And when the game has too many mechanics that are annoying to deal with for the sake of management, others will want to have nothing to with the game anymore. There's a difference between a challenge and an annoyance. Having to constantly sell or release exhibit animals or keep them all on contraceptives permanently isn't a challenge, it's an annoyance. I personally find facility buildings to be an annoyance rather than a challenge because they don't function logically and hiding them apparently isn't good enough for xray vision guests. Water filtration and power grids add nothing to the game for me, they're just an obstacle to building the zoo of my dreams. The games management isn't difficult or hard, it's tedious and constant and in the way. That's the problem. I'm not having issues managing my zoo, I'm annoyed by the management aspect intruding on my enjoyment of the rest of the game.
No enjoyable gameplay
- Thread starter chrisslie
- Start date
Sounds like you need to play sandbox with the following options, a competitive mode, especially one that involves a multiplayer animal market needs some challenge!
There is another thread that specifically discusses the idea for an auto-release/sell option which could add to the game, here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ture-needed-animal-management-policies.528843 . But taking away every design challenge like staff building and power placement is a bit odd, but put in a feature request to get those added to the Sandbox disable options.
Here is a good video about Staff buildings, they just have a small radius that needs to be kept away from the public but their distance from enclosures is very important for efficient feeding and cleaning. Seems logical to me
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Its all there and free to choose.
I play games on easy difficulty if they annoy me otherwise, i don't see why this is a bad thing.
I play games to enjoy them.
But insisting on playing a game on normal or hard difficulty and then complaining about the complexity or difficulty and
demanding that things get easier or more shallow is a jerk-move, because its potentially taking away the fun of other people because i am not
honest enough to myself to say "fk this, i play for fun, i have more fun on easy".
Its not a competitive multiplayer where you're contesting on anything.
I play games on easy difficulty if they annoy me otherwise, i don't see why this is a bad thing.
I play games to enjoy them.
But insisting on playing a game on normal or hard difficulty and then complaining about the complexity or difficulty and
demanding that things get easier or more shallow is a jerk-move, because its potentially taking away the fun of other people because i am not
honest enough to myself to say "fk this, i play for fun, i have more fun on easy".
Its not a competitive multiplayer where you're contesting on anything.
Not sure if some of those issues are down to with food and enclosure cleanliness but there is a good video about the importance of staff building placement here:
I haven't actually even tried Franchise mode yet. I've played strictly on Career up to this point. I don't want to play on Sandbox because I'd like to enjoy actual challenges, I just find how the game has chosen to implement "challenge" unfun currently. I don't want staff buildings disabled, I want to be able to hide them inside large structures without whiny guests ruining my immersion, the challenge being clever floorplans that make efficient use of space and give my staff the quickest access. I don't want immortal animals or breeding disabled, I want non-micromanagey ways to repopulate an endangered species. I would LOVE to be able to build realistic indoor exhibits with hidden facilities for my staff (like in real life with hidden behind the scenes areas!), but I can't because the guests whine. I'm not sure I would have included the power grid system if I were designing the game myself. It worked well in Jurassic World Evolution because power failure meant imminent chaos and grand destruction, but here it's more of a nuisance (didn't play Planet Coaster so can't speak to that). Water seems to be somewhat more interesting and I see its value as a system, but I wish it were easier to understand; the water filters have zones that they affect and they clean entire bodies of water that are touching that zone of affect, but you're going to need more filters for bigger water bodies? Is that correct?
the water filter's working radius just needs to touch a body of water to be able to clean them. When they break down, the water becomes dirty and the animals complain, there doesnt seem to be a mechanic that relates to the size of the body of water or an upgrade path to improve the working radius which would be good. I agree that the line of sight mechanic that the animals use would have been great for the utilities, which instead just uses a radius of influence mechanic. I am guessing that including the visitors in the line of sight mechanic for staff areas and utlities would have been a big drain on computing power or complexity for little benefit, or maybe it just needs more work on it.
No, gladly it is not overcomplex in terms like power consumption or watervolume of pumps (that i would indeed consider an overkill).
As long as your body of water lies in the filter-zone (its enough when a small part of it is covered) the filter will keep it clean.
(Same goes for power, its just an aoe effect, covered or not covered).
If you get unclean water, its caused by the poo-in-the-water-bug where keepers can't reach it.
You have to remove the water manually, let the keeper clean it and put it back then.
Quite annoying, but in my experience it doesn't happens that often, i had it 3 or 4 times so far in 33 years of ingame-time.
I believe I posted it in another thread somewhere, but I have a technical suggestion related to the guests seeing facility buildings: since every guest trying to line of sight the building would probably be overkill, instead have the building detect if it is hidden - if it detects unattached architecture, a guest service building, or terrain in the way before it detects a guest, then it's hidden?
Anything but simple AOE-effects affecting the guests must be a nightmare for the game performance.
I understand now, why everything looks so nice and shiny and the visitors are still in the plain planco style.
I have 7000+ guests in my zoo atm.
The workload for the cpu must be hell.
Even if a building checks the guests instead of vise versa, every building has to check each guest.
Thats simply not worth the effect.
Just a normal day in hell for the vendor employees.
Source: https://i.imgur.com/SOqTGYY.png
I understand now, why everything looks so nice and shiny and the visitors are still in the plain planco style.
I have 7000+ guests in my zoo atm.
The workload for the cpu must be hell.
Even if a building checks the guests instead of vise versa, every building has to check each guest.
Thats simply not worth the effect.
Just a normal day in hell for the vendor employees.
Source: https://i.imgur.com/SOqTGYY.png
Bruh I didn't even know those options existed....Are they just in Sandbox mode? If so they should put those options before you even load Sandbox.
The building wouldn't need to check each guest, the building would only need to check its surroundings. Basically, it sends out an invisible ray in each direction, and if that ray collides with a solid object before it collides with a path, the building is hidden. It should only need to check its status when its surroundings update.
What a nice zoo, sadly spoiled with enormous crowd of peeps.
Oh well, i would prefer it without those (as any place on this world), but they are paying the food for my furry, feathery and scaly little friends, so i have to keep
them satisfied.
Don't ask me how all this works, when i started at releaseday i waited for everything to breakdown every moment, but it works for almost 90 hours now
even with all these checked...most all the annoyances mention in the OP are still there to deal with in the sandbox mode.Bruh I didn't even know those options existed....Are they just in Sandbox mode? If so they should put those options before you even load Sandbox.
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.
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.
What's even worse is, that the park gets harder to sustain the bigger it gets.
@ a certain point you no longer make more profit for adding new species, because the people are all broke after they went through 50% of the park.
@ a certain point you no longer make more profit for adding new species, because the people are all broke after they went through 50% of the park.
Thats the only point i disagree with.
You have to plan your supply a little and keep care for having things maintained it would feel odd if anything would work magically.
The speed is kinky indeed.
For me personally its no problem to make use of pause all the time (i do so in any game, i don't like hectic crap anymore... maybe the age), but yea...
without pause in franchise is not possible.
Oh! That means you haven't played PZ yet.
I just get annoyed that I play the game entirely in pause mode, get all my habitats etc "perfect" - everything at green, etc.
Then I un-pause, and within about 3 minutes everything is falling apart... so I have to pause again to find out why.
Really need a slower time frame for this game.
Then I un-pause, and within about 3 minutes everything is falling apart... so I have to pause again to find out why.
Really need a slower time frame for this game.