I really hope this is what it is, they already got the console release so I can see them adding more people to PZ team for the short term just because they have more to do, I don’t even care anymore about it being a bigger pack, if we get the same quality as the last year of packs then that’s all I can ask for and I will be happy with that.
Spring 2024 DLC Speculation
- Thread starter The Carcharodontogenius
- Start date
But now the question remains, is the new JWE2 pack a sign of them working on something bigger for a summer pack (potentially explaining the obvious lack of effort behind this pack) / them getting most of their team back from PZ for the summer pack and it be quality as normal, or is it a sign of the end with things shutting down for JWE2. Keep in mind all of the past games have ended support in June, making this even more confusing 
What you're outlining here is precisely why I'm not so worried. The JWE2 DLC and most of the updates have felt pretty "meh" for me with the exception of that marine one that they dropped.
The Planet Zoo PDLC packs and free updates has (in)arguably remained pretty consistently "good to amazing" in my opinion.
There may be something to what you're saying here but I'm remaining optimistic still. From what I can tell in reading the comments the JWE2 fanbase there's a lot less sensitivity and people are more willing to pay for that kind of pack. Definitely some outliers but people seem (mostly) enthusiastic despite how basic it is (Spinoraptor seems to be a big driver). So if they got some sort of signal that people were willing to pay for something like this... Why put in the effort when the ROI might be similar?
I also am wondering if they've shifted people to work on JWE3 in prep for the movie next year? I'd be frustrated if I were a fan of said-game but... It wouldn't shock me. Some of this also isn't up to Frontier fully and it's been a very fruitful collaboration with Universal thus far.
Or this is truly their last DLC... What's interesting is they flat-out acknowledged in the comments that there's a "small update" with "bug fixes" coming alongside it. I don't know that they've ever acknowledged that kind of thing in the past.
Honestly, I'm torn about the summer DLC. The logic behind it makes sense because one final (and bigger) Planet Zoo DLC would probably do really great numbers for them and could be a strong bump-start for FY25 along with the console releases... But I suspect the console version will just take the place of whatever Planet Zoo would otherwise do (if that makes sense) except with a greater ROI. And the next game could bump things further later in the year.But now the question remains, is the new JWE2 pack a sign of them working on something bigger for a summer pack (potentially explaining the obvious lack of effort behind this pack) / them getting most of their team back from PZ for the summer pack and it be quality as normal, or is it a sign of the end with things shutting down for JWE2. Keep in mind all of the past games have ended support in June, making this even more confusing
My biggest anxiety (for lack of a better, less intense word) is that the final Planet Zoo pack will be just a regular ol' same old, same old that won't signal the end and we'll all be left wondering...
I feel like even pushing the pack until April, it still won’t get as much attention because everyone’s still hyped up on the console release, so what I would do is while the console people are getting to play around with all the trendy animals from the packs like NA and Europe and of course the game itself, the spring pack focuses on what the hardcore community is looking for, Central America. If attention is already on the console, it depends if they want to bring back everyone’s attention to the spring pack, or just let the console players have their fun and strictly focus on the hardcore pc community.
Cause that to me makes sense, once console players get the game at the end of march they’ll want to play around with it and get introduced to it for a month or so, which means they won’t pay as much attention to a new pack cause they’re getting caught up with the game itself and the 4-5 packs they get with it.
That leaves the PC community, which can then get a pack that doesn’t need to get as much attention cause console players will be off exploring the game for the first time and the sales from console launch will cover the spring pack enough so that the spring pack doesn’t need to cater to a general audiences profit, it can rather cater to the hardcore community and we can finally get what the game is truly missing, South America.
By June, console players will be looking for something new and be adjusted to the game, which we can then get a finale pack grabbing everyone at once both console and PC.
TLDR: Console release will distract console players, sales will cover spring release, so they release a pack that’s not as popular a title but does more for the game (SA) then bring everyone together at June for finale.
Of course like always a crazy fan theory lol
Cause that to me makes sense, once console players get the game at the end of march they’ll want to play around with it and get introduced to it for a month or so, which means they won’t pay as much attention to a new pack cause they’re getting caught up with the game itself and the 4-5 packs they get with it.
That leaves the PC community, which can then get a pack that doesn’t need to get as much attention cause console players will be off exploring the game for the first time and the sales from console launch will cover the spring pack enough so that the spring pack doesn’t need to cater to a general audiences profit, it can rather cater to the hardcore community and we can finally get what the game is truly missing, South America.
By June, console players will be looking for something new and be adjusted to the game, which we can then get a finale pack grabbing everyone at once both console and PC.
TLDR: Console release will distract console players, sales will cover spring release, so they release a pack that’s not as popular a title but does more for the game (SA) then bring everyone together at June for finale.
Of course like always a crazy fan theory lol
I think its going to be DLC June and Dec with 1 anniversary animal to make the 5 year benchmark.
I don't know that I'd call this "crazy" so much as... Reasonable? Logical? Haha. It would make a lot of sense and is honestly maybe the best-case scenario because it gives Latin America more attention and opens up a few key slots for that final DLC as a result.
But on the flipside: I'm not sure they need to "slow things down" for the console players. We got the Arctic pack ~1 month after Planet Zoo released, the first DLC for JWE2 came ~1 month after release, a free update for PlanCo ~1 month after release, a free update for JWE with new dinos even shorter after release, etc. There'll be a glut of content but that's never a bad thing with a game like Planet Zoo. If anything releasing the game in March, dropping a new DLC for both platforms in April, then dropping another pair of DLC in May will be a strong strategy to keep people talking and interested. And for console it would be three months of fresh content for people.
Of course, the counter argument would be that plopping a June DLC would fill the gap between May and July but... That just feels too ideal a scenario. Haha. If resources weren't so tight I'd say "for sure!"
And I remain pretty convinced that it would be a really weird look to have DLC planned for FY25 that wasn't mentioned in that presentation. Mostly because adding it in would have made their position look stronger and on a basic aesthetic level it would have made the slide itself look better and more balanced.
Basically, this is all really confusing and fun and terrible all at once.
I can’t even remember half of what I just explained that’s how I know I’ve had enough speculation for the night lol
As the Deladysigner's top 100 popularity list shows, exhibit Herptiles are not favored by general players (Axotol is the only exhibit Herptile made in the list), so a DLC full of exhibit snakes will likely be the worst-selling DLC. However I agree the Herptiles in the game are still insufficient, especially no any Asian amphibian, snake and turtle/tortoise currently, the African Crocodile, Oceanian amphibian and turtle/tortoise, European snake and lizard are also missing.
For Oceanian amphibian, which one do you guys prefer, White's Tree Frog, Cane Toad or Southern Corrobee Frog? White's Tree Frog is probably the best-known Oceania native amphibian, and widely kept as pet. Cane Toad is the most popular one among these 3, very common in worldwide captivity, and fills the gap of toad but it is a notorious invasive species in Oceania. Southern Corroboree Frog has the best conservation value among the 3, it is critically endangered and another success of captive conservation, but it is very tiny (might be very hard to find since the terrarium tank in the game is too large for 3cm creatures) and only kept by Australian institutions (realistic gangs outside of Australia don't like)
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So a general question, not to say any of this is going to happen, but - would you rather have 20/21 more animals total with it being done with one animal pack in the next month or two and a second wrap up pack done in the summer with 12/13 species, or would you rather just have one larger wrap up pack that might not come until May or June that would include the 20/21 animals? For the sake of knowing what we'd be looking at for the animal pack, let's go with the theme that makes the most sense, some kind of Latin American Animal pack or New World pack.
All this is just hypothetical and there's no evidence we'll get 20/21 more animals, other than us just getting to a round 200 or "over 200" animals. We may well only get 8 more animals...heck if we really went worse case we could get as few as one more animal though I think that's very unlikely.
So yeah...2 packs 1 soon and 1 a bit later, or one larger pack a little bit later?
ETA: Pricing would be comparative. $10 USD for animal pack as always, a 12/31 animal pack would be around $15 I'd think. A 20/21 animal pack you could probably look at roughly $25.
All this is just hypothetical and there's no evidence we'll get 20/21 more animals, other than us just getting to a round 200 or "over 200" animals. We may well only get 8 more animals...heck if we really went worse case we could get as few as one more animal though I think that's very unlikely.
So yeah...2 packs 1 soon and 1 a bit later, or one larger pack a little bit later?
ETA: Pricing would be comparative. $10 USD for animal pack as always, a 12/31 animal pack would be around $15 I'd think. A 20/21 animal pack you could probably look at roughly $25.
At this point, I would probably prefer just getting everything all in one go. And we know we're getting at least one more DLC before May so... What's another two months waiting?
Better to wait for something I know is coming rather than getting a few animals now and being in the current JWE2 limbo of "Wait, is this really it?!! Are we done?"
Yes please!A wacky thing that PZ should get in their next wacky pack!
Been thinking about it for such a long while, would love a southern screamer.
Yeah but that is exhibit animals competing with habitat animals, not really a fair fight
It doesn't work like that though. Sure you can more easily move a model/texture artist from JWE2 to PZ if you need them to work on a reptile ( or maybe, very maybe a bird ) because they got a lot of experience in that area, it still doesn't mean that you can just uproot people from one team in one game to another game.
People need to be onboarded, need time to adjust to the new project, need to get the hang of the technical side of things. That all takes a long time depending on the complexity of the project (with PZ being a 7 year old code base at least, it is a complex code base), so there's very little gain Frontier could really get out of it in a short amount of time.
Besides we got a whole thing about that already, devs know better by now
I do think it's unfair to draw that comparison though.
The Hybrid pack and the Predator pack are far apart in what you'd need in terms of budget to make both. Just because it might feel similar in terms of gameplay, does not mean that the budgets where the same. The hybrid pack is clearly something made with a much lower budget, as it is mostly reused assets (which is fine, this is not a judgement of that in any case) whilst the predator pack had several dinosaurs made from scratch (as we've seen through behind the scenes footage).
True! Would be nice to see the results from a separate list for exhibit species only
this is basically my whole view point I love reptiles and every zoo I go to the reptile house is the first place I go I love their designs with small encased micro climates. Sadly the exhibit system in planet zoo is hot garbage I despise it. They turned an opportunity to make complex self contained worlds and turned into you like this 4x4 box and the same tree sure hope you because its all you going to get. Add to this that half the animals are so small that you cant reliably see them in the 4x4 box. The junk in the box doesnt help since they had to make it so viewing was the same from every side so every side is equally bad and the animal is completely hidden half the time.
I am not surprised that in a list of what animals people like ingame that none of the exhibit animals made a dent because they are garbage to build for and just as bad to watch since they only move when your not there actively encouraging you to leave.
The whole system is flawed the only exhibit animals that actually have had a meaningful affect on the community or building in general are the walkthroughs since they are just so much more customisable. Even the ability to just remove the glass on a exhibit would make them so much more useable and fun to build with because inevitably every build with an exhibit has to accommodate a 4x4 cube unless you doing a trick to obscure glass ruining the view as a whole or hiding parts of the exhibit in the walls or ceiling which means the animals are never in view but it looks bearable.
This is how I feel too! I also feel like one more calendar year of DLC would make so much sense.
It does feel like JWE2 is wrapping up. This pack feels like a little garnish to end the game. I like the game, but I barely play it because it feels like it’s pure aesthetics - the dinosaurs feel more like animatronics than animals because there’s almost no enrichment, no shelter needs, no breeding, no babies, and building is so limited. It’s a pretty fishtank, but it’s not engaging. Maybe a future JWE3 could make an immersive game with dinosaurs that feel like animals, but it won’t come with JWE2.
The new JWE2 pack being a shiny edition of JWE1 animals is in keeping with how boring JWE DLC is compared to Planet Zoo, so I’m not concerned at all. I don’t think it’s a reflection of a reduced Frontier capacity after layoffs, I think it’s just the direction that that game decidedly went with since JWE1 launched.
That leaves PZ as the absolute leader, and why stop milking a cash cow just as it breaks into a whole new market? Now you have DLC and the base game selling to at least 3 bases of players: PC, PlayStation and Xbox. I just don’t understand why you would quit now when you have a source of reliable income.
If Lqa updates this week, we can expect DLC to release around the 16th April?
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Can you really call it a superiority complex to think one game is better than the other?
I would rather have a frog from any other continent before Australia (Titicaca from South America, mountain chicken from the Caribbean, clawed from Africa, mantella from Madagascar, mossy from Southeast Asia). I feel like the toad need was partly solved with the big bullfrog (I know it really doesn't but still), and my biggest toad want is some species of fire-bellied toad (Asian or even European), I think that would be OK toad representation.
As for Oceania, it's true it still lacks some herps but those aren't frogs in my opinion (although I love the white tree and corroboree frogs, and I wouldn't mind having them). Oceanian exhibit species that are probably the most needed: Tuatara, frilled lizard, thorny devil, New Caledonia gecko, weta cricket, coconut crab...