No enjoyable gameplay

[LaTokk]

You have to plan your supply a little and keep care for having things maintained it would feel odd if anything would work magically.

Never felt rushed in PlanCo. Maybe I just need more time to develop the maintenance strategy so that staff can handle things. At the moment I seem to have plenty of staff, but they don't really achieve as much as you'd expect. Keepers especially seem to have problems doing everything they need to do in a visit to a habitat as soon as you have enough animals to require a few food/water items.

Balance just feels a bit off at the moment - but it's a new release, so I'm sure things will get tweaked.

 

[zoomac92]

Planet Zoo is more than just Franchise mode, clearly. I may never even touch it. I don't play simulations for online play.

 

[ZooKate]

The only issue is the overall speed of the game thh

 

[Robbierotten]

I have to agree. After having hundreds of hours into Planet Coaster, I'll say that Planet Zoo is certainly more "stressful."

There is never a moment to relax and just look at what you've created. There is just constantly something wrong with the animals that you have to tend to. Fighting, overpopulation, wrong gender ratio, animals dying etc etc. It gets to be a lot.

A couple suggestions I have,

1. As many other have suggested, the game speed needs to be slowed down.

2. Relax some of the gender ratio requirements for certain species. Animals that roam in large herds like the American bison should tolerate more than a single male in their exhibit. This would help stop with the constant fighting once offspring mature. And what's with the wolves? Two per exhibit? I'm pretty sure wild wolf packs can have as many as 10 individuals. I've been to a few zoos with wolves, and they all had 3-5 wolves in the exhibit without issue.

Planet Coaster was initially criticized for not having enough management, and I feel like Planet Zoo kind of went the opposite of that. The management in this game isn't necessarily difficult, it's just a lot of little things that you're juggling with all the time that add up to stressful gameplay.

 

[xesta]

I feel there's a few things interacting here. My experience in Planet Zoo comes after a long period playing Cities: Skylines, which has a very leisurely approach to management.

In Planet Zoo, for pretty zoo building, play in Sandbox. Franchise needs to be different, there needs to be challenge and that is going to come from handling species selection, habitat construction, breeding and staff management.

Having said that, the game clock make things too manic at times. The average player should never have to pause the game in normal play - only when building and decorating habitats and other features of the park. The speed of the game should allow you deal with the alerts and trade animals and still have time to enjoy watching your animals for a decent amount of time. If you can't take time to enjoy the animal animations (which obviously need the game to be unpaused) then you could be in any generic management game as all you are doing is balancing resources at a numeric level.

As previously mentioned - I'm from a city builder game background - even there power and water management is tedious, but at least you normally have a sensible approach of auto joining via proximity, pipes/cables to bridge gaps and a capacity based limit for each facility. PZ's circle zones are a poor implementation and the maintenance requirements are horrendous - as is the speed of habitat barrier degradation. The 'poop under shelters' issue also needs resolving very quickly as it leaves the player having to periodically move things so that the keeper can properly clean a habitat. This all adds unnecessary micromanagement in areas where the game mechanics should handle it as long you have enough staff and appropriate work zones.

A lot of the annoyances would be reduced at a slower game speed - the slowest should probably be about 1/4 of what it is now. Power and water needs to be rethought or have an auto-manage switch - it adds exactly nothing to the game.

this guy gets it

 

[Wolfen75]

And what's with the wolves? Two per exhibit? I'm pretty sure wild wolf packs can have as many as 10 individuals. I've been to a few zoos with wolves, and they all had 3-5 wolves in the exhibit without issue.

I can tell you what wents wrong there all the time (because wolves are the only animals i really know inside out).

You have two wolves, lets call them paul and mary.
They have two beautiful daugthers, lets call them hanna and henna.

Now you want a nice mate for one of them and buy the young, handsome jack.
You put jack in the habitat with paul, marry, hanna and henna.

I tell you what would happen irl:

Jack and paul would fight for alpha status.
nothing else, thats how packs work (in very seldom cases a strong female can be packleader, but forget that now)
possible outcomes irl-
1) jack wins, take the alphastatus and mate with henna or hanna
2) jack loses, becomes a normal pack member, forget about your breeding
3) jack loses, the pack declares him as an enemy, you have to remove him or they will kill him
(in game you can move him and henna or hanna in another habitat, irl they will recognize him as an enemy for the rest of their lifes and attack him)

What actuall happens ingame:
your social group limit is two adults
As soon as you got a third adult, they start to fight
no matter if its a stranger or the own child
either for alpha status or because of overcrowding

So... yes, that is complete bollockz atm

A system with the 3 possible outcomes at a 50/25/25 or even a 33/33/33 % chance would be rrrreally nice.
Those small packs are making my wolves sad.

 

[Llamadrama]

I can tell you what wents wrong there all the time (because wolves are the only animals i really know inside out).

You have two wolves, lets call them paul and mary.
They have two beautiful daugthers, lets call them hanna and henna.

Now you want a nice mate for one of them and buy the young, handsome jack.
You put jack in the habitat with paul, marry, hanna and henna.

I tell you what would happen irl:

Jack and paul would fight for alpha status.
nothing else, thats how packs work (in very seldom cases a strong female can be packleader, but forget that now)
possible outcomes irl-
1) jack wins, take the alphastatus and mate with henna or hanna
2) jack loses, becomes a normal pack member, forget about your breeding
3) jack loses, the pack declares him as an enemy, you have to remove him or they will kill him
(in game you can move him and henna or hanna in another habitat, irl they will recognize him as an enemy for the rest of their lives and attack him)

What actuall happens ingame:
your social group limit is two adults
As soons as you got a third adult, they start to fight
no matter if its a stranger or the own child
either for alpha status or because of overcrowding

So... yes, that is complete bollockz atm

A system with the 3 possible outcomes at a 50/25/25 or even a 33/33/33 % chance would be rrrreally nice.
Those small packs are making my wolves sad.

The concept of 'alpha' has been debunked, but I digress. I'm not happy with how fast time goes yet and I'd like to at least see some shorter lived animals not kick the bucket 2 hours after buying them but right now my one of biggest complaints is the pack mechanics and how they (don't) function which also ties in to breeding and in-breeding. I'm avoiding getting wolves, lions or any large pack animals because they're just cumbersome and annoying to micro-manage because they breed, they fight, the son becomes alpha and breeds with the mom when there's a new stock of females available. In reality, packs will actively avoid in-breeding and it very seldom happens. In zoos that is of course different but the animals will still avoid breeding with their immediate parents. In Planet Zoo it's a throw of the dice, there's really no mechanics to avoid this and it's so simple too. If A is related to B and there's a brand new young C available from another zoo, prioritize breeding with C.

Also, someone else brought this up and they're right - The moment an enclosure is done, there's very little to 'chase' or progress except cooler and species specific enrichment items. You bring in new animals and while they seem to have some hidden stats, I've noticed my new red pandas are much shyer than my first pair and get stressed much more, it's really not enough or noticeable to be considered 'chasing'. The breeding is just so simple too, and if you keep happy animals they'll NEVER get sick. Like, seriously why is the sickness mechanic in the game with a bunch of diseases you have to research when it never triggers?

 

[zoomac92]

I've definitely encountered sickness in game, but I've only played in career mode thus far. Tends to happen when there are breeding explosions with my wildebeests and the keepers can't keep up with the poo. Also had one Saltwater Crocodile I adopted show up in habitat and immediately have crocodile pox, like I adopted a diseased animal. Might be a bug?

 

[Wolfen75]

Also had one Saltwater Crocodile I adopted show up in habitat and immediately have crocodile pox, like I adopted a diseased animal. Might be a bug?

If you bought it from another player for creation credits he/she simply sold you a sick croc.
Sadly, you can sell dieseased animals and sadly, some people deporting their poor little fellas instead of healing them.

 

[PeppyPepp]

Come back in 20 years then, maybe until then AI / KI is that advanced that it can play the game for you.



I am playing this game at release for the first time with zero experience in planco.
A noob like me has over half of the species in the game in his first-ever build zoo which is running fine...
or would if the servers would let me play.

How simple and easy do you guys want the game?

Use sandbox or take the time how to manage your zoo.
If you don't got enough patience, use another game mode.
Or watch a zoo movie.

When the franchise mode plays itself no one who like at least some challenge has nothing to do anymore in this game.

This is me. Never played Planet Coaster. I have watched a lot of gameplay videos on Youtube and learned a lot of things before I even got my hands on the game.

I don't mean to be rude, but people complaining about management in a management game is confusing to me. Obviously there is always room for improvement and I understand there are bugs present which make management much more difficult, but it's a game where you have to think things through. You can't just plop things down and hope it works. Besides, we have 4 different modes available, I think this offers plenty of different ways to play the game.

 

[Dr4gon]

If you bought it from another player for creation credits he/she simply sold you a sick croc.
Sadly, you can sell dieseased animals and sadly, some people deporting their poor little fellas instead of healing them.

That is actually a good suggestion. People should not be able to sell sick animals, but I hope it doesn't open an other can of worms. People have already many problems as it is. Not me, I make a new zoo every 4 habitats, or I go bankrupt.

 

[FridaShines]

I've never gotten diseased animals in Franchise mode from Animal Trading, but in Challenge mode almost all animals I buy are carrying diseases... Guessing they want us to place them in Quarantee first?

 

[Dr4gon]

I've never gotten diseased animals in Franchise mode from Animal Trading, but in Challenge mode almost all animals I buy are carrying diseases... Guessing they want us to place them in Quarantee first?

Yes, challenge mode has its own challenge with that. Every new bengal tiger I buy seems always have to fight for dominance, no matter what gender. Still it offers a more relaxed gameplay because the market works better. You have to breed your own genes into better ones, because 90% is real bad.

 

[LaTokk]

I don't mean to be rude, but people complaining about management in a management game is confusing to me

There's different levels of management - in a game that is pure management you expect to have high levels of micromanagement and to be kept busy. In a management game that also includes a large building element such as Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster or city builders, you expect to be given space and time away from management tasks to do the creative side and enjoy the park/city from a guest POV as well.

If management was all there was to the game, you'd be right. It's a balancing act and you'll always get a tension between those who want a building/simulation type game with some management elements and those who want a management game with enough building to customise the look of things a little.

 

[Maleha]

There's different levels of management - in a game that is pure management you expect to have high levels of micromanagement and to be kept busy. In a management game that also includes a large building element such as Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster or city builders, you expect to be given space and time away from management tasks to do the creative side and enjoy the park/city from a guest POV as well.

If management was all there was to the game, you'd be right. It's a balancing act and you'll always get a tension between those who want a building/simulation type game with some management elements and those who want a management game with enough building to customize the look of things a little.

Thing is, back in PlanCo people complained management was too shallow, they wanted it to be more in depth, have more micro. So with Planet Zoo they went for it. Now it can be argued it goes too far into that end now for some people's taste (I'm enjoying myself immensely with only a few minor complaints, like screens & trashcans not being fixed more efficiently), but at most Frontier can be told they listened to the players too well. They were saying from the get-go the management would be tougher than in PlanCo.
I will say in that regard I have heard Sandbox (aka the place where builders would reasonably go) leaves some things to be desired, but I also have a feeling a lot of people haven't checked the settings for that. I have only dipped into a sandbox to try putting together some blueprints for franchise but there are options to disable death, sickness, fights, aging and birth. I guess those can be expanded on (like a reduction on hunger, thirst decay, ignoring / disabling poop, disabling protesters and inspectors...) but there is already a lot that will help to let you enjoy the aesthetics of building and the animals in a more relaxed setting compared to campaign or franchise / challenge.