Quality of Life Improvements Wishlist

[crowmeleon]

I'll be updating this thread as I go. Trying to focus on QOL improvements alone since there seem to be plenty of threads for other stuff. Listing literally everything I can think of because I know many of these won't be implementable, especially by release.

• Please fix: Don't have to keep cursor over whatever value you're typing in (I've accidentally bumped my mouse so many times)
• Automatically bring up the info window for any animals or staff you select from the overview tab (The overview is huge so if you just locate them it's impossible to click them until you close it. And when you have 20 baby nile lizards on the screen at one time it's sill impossible to know which is the right one) or include a 'select' button next to the 'locate' button
• Ability to select incompatible flora and fauna directly from the habitat page of an animal's info window, or from an habitat overview (basically especially with small things like vines it can be incredibly difficult to find)
• Show the genetic medals of animals on the overview screen (Again the 20 baby problem where I'm trying to quickly move the individuals I'm releasing based on genetics but it's incredibly time-consuming) or have another column that shows it (would be cool if when you mouse over it shows the genetics bars)
• Option to 'lock' your filters in the marketplace so if you're watching for a specific type of animal you don't have to reselect your filters every time (would also lessen the impact of marketplace lag)
• Ability to compare genetics between animals (this wouldn't really be needed if this information could be viewed from the animal overview tab)
• Option to mute educational speakers for yourself

Edit adds:

• DEFINITELY add the option to be alerted when an animal reaches adulthood. PLEASE let us automatically schedule animals to be sent to the trade center when they grow up, or let there be like a 3 month grace period where adult animals don't attack each other. A 3 month grace period after an animal returns from the vet would be nice as well (a hurt animal isn't going to go looking for many fights irl). I would also suggest that animals on their way to the vet be able to be sent to the trade center, but they automatically get sent AFTER being healed (to avoid the cycle of fighting animals sent to vet getting put back in their habitat and fighting again before you catch it)
• Make the NULL fence indicators higher and easier to see through terrain. Trying to adjust or connect to a NULL fence post hidden in terrain is very difficult atm. I would like if the indicators were just a bit higher and easier to snap to, when trying to enclose a habitat or repair a habitat border
• Reduce the number of diseases. Or do some very serious playtesting on how they affect scalability. Right now I am slightly concerned. Research is fun because of all the new things you unlock. Diseases adds some fun challenge, but it's just that, challenge. There is no tangible reward from the action. It's basically the equivalent of spreadsheet management, which is a fun dash of spice but can be overwhelming if it requires 'babysitting'.
• Merge vet research and maintenance research alerts. This will be doubly important once illnesses get implemented.
• Ability to cycle through animals of a species in an exhibit. Would be really nice if you cycled with an animal selected it cycled through members of the same species, if you had a habitat selected you cycled through exhibits, if you selected a staff member it cycled through other staff members of the same type etc much convenience from one hotkey, improved scalability of your zoo
• If I have one tab of an animal/staff members info window open then select another animal/staff, keep the info window on the same tab (for the new animal/staff) instead of moving it to the first one. This makes it much easier when I'm moving around comparing genetics or different well-being stats.Even if this was on a timer (if you select another animal within 30s, then it keeps the same window open but otherwise goes to the main)
• Some way to make vets/mechanics return to the same research project after taking a break. Unsure if this is supposed to happen but it seems to be inconsistent for me. I believe at this point staff members return after a break but it would be nice if they automatically started on the next level of research if they finished one
• Change all staff member of a particular level's salary at once (Right now it takes so many clicks to move them up into the next bracket it's kind of annoying when you have like 5 employees to level up)
• If you open zoopedia from trade vender, open it to the animal you opened the zoopedia from rather than just the first in the list.
• Some way to see the habitat requirements for an animal before you move them into the zoo
• Ability to toggle contraception from the animal overview tab, and to toggle it proactively in juveniles (very easy to miss when animals become adults, and if I miss my nile lizards growing up suddenly all the females are pregnant and I can't release them until they have THEIR babies) You can do this, it seems
• Ability to filter what types of terrain you paint over
• When you hover over the rewards for different tiers of research, have a mouseover or some way to tell what all those icons actually mean

Controversial Balance Opinions for time and zoo scaling:
All of these adjustments are things that need to be ever so slightly tuned. Even just 10% changes would make a huge difference
A) I'm hearing the game is too slow, but I feel the current speed was chosen to make the genetics and conservation point system even slightly viable. As it stands you basically are forced to choose between asking things to be slower to be able to connect with your animals or the current system so the genetics and conservation point systems are still worth engaging with. To compromise:

• Reduce the rate of animals fighting each other. Anyone sensible is going to try and move one, but right now it's very difficult to do that without babysitting one exhibit
• I do feel the time could be slowed down just a little bit so things didn't feel so hectic, and things wouldn't 'hit the fan' faster than you could recognize and address them.
• Increase the conservation points earned by releasing animals. Reward conservation points for them being born, too. Tentative crossout. Breeding lions the rate seems to be much more reasonable but if things were slowed down I would bump it up a little
• Decrease prices of animals being sold on the marketplace for conservation points and make the most expensive animals for conservation points more valuable (better genetics, younger). I would skew the current price distribution to the right (more cheaper animals, but a few still expensive but better ones)
• Skew the probability distribution of genetic outcomes to the left. So you're more likely to get improvements and therefore have to go through fewer generations to get improvements, but poor outcomes are still possible. This encourages becoming attached to individual animals rather than having to move to the next generation so quickly to make any genetic improvements while still maintaining risk.
• Essentially 'slow down the game' isn't just the /running/ speed, because decreasing the rate a player can earn conservation points/make genetic progress

B) Decrease the brood size of animals that give birth to more than 10 young. Honestly anything more than 15 is almost impossible to manage. Or I suppose it is possible, just very much not fun. I only had a few exhibits, I can't imagine it fares any better as a park scales. The game doesn't adhere perfectly to realism, and even if it did, you could argue that real animals have a higher juvenile death rate than is represented by game mechanics. I believe this has been changed. My tortoises had 2 young which is oh my goodness so much more manageable.
C) SLIGHTLY increase tortoise speed. Just a little bit, maybe 5%. Right not they're so slow it makes it hard to give them an appropriately sized exhibit without running the risk of them stranding themselves. Especially the babies. OR have their needs decay slower.

 

[crowmeleon]

I've gone ahead and added a few more, and have bolded all the ones I personally feel would make the biggest impact on my experience. Anyone else please feel free to add any QOL improvements you can think of.

 

[CarnivorousJellybean]

The tortoise thing. I had one of my tortoises starve to death after being added to the habitat because it chose the food enrichment on the opposite side of the habitat instead of the food trough right beside it.