Interesting that you're saying this because when the trailer dropped and that shot of the quokka statue popped up? I thought it was a tree kangaroo!
I remember seeing something previously about the chimp animations elsewhere and thought maybe they tried/scrapped the tree 'roo for that pack but you're hopefully right that it was just a way to make it easier for a future pack... Fingers crossed on that !
I don't think we'll get one when they end support... Even though I'd really want one. It would be a nice way to keep fans engaged across the board with minimal effort on Frontier's part. And ending things off at five years would feel like a nice number to end things (and certainly something to celebrate). Whether they have the resources for that when the time rolls around? Who knows.
The console players will be getting that slow drip of DLC content every couple months but I can't help but think that any new "surprise" content wouldn't help get people even more excited... This is what I'm hoping for but not what I'm expecting. Haha.
Scaling would be high-key exciting for the game as a whole but particularly useful for the primitive shapes, fonts, animal signs, and statues. Rocks and foliage too, obviously. Wall-swapping would be great too, especially if they opened the door for allowing us to implement our own textures.
If we ever wind up with a Planet Zoo sequel, I'd like for them to create it keeping indoor building in mind. It's pretty obvious that with the initial game they didn't really consider things like nocturnal, reptile, or small mammal houses. But based on how people used the game it's hopefully quite apparent the community would want a system that works better for that!
I think the pathing is honestly not all that bad for it. But designing the habitats gets to be kind of tricky. Actually, maybe something akin to what they do with the gift shops or walk-through exhibits could work. You could place down "habitat boxes" (4 shapes/sizes) that don't have anything in them, and can be populated however you'd like... Really, it would just be a simpler way to draw-up habitats for an indoor setting rather than fiddling with the barrier tools. You could set each wall to be glass, mesh, null, or a background image and decide where you want the staff door to be, etc.
Alternately, I've daydreamed about a "design" mode that allowed you to use various foliage, props, etc. with "perch points" for exhibit animals to allow for a bit more customization in those. But now we're veering very far away from DLC specullation and into sequel territory. LOL
