Refunds
- Thread starter fraser11
- Start date
My "new" franchise zoo that I started because the other one was so much in the red after the update is still doing awesome with profits of over 100k a year and I'm past like year 25 or more and it's gotten quite large.
I've only had 3 years so far with high refunds. Those years all correspond to an animal escaping due to the glitch that phases them through barriers (and in one case through terrain, the warthog was under the terrain map...). When an animal escapes, all of the people that run away seem to demand a refund, even if they were completely happy.
So, for me at least, this issue is directly tied to the animal-escaping glitch. It's the only time my refunds have spiked up at all.
This was my last profit/loss report, and the 2 years previous to this both had an escape, luckily my visitors are so spread out throughout the zoo (and I set 4500 as a visitor cap) so the refunds were 3x lower than what was hitting my last zoo.:
I've only had 3 years so far with high refunds. Those years all correspond to an animal escaping due to the glitch that phases them through barriers (and in one case through terrain, the warthog was under the terrain map...). When an animal escapes, all of the people that run away seem to demand a refund, even if they were completely happy.
So, for me at least, this issue is directly tied to the animal-escaping glitch. It's the only time my refunds have spiked up at all.
This was my last profit/loss report, and the 2 years previous to this both had an escape, luckily my visitors are so spread out throughout the zoo (and I set 4500 as a visitor cap) so the refunds were 3x lower than what was hitting my last zoo.:
I'm going to join in on this topic, everything seemed fine at first but suddenly the refunds started to rise to an insane amount!
Some animals escaped by glitching through the walls, ok that can happen, but this didn't happen every year, but this refund stuff is bleeding my zoo dry, I went from 4 mil down to below 2.5 mil. Zoo reputation appears 5 stars, only guest happiness is 4.5 stars, so the refunds don't feel justified at all.
If I'm honest I feel like animal feeding costs and staff wages are already insanely high, and would love to see them reduced too. The vendors in the shops cost me more than I make in a year from these shops, if i raise the price the guests complain and if I place more shops, the guest will demand even more but don't seem to buy enough to counter the upkeep costs from that alone, pretty silly. It is a game, so we should enjoy it, but I;m now at a stage where i need to micromanage everything, keeping me from building/ enjoying my zoo. Got 24 Habitats, 4 exhibits and in some habitats, multiple animals, 242 animals total, including those I have in the trade center. The zoo is almost 148 years old now. Yes it is Franchise, so it has to have some form of difficulty, but it shouldn't be holding people back by ridiculous costs.
Some animals escaped by glitching through the walls, ok that can happen, but this didn't happen every year, but this refund stuff is bleeding my zoo dry, I went from 4 mil down to below 2.5 mil. Zoo reputation appears 5 stars, only guest happiness is 4.5 stars, so the refunds don't feel justified at all.
If I'm honest I feel like animal feeding costs and staff wages are already insanely high, and would love to see them reduced too. The vendors in the shops cost me more than I make in a year from these shops, if i raise the price the guests complain and if I place more shops, the guest will demand even more but don't seem to buy enough to counter the upkeep costs from that alone, pretty silly. It is a game, so we should enjoy it, but I;m now at a stage where i need to micromanage everything, keeping me from building/ enjoying my zoo. Got 24 Habitats, 4 exhibits and in some habitats, multiple animals, 242 animals total, including those I have in the trade center. The zoo is almost 148 years old now. Yes it is Franchise, so it has to have some form of difficulty, but it shouldn't be holding people back by ridiculous costs.
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I lost so much money on refunds. My zoo was making easily 90,000 a year and the all of a sudden it was loosing money, to losing nearly 50,000 in a year all due to refunds. Loosing nearly 60,00p because of then.
I closed the zoo untill about half the people left on 3x speed and then opened the zoo again. The refunds stopped and I the made 106,000 in the next year.
Hope this helps
I closed the zoo untill about half the people left on 3x speed and then opened the zoo again. The refunds stopped and I the made 106,000 in the next year.
Hope this helps
This person isnt actually happy though, he is really thirsty and saw too much vandalised things. I dont agree he should ask for a refund, as mechs should be better at fixing vandalised items and for me thirst is currently too harsh. That is the reason none the less.
Still not 100% sure if there is actually any 'bug' or a combination of other issues, barriers not working, staff paths and possibly some sort of change difficulty, hard for me to tell because part of the issue in my zoo was self inflicted, I opened a new sector of my zoo without enough facilities.
The best way to fix it would be to;
- Fix barrier bug
- Fix staff path bug
- Increase the range and volume of bins (so less litter dropped)
- Increase the performance of cleaners slightly
- Improve pathing to drinks stalls and slightly decrease the speed of thirst decline
- Fix mechs fixing vandalised items - this is a massive one for me
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Hey there. Guests will demand refunds when leaving the zoo if they are unhappy for a long period of time. In this case you can see that the guest was incredibly thirsty and was unhappy to encounter vandalism. This would indicate your zoo needs additional security guards and security cameras and that you will need to place more drink shops around the park. I have found the best way to get round this is to place bottled water shops near the active areas of your habitats so guests can always find one on the way.
Thanks for the reply Paul, can you confirm whether there were any actually changes to the refund configuration or guest AI (such as thirst depletion) in the last patch, or are these refund issues being caused by the bugs with staff paths and barriers (increasing refunds because of escapes and staff facilities)?
I have noticed that both my own large zoos got to a tipping point with refunds when they expanded, but this could just be down to me rushing then and not provided enough facilities. It could be some people are just seeing an natural increase in refunds due to another reason and attributing it.
but guest using the staff paths as shortcuts after the last patch is something that should be changed with high priority then, because that leads to unhappyness very quickly.
sorry i just read the dev post, that they already work on this bug. pls ignore my post
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Definitely solved any issues with refunds in my zoo:
