Nicely Themed Staff Buildings Should Make Guests Happy

SirTophamHatt

SirTophamHatt
In a real zoo, there's loads of staff buildings that are themed as per the area.

This should make guests happy triggering the "I like the theming around here".

If it's the plain buildings, yes, they going to have a negative impact but if they're covered and themed nicely, this should have a positive impact.

This is some feedback from me.
 

Jaklgreen4

J
I agree. At RL zoos, they have facilities where guests can walk in and watch the keepers work. The Vet building that guest can look into should be a bonus to the guests, not a negative. The refund system is also ridiculous, no zoo gives people a refund because they were unable to see a certain animal.
 

yumi-moon

Y
I absolutely agree, if the buildings are nicely themed with the rest of the zoo, it would be nice to see. They should not be causing a negative impact, in real zoos you see that stuff all the time and no one complains you know the animals are cared for and can see it happening. Also agree with the refunds, no real zoo gives you a refund because you didnt get to see a certain animal or because the lines were too long for food( go to one of the other dozen shops in the zoo people!)
 

[VR] Deggial

[VR] Deggial
Those tours are deliberately booked by visitors who are actually interested in seeing this stuff, though. That’s not necessarily the case for all guests.

Furthermore, the negative radius of staff buildings is usually really small and negative impact can be avoided completely by placing them just a little bit off the main guest roads. It’s mainly power generators and water purifiers that have a large radius ... and please don’t tell me, that zoo guests are super hyped by seeing this kind of equipment during the tours ...
 

Adarra

A
I have to say I like the idea, though. Or make it so that you can 'hide' the staff buildings with fences/bushes/trees, which would block the influence radius.
 

Jileha

J
My home zoo is the San Diego Zoo where all the animals can live outside all year round, but they still have their indoor animals facilities. And even those are hidden. They try to create a natural looking habitat, where staff facilities definitely don’t belong.

Zoos in cooler climates need larger buildings for the indoor animal facilities, so that’s maybe where you get to see more of the staff builings as well. But there are some zoos with huge indoor areas housing several habitats, all designed to look like a real jungle/river scene, for instance. Don’t you think the guests would not complain if they could see all the staff facilities everywhere?

In zoos, if you would see every single staff building, you would complain as well. There is one or the other special building such as animal nurseries, the vet or the elephant care center or similar visible to and visitable by the guests, but in general, the ordinary facility buildings are well hidden. More often than not, the back wall of a habitat is extra high and the buildings are hidden behind that wall, together with the indoor facilities of the animals.

I actually had guests complain that they could see the staff facilities even though they were far enough away and the negative radius didn’t even apply. I was so surprised that I double checked the heatmap. After I hid the buildings behind some trees, they stopped complaining. So apparently, it does make a difference if they can see them or not, or maybe it was a bug.
 

Jileha

J
Jaklgreen4 said:
You are imagining that. Even the devs said that they are only affected by the radius, not with line of sight.
Click to expand...

Oh, so you were inside my brain when it happened? I said I checked it out because it was unexpected. Several guests complained that they could see staff buildings, which were far enough away, but in plain view on the side of a habitat building. I moved the buildings a bit further away, still in plain view. Guests continued to complain, until I put some trees in front of the buildings.
 

Jacob1989

J
I agree 100%, and in response to people who don't think this is a good idea and that not all guests will appreciate this, I'd like to respond with: They won't even know that's a staff building if it is well themed. There is a ton of buildings in theme parks and zoos alike that you don't know what they are for. Some are functional, some are empty and exist just for the sake of theme-ing. You can't even tell them apart.
 
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Jaklgreen4

J
Jileha said:
Oh, so you were inside my brain when it happened? I said I checked it out because it was unexpected. Several guests complained that they could see staff buildings, which were far enough away, but in plain view on the side of a habitat building. I moved the buildings a bit further away, still in plain view. Guests continued to complain, until I put some trees in front of the buildings.
Click to expand...

It does not matter what your are thinking, facts are facts. The way the game is programmed, it goes by the radius, the guest are not looking at the building and saying, "oh, that is a pretty building". For the record, I don't like that they put this radius in. I would rather that they did make it a scenery aspect. But it is just not possible for it to have happened as you described. Programming and all.
 

P3NGU1N

P3NGU1N
It's been discussed in the past that the negative radius of a staff facility should change depending on the scenery rating of it. Really don't know how difficult implementing that sort of game mechanic would be.
 

Jileha

J
Jaklgreen4 said:
It does not matter what your are thinking, facts are facts. The way the game is programmed, it goes by the radius, the guest are not looking at the building and saying, "oh, that is a pretty building". For the record, I don't like that they put this radius in. I would rather that they did make it a scenery aspect. But it is just not possible for it to have happened as you described. Programming and all.
Click to expand...

I was not thinking, I was making observations by checking the heat map and checking the reactions of several guests before and after placing trees around the staff buildings. As you say: facts are facts. Since it did happen, it is possible. Many things happen in PZ that are not “programmed” that way. E.g. Guests and staff are programmed to walk on the paths, and yet they get stuck in some places for no obvious reasons since replacing the path in exactly the same way it was before fixes the issue. Maybe it was because the staff buildings were almost directly in front of their eyes, even if outside the negative influence sphere, and they pretty much had to look at them.

Please stop insinuating it was “all in my head”.
 

Jacob1989

J
The way I see it, the radius and line of sight should both be taking effect in guest negative impact. Things that make a sound, like water treatment and generators, should have both line of sight and radius effect because of sound, yet things like staff buildings should only be affecting line of sight. This way you can have nicely themed staff buildings incorporated into your zoo, even with nice viewing areas for the windowed side of things like vet surgery and keeper huts like how Jonti Sparrow describes in one of his Geekism videos. Also you won't get happy guests just because the ugly bare prefabricated staff buildings are just two tiles away. I see this solution as a win-win situation.
 

SirTophamHatt

SirTophamHatt
1) This isn't about your game, what you did or changed that apparently changed the view of the guests.
Please don't derail the thread in a quest to be "right".

2) This also isn't about hiding the staff facilities to reduce unhappiness. It's about covering them in themed pieces, which should increase the guests happiness.

Hiding so it reduces the zone of unhappiness and hiding to increase happiness are similar, but quite different.
 
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