I get your point, but I need to agree with others, 8 animals for three continents would be too few (and I absolutely understand the point that Europe isn't a "real" continent), even having a lot of cosmopolitan species. I'm concerned too about species of other regions, specially South America (where I live), Australia and to some point also Africa (particularly Madagascar), as they didn't got the attention they deserved.
Predicting the remaining dlc content
- Thread starter paul78
- Start date
Realizing after the fact that I really should have put Europe at #7 and North America at #9, after the Aviaries, so that the bald eagle can be included in the N. Amer. pack.
According to me:
And maybe that's it. We will be done.
- either North America pack (4+1: puma, moose, Amercian alligator + two other like the wolverine, with Cherookee / Appache items) or boreal pack (that will also includes European animals in an animal pack with no item: lynx, ibex, ...)
- tropical rainforest pack with maybe sloth, gibbon, marmoset, tree kangaroo, another lemur species... will perhaps arrive with the brachiation animations. Some leaks (true or fake) were reported... Great opportunity to include the capibara inthe tropical rainforest pack (highly requested animal)
- desert pack (dromadery camel, armadillo, caracal, striped hyena, ...)
- and eventually, aviary pack we can bet
And maybe that's it. We will be done.
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A boreal pack?
This is almost exactly my thought too, though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they end up combining Europe and North America into one pack - if so, my guess for the freed-up slot would be another biome-based pack (or split out desert and grassland), 'Islands', or some sort of nocturnal pack (possibly wishful thinking on my part - I just want night house stuff and an aye aye at some point!)
And yeah, an endangered species pack would basically just be a fan favourites pack by another name, which I'm all for!
EDIT: If there were to be more packs than this, I would think additional biomes would be the way to go, being a really easy way for the devs to add in popular 'missing' animals from previous packs, without going with 'Australia Pack 2' or whatever (which I think would be tricky from their point of view to not be seen as 'we messed up the first time, here's another go at it!'). Grassland could have maned wolf, emu, any number of African animals, Tropical could have another new world monkey (or two!), a gibbon, red river hog, and so on. If they did end up combining Europe and North America, I would think that a 'Temperate' pack would probably be primarily EU and NA animals.
(Sidenote - future biome packs is my tinfoil hat theory for the disconnect between theme and animals in the Africa Pack - they wanted to do the North Africa building theme, and the seemingly random assortment of African animals to accompany it were those they couldn't find room for in their vague future plans)
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The more I think about it the more I like the idea of 'Eurasia' over just Europe however I think if this happens the asia part should focus on central asia/middle east. This allows for the inclusion of a true wild horse (Onager or Przewalski) along with the European lynx. These two highly requested animals combined make a really solid base for the pack.
There's lots of options for other animals such as the rock hyrax, red fox, European otter, Euopean beaver depending on what goes into the NA pack.
JWE2 just released gameplay with free flying pteranodons in aviary.
Edit: looks like aviary can have whatever size you want, place plants and water inside, modify terrain.
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Do you have a link to that video? I can't find it anywhere, would love to see it.
Source: https://twitter.com/Andrew_Reiner/status/1407037677908729857
One pteranodon rests quietly on the ground.
Hmm...I'm still not convinced, but I'm definitely more hopeful now.
It's hard to tell based on such a small sample, but either way, even if it is looped, it's quite good.
Don't tell me they can't make Aviary Pack after that
!Like I've said before, I'd be fine with looped aviaries in either game, but it's not my preference. It seems like a big coincidence that both fully aquatic reptiles and pterosaurs are making it into JWE at the same time, however. There is a lot to consider with this;
- JWE2 is using an updated engine and sharing assets with PZ.
- PZ got deep diving, and now JWE2 is getting marine reptiles.
- We've theorised that free flight wouldn't be conceptually different from deep diving (practically it would be different, of course).
- Potentially we're getting free flying in JWE2, at the same time as that game's version of "deep diving".
I'm very on the fence here. Free flying does seem like a logical conclusion to reach, but there's still no reason to think it's guaranteed. There's also the point that the aviaries don't actually look very customisable. Every shot of them I've seen so far looks identical, just from different angles.
That's the trade-off though, isn't it? With deep swimming, the ground and/or specific barrier types define the water volume - there needs to be something equivalent to define the air volume. You can't use every building piece to define the aviary volume for the same reason you can't use every building piece to define a water volume - it would be a computational nightmare. Assuming aviaries are customisable, I would assume there are only a limited number of specifically designated aviary roof pieces (maybe even roof and wall to ensure the aviary area is sealed down to the ground), so even if the shape can be different, the overall look of the thing is going to be the same every time.
As far as JWE2 is concerned, the popular theory is that it's modular, so you have a single aviary piece that you can place and then add to with more identical pieces to make the aviary bigger. IMO this doesn't track with the screenshots and videos we've seen but you'd still end up with a bunch of aviaries that are identical except for what's in them, which isn't ideal.
Gotcha. I dunno, I can see that idea working with the limited view of the aviary we've got so far, assuming there's a 'hub' piece and a 'corridor' piece (for want of better words), and you can select which you use at each 'node' of a hub piece (or something like that), but yeah, too small a data set to really draw any conclusions from. Plus, can't see them really using a system like that for PZ - too many pre-build elements, surely?
Yeah, who knows what they'll do for PZ. I have a sinking feeling that nobody is going to be wholly satisfied though.
I mean, look at the exhibits. Personally I love them, and I use them in every zoo (because it isn't a real zoo without them), but the one-size-fits-all style isn't at all versatile.
Source: https://twitter.com/Andrew_Reiner/status/1407056311037087745
"I didn't, but did see how you can design your own aviary. Can place everything within it and expand how big it is."
At a certain point I feel like we're constantly underestimating Frontier here. Diving was theorized by many to be enrichment related, digging wasn't going to happen, etc. I feel like there's a healthy balance that we can find where we don't expect too much, but we also aren't dismissive to the point where we're wilfully ignoring signs. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the sentiment that people expect waaay too much in this community, but I do feel the need to point out that the other way around where we only expect the bare minimum from Frontier doesn't line up with reality either.
I can appreciate your point of view. In my case I'm not underestimating Frontier - I fully think they are capable of giving us free-flying birds. I'm just not convinced we have proof that they're coming. I mean, look, even if the pterosaurs in JWE2 are going to be free-flying, that actually doesn't say anything about PZ. We have people saying "it better be birds in December" or asserting that that is definitely what's coming for Christmas, and time and time again since November 2019 the board has had the bad habit of expecting too much and reacting accordingly when their expectations aren't met. I mean, the JWE2 aviaries are a sort of awkward middle ground between what people have wanted/expected for PZ based on what little information we have on them.