Motivation vs Gamebreakers

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
For me the biggest issue is certainly time. Doing anything in the game takes a lot of time, especially when you want to construct complex things (whether that's habitats or buildings, or mixing the two together). When I was under lockdown I played a lot, because I had the time to. My zoo grew slowly, but it grew surely, and I was really happy with the way things were coming together. I even started getting the hang of simple terrain work, which until then I had avoided beyond the very basic. Now that lockdown has effectively ended for me (for many it's still in place, but once we went from Level 4 to Level 3 it became business as usual for me and my colleagues), I just don't have the time or energy to sit there and put anything together.

I get up really early so I have time to myself in the morning, but that flies by too quickly to achieve anything. Then in the afternoon, I come home and all I want to do is stick on my headphones and watch something on Netflix to wind down. My brain is too tired to focus on anything else.

So yes, definitely time. Nothing at all Frontier can to do to fix that. Best I can do is hope that I win the lottery so I can voluntarily go back to lockdown conditions. 😅
 

ShadowLilly

ShadowLilly
Arrakai said:
Well the problem is that if people say here on the forum that the notifications are annoying, there is a risk that frontier will just remove them. That is what happened to the fight alert. It seems like people were complaining about the alerts, so they removed them, wich made the game much worse (in my opinion). I just don't want that to happen :(
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I understand what you said, that is why I want them to make it 'an option', so everyone can have the settings they want.
 

markun

markun
Building and the maps are things that frustrate me and make me give up sometimes.

I can’t find the right map for a Nordic zoo I want to build. I don’t want towering mountains but I do want snow. I’m not really keen on the tundra map grass colours either. So I keep starting it and make good progress but then I get frustrated with those aspects and delete it. So I really wish we could control temperatures manually and also have just a map with no background scenery.

Building still frustrates me but I am getting better. Some things I just can’t get round are the ground levels and certain objects. I start making a wooden fence but when I copy it, the new part sinks into the ground at a different level. Or I save a blue print and the same things happen.

I won’t even mention paths and barriers...

Broadly I’m enjoying the game and spending lots of time on it but I find I’m limited to doing what I can do rather than what I want to do which is frustrating.
 

craftymutt

C
LillidarAn said:
on the timeline there is a checkbox for 'notifications per animal'.. but whether i 'check' the boxes, or not, they keep popping up.. Even when i disable every notification in the gamesettings :(
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Huh, I hadn't tried it but I just assumed it worked. Does that not seem like a bug, have you filed a report on it? Sounds broken to me!
Hopefully the'll get those working as expected, and then one of your dealbreakers is removed :D
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
markun said:
Broadly I’m enjoying the game and spending lots of time on it but I find I’m limited to doing what I can do rather than what I want to do which is frustrating.
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Honestly, it's all about repetition, repetition, repetition. The pathing system is always going to be a pain, but the more you do the better you'll get. When I first played I found everything extremely daunting, as I had never played PlanCo. I only played the beta once or twice before deciding to quit and wait for the full release so I could use Sandbox to experiment. As it turned out, that was exactly what I needed.

I wouldn't say I'm as good as some of the others out there (I won't even touch domes, for example, that's just bonkers) but at this point I'm sure I could be. Besides my aforementioned time constraints, the other thing that limits me is patience. If I had the patience to decorate every little bit of the game (some people even add custom kerbs to every stretch of path! Who could be bothered!) then I'm sure I could build something rivalling that of, as a random example, Rudi Rennkamel or DeLadysigner. I imagine you'll get to the same point if you keep at it. When I first started I couldn't even figure out how to properly embellish buildings (I was building a shell then adding the decorative pieces on one at a time, trying to make them all line up perfectly), but only recently did it occur to me to decorate one wall piece and just copy and paste it. Now I feel confident in building just about anything (except domes, that).

Eventually I reached a point where I decided that if I had a specific idea in mind, I was going to keep trying it over and over until it was the way I wanted it. Sometimes it works out on the first time (or at least it's close enough), sometimes it takes me a few attempts, sometimes I even wind up bulldozing the whole lot and starting over, but you just have to keep doing it. When it's finally done and good enough to satisfy you, you'll find that doing it again in another zoo or another part of the park is a lot easier.
 

Dezessete

Dezessete
What draws me to the game:
The animals and buidling habitats

Even before Planet Zoo was even announced, I watched speed builds from NickNack Gaming who was building beautiful habitats in a modded version of ZT2.
As a Fan of ZT and Wildlife Park I also wanted to be able to build such amazing habitats for animals and in Planet Zoo I can do just that. It's great.

What diminishes my motivation:
Building everything else besides habitats can be really tedious and repetative. I'm also not the most patient guy.
As for now, after my motivation peaked at creating a habitat, it takes a massive hit because I now have to place all the signs, food courts, benches and lampposts (which I can never get perfectly in the middle of the path 🤬). It's kinda boring imho. This get's even more of a problem, when creating a new zoo. Because you have to do all the boring things again.

Another problem is that even though Planet Zoo has an abundance of building pieces, there are a lot of times where I can't find a piece to actually do what I had in mind.
As example: Currently I'm working on a big aztec temple and I want the entrance to be more than just a hole in the wall. But I just can't find a decorative piece, that fits what I had imagined. I'm also not creative enough to use other pieces in a way to get what I want (so this is more an issue on me and not on the game).

Paths are another issue.

Also I have a problem with game mechanics that are not properly explained. Why was the time at the habitat just "okay" even though the view of the animal was "amazing"? (There is even a thread about this issue). What does advanced research do? It says it increases the education about a certain animal, but it never seemed to work for me? And some more...
 

shirandhak

S
Dezessete said:
Building everything else besides habitats can be really tedious and repetative.
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It's funny, but with me it is exactly the other way round: I love building structures and signs and scenery in pz - even building bridges and laying out paths, although this is sometimes a bit .... difficult! But it is kind of meditative.

But when I get to building habitats, I'm through. No fun in that (for me). Barriers are much worse than paths! Fumbleing and stuttering and struggeling with the elements just sticking together like a bunch of overcooked noodles! The barrier-menu alway in the way - and where is that darn button to move a post again? right, again it is beneath everything else, no chance to grab it from this angle - terrain editor on and off and water in and water out and menu-change every few seconds and never get something look like I wanted it to look - uah.
 
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Dezessete

Dezessete
shirandhak said:
It's funny, but with me it is exactly the other way round: I love building structures and signs and scenery in pz - even building bridges and laying out paths, although this is sometimes a bit .... difficult! But it is kind of meditative.

But when I get to building habitats, I'm through. No fun in that (for me). Barriers are much worse than paths! Fumbleing and stuttering and struggeling with the elements just sticking together like a bunch of overcooked noodles! The barrier-menu alway in the way - and where is that darn button to move a post again? right, again it is beneath everything else, no chance to grab it from this angle - terrain editor on and off and water in and water out and menu-change every few seconds and never get something look like I wanted it to look - uah.
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Now we just have to work together to create the ultimate Park. 😄
 

Skull Lady

S
Dezessete said:
And even when you got it right, they don't save as blueprints, meaning you have to do all of the tedious pathwork again when you place such a building in a different zoo.
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Yes I agree with that, plus terrain, too. There are great blueprints people built and I wanted to use them but paths are pain in the butt. So I decided to do it myself and learn from their buildings.
 

Swjosdotschka

Swjosdotschka
My motivation is my creativity. I like to build zoos with different concepts in mind, like to improve my building skills, love to let my creativity run free. I am highly creative. I write, I craft cards, I play creative games. My brain is actually constantly creative.
Which leads me to the game breakers. Sometimes, all the creativeness is draining all my energy. And Planet Zoo needs a LOT of creativity from me. I can not play the game causual, although I tried. So sometimes, my own exhaustion is keeping me from playing. Or my shoulder issues, from time to time. And sometimes I just need a break to figure out how I want to move on with my zoo.
 
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