Been following this game pretty much since its reveal. I have stayed pretty quiet for the most part save for a short window of activity, but I have still followed the game's development. While I have to compliment Frontier for their progress with the game, I confess to being a little astonished that no one is discussing this issue. I see plenty of threads and suggestions for new dinosaurs and so on, but whenever it comes to replayability people only ever talk about terrain tools and decorations. While I feel those are vital to fleshing out the game and providing more content that players can create themselves, the biggest problem with the game overall is still its replayability.
Frontier has teased terrain tools and they have steadily added options to Sandbox mode and both introduced and broadened the scope of Challenge Mode which has helped enormously, but I feel they are still missing the mark. The recent carnivore pack was much welcomed, as are most new dino additions, but even if they had completely unique rigs and animations, we are still going to hit a wall. Right now Frontier has done a lot to prolong hitting that wall, but they aren't actually overcoming it, just buying more time. That is what I really wanted to discuss today and get the community talking about it. This is truly important and I have scarcely seen more than a handful of comments here and there in months about the matter. In game design the goal of game mechanics is to create emergent, organic, dynamic, etc. gameplay, it goes by many terms by different developers/studios. This is Jurassic World Evolution's greatest obstacle and why even sizable DLCs like the Secrets of Dr. Wu simply cannot sustain momentum for the community in between updates.
So lets go back to a basic premise of Jurassic Park/Jurassic World--failure is inevitable. Humans try to assert themselves as masters of nature and revive extinct species without understanding how and why that aim is folly. The results are clear and apparent from Michael's Crichton's novels as well as pretty much every film and most pieces of media made based on the property. In Jurassic World Evolution you are invited to create your own Jurassic World with all that that entails. Naturally catastrophe is not only expected its a desired result, and that is very important because that is how you gain your emergent gameplay for this title. In order to set this up, it is a very complex balancing act where the developers have to juggle a large number of different variables without making them too taxing and oppressive on the player to the point they grow bored or no longer want to interact with the game. The basic idea, however, is that you are going to toss all these different options at the player and entice them to build out their parks using the different dinos as lures. In doing so, the player will have a decided goal and actively work to meet the requirements to have that dino in their park stomaching the consequences of pursuing their ambition. In this sense, you really are seeing things through the eyes of John Hammond himself, this is intentional, they got to toss many enticing things at you both keeping you preoccupied while simultaneously setting in motion several variables all vying for your attention at once. The emergent gameplay and end result is that you overlook something no matter how remotely small or ostensibly inconsequential by pulling your attention in all different directions that you miscalculate and create a disaster of your own making.
Sometimes, however, that isn't always enough and that is where storms & disasters come into play. If you are an ultra conscious and patient player, you will build at a really gradual pace and take steps using the tools provided to you to minimize risk. When that happens it can be hard to create dynamic gameplay, so what can the developers do to influence this type of player to interact with the game in a different manner, knock them out of their comfort zone and retain their interest with new things to do? Well, you build in a few naturally and recurring events beyond the player's control nudging them in the direction of responding to the emergent situation. Now that we understand how you make Jurassic World Evolution authentic to its source material as well as an engaging gameplay experience, how does the game in its current state fare? As it stands, there are some good ideas and the foundations for what can be in place, but there is a clear lack of variables that can consistently trigger this emergent gameplay much less doing so in a way that feels dynamic and interesting rather than a predictable retread.
I wanted to touch back on the terrain tools and decorations for a moment as well. Both of these essentially accomplish the same goal, they give creative control to the player to build their park as they see fit (core to the genre/title's selling point), but under the lens of creating emergent gameplay they are flat. What they really accomplish is creating a massive attention sink that makes it easier for organic gameplay experiences to develop. Though that is a bit harsh, for the most part, that is what they do. I could make a case for decorations in that you might be incentivized to build different structures to meet guest needs thus creating a more functional park, or if somehow the environment becomes a big factor in combating disasters or creating natural barriers to isolate your dangerous carnivores. For the sake of time and staying on topic, lets put that aside for now on this already very lengthy post.
Now let me briefly list some of the "risk variables" and the "naturally occurring risks" presently in the game:
Risk Variables: Division loyalty, Power usage, Genetic modifications
Naturally occurring Risks: Tropical Storm, Twister, Disease
(Feel free to list any I might have missed)
Now if that list isn't setting off some alarms, I don't know what will. There are so few risks baked into the game that it doesn't create the kind of emergent gameplay it really needs to do. This often results in long stretches of inactivity where the game grows stale because you are pretty much just waiting on incubation of your species or for research, extraction, or dig teams to return. So in the meantime you pretty much just try and plan new enclosures and start building this, but that often stops being fun and feels more like a chore. This is where the terrain tools and decorations would really improve the game; however, there is nothing filling in the dead time and you can't speed up the above without severely imbalancing or tripping up the reward loop. Naturally, the Campaign throws another wrench into things since it locks so many research and species behind island and reputation requirements making that mode even more taxing although for a first play through it shouldn't be much of a chore, these lack of risk variables impact the campaign somewhat, but not significantly since it has its own objectives/missions whereas the end game/post game is where replayability really takes a hit for this game.
I think the risk of "sabotage" stemming from your reputation with the divisions is significant and a great risk variable. I might not agree on the balance of some sabotages like opening all gates in the park, but I digress. The outage risk on the power stations is more standard, but a solid example to lead with and its the quintessential Jurassic disaster. The ability to upgrade your power stations in various ways in exchange for varying degrees of risk of outages is wonderful. Genetic modifications can also play a significant role in dinos acting up, if you are hyper focused on boosting their rating, tweaking social, population, environment, lifespan, or achieving the ultimate notoriety (possibly spurred by contracts) you can easily run the risk of losing that creature during incubation, and if successful still run the risk of making a very unhappy creature that will rampage in a manner its unmodified kin might not.
The above are risks the player can exert more control over rather directly. However, the ones that are probably even more impactful are the naturally occurring disasters and other events. Storms will cause damage to your structures and drive your dinos into a frenzy; however, good foreplanning can minimize risk such as placing down Storm Defense Stations for early warning and protections of key structures. Disease is another though its a bit of a unique case since it can be both triggered as a sabotage or naturally occurring. Sadly, I find disease to be the most underutilized of the existing emergent gameplay mechanics, so long as you have the Ranger Station and researched your medical treatments it is an event with rapidly diminishing returns to the point its virtually pointless once you have them all researched. I feel more can be done to push the envelope like limiting tranquilizers available for a disease or some other fascinating risk variables I will propose towards the end of this post. Then finally we have twisters, the rarest of the natural disasters, they are terrifying to see in this game, but the actual impact is less than what I would hope. For their rarity and image, they do surprisingly little damage and I speculate the reason is due to the lack of different disasters that Frontier has been cautious about making them too destructive, but at the same time they have really been de-fanged. Emergency shelters are an existing counter play to these events, you can't eliminate the damage altogether, but you can cope with it which is exactly what I expect of something like this, but they simply aren't threatening when neither your guests nor your dinosaurs are at risk when one comes through your park.
Now that I have briefly touched on the above, notice my comments on each of them. The majority of my comments are that they too weak, avoidable, and/or lacking in staying power to really affect your gameplay experience.I am not unhappy with regular tropical storms, its still a weather effect and not all disasters are or should be treated equally. Twisters should be the most devastating while storms can cause harm to unprepared players who failed to account or ignored their risk potential. They target two different kinds of players really, both the storms and twisters are countermeasures to create gameplay for players who might be doing good in one area but lacking in another. In this instance, tropical storms with diminishing returns isn't an issue, it still adds a lot of atmosphere and most importantly it still has an impact on your dinosaurs comfort even if its direct damage is really cut down.
Emergent gameplay is lacking in Jurassic World Evolution for some obvious reasons. A cursory glance conveys there are too few to really cast that wide net to prompt a player response. Looking at it a little more in-depth we see that a few are really excelling at what they are intended to do while others are failing to live up to their potential. We also encounter a couple other situations particularly unique to the weather based events. The game really doesn't have that much variety in its weather patterns since they are tied to the disasters, and there is a fine balance of also ensuring that adding new disasters doesn't result in too high a frequency where one or another is always happening. Its an obvious thing, but it has to be stated nonetheless, not too many disasters can be added, otherwise due to sheer volume even with low percentage rates they might occur too often and drive players off from sheer difficulty or annoyance rather than giving them a new and interesting organic gameplay experience.
Most importantly of all dynamic gameplay results in a title that can stand on its own. There is going to come a time where Frontier will no longer support Jurassic World Evolution for whatever their next title will be and so it is vitally important that this doesn't get swept under the rug under a billion dinosaur and skin requests. What we achieve from this dynamic gameplay is infinite replayability that will finally tackle the downtime and add a degree of uncertainty and variation into the game creating unique experiences that can be enjoyed for the coming years. We have some good events such as the genetic modifications, storms, sabotages, and power outages that point us in the right direction of what can be and some like diseases and twisters as examples of those that need improvement. So let me just give a short list of possible new events:
-Stampede (Refer to Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis; makes herbivores more of an equal threat, we already see they can trample guests now imagine a herd on the move)
-Heat Wave & Drought (See JP:OG; why not add a more subtle environmental factor it would be radically different from the others in the game and it can even tie in with diseases making some more virulent or enable new additions)
-Breeding (This has been core to the idea of "Life finds a way" in the Jurassic franchise; it would also make dinosaur incubation of any sort a risk in itself. Say you have between a 0.1 and 1% chance of your dinosaur being able to breed with default genes and that number can increase as you genetically modify them adding another risk factor beyond just their social and behavior tolerances)
-Immunity & Susceptibility (The unique disease enhancement I had in mind, imagine that your dinosaurs could not just have default immunities/susceptibilities, but could develop them based on conditions they experience over time like heat waves, breeding with genetically modified kin, or simply develop them based on past exposure to a disease in their enclosure requiring a more advanced medical response involving research or a new veterinarian service; the sky is the limit for implementation it could be simple or very in-depth depending on time, resources, and interest)
-Famine (You have to grow food at a greenhouse/abattoir, but during this event your food stores are hit forcing you to respond to how to feed your dinos before supplies resume, it takes away from micromanaging your feeders to adding a macro element where you must be aware of growing/preparing food for your dinos and stocking some of it just in case, so now your feeder resupplies are actually more important)
-Corporate Espionage (BioSyn [insert generic replacement] has conspired to steal InGen trade secrets causing a financial setback to your operations; you can interpret whether that loss stems from a competing company establishing its own Jurassic World equivalent or InGen's legal fees suing them into oblivion; the legal fees research in Global Operations can also help reduce this loss in addition to guest lawsuits [which need to be increased by the way] so there is actually counter play already in the game you can use, similarly to twisters it would be a rare but unavoidable loss, but one that can be managed)
These are some of my best ideas for new random events in the game. Some of them do require new buildings with unique functionality like the Famine & Immunities to work properly I also wanted to make it clear for Frontier that some of these could be implemented without being overly demanding on resources. I have a hard time imagining Universal would deny "Breeding" considering it is literally one of the biggest things prevalent in the Jurassic franchise, the whole "Life finds a way" thing stems entirely from the fact that the park had already failed and that the dinos found a way to breed. Its hard to even conceive of a Jurassic game without something so core to its identity in it. You could even scale it accordingly with a mere downscaled model if its too much work to create new infant models for the.. what was it, 60+ dinos we have and those in the works. I have always emphasized there are ways to put these ambitious stuff in without going so detailed on every aspect of it particularly if it means having it versus not getting it at all.
Anyhow, let me know what you think. Do you agree or disagree with me? I hope this topic really catches on and Frontier will take notice.
Frontier has teased terrain tools and they have steadily added options to Sandbox mode and both introduced and broadened the scope of Challenge Mode which has helped enormously, but I feel they are still missing the mark. The recent carnivore pack was much welcomed, as are most new dino additions, but even if they had completely unique rigs and animations, we are still going to hit a wall. Right now Frontier has done a lot to prolong hitting that wall, but they aren't actually overcoming it, just buying more time. That is what I really wanted to discuss today and get the community talking about it. This is truly important and I have scarcely seen more than a handful of comments here and there in months about the matter. In game design the goal of game mechanics is to create emergent, organic, dynamic, etc. gameplay, it goes by many terms by different developers/studios. This is Jurassic World Evolution's greatest obstacle and why even sizable DLCs like the Secrets of Dr. Wu simply cannot sustain momentum for the community in between updates.
So lets go back to a basic premise of Jurassic Park/Jurassic World--failure is inevitable. Humans try to assert themselves as masters of nature and revive extinct species without understanding how and why that aim is folly. The results are clear and apparent from Michael's Crichton's novels as well as pretty much every film and most pieces of media made based on the property. In Jurassic World Evolution you are invited to create your own Jurassic World with all that that entails. Naturally catastrophe is not only expected its a desired result, and that is very important because that is how you gain your emergent gameplay for this title. In order to set this up, it is a very complex balancing act where the developers have to juggle a large number of different variables without making them too taxing and oppressive on the player to the point they grow bored or no longer want to interact with the game. The basic idea, however, is that you are going to toss all these different options at the player and entice them to build out their parks using the different dinos as lures. In doing so, the player will have a decided goal and actively work to meet the requirements to have that dino in their park stomaching the consequences of pursuing their ambition. In this sense, you really are seeing things through the eyes of John Hammond himself, this is intentional, they got to toss many enticing things at you both keeping you preoccupied while simultaneously setting in motion several variables all vying for your attention at once. The emergent gameplay and end result is that you overlook something no matter how remotely small or ostensibly inconsequential by pulling your attention in all different directions that you miscalculate and create a disaster of your own making.
Sometimes, however, that isn't always enough and that is where storms & disasters come into play. If you are an ultra conscious and patient player, you will build at a really gradual pace and take steps using the tools provided to you to minimize risk. When that happens it can be hard to create dynamic gameplay, so what can the developers do to influence this type of player to interact with the game in a different manner, knock them out of their comfort zone and retain their interest with new things to do? Well, you build in a few naturally and recurring events beyond the player's control nudging them in the direction of responding to the emergent situation. Now that we understand how you make Jurassic World Evolution authentic to its source material as well as an engaging gameplay experience, how does the game in its current state fare? As it stands, there are some good ideas and the foundations for what can be in place, but there is a clear lack of variables that can consistently trigger this emergent gameplay much less doing so in a way that feels dynamic and interesting rather than a predictable retread.
I wanted to touch back on the terrain tools and decorations for a moment as well. Both of these essentially accomplish the same goal, they give creative control to the player to build their park as they see fit (core to the genre/title's selling point), but under the lens of creating emergent gameplay they are flat. What they really accomplish is creating a massive attention sink that makes it easier for organic gameplay experiences to develop. Though that is a bit harsh, for the most part, that is what they do. I could make a case for decorations in that you might be incentivized to build different structures to meet guest needs thus creating a more functional park, or if somehow the environment becomes a big factor in combating disasters or creating natural barriers to isolate your dangerous carnivores. For the sake of time and staying on topic, lets put that aside for now on this already very lengthy post.
Now let me briefly list some of the "risk variables" and the "naturally occurring risks" presently in the game:
Risk Variables: Division loyalty, Power usage, Genetic modifications
Naturally occurring Risks: Tropical Storm, Twister, Disease
(Feel free to list any I might have missed)
Now if that list isn't setting off some alarms, I don't know what will. There are so few risks baked into the game that it doesn't create the kind of emergent gameplay it really needs to do. This often results in long stretches of inactivity where the game grows stale because you are pretty much just waiting on incubation of your species or for research, extraction, or dig teams to return. So in the meantime you pretty much just try and plan new enclosures and start building this, but that often stops being fun and feels more like a chore. This is where the terrain tools and decorations would really improve the game; however, there is nothing filling in the dead time and you can't speed up the above without severely imbalancing or tripping up the reward loop. Naturally, the Campaign throws another wrench into things since it locks so many research and species behind island and reputation requirements making that mode even more taxing although for a first play through it shouldn't be much of a chore, these lack of risk variables impact the campaign somewhat, but not significantly since it has its own objectives/missions whereas the end game/post game is where replayability really takes a hit for this game.
I think the risk of "sabotage" stemming from your reputation with the divisions is significant and a great risk variable. I might not agree on the balance of some sabotages like opening all gates in the park, but I digress. The outage risk on the power stations is more standard, but a solid example to lead with and its the quintessential Jurassic disaster. The ability to upgrade your power stations in various ways in exchange for varying degrees of risk of outages is wonderful. Genetic modifications can also play a significant role in dinos acting up, if you are hyper focused on boosting their rating, tweaking social, population, environment, lifespan, or achieving the ultimate notoriety (possibly spurred by contracts) you can easily run the risk of losing that creature during incubation, and if successful still run the risk of making a very unhappy creature that will rampage in a manner its unmodified kin might not.
The above are risks the player can exert more control over rather directly. However, the ones that are probably even more impactful are the naturally occurring disasters and other events. Storms will cause damage to your structures and drive your dinos into a frenzy; however, good foreplanning can minimize risk such as placing down Storm Defense Stations for early warning and protections of key structures. Disease is another though its a bit of a unique case since it can be both triggered as a sabotage or naturally occurring. Sadly, I find disease to be the most underutilized of the existing emergent gameplay mechanics, so long as you have the Ranger Station and researched your medical treatments it is an event with rapidly diminishing returns to the point its virtually pointless once you have them all researched. I feel more can be done to push the envelope like limiting tranquilizers available for a disease or some other fascinating risk variables I will propose towards the end of this post. Then finally we have twisters, the rarest of the natural disasters, they are terrifying to see in this game, but the actual impact is less than what I would hope. For their rarity and image, they do surprisingly little damage and I speculate the reason is due to the lack of different disasters that Frontier has been cautious about making them too destructive, but at the same time they have really been de-fanged. Emergency shelters are an existing counter play to these events, you can't eliminate the damage altogether, but you can cope with it which is exactly what I expect of something like this, but they simply aren't threatening when neither your guests nor your dinosaurs are at risk when one comes through your park.
Now that I have briefly touched on the above, notice my comments on each of them. The majority of my comments are that they too weak, avoidable, and/or lacking in staying power to really affect your gameplay experience.I am not unhappy with regular tropical storms, its still a weather effect and not all disasters are or should be treated equally. Twisters should be the most devastating while storms can cause harm to unprepared players who failed to account or ignored their risk potential. They target two different kinds of players really, both the storms and twisters are countermeasures to create gameplay for players who might be doing good in one area but lacking in another. In this instance, tropical storms with diminishing returns isn't an issue, it still adds a lot of atmosphere and most importantly it still has an impact on your dinosaurs comfort even if its direct damage is really cut down.
Emergent gameplay is lacking in Jurassic World Evolution for some obvious reasons. A cursory glance conveys there are too few to really cast that wide net to prompt a player response. Looking at it a little more in-depth we see that a few are really excelling at what they are intended to do while others are failing to live up to their potential. We also encounter a couple other situations particularly unique to the weather based events. The game really doesn't have that much variety in its weather patterns since they are tied to the disasters, and there is a fine balance of also ensuring that adding new disasters doesn't result in too high a frequency where one or another is always happening. Its an obvious thing, but it has to be stated nonetheless, not too many disasters can be added, otherwise due to sheer volume even with low percentage rates they might occur too often and drive players off from sheer difficulty or annoyance rather than giving them a new and interesting organic gameplay experience.
Most importantly of all dynamic gameplay results in a title that can stand on its own. There is going to come a time where Frontier will no longer support Jurassic World Evolution for whatever their next title will be and so it is vitally important that this doesn't get swept under the rug under a billion dinosaur and skin requests. What we achieve from this dynamic gameplay is infinite replayability that will finally tackle the downtime and add a degree of uncertainty and variation into the game creating unique experiences that can be enjoyed for the coming years. We have some good events such as the genetic modifications, storms, sabotages, and power outages that point us in the right direction of what can be and some like diseases and twisters as examples of those that need improvement. So let me just give a short list of possible new events:
-Stampede (Refer to Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis; makes herbivores more of an equal threat, we already see they can trample guests now imagine a herd on the move)
-Heat Wave & Drought (See JP:OG; why not add a more subtle environmental factor it would be radically different from the others in the game and it can even tie in with diseases making some more virulent or enable new additions)
-Breeding (This has been core to the idea of "Life finds a way" in the Jurassic franchise; it would also make dinosaur incubation of any sort a risk in itself. Say you have between a 0.1 and 1% chance of your dinosaur being able to breed with default genes and that number can increase as you genetically modify them adding another risk factor beyond just their social and behavior tolerances)
-Immunity & Susceptibility (The unique disease enhancement I had in mind, imagine that your dinosaurs could not just have default immunities/susceptibilities, but could develop them based on conditions they experience over time like heat waves, breeding with genetically modified kin, or simply develop them based on past exposure to a disease in their enclosure requiring a more advanced medical response involving research or a new veterinarian service; the sky is the limit for implementation it could be simple or very in-depth depending on time, resources, and interest)
-Famine (You have to grow food at a greenhouse/abattoir, but during this event your food stores are hit forcing you to respond to how to feed your dinos before supplies resume, it takes away from micromanaging your feeders to adding a macro element where you must be aware of growing/preparing food for your dinos and stocking some of it just in case, so now your feeder resupplies are actually more important)
-Corporate Espionage (BioSyn [insert generic replacement] has conspired to steal InGen trade secrets causing a financial setback to your operations; you can interpret whether that loss stems from a competing company establishing its own Jurassic World equivalent or InGen's legal fees suing them into oblivion; the legal fees research in Global Operations can also help reduce this loss in addition to guest lawsuits [which need to be increased by the way] so there is actually counter play already in the game you can use, similarly to twisters it would be a rare but unavoidable loss, but one that can be managed)
These are some of my best ideas for new random events in the game. Some of them do require new buildings with unique functionality like the Famine & Immunities to work properly I also wanted to make it clear for Frontier that some of these could be implemented without being overly demanding on resources. I have a hard time imagining Universal would deny "Breeding" considering it is literally one of the biggest things prevalent in the Jurassic franchise, the whole "Life finds a way" thing stems entirely from the fact that the park had already failed and that the dinos found a way to breed. Its hard to even conceive of a Jurassic game without something so core to its identity in it. You could even scale it accordingly with a mere downscaled model if its too much work to create new infant models for the.. what was it, 60+ dinos we have and those in the works. I have always emphasized there are ways to put these ambitious stuff in without going so detailed on every aspect of it particularly if it means having it versus not getting it at all.
Anyhow, let me know what you think. Do you agree or disagree with me? I hope this topic really catches on and Frontier will take notice.
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I also agree with everything you said.
