First they took away the outfit rewards. They said the rewards had changed, that we'd have to participate to find out. The only thing that changed was their removal of the outfits. They didn't bother announcing on their Facebook page when the newest challenge started. They didn't give us anything new with the final rewards. All I got were the same old gold star animals. A Himalayan bear, a Japanese macaque, and a giant panda. Nothing special about them. I checked their stats, nothing different there from the previous rewards. They just don't want to be bothered anymore with setting up rewards. Therefore, I can only guess that they've given up on the challenges entirely. They'll keep them going, but nothing all that great will come from them. I could have gotten these animals for less cc than I spent for the challenge.
Planet Zoo has obviously given up on their Community Challenges
- Thread starter liondreamer
- Start date
Tinfoil-hat-time: Frontier is about to run out of puns to name the challenges but they need a better reason to stop them. Thus they decided to make it more unattractive.
On a more serious note: neither the animals nor the CC were ever a worthwhile reward. Of the challenges I participated, I always played them until I got the hat, which rewarded me with two or three animals. Out of the around 20 animals I won, 2 were usefull. The rest were useless because of their poor stats and the better animals I already owned.
Frontier really needs to add something attractive to the loot pool if they want to keep the player engaged. Otherwise, not only the challenge but the whole franchise mode is in jeopardy
On a more serious note: neither the animals nor the CC were ever a worthwhile reward. Of the challenges I participated, I always played them until I got the hat, which rewarded me with two or three animals. Out of the around 20 animals I won, 2 were usefull. The rest were useless because of their poor stats and the better animals I already owned.
Frontier really needs to add something attractive to the loot pool if they want to keep the player engaged. Otherwise, not only the challenge but the whole franchise mode is in jeopardy
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I really loved the outfit rewards. They were my main reason for doing the challenges. Especially since most of the animal rewards were fairly common and easy to get.
The outfit rewards were bound to end some time. We already had a large selection of animal outfits.
Not a big surprise.
With the amount of animals, you know at some point they've done all animals and maybe have to repeat a few rewards.
Maybe they have to create new ones or saving a couple for a different period.
Not pleased with the change, didn't participate in the last 2 challenges.
I think some got 1 albino, others had a 100% animal included and some were unlucky by receiving the regular golden animals.
I think the only thing we can do, is suggest reasonable rewards for the challenge. And hopefully they keep those suggestions in mind, when/if they decide to change it.
Not a big surprise.
With the amount of animals, you know at some point they've done all animals and maybe have to repeat a few rewards.
Maybe they have to create new ones or saving a couple for a different period.
Not pleased with the change, didn't participate in the last 2 challenges.
I think some got 1 albino, others had a 100% animal included and some were unlucky by receiving the regular golden animals.
I think the only thing we can do, is suggest reasonable rewards for the challenge. And hopefully they keep those suggestions in mind, when/if they decide to change it.
There was a time when I had franchise zoos dedicated to breeding as many animals for the challenge as possible. Some were easier than others, releasing gorillas I felt was particularly frustrating. By the end I was just buying them off the market to release in order to get my outfit. A long time has passed since then and I've been playing a lot less since.
I think the initial attraction of outfits for me was that my avatar would be seen wearing my accomplishment in other peoples zoos and I could see other people wearing silly outfits in mine. It's a small aspect of community that was a good beginning. It probably should have been built on but instead I feel it has been pulled away from. Other community oriented aspects that were present at the start, like the record size and ages of animals have been overlooked, forgotten about, and were bugged for a very long time.
Visiting friends zoos would be an interesting idea if it coincided with the release of statues/scenery items awarded for the completion of community challenges. I've gotten a lot of animals from the community rewards, but I don't think I've ever used them. When you reach the stage where you are able to breed/release enough to get the animal rewards, you have generally outgrown the need for them, and that, to me, sadly feels like an issue with the decision makers not playing or understanding this particular aspect of their own game.
I think the initial attraction of outfits for me was that my avatar would be seen wearing my accomplishment in other peoples zoos and I could see other people wearing silly outfits in mine. It's a small aspect of community that was a good beginning. It probably should have been built on but instead I feel it has been pulled away from. Other community oriented aspects that were present at the start, like the record size and ages of animals have been overlooked, forgotten about, and were bugged for a very long time.
Visiting friends zoos would be an interesting idea if it coincided with the release of statues/scenery items awarded for the completion of community challenges. I've gotten a lot of animals from the community rewards, but I don't think I've ever used them. When you reach the stage where you are able to breed/release enough to get the animal rewards, you have generally outgrown the need for them, and that, to me, sadly feels like an issue with the decision makers not playing or understanding this particular aspect of their own game.
This whole community-challenge-thing is what I would call "grind". And grinding is no fun at all (in no game). There is enough of stupid repetitive work for me to do in my daily tasks around house and garden, so that I need no more stupid repetitive work in games. There is no "reward" I can think of, which would make this type of "communitiy-challenge" appealing to me (and for sure not silly looking costumes for my silly looking avatar 
). I am participating in community-challenge because I do automatically participate (like in the "normal" challenges, which are no real challenges neither, but tasks to distract me from things I like to do ingame. Mostly I won't even look at them.) I won't play in another way as I would normally do (and even so I made it to the upper third ).
The only thing which makes franchise attractive to me is the possibility of buying animals from other players: animals with reasonably good stats and the colour I want (normal or "special"). That's the only reason for me to play franchise from time to time. The rest of franchise is not to my flavour - too much micromanagement and too much lag.
). I am participating in community-challenge because I do automatically participate (like in the "normal" challenges, which are no real challenges neither, but tasks to distract me from things I like to do ingame. Mostly I won't even look at them.) I won't play in another way as I would normally do (and even so I made it to the upper third ).The only thing which makes franchise attractive to me is the possibility of buying animals from other players: animals with reasonably good stats and the colour I want (normal or "special"). That's the only reason for me to play franchise from time to time. The rest of franchise is not to my flavour - too much micromanagement and too much lag.
I agree with this. Grinding is no fun at all, that is why i don't like the 'breed/release x animals' challenges.
I also like the possibility to buy animals from other players, because the animals in sandbox have no good stats and have almost all the time way to many scars. And color variants are also never for sale.
This whole community-challenge-thing is what I would call "grind". And grinding is no fun at all (in no game). There is enough of stupid repetitive work for me to do in my daily tasks around house and garden, so that I need no more stupid repetitive work in games. There is no "reward" I can think of, which would make this type of "communitiy-challenge" appealing to me (and for sure not silly looking costumes for my silly looking avatar
The only thing which makes franchise attractive to me is the possibility of buying animals from other players: animals with reasonably good stats and the colour I want (normal or "special"). That's the only reason for me to play franchise from time to time. The rest of franchise is not to my flavour - too much micromanagement and too much lag.
Avatar costumes somewhat worked for me. Some look great and some are less interesting. I understand that the avatar costumes don't work as a reward for a lot of people.
Statues/trophy building pieces could work for me. So I can dedicate a building or path to my achievements
(the only problem is that sandbox/offline franchise players are "forced" to play online franchise)
I think the grinding part has been improved on with the newer challenges. The "only breed/release this species" slowly became less interesting. Felt like a grind with some animals. Or took too much time of my weekly playing time. At least with the primates, you can try to incorporate this in a current zoo and pick certain species.
The Giant Panda challenge costume is one I didn't complete (not that much time for PZ) and required a more attention than the lions.
I also have a few that I didn't have time to complete. Honestly I wouldn't mind the cycling/looping of costume rewards for future challenges if we are really out of new costumes.
But in game the costumes are worth nothing. I mean, in your zoo they are of no use.. And i realy dont like those simple shorts and shirts
It would be nice if we unlocked the hats not only for our avatar, but for the hat shop for the guests as well.
But even the the best rewards won't help the shortcomings of the current community challenge. Especially the moving reward thresholds combined with grinding results in a very unfulfilling experience. I guess Community Rat Race would have been a better fitting name for the current system.
But even the the best rewards won't help the shortcomings of the current community challenge. Especially the moving reward thresholds combined with grinding results in a very unfulfilling experience. I guess Community Rat Race would have been a better fitting name for the current system.
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Guess I'm a collector. At the end of the day it depends on the kind of person you are.
That being said, I'm not implying the type of rewards should be limited to what we had/have right now. I agree that the challenges should be more rewarding to keep the community more active and involved; but I don't think removing existing reward types is going to be effective in that. It will result in even less people getting involved.
Instead, newer, more creative rewards could be incorporated into the reward system, in addition to the already existing rewards like costumes and CC. Not to mention 25-250 CC not having any appeal, especially this late into the community challenges. It needs to be at least x10 the current amount. Ideally more. Even then, I agree that more creative and rewarding ideas in the form of objects for your zoos in the long run is necessary.
Edit: This week's albino and 4x100% animal rewards were a good starting point. However, each addition to the reward system would be constructive only if the existing ones (like costumes) were to stay. Yet we still don't know if we won't get new costumes in the future. The current situation might be related to the pandemic.
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I agree with that Idea. It bothers me that I can only sell 4 Hats in my Souvenir-Shop and I don't even keep most of these Animals in my Zoos.
One of the Animals of which the Guests can buy a Hat isn't even in the Game yet (Rhinoceros with 2 Horns)
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Hey @liondreamer. Sorry to say, that's absolutely not the case at all. Thanks to the move to working from home, the team have had to shift priorities on tasks lately. The reason we didn't make a big deal about the rewards changing to albinos for the time being is because the costumes are coming back, although they will be slightly different. We also didn't post on our social channels on the 2nd and 3rd of this month out of respect for the Black Lives Matter movement. It has nothing to do with us not being bothered anymore, which I can say is not true. The costumes will be coming back soon, and we'd appreciate being given more time to work on them. Thanks for expressing your concerns.
First of all, it sounds like you're chastising me. Second of all, nothing at all was conveyed to us about the change being temporary. It was conveyed as a change in rewards. We were also not told that not everyone would be getting the albinos. While you may not have posted on the 2nd and 3rd, you certainly posted on the 1st, which is when the challenge started. You could also have made a simple post letting us know you were supporting Black Lives Matter instead of just silence, which told us absolutely nothing about the lack of posting. You can chastise me for how I feel, but I am NOT the only one who feels this way. If you had simply communicated with your customers, then we wouldn't be feeling abandoned. You know what we were told about the rewards change? "What's in it for you? The rewards have changed... see for yourself by joining in!" Does that sound temporary to you? Have you not seen the posts where others are giving up on challenges because they feel the same way I do? Before you tell me you'd appreciate being given more time to work on the costume changes, then maybe you should start keeping us informed so we can understand and then we'd be happy to give you that time. I'm sorry, but your response to me has made me go from feeling abandoned to feeling upset. Without taking into account how little was conveyed to your customers, you felt you had to slap my hand for not being understanding of things we were not informed about. Thank you for explaining the situations that we had not been told about, but no thank you for your attitude, which kind of proves the point of those of us who have felt cast aside in the game.
I kind of agree that Frontier can't blame a large amount of players for assuming that outfits were going to just be gone. Until today (and I think 1 other day this week), the impression was not that they would be making a return.
These are the posts we had to go on for a while, which gave 2 impressions:
1. We would not be getting outfits from franchise challenges anymore
2. There were currently no plans to bring them back
We know now that that isn't the case, but we had no way of knowing before. That's why topics like this have popped up since then
You are absolutely right! The community manager's response to you was demeaning and I was quite surprised to see that kind of response. She basically said "shut up and know things that we never let you know!" As the post above me shows, we were indeed led to believe this change in rewards was not a temporary thing. I am upset along with you at Frontier's utter lack of communication on future plans and the community manager's response here. I expect better from someone whose role is community manager.
As it was quoted by someone else a few message earlier, you cannot tell us this when you are the one who told us there won't be any outfits anymore. Also the "surprise change in reward, participate to see what it is !" was a total FLOP and you seems to completely disregard this. How many challenges have not been fulfilled since the start ? Not so many, and this was mostly due to a communication issue where players had to do YOUR job because we wanted to keep the community and challenges alive.
I am glad there will be new kind of outfits and of course I am eager to give you all the time you need, but your answer disregard so many aspects of the problem it is almost insulting...
Among the problems cited, there were :
- communication issue (great to not post for two days in support of BLM, but the last weeks do not resolve at only two days so it sounds more like a poor excuse than an answer)
- repetetive challenges : people are less and less eager to participate due to challenges being always the same
- not interesting enough rewards : the removal of outfits was a problem (yet you could have go with old outfits saying you are giving new players an exclusive chance to get them or complete their outfit !), but the CC and animals rewards are also a problem. It seems that there were more people mad about having albinos than people who were happy too !
In conclusion : you made a big mistake with the community challenges. It's okay, you are human, but to rectify a mistake you do not ignore or worse, look down on your community, you explain yourself and try to do better. I am happy to read that you are not "abandoning" us but your words themselves sound contradictory so you can't blame us for feeling this way. Please do communicate, and in a positive way. If we are here and complaining, it's because we love this game and we want it to always improve and to not drown !
Communication has not exactly been Frontiers strong suit for a very very long time.