Spring 2024 DLC Speculation

RightWhale

RightWhale
I really want to temper my expectations, but another part of me wants to be hopeful for a fun sendoff. Like I don’t want to keep getting excited over this potential dlc, only for it to have the one bird and exhibit animal, and have the rest be mammals AGAIN.

Another part of me feels like they have heard us and are actually planning on doing something great. I’ve been burned out a bit with the whole process though. I get excited hearing everyone’s wishlists and think they sound so cool, then the dlc is announced and I get a bit excited. Then within a couple days I realize the animal selection isn’t as exciting for me as the potential DLCs we discussed. I did this for years.

I do think it will be fun though, probably more so for others than me.
 

markun

markun
RightWhale said:
I really want to temper my expectations, but another part of me wants to be hopeful for a fun sendoff. Like I don’t want to keep getting excited over this potential dlc, only for it to have the one bird and exhibit animal, and have the rest be mammals AGAIN.

Another part of me feels like they have heard us and are actually planning on doing something great. I’ve been burned out a bit with the whole process though. I get excited hearing everyone’s wishlists and think they sound so cool, then the dlc is announced and I get a bit excited. Then within a couple days I realize the animal selection isn’t as exciting for me as the potential DLCs we discussed. I did this for years.

I do think it will be fun though, probably more so for others than me.
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I really get this. My approach is to assume we have only one more dlc and it won’t be anything bigger than usual. That way, whatever else might happen is only a bonus.
 

Marvinb

Marvinb
Mr-Hyrax 2 said:
hey guys what the worse, least realistic, final pack you could think of it can have any number of animals and scenery the only rule is it has to be terrible or at least mid; I will start.

African Ungulate Pack
Rock Hyrax
Kirk's Dik-Dik
Greater Kudu
Common Eland
Water Buck
Moutain Zebra
Gerenuk
Impala
Bontebok
Blue Duiker

50 scenery all of which is just taxidermy of all the animals in this pack.
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Idk about the least realistic one so i just say what i think is that worst possible final DLC.
Basicly everything thats not predominately focused on trying to fill up the holes in the roster is kinda a failure of a final pack in my eyes.
 

RightWhale

RightWhale
I’ll admit I’m uneducated on this, but my GF and I had a thought walking home (while I was talking/ ranting about Planet Zoo of course). While the layoffs are most likely due to financial stress, could it also be because they were planning on ending support for Planet Zoo. Like if a lot of the models, rigging, textures etc are done in advance maybe they didn’t “need the staff” anymore. I imagine they don’t make an animal from the ground up in the short time between DLCs, so I imagine a lot of stuff was always in varying degrees of complete. Of course I really don’t know, so I got curious.


For the talk/ rant, it was more of a discussion on last years DLCs and how weird some of the choices were.
  1. Tropical had no monkey or bird, it did give us some very requested animals though (which is a common trend for last year, gave us requested animals and then some weird choices)( I have felt bad for Frontier, we have animals on a meta wishlist, then get upset when we get them in weird orders. Still, it’s the combination of animals, and how our desires as a community change)
  2. Arid was another all mammal except exhibit pack. Some amazing animals definitely, but lack of baboon, bird, or tortoise was odd.
  3. Oceania was honestly a good pack all around (imo) but I can recognize its niche and the quokka could have been something else. Still it’s a pack I don’t have much to say on.
  4. Eurasia is similar, I’ll admit I thought the bear and Saiga could/ should have been something else.
Still every animal added was great. I almost wonder if they were saving up for the final dlc and it will really wow us. Still as I stated earlier I want to temper my expectations. Hopefully we will beat the two birds at max record.
 
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NachoB

NachoB
RightWhale said:
For the talk/ rant, it was more of a discussion on last years DLCs and how weird some of the choices were.
  1. Tropical had no monkey or bird, it did give us some very requested animals though (which is a common trend for last year, gave us requested animals and then some weird choices)( I have felt bad for Frontier, we have animals on a meta wishlist, then get upset when we get them in weird orders. Still, it’s the combination of animals, and how our desires as a community change)
  2. Arid was another all mammal except exhibit pack. Some amazing animals definitely, but lack of baboon, bird, or tortoise was odd definitely.
  3. Oceania was honestly a good pack all around (imo) but I can recognize its niche and the quokka could have been something else. Still it’s a pack I don’t have much to say on.
  4. Eurasia is similar, I’ll admit I thought the bear and Saiga could/ should have been something else.
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Last year felt like they intentionally try to come up with rosters that were not what they knew we were expecting for those packs. Like they included highly requested animals but the roster the community came up with for every single one of those pack conceptos were pretty much perfect or better and most of them pretty realistic yet we got a lot of weird/odd choices even thought they could've gone with the animals everyone was mentioning.
 

Captain Callum

Captain Callum
So basically last year was...

Give.png
 

Eletan888

Eletan888
Last years packs really felt like filler packs to me. I definitely got to scratch a lot of species off my wishlist, but definitely not as many as I did in 2022. Maybe more so now, but last year didn't feel like the point to stuff packs full of oddballs. Maybe more oddballs were necessary with a smaller crew working on the game. The result is a lot of unrelated regions missing key species that can't support a whole DLC. I mean Arid, as annoying as it was for most, did round out North Africa pretty nicely.
 

NachoB

NachoB
Eletan888 said:
Last years packs really felt like filler packs to me. I definitely got to scratch a lot of species off my wishlist, but definitely not as many as I did in 2022. Maybe more so now, but last year didn't feel like the point to stuff packs full of oddballs. Maybe more oddballs were necessary with a smaller crew working on the game. The result is a lot of unrelated regions missing key species that can't support a whole DLC. I mean Arid, as annoying as it was for most, did round out North Africa pretty nicely.
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The weird thing is the amount of work put into some of those oddballs like the quokka, dama gazelle, saiga and sand cat, all with new animations and behaviours. I thought the sand cat was leading to more small cats but not and thought the quokka was ground work for rabbits and dama gazelle for gerenuk but also no lol
 

jcp011c

jcp011c
RightWhale said:
I’ll admit I’m uneducated on this, but my GF and I had a thought walking home (while I was talking/ ranting about Planet Zoo of course). While the layoffs are most likely due to financial stress, could it also be because they were planning on ending support for Planet Zoo. Like if a lot of the models, rigging, textures etc are done in advance maybe they didn’t “need the staff” anymore. I imagine they don’t make an animal from the ground up in the short time between DLCs, so I imagine a lot of stuff was always in varying degrees of complete. Of course I really don’t know, so I got curious.


For the talk/ rant, it was more of a discussion on last years DLCs and how weird some of the choices were.
  1. Tropical had no monkey or bird, it did give us some very requested animals though (which is a common trend for last year, gave us requested animals and then some weird choices)( I have felt bad for Frontier, we have animals on a meta wishlist, then get upset when we get them in weird orders. Still, it’s the combination of animals, and how our desires as a community change)
  2. Arid was another all mammal except exhibit pack. Some amazing animals definitely, but lack of baboon, bird, or tortoise was odd.
  3. Oceania was honestly a good pack all around (imo) but I can recognize its niche and the quokka could have been something else. Still it’s a pack I don’t have much to say on.
  4. Eurasia is similar, I’ll admit I thought the bear and Saiga could/ should have been something else.
Still every animal added was great. I almost wonder if they were saving up for the final dlc and it will really wow us. Still as I stated earlier I want to temper my expectations. Hopefully we will beat the two birds at max record.
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If anything, last year's offerings certainly resulting in one pack idea being squashed to almost nothing, to the point it very rarely gets discussed anymore. And going into last year, it was one of the more popularly suggested themes.
 

Narwhaler

Narwhaler
Captain Callum said:
So basically last year was...

View attachment 382751
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I know it's a meme but yes, it is quite literally not how they should have done it. Doing a good pack isn't just adding highly requested species but species that add something to the game. Like I have said many times the additions in the packs need to have some actual use, and most of this year's packs have failed to do that because they were centered more about adding animals for the sake of "we finally get this one" rather than "we finally get this one because we need it for this".

  • The tropical pack would have been good if instead of the water monitor we had a muntjac, which is literally the only SEA animal left with a useful niche. Nile monitor remains without deep diving. The gibbon and the pig were a different flavor for something we already had, while nice, not something incredibly worth.
  • I don't think the arid pack needs any explanation why it was not good, once again it would have been a fantastic pack if they had added a baboon and a sulcata tortoise instead of the addax and the dama gazelle, which ultimately add nothing because we already have the scimitar oryx.
  • Oceania would be perfect if it had been a tree kangaroo instead of the quokka, and yet, it is still the best pack of the year IMO.
  • As much as I love the Eurasia pack for giving us waterfowl all the other animals aside the wolverine were really bland additions that don't stand out at all, specially the wisent which for some reason is the key art animal, making the pack even more unappealing to regular people. Honestly, they should have ditched the wisent for a bunny, the pack would have improved tenfold.

I think in the Eurasia pack, stuff like the sloth bear, the wisent and the wild boar are the clear reflection of the issue with the packs. The sloth bear specially is a perfect example: an animal that looks gorgeous ingame and was quite requested, yet in the end its addition was simply for the sake of having it, not because having it brings something particularly interesting. It really isn't hard to see why less people will buy these packs when they can be summed as "it's a neat animal I like :)"

Like look at the swan, swans are cool but they are nowhere close to be an animal that sparks fascination in a lot of people as much as a bear would do, yet it is to many the only reason why the Eurasia pack has any value. And I am honestly not sure if Frontier has not realized this yet, or if they actually have but they just want to keep it as the bare minimum.

PS: Frontier give us rabbits come on...
 

Jeminyne

Jeminyne
Was looking through the ocelot discussion and realized I forgot to ask something

@jcp011c @Markiz @Fini @KönigDerKaffeebohnen @markun @NachoB @Tinou97 ….How would you guys feel about the margay instead of the ocelot? Fills a similar niche but looks just a bit weirder and cuter. Might be more interesting.

I agree with those who would prefer more new world monkeys and birds than another cat though— and especially the Brazilian porcupine which someone mentioned. It actually has always been one of my most wished-for animals. But I wonder how much justice frontier would do it. (For instance, even after the redesign, the binturong is still a bit… ehh… some weird and unique animals require very precise models, vocals, and animation to capture what is so special about them. )

I also find it bizarre we got the caracal over the serval, since servals are so much more fun to look at. If we get ocelot and caracal but not serval, it would feel weird to me.
 
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