is better than quantity... but there are so many unique australian animals.. and to be honest, I would even pay more than 9,99 if there would be 10 or more inside...
I mean sure, they can return to australia later for more animals like platypus or emus, but I dont see that coming, sadly...
Or redirecting time from scenery and buildings to more animals..

There are many options how it would be doable
Another option would be moving away from this little dlcs to big expansions like Zoo Tycoon had them

But, at least for me, it is a fact that the balance between scenery, buildings and animals is OFF for a ZOO game

 

[Cocolori]

The thing is that I think we need to bear in mind that more scenery pieces doesn't really mean time was 'taken away' from creating new animals. If we got less scenery that wouldn't translate into more animals because (I imagine) the team doing the rigs and animations for the animals are probably not the same team creating still assets. There's an animation bottleneck. So yes I'd like more animals but either they'd have to hire more animators or we'd have to wait longer between DLCs. I don't mean to not credit the scenery creators because the scenery is really beautiful but I suspect the quality of animation and the complexity of coding movement for the animals is a more specialist and highly skilled job. Plus I want some of the coding team to still be working on longer term mechanic changes (like colour variation and the more frequent wading behaviour included in the free update). I'm hoping there's already some of the team working on aviaries or we know they have a long term goal to do underwater navigation.

I also think people's fears that a continent will be 'finished' by a single DLC pack is unlikely. We may not get Australia 2 but we could get reptiles and amphibians or a unique islands pack. In Planet Coaster they started out with some definite theme packs but responded to community feedback to bring out ride only packs later in the development cycle. So I don't think we should be scared Frontier doesn't listen to feedback or that they have to stick to a type of theme. The second of year of DLC and updates for Planco brought loads of new gameplay features and bigger free updates as well - it just takes time from when the game launches for them to work on any big changes.

So for sure keep asking but I'm not sure it's completely a 'real' trade off and personally I don't really want 200 animals on the roster which can only do what the animals in game can do currently. I want to see the mechanics develop over time and that's why I like the australia pack roster

 

[shirandhak]

There can never be enough new building pieces! Or do you want a "zoo" just by clogging together a fence and just place your animals in? Come on, guys! Sure there are some people who doesn't want to do buildings - for them there are the prefabs and blueprints. But the rest of us seem to enjoy building our own stuff! And as Cocolori mentioned, the designers of animals and of objects are different teams. So it's not one against the other. And as for me, I think the quality of the DLCs increased from every DLC to the next. I am very pleased with the Australian DLC and I hope, Frontier keeps going and improving from pack to pack. (And perhaps doesn't put in as many bugs in future, when fixing other bugs or putting out a DLC ).

 

[peafowl]

Im alright with the amount of animals. What annoys me is the lack of birds and reptiles for habitat contra mammals. 2/15 dlc habitat animals have been non-mammals so far.