Idk 35 aviary birds base game feels rather excessive.
If i had to guess id say like 10 base game, and those would probably not all the big names and more like stuff like african grey parrot and golden eagle. That way they would have macaws, bald eagle and stuff to use as sellers for the dlcs.
What about generic small birds that wouldn't sell well in DLCs and you can reuse the same rig? There are hundreds of smaller bird species they could choose from as any bird lover would know. Just look at the specie list from Walsrode or Singapore Mandai Bird Paradise. Larger and more iconic birds can be saved for DLCs.
Also how would people feel if the basegame had like 120 ish animals, mostly consisting of returning ones plus a couple fish/birds and they release a couple animal packs alongside it at release. I imagine those being made up of alot of the animals from the last 2-3 years, like idk a "Legacy expansion" featuring a grab bag of 20 animals, maybe including a new one or two to sweeten the deal, for 15 bucks.
Because im really not sure how you could reasonably fit (from a business point of view) 200~ animals, plus all the stuff we got over the years aswell as all the new stuff into a base game that still has to go for a reasonable price.
I mean a basegame that costs like over a hundred dollars is probably gonna scare alot of people of.
A Deluxe Edition would make sense containing 100 animals from PZ1 DLCs. It can cost $30. I think a one or nothing deluxe edition would be more profitable for Frontier forcing people to buy all the animals or nothing at all.
The base game ($59) should contain 25 generic small fish and 10 coral species (reusing rigs). This is enough for building a small realistic zoo aquarium. 35 small flying birds (reusing the small bird rig) would be needed to build adequate aviaries in different biomes (tropical, temperate, taiga, ect).
10 new small mammal exhibits (allowing one to build a small mammal house), 5 new monkeys, 5 new land/water birds, 5 new exhibit reptiles, 5 new amphibians, 5 new insects. Plus the base game PZ1 animals for roughly 200 species total. That way you can build a realistic zoo with just the base game. The base game should contain a lot of generic animals that zoos typically have, but aren't iconic enough to sell in DLCs.
I would be very disappointed if Frontier released PZ2 with the same roster as PZ1 "plus a couple fish/birds", because you can't really do anything with a few flying bird species and fish. It's not immersive at all and the PZ2 base game offers an opportunity to add less popular but very important species to the roster (which Frontier did to an extent for the original PZ1). These animals can't be profitably added in DLCs but they are needed for PZ2 to be at a level above PZ1 in immersion.
