Not enough toy enrichment items

Nioell

Nioell
Like the title says: there aren't nearly enough toy enrichment items in the game, especially considering the whole animals get bored of them with time mechanic. This is already a huge pain to keep up with in larger zoos, but if you don't even have enough toys to change them regulary it becomes down right impossible to meet the enrichment requirements for some animals after a while.

For example: I added a small Giraffe herd to my main franchise zoo not long ago and they're fully researched at this point, yet I can't max out their welfare simply because there are only two toy item available for them. They're constantly in the red and it's just so frustrating to have the game tell you to do something about it because the animals aren't happy with what they have while, at the same time, it fails to provide you with the means to do so -.-' Same goes for animals which grow bored of their toys so fast that the ones you removed previously don't regain their novelty back fully in time before you have to switch them out again e.g. Elephants.

In conclusion please give us more toy enrichment items or the option to turn this "feature" off, because while I get where it's coming from and it really sounds great in theory, as it is right now the game simply doesn't offer us enough choises to actually make it work...btw an option to assign keepers to exchange toys on a specific schedule would be amazing, too, 'cause like I mentioned earlier it's a pain and close to impossible to do it manually all the time while also managing a larger zoo.
 

yoav_r

yoav_r
Ashen Shugar said:
It feels like the game was designed for a few enclosures, anything larger becomes a micro management nightmare and not fun. I get the artisitc vision of the dev's but it is a game and it is supposed to be fun, The game in in it's current state is not fun.
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Especially when considering that even a "large" zoo in this game, with only ~50 species, can be considered average at best compared to real world zoos.
 

QueenOfTheNorth

QueenOfTheNorth
Yeah the boredom factor of enrichment items kind of gave me mixed feelings. I appreciated that they had gone so far to take realistic animal enrichment to that degree, but its a PITAAA when I have 20 habitats and everyone needs their toys and feeders swapped out so often. Probably a reduction of that sensitivity or removing that feature would be advisable. I know we'll get more enrichment items in the future so I've no concerns there, but agree the sensitivity is causing a bit of a management issue.
 

Jacob1989

J
I've also noticed a change some patches back that makes food enrichment items inadequate no matter how many you place in the habitats. The tortoise challenge this week made it quite noticeable. The habitats were literally littered with enrichment items yet they were never enough.

Another thing is, for animals that don't require many enrichment items in real life, like reptiles, both toy and food enrichment item requirements could be lower as well as the rate they get bored from toy enrichment items. It makes sense many mammals, especially primates, carnivores and elephants require a ton of enrichment that is almost never enough, but this shouldn't apply to some other animals.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Personally I haven't encountered the problem discussed in the OP, but I agree with the overall sentiment. I mentioned something similar in the thread about the 1.1.1 update - one of the community staff reached out to say they took special care when adding the polar bear, but I felt the need to point out that they obviously did this specifically for the polar bear. When it comes to other animals - elephants, great apes, other carnivores as mentioned - the same level of thoughtfulness was not applied. I brought up enrichment specifically - there isn't early enough of it. Elephants and great apes especially need a ton of enrichment in zoos, and it could be anything from a complex climbing frame to a pile of burlap sacks. The whole point is that something new needs to be added to the enclosure to keep the animals interested in the world around them on a regular basis.

A lot of zoos do this 'behind the scenes' as well. They'll put intelligent animals like apes through 'tests' designed to make them think. It provides the added bonus of allowing research to be done on the animal at the same time. I also know of tons of zoos that will have animals like elephants paint pictures, and then they'll sell those pictures (sometimes for profit, no doubt, but that money will often be given over to conservation projects).

I'm not expecting an in-depth system in PZ where we can design complex tests for animals to perform when off-display or whatever, but we definitely need more enrichment items. If for nothing else, then for the spirit of realism and "thinking long and hard about the animals" as they claimed to do for the polar bear.
 

Adarra

A
I was about to write a post about this when I saw this post. YES. Yes to this! Giraffes have only TWO toy enrichment items available and, as the OP said, even when you switch them, it's never enough to bring their welfare above 30 or 25 percent. Same goes for elephants (both species) and several other herbivores. The gorillas have the same issue as well. Strangely enough tigers, lions and cheetahs and other carnivorous animals are barely, if at all, concerned with what toys they get.

Like the OP I get what the reasoning behind it is, but why make it so arbitrary? One animal has a list of literally between 8 and 10 toys to choose from and doesn't even get bored, another animal has only TWO toys to choose from and gets bored almost immediately. There's a large disparity here and it makes the managing aspect of your animals' welfare in certain cases an absolute impossibility, because you simply don't have enough items!
 

Nioell

Nioell
So another thing related to this that happened quite a few times in my zoos now is that the welfare even drops when you add several of the same items. Actually happened again just now, first when placing a second sprinkler in my Orang-Utan (they also need waaay more items added) habitat and then when I put down the second grass scent marker for my tortoises. This is srly starting to feel like some kind of joke...a really bad, terribly annoying and frustrating joke :/
 

Moosegun

Moosegun
Ashen Shugar said:
It feels like the game was designed for a few enclosures, anything larger becomes a micro management nightmare and not fun. I get the artisitc vision of the dev's but it is a game and it is supposed to be fun, The game in in it's current state is not fun.
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Whilst I agree with the thread, some animals defiantly need more enrichment items, if you are struggling with micro then you are not using all the tools provided. It is possible to run even large zoos with minimal micro. Main thing is dont try to breed all your animals, all of the time.

I get very few notifications in my zoo, if an animal is hungry and i go to check one of my keepers is normally on it. The only things i do get are bugs, such as boxed animals.
 

Ashen Shugar

A
I guess it is a matter of which animals you have. Do not have peacocks, no settings will save you, you will get constant habitat needs to be cleaned messages.
 

Adarra

A
Moosegun said:
Whilst I agree with the thread, some animals defiantly need more enrichment items, if you are struggling with micro then you are not using all the tools provided. It is possible to run even large zoos with minimal micro. Main thing is dont try to breed all your animals, all of the time.
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I would love to see what kind of large zoos can manage with only minimal notifications all the time. Besides, the notifications I get aren't from animals that are getting bored, it's from animals that are starving/thirsty/been in box for too long/have escaped/are fighting for alpha status/are about to inbreed. I know those. I can deal with those, they aren't the problem we're discussing. It's about the fact that some animals have decaying 'fun bars' apparently, while others haven't. Very arbitrary. And some animals with decaying 'fun bars' also have far too few toys (like giraffes). They're constantly below 50% toy enrichment because they either have a rubbing pillar or a sprinkler. Wow. Such fun for them. Why can't they use some of the elephant toys as well? Poor animals always feeling bored...
 

Moosegun

Moosegun
Adarra said:
I would love to see what kind of large zoos can manage with only minimal notifications all the time. Besides, the notifications I get aren't from animals that are getting bored, it's from animals that are starving/thirsty/been in box for too long/have escaped/are fighting for alpha status/are about to inbreed. I know those. I can deal with those, they aren't the problem we're discussing. It's about the fact that some animals have decaying 'fun bars' apparently, while others haven't. Very arbitrary. And some animals with decaying 'fun bars' also have far too few toys (like giraffes). They're constantly below 50% toy enrichment because they either have a rubbing pillar or a sprinkler. Wow. Such fun for them. Why can't they use some of the elephant toys as well? Poor animals always feeling bored...
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You have taken my comment out of context though, I am well aware this conversation is about enrichment, my comment was in reply to someone stating that you cannot run large zoo because of micro. I was just saying it is more than possible. I can run my zoo for a whole year without having to really get involved, aside from boxed animals.
 

Adarra

A
I'm genuinely curious how you (not you specifically, but generally speaking) manage that, though, as I said in my post, other than just stopping your animals from breeding. Which to me seems like a serious issue, because Frontier can't expect everyone to create a zoo and then put all their animals on contraceptives just because the food costs are insane and because animals are otherwise starving. Btw, another issue entirely, but I wish my keepers were smart enough to also deal with the whole alpha status thing. Just go in and separate them, darn it! (yes, that's a joke). XD
 

Moosegun

Moosegun
Adarra said:
I'm genuinely curious how you (not you specifically, but generally speaking) manage that, though, as I said in my post, other than just stopping your animals from breeding. Which to me seems like a serious issue, because Frontier can't expect everyone to create a zoo and then put all their animals on contraceptives just because the food costs are insane and because animals are otherwise starving. Btw, another issue entirely, but I wish my keepers were smart enough to also deal with the whole alpha status thing. Just go in and separate them, darn it! (yes, that's a joke). XD
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I play on x5 speed and only breed certain animals, all my workzones are set up and work correctly, so if I do get a notification about hunger etc, when I check it 80% of the time the keeper is already dealing with it. If not, it is just a case of requesting them and they sort it. Apart from bugs such as false escapes (which rarely happen now) or boxed animals, I dont have much micro to do at all.
 
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