Opinion: Bats are the most worryingly disappointing content added to the game.

[DarthQuell]

I agree with @FoxyDee, @SalamAnders, and @NZFanatic.

In my experience, at the zoo I can barely see the bats anyways, because it's extremely dark. Plus, they dart around in a very small enclosure anyways.

Also, I see bats in the wild all the time, almost every evening. We have Mexican free-tailed bats locally and they don't fly smoothly like a bird would; their flying is sporadic. They twist and turn in the funkiest ways possible and it's fun to watch them. I haven't played the DLC myself, but from the videos I've seen, I'm satisfied with them.

Plus, let's not forget that, like what NZ said, the free flying in JWE 2 is kinda awkward. The pterosaurs fly from point to point, no walking, no enrichment. Even when they attack dinos, guests, and choppers, it seems awkward. Let's add to this: as it is, deep diving, for a very long time, has been awkward and still has some glitches, like phasing through walls. So do normal terrain animals. And the climbing is wonky, as well. Why add to the list of messed up locomotion and add free flying, when it likely would be glitchy and awkward movement? Plus, I doubt you'd be able to distinguish every single loop for a colony of 35 animals

 

[Firestar97]

Only seen them fly around in Circles in the Videos I've seen so far on YouTube, so I've looked the Species up to see how they fly in Real Life.

Source: https://youtu.be/sJquMadKmRk

Despite the Enclosure being so small, they don't fly in Circles but mostly straight with a clear Destination. So it was a really weird Decission to give them Animations like that. Now I really wish they would improve them with new Animations. They could get a Set of looped Animations like:
-eating for a While, then flying to another Place to sleep, after a While fly back and eat
-hanging, fly to another Place and hang there and back after a While
-hanging while socializing
-eating, then flying to the Water Through to drink, then fly back to eat
-drinking, then flying to a Place to hang and back after a While
-hanging, then fly to another Place to eat and back to hanging after a While
-flying to a hanging Bat to socialize (If possible)
-feeding Offspring (If they should decide to add a Baby Model to the Bat but I doubt it because the other Exhibit Animals also don't have one)
-hanging closely together as a Group
-different smaller Animations they can do while hanging (for Example stretching their Wings or as seen in one of the Videos grabbing a Rope with the Wings and let the Feet hang down and then put them back on the Rope)

Other Videos I've watched for Reference:

Source: https://youtu.be/iA6I8JdWUKI

Source: https://youtu.be/qJw0pPTDH98

Source: https://youtu.be/pjybm1J_kUg

As mentioned in the last one, the males are actually larger but I assume adjusting their Size might probably mess too much with the looped Animations. Frontier did a good Job with the Eating Animation though and I'd like a new Education Sign about Pollination, now that we have a pollinating Bat Species

 

[Veah]

Frontier know there's a certain portion of the player base who are dying for flying animals to be added to the game and I just gave the walkthrough exhibit a go and got some bats in there and waited for something to happen and I thought: Well, they're not moving...Oh, I wonder if they've actually programmed the bats to be active at night time!
(Spoilers, they did not).
So I waited for a while longer while the bats did nothing and then it dawned on me, that like other exhibit animals they have their set places that change if you add other animals in the same exhibit. So I threw some more bats in there and was really disappointed to see that Frontier's usual standards for animal behaviours and quality of animations were nowhere to be found here. The short loop of animations is a worrying problem/sign of things to come as they are, but also the way these bats fly looks (and I'm gonna be blunt here for the sake of future attempts on Frontier's part, if you're reading this) just awful.

Seems dramatic but I've just asked Steam for a refund. That's where I'm at.
Disregarding any pondering on what Frontier's intentions were here, including these animals absolutely would be a main draw for people who have been shouting with megaphones to include aviaries and would have sparked their imaginations. I'm just really surprised that even if these animals are confined to exhibits, that they can't go from one set placement on a perch say, fly down to the water tray or over to their food, and that even if they do have looping flying animations, that they are so low quality - at odds with the amount of effort shown to other animals in the game. This is a premium inclusion, you're charging people for this animal.
I'm also very surprised walkthrough exhibits have been added to the game when they don't support functionality with any other animal. If they weren't ready Frontier shouldn't have pulled the trigger on them.

I know this comparison is brought up a lot when talking about flying animals making it into PZ, but this is even worse than JWE1's aviary and I did not think that'd ever be the standard Frontier would be happy with were they to put flying animals in PZ.

The thing is I don't get how you could have not been dissapointed by any other way Frontier could have implemented the bats. As habitat animals they would have a much more clumsy flight because they would have hitboxes and traversable area constraints, and you couldn't have such dense colonies in such small aviaries. In fact, I think your problem is that you don't understand the exhibit system of Planet Zoo. A player can wait for hours watching an exhibit and (almost) any animal will stay in the same spot, they only change their places randomly when you aren't watching, and the great new thing about the bats is that they have animated loops bigger than any other exhibit animal yet. So complaining about watching them being in the same spot all the time is like complaining about your fridge light being switched on all the time. I can agree that their loops could be bigger and make more use of all the space in the aviary, although maybe it's like that so they don't collide with the enrichment items.

I'm all in about improving animal personality, having more animations and more detailed, and all sort of things that make us spend more time just watching our animals moving. But the aim of Planet Zoo is not having you watching all the time the same animal, but managing a collection of lots of animals and building zoo facilities and so on. If you want to see a much more simple zoo management/building but staring at the same pretty animal moving for hours, I advice you to try Zoo Tycoon for Xbox, from this same developer, Frontier. The problem is that ZT for Xbox didn't have bats, and in fact I think that no other zoo game had bats until now, which should also give us an idea of how difficult is to implement them.

 

[Leaf Productions]

My Opinion: The Bats are actually really freaking cool and it gets me even more excited for birds.

 

[becks474]

Flying in a circle is just the easiest way to get an animation from point A back to the same point. I would rather find it strange if the bat would continously fly from one side to the other side. A Goliath Frog also does not swim always in circles. I have already posted it to the "hot takes" thread. But I think some people had too much expectations into the bat especially after it was clear that it is an exhibit animal. It was labeled as an exhibit and in the end we got a more active version than the former exhibits.

 

[DarthQuell]

Personally, I'm happy with how bats turned out, and I'm excited to see flocks of birds coming this way to PZ

 

[paul78]

I agree I think the bats are amazing. I really do prefer this system vs jwe2. I really like jwe2 but the aviary system isn’t one of the reasons. When I watch the mechanics it does seem rather awkward and really don’t see a benefit to using the same system.

 

[Sclurp]

Oh lord, more replies with "you just don't understand actually" and more counterarguments to things I never said. I will get back to y'all tomorrow cos I am tired.

 

[ElectricMonk]

...The short loop of animations is a worrying problem/sign of things to come as they are, but also the way these bats fly looks (and I'm gonna be blunt here for the sake of future attempts on Frontier's part, if you're reading this) just awful.... that they [the flying animations] are so low quality - at odds with the amount of effort shown to other animals in the game.

This is one of those times i feel like I'm playing a different game. IMO, the bats look great (although I haven't had a chance to play with them heaps yet).... Their flying animations are very accurate to how large bats fly. Could they be better? Yes, - Some of the loops are too short so you notice the loop but, on the whole, they're very good. Bats, especially meagachiropterans, are pretty clumsy fliers compared to birds, and from my experience of fruit bats that fly around while I'm walking the dog (albeit a different, much larger species) the animations themselves are spot-on. I was somewhat sceptical, when the bat exhibits were announced, that they'd be good but, on the whole, I'm super happy with them. If small flying birds are treated similarly (as seems likely) I'll be very happy.

I'm also very surprised walkthrough exhibits have been added to the game when they don't support functionality with any other animal. If they weren't ready Frontier shouldn't have pulled the trigger on them.

They don't support functionality for other animals yet, but it seems pretty likely that they will in the near future.

 

[Chuditch]

Bats, especially meagachiropterans, are pretty clumsy fliers compared to birds

Bats in general are actually more agile fliers than birds, thanks to their flexible and more adjustable wings allowing for greater manoeuvrability and reduced drag in the air. Of course, they're hardly perfect...

I agree that the fruit bat's flight in PZ looks very accurate for a megabat though (also have a lot of experience with them thanks to grey-headed flying-foxes flying above my backyard every night), I can see how it's sorta janky in some areas but I imagine it would look way jankier if they were free flying.

 

[Leaf Productions]

Oh lord, more replies with "you just don't understand actually" and more counterarguments to things I never said. I will get back to y'all tomorrow cos I am tired.

idk what you were expecting. you have a post that’s an opinion piece and expecting people to agree with you for nitpicking.

 

[ElectricMonk]

Bats in general are actually more agile fliers than birds, thanks to their flexible and more adjustable wings allowing for greater manoeuvrability and reduced drag in the air. Of course, they're hardly perfect...

By 'clumsy', I didn't mean that they're not agile (I agree that they certainly are - microbats much more than meagbats though), more that they're way of flying looks and sounds clumsier / less efficient than (most) birds - in general (very general) the "flappier" ('clumsier') a bird is, the more manouverable - bats are very flappy. Even a fairly 'flappy' bird will go some distance gliding or using its momentum whereas bats' wings are pretty much constantly in motion.

I agree that the fruit bat's flight in PZ looks very accurate for a megabat though (also have a lot of experience with them thanks to grey-headed flying-foxes flying above my backyard every night), I can see how it's sorta janky in some areas but I imagine it would look way jankier if they were free flying.

Same species as for me (Melbourne) - I think free flying would very likely be jankier and less realistic.

 

[Iben]

Okay. I feel like I'm more in the middle ground here.

I don't agree with the idea that this is the worst possible version of the bats. The more I play with them, the more they grow on me and the more the flaws of the system fade into the background. Once you have a bunch of bats flying around, and especially in the dark, it's even less noticeable. It's an imperfect system but it's not the worst. There's room for improvement, but I think that in general for bats and for animals like butterflies this is a nice compromise.

I agree with what @becks474 said as well. I'm not saying the OP was amongst those people, but there were quite a few people out there who had really wild expectations and were convinced that "we didn't know" that it wasn't going to be like any other exhibit box. Frontier was clear about it from the start by literally calling it an exhibit, so we knew that the inherent flaws that come with that system would also be present here. Not a single system in the game comes without flaws, that's simply because a game is always a compromise of reality.

Now. On the other hand, I do agree that there are some flaws that can be addressed. There are loops that are really noticeable. There is some clipping where there really shouldn't be any. You don't have to stare at the bats for a long time to see that, when you put in just 5 bats it is clearly visible that some loops are really short and then it becomes repetitive quite easily even if you're watching them for less than half a minute (yes, this isn't the case when you put in more, but you shouldn't have to put in more). This isn't really nitpicking, because it is pretty much right in front of your face.

If ( and I stress the if part here a lot, because I'm not nearly as convinced anymore that birds are guaranteed ) this system is going to be used for birds, these flaws will need fixing. These are things that will need to be improved. If you have an aviary with large macaws in them and one of them constantly flies in a circle whilst the others are perched, that will become extremely obvious and it won't look as good.

As long as we can discuss this with each other in a reasonable fashion then I think it should be perfectly fine to point out these flaws and not be happy with it. We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all play the game in the same way. As long as people voice their "negative" opinion in a reasonable and constructive manner, and with that I mean not going "TIZ SUCKZ U SHOULD FEEL BAD" and not beating a dead horse over and over and over again, we shouldn't just counter it with "nah these are great what are you talking about". Because I'm not going to lie here, I've seen too many takes already where it's like "here's why you're wrong for not being happy with the bats" and I don't agree that that is good way of discussing things with each other.

 

[Firestar97]

If you have an aviary with large macaws in them and one of them constantly flies in a circle whilst the others are perched, that will become extremely obvious and it won't look as good.

That's why I've suggested completely new Animation Loops for flying where the Animals sit, eat or drink for a While, then fly to another Place, do something there and then fly back so the Loop can start again. The only Reason I can see why it shouldn't be implemented like that would be if the Animation Loops would only allow a very short Time Limit. Flying in a very small Circle looks just too much like a sick or disoriented Animal. I hope if we get Macaws they will also have some nice Climbing Animations.

"TIZ SUCKZ U SHOULD FEEL BAD"

Thanks for putting a Smile on my Face. That's hilarious

Bats in general are actually more agile fliers than birds, thanks to their flexible and more adjustable wings allowing for greater manoeuvrability and reduced drag in the air. Of course, they're hardly perfect...

I agree that the fruit bat's flight in PZ looks very accurate for a megabat though (also have a lot of experience with them thanks to grey-headed flying-foxes flying above my backyard every night), I can see how it's sorta janky in some areas but I imagine it would look way jankier if they were free flying.

Thanks, didn't know that they bump into each other while flying

If they are supposed to look that much better if many of them are flying in the same Exhibit, can someone show Footage of a Exhibit that has the maximal Group Size of Bats in it? Only seen Videos with relatively few in it

 

[Xificayd]

I don't agree at all with your post, bats are an amazing addition and if you didn't expect them to be looped, as an exhibit animals then it's your own fault for not understanding the game better. It is the opposite infact of your post, this atleast paves the way for future flying birds, which so many of us were hoping for.

I, as well as many other players prefer having looped flying animals over a. no flying animals at all or b. buggy free flying animals that lag in the air, like how the free climbing sometimes lags or even c. the RAM going crazy over how much memory the calculation of free flying would need, thus a huge fps drop would make the game unplayable.

Full free flying is a very complex mechanic and something which seems to me as a core mechanic which neeeds to be implemented from the start to the game and not in a later update.

Be glad we got what we got and that the looping looks good, rather than having nothing or a worse system.

 

[Firestar97]

I don't agree at all with your post, bats are an amazing addition and if you didn't expect them to be looped, as an exhibit animals then it's your own fault for not understanding the game better. It is the opposite infact of your post, this atleast paves the way for future flying birds, which so many of us were hoping for.

I, as well as many other players prefer having looped flying animals over a. no flying animals at all or b. buggy free flying animals that lag in the air, like how the free climbing sometimes lags or even c. the RAM going crazy over how much memory the calculation of free flying would need, thus a huge fps drop would make the game unplayable.

Full free flying is a very complex mechanic and something which seems to me as a core mechanic which neeeds to be implemented from the start to the game and not in a later update.

Be glad we got what we got and that the looping looks good, rather than having nothing or a worse system.

I think the Main Problem this Person has is the same as what I think could be better. The flying Animation itself looks fine but the Loop it is in just looks way too unrealistic. Bats don't fly in small Circles like that. At least not in the Footage of this Species that I have watched

 

[Chuditch]

I think the Main Problem this Person has is the same as what I think could be better. The flying Animation itself looks fine but the Loop it is in just looks way too unrealistic. Bats don't fly in small Circles like that. At least not in the Footage of this Species that I have watched

I've just been playing with them in-game myself for the first time. Some of them do indeed have rather small and circular flying loops that aren't very noticeable when viewing from afar amongst other bats but are when you focus in on them for more than a short period of time. However, there are also significantly longer loops in which a bat will fly over a large portion of the exhibit before circling back (and sometimes landing too), and those are more fun to watch and look less obvious as loops. I hope we see more like that, although I'm personally pretty happy with the loop quality regardless.

 

[Firestar97]

I've just been playing with them in-game myself for the first time. Some of them do indeed have rather small and circular flying loops that aren't very noticeable when viewing from afar amongst other bats but are when you focus in on them for more than a short period of time. However, there are also significantly longer loops in which a bat will fly over a large portion of the exhibit before circling back (and sometimes landing too), and those are more fun to watch and look less obvious as loops. I hope we see more like that, although I'm personally pretty happy with the loop quality regardless.

Just seen it myself because I've searched on YouTube again and came across this Video

Source: https://youtu.be/g5mMQtdEPu4

At the End one can be seen that has a really big Animation Loop. I hope there are many more of those bigger Loops. 10 properly flying at once would probably already be satisfying enough. After seeing that long Loops also exist I became more excited again about them and wish I could already build a Exhibit for them. Even better if you consider the Fact that you can have hundreds of them (even though sadly not very close together) by using Null Barriers to connect the Exhibits to a bigger one (If bigger normal Exhibits shouldn't be added for some Reason I want at least this Option for the smaller ones too. Would also allow me to build some nice Mini Ponds for Terrapins and Bullfrogs If we would also get a Way to somehow put them into proper Ponds and Lakes then it would be absolutely awesome)

 

[random goat]

My Opinion: The Bats are actually really freaking cool and it gets me even more excited for birds.

Sorry but you're not entitled to an opinion. C'mon you're just a leaf!

Now seriously:
I am also on the grey zone here.
I quite agree with the sentiment of the OP that the system has some flaws and that it is a bit odd that it took them 3 years to develop an exhibit with not much complexity compared to the previous ones.

Even for bats the new exhibit feels a bit shallow. Yes, an exhibit with looped animations is probably the best system for this kind of animal, I can agree on that. But even within the current set up, this needs to be improved a lot, like NZFanatic emphasised in another thread. Null barriers is great, but that is not enough. The size (particularly the height) of the exhibit is just unrealistically gigantic and, similarly to what happens with the other exhibits, the lack of different shapes and sizes is glaring. You really have to be a building genius like Iben or DanXG to really make your exhibit stand out, otherwise it will look pretty much the same in every zoo, which is lame.

But my main gripe is indeed the loops. Look, I’m not even asking for free-flying for these animals. But by all means the loops need to be less noticeable. Not only should there be a wider range of loops but, most importantly, animals should be able to change from one loop to another (A to B, B to C, C to A, etc.) on the go, not just when you’re off camera. And in this regard I have to disagree with what some people have said here regarding this issue being less noticeable with bigger numbers or in the dark. Sure, it does help, but even in potentially the best and darkest PZ bat exhibit that we’ll ever witness (Koali one) I could easily notice the loops after just 20-30 seconds staring at them.

Now, extrapolating this to birds is something that I refuse to do because we really don’t know how it’ll work. If anything, all the above should be more taken into account to make a significantly improved system for our feathered frieds.

 

[Firestar97]

Sorry but you're not entitled to an opinion. C'mon you're just a leaf!

Exactly. Leaves don't have Rights

The size (particularly the height) of the exhibit is just unrealistically gigantic and, similarly to what happens with the other exhibits, the lack of different shapes and sizes is glaring

I like the current Size but I see the Point. When I search Egyptian Fruit Bat on YouTube the Real Life Exhibits aren't that high. In my Opinion there should be the one with 8 Meter Height (Bat Caves, Aviarys....) and a Exhibit that is 4 Meters high for normal Indoor Exhibits

most importantly, animals should be able to change from one loop to another (A to B, B to C, C to A, etc.) on the go, not just one you’re off camera

Absolutely agree. I understand if it might not be possible but if Frontier could manage to do this, it would be absolutely awesome

or in the dark

Regarding that, we should have a Option to completely block out all natural Light from the Exhibit so we can create proper Nocturnal House Exhibits without needing to dig 30m into the Ground

Now, extrapolating this to birds is something that I refuse to do because we really don’t know how it’ll work. If anything, all the above should be more taken into account to make a significantly improved system for our feathered frieds.

For a Maccaw I could see a Example regarding switching between different Animations like: First Animation
-Bird climbs up
Then the Options for the Continuation from that one into another Animation might be:
-Bird sits
-Bird walks on the Branch until it reaches the Food Bowl and eats or drinks
-Bird flys somewhere else

Bird flys somewhere else could then continue with the Change to other Animations like
-Bird flys to another Branch
-Bird flys to another Bird to socialize
-Bird flys to a Nesting Box or hollow Tree and goes inside
-Bird flys to the Ground
-Bird flys to a Bird Bath