What do you think about that ?
New hint for Aviary???
- Thread starter Lutschpastille
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Credit to @Pacha Camac, but unfortunetately, it doesn't seem to be a new item. It looks like the zoos used in the dev journal video were zoos from the workshop, as DeLady recognized her hippo habitat in it.
I was finally thinking they were starting to hint and build hype.... and then you came along and smashed my sandcastle with your shovel
()
In this video by Sdanwolf you can how easy it is to build an aviary in Planet Coaster. We should have been able to do this in PZ from the very beginning using similar fence pieces.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Je0WDDYqLQ
They will probably add aviaries in the future, it is just a matter of waiting, we had to wait a year and a bit before Jurassic World Evolution got the aviary and the pteranodons
I agree. I think it's not a matter of IF but WHEN. I firmly believe we will have aviaries and swimming/diving animations (and animals ofc) somewhere down the line.
Credit to @Pacha Camac, but unfortunetately, it doesn't seem to be a new item. It looks like the zoos used in the dev journal video were zoos from the workshop, as DeLady recognized her hippo habitat in it.
Where did you find that build? Would really love to learn how to make that.
They could implement something similar to the Prehistoric Kingdom Mini-Aviary and if you look closely it has an exhibit gate for keepers, so this could be something they could do for the aviaries when they are added
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Yeah, Frontier gotta catch up otherwise some indie devs are gonna beat em to it!
Yeah, Frontier gotta catch up otherwise some indie devs are gonna beat em to it!
To be honest, if nothing changes with how Planet Zoo is handled by Frontier currently, I just want PK to come out and then let take Crytivo (hopefully) their try on a zoo game. Frontier dropped the ball - which doesn't say they can not pick it up again. But not with "just going on".
In what way do you think they dropped the ball? I’m not being argumentative, genuinely curious.
The communication was lacking a lot in the past month. Critique with the DLC model only got a "we hear you", but nothing else. IF feedback is addressed, it is on unofficial sources only (and yes, there has been a lot lately, so my hopes that things can improve are there). New animals are only done relatively half-baked. Yes, the joey animations in the Australian pack are extremly cute, but they are just cosmetic if they only happen once and are no more than a short video special and not part of the regular animation. No joey in PZ ever gets back into the pouch again. All in all, as much as I love the building pieces in the Aussie pack, it introduced a lot of bugs (path finding, though that has been fixed, broken editable signs, broken gizmo, climable objects aren't counted anymore) and only a few were fixed, probably because they concentrate on the Update 1.4 instead of releasing another small update in between. They seem to save resources and take into account that bugs exist longer than neccessary then. If the reason is, that they need more time fixing it, again, this could be communicated. But every time I have yet again to delete my climbing frames so that the game counts it, I hear a manager scream in my hand: "NO MORE MONEY AND TIME ON PZ!"
The addition of fur coat was made, because it was a promised feature and the players began to get loud. We only heard an update about the process when there was a small storm comming in. Basically, we only hear from them when they want to sell us something or when things gets too hot. And by not celebrating PZ with a real update, like they did with PC and JWE, they clearly showed which priority PZ takes. None, it feels. Like they only have in mind to sell a few additional animals until the end of the life span but do this with as little work and resources spend as possible. Hence there was no update for people who supported this game over a year, but a looot of giveaways to get new players on board again and make them hopefully spend more money in the future. It was a marketing campaign, not a tribute to the game as it was with other Frontier installments.
Now, Chanté did tell us that they are "still working hard" on Planet Zoo and I did not forget that and believe her. However, in all honesty, I'm at a a point were only actions are important to me anymore, not words.
In short: All they do ever since the South America pack was extinguish fires, but they never renovated the broken house.
Now, lets compare that with Crytivo for a moment, shall we? They release their game with LESS animals than promised. But that's not a bad thing, becazse they clearly communicated, it is because they want to make sure we get best quality. They regularly address feedback from the community, answer questions, give us a glimpse into the future. A whole roadmap indeed. They show that there is a future and what it will look like, while we, as PZ players, don't even know if most requested features are looked into. Swimming animals? Ever only has been addressed by Bo on reddit I believe, but never on the official forums. "We can only talk about things when they are ready" translates into "we can only talk about things when we want your money."
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And what actions do you consider that you think could have an effect?
She kinda just explained that, I think her last paragraph is your best example. But also:
When she says "Critique with the DLC model only got a "we hear you", but nothing else." I take it she'd prefer that Frontier makes better statements on this. Statements on if and how they're planning on improving the DLC model. If they want to avoid "spoilers" then at least do it in fun hints. Anything's better then their inadequate communication. Leaving your worrysome forum members in perpetual doomer-mode over your DLC model makes you look pretty neglectful.
"IF feedback is addressed, it is on unofficial sources only" -- Frontier should communicate on their official platforms more. And not just random animal facts.
"New animals are only done relatively half-baked." She brought up how kangaroo joeys should use the mother's pouch more often. I think this could also apply to how Frontier is yet to make a DLC animal that really improves on things we've been worried about. Like... the Koalas didn't come with improved climbing frequency. Nor did the Capuchin monkeys-- and a lot of players want primates like gibbons, spider monkeys, langurs, or howler monkeys; animals that can't just use the lemur rig like the capuchins did. Some of these animals have very long arms for hanging in the trees... the orangutans have the problem of not living up to this trait, and it seem like it will never be fixed.
This can also be applied to the fact that no new animals are aviary birds or diving animals. Basically no significant behavior has been improved (climbing) or added (flying and diving.) The statement "half-baked" could also describe the Arctic Wolf addition, and the disappointing way they did colour variants.
Her statement on bugs also seems clear to me. They need to spend more time and money on dealing with bugs. It feels like cynical corporate management or something, like higher-ups are preventing them from having the time and employee-count to deal with them.
Second paragraph: Frontier sometimes seems to only care about issues at the last second, before players get really mad.
And then yeah, the last paragraph is describing what Crytivo does, that she believes Frontier should also do.
Personally I would also suggest Frontier do fun things like polls. For instance, where we vote on which current in-game animals and features are our favorites. Just to show they care how we're experiencing the game. They could even do polls on what new features or animals we'd want the most, as long as they clarify our vote isn't assured to be the final choice they go with. They could make posts where they recommend ways to use certain blueprints. Make more behind-the-scenes videos. Anything to show they still CARE about this game.
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Thank you for re-phrasing what I was thinking so perfectly
I really appreciate. I'm normally not short of words, but you indeed explained it much better.I just realised it was not her who would take actions, but she wants Frontier to take actions.
My bad.
I thought at first she wanted to take actions against Frontier, which did sound strange to me. But that's not the case. So apologies for me misunderstanding the post.
I want to emphasise that this is my own perception and that I fully accept it may not be a majority opinion! Personally I don't really understand the comms thing being used to judge whether a developer is still invested in a game and I've never thought road maps were useful and too often they get used as a stick to beat developers over when there are delays (which in turn feeds into the culture of unfair work practices). But that may be a generational thing - I grew up playing games when they got published and that was it, you wouldn't know anything about them before they came out and wouldn't hear anything from developers afterwards. I'd also personally prefer Frontier spend more money on the developer teams than having a really large comms team.
That's not to say comms isn't important and I do miss the livestreams they used to do regularly for Planco and the hints we'd get (mostly from spoiler Sam) but even then they were quite often derailed by people getting upset that they weren't giving enough information even when they had clearly stated they weren't going to talk about new features or DLC. I think they can definitely improve comms about bug fixes and it would be nice to see more community engagement. I'm not sure I personally follow the logic that leads from that to the game being better supported. After all, actions speak louder than words. I also want to point out that the voices in this forum and on youtube and reddit probably don't reflect the majority of players views - I suspect we are the most invested and passionate but that in turn means we probably have the highest expectations and demands.
The other points are, in my opinion, also about expectations. Maybe my experience of Planco colours my outlook, but as I've said before, I work on the assumption that with heavily requested things like diving and aviaries etc. if we haven't heard about it that means they are working on it or it's part of the plan. They were really up front with Planco about features they had no plans on implementing e.g. water parks and weather. Every other really highly requested feature got delivered (even if they were more limited than some people wanted) e.g. restaurants and hotels, staff energy, crime and security, more flat ride packs as DLC, mixed terrain paints on a map, scenario editor etc. And all of those were provided for free - Frontier doesn't tend to hide new gameplay features behind paid for content packs which I think is amazing.
So I guess I'm a little confused as to why the community is making negative assumptions about what is planned - I'm not sure what them saying 'we're working on x,y and z' adds to anything if they don't know when they will be able to deliver. They had a breakthrough with the mix and match terrain paints in Planco where a developer was working on it for months before they even knew it was possible because they found a solution. They didn't tell us that until afterwards because why would they? If an when we get diving animations I'm sure we'll get a developer journal that talks about the process of working on it and we know they are working on it because they've said it's proving more complicated than climbing.
The rest is also in the eye of the beholder. I didn't think the arctic pack was 'half-baked' or lazy, partly becuase from my perspective it's pretty cheap and I don't mind paying money for cosmetic DLC when we get new game play features for free - It's easy for me to say because I have the money to buy them but I see it as helping fund the new features and free updates for everyone. I'd like to see improvements to climbing but it's obviously the most complex system in the game in terms of behaviour and I can understand why they wouldn't want to mess with it until they solved some other problems. I thought the colour variations thing is fine, I know others were disappointed but I think it works ok.
As I said it may be a generational thing or a personal one and clearly many people here disagree so I hope Frontier does more comms to help everyone feel as optimistic as I do. My only caveat to that would be if they put loads of staff time into the comms side and less into development that kind of defeats the purpose and many 'silent' players not on the forums or discord or reddit etc. may not care as long as they get new stuff eventually. I just wanted to say I just feel sad that some people seem to feeling so negative so this is a bit of a counter to that to say I don't feel that way and I am looking forward to whatever comes next. I vaguely remember similar 'slumps' in Planco's development as well when everyone seems to feel a bit down and then that came out with some amazing DLC and updates and everyone seemed to forget it ever happened so here's hoping this is the same.
That's not to say comms isn't important and I do miss the livestreams they used to do regularly for Planco and the hints we'd get (mostly from spoiler Sam) but even then they were quite often derailed by people getting upset that they weren't giving enough information even when they had clearly stated they weren't going to talk about new features or DLC. I think they can definitely improve comms about bug fixes and it would be nice to see more community engagement. I'm not sure I personally follow the logic that leads from that to the game being better supported. After all, actions speak louder than words. I also want to point out that the voices in this forum and on youtube and reddit probably don't reflect the majority of players views - I suspect we are the most invested and passionate but that in turn means we probably have the highest expectations and demands.
The other points are, in my opinion, also about expectations. Maybe my experience of Planco colours my outlook, but as I've said before, I work on the assumption that with heavily requested things like diving and aviaries etc. if we haven't heard about it that means they are working on it or it's part of the plan. They were really up front with Planco about features they had no plans on implementing e.g. water parks and weather. Every other really highly requested feature got delivered (even if they were more limited than some people wanted) e.g. restaurants and hotels, staff energy, crime and security, more flat ride packs as DLC, mixed terrain paints on a map, scenario editor etc. And all of those were provided for free - Frontier doesn't tend to hide new gameplay features behind paid for content packs which I think is amazing.
So I guess I'm a little confused as to why the community is making negative assumptions about what is planned - I'm not sure what them saying 'we're working on x,y and z' adds to anything if they don't know when they will be able to deliver. They had a breakthrough with the mix and match terrain paints in Planco where a developer was working on it for months before they even knew it was possible because they found a solution. They didn't tell us that until afterwards because why would they? If an when we get diving animations I'm sure we'll get a developer journal that talks about the process of working on it and we know they are working on it because they've said it's proving more complicated than climbing.
The rest is also in the eye of the beholder. I didn't think the arctic pack was 'half-baked' or lazy, partly becuase from my perspective it's pretty cheap and I don't mind paying money for cosmetic DLC when we get new game play features for free - It's easy for me to say because I have the money to buy them but I see it as helping fund the new features and free updates for everyone. I'd like to see improvements to climbing but it's obviously the most complex system in the game in terms of behaviour and I can understand why they wouldn't want to mess with it until they solved some other problems. I thought the colour variations thing is fine, I know others were disappointed but I think it works ok.
As I said it may be a generational thing or a personal one and clearly many people here disagree so I hope Frontier does more comms to help everyone feel as optimistic as I do. My only caveat to that would be if they put loads of staff time into the comms side and less into development that kind of defeats the purpose and many 'silent' players not on the forums or discord or reddit etc. may not care as long as they get new stuff eventually. I just wanted to say I just feel sad that some people seem to feeling so negative so this is a bit of a counter to that to say I don't feel that way and I am looking forward to whatever comes next. I vaguely remember similar 'slumps' in Planco's development as well when everyone seems to feel a bit down and then that came out with some amazing DLC and updates and everyone seemed to forget it ever happened so here's hoping this is the same.
To be honest, I don't think we need more CMs. It would be enough to hear from the ones we have, but I agree that hiring / shifting more Devs to PZ is the solution. Because, well, that is how things get moving with additional features.
Planco got one year of free updates before there even was a paid DLC. Planco also got a big anniversary update and - believing the Planco people I interact with a lot - there were more hints, a constant buzzing and more insight to the process than there ever was with PZ. So I don't feel like we are still in a situationb were we can compare these two. Things have changed and I don't see it changed for the better.
Also, PC got better player numbers as far as we know. So that might very well be a reason for Frontier to put less resources in PZ then they did put in PC (their main game to that point, if I remember correctly). Now, I am one of those who still thinks that PZ can have a bright future, so on that aspect am not that negative as it seems. However, the road needs to be to invest in this game and not give up on it.
By the way, for me it got downhill with the SA pack. The arctic pack was perfectly fine for me for what it was. Of course not game changing, but it was very short after release. The SA was lacking animal wise, with 4 animals representing a continent with a rich fauna. But the pouches-thing in the Australian pack is - for me at least - really a lack of quality and a very "easy" solution. A cosmetic one.
By the way, it indeed only reflects the missing interaction between mother and infant in any species, including apes, where it is most noticeable. We don't have any social interactions like carrying or hugging in this highly social species, because, well, lack of resources to animate such things, I guess. It's all a one time done thing and the few imrpovements we got with animations are clearly planned before, but scrapped due to time.
The hard part of all of this is: Frontier did an amazing job with the base game (mostly) and I can clearly see they COULD do better.
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