Actually to me the miss in the tropical pack was the monitor. It was the oddball choice no one was expecting and while it gaves an updated monitor it didn't add anything new (we already has a SEA monitor) nor asked for. Either a tropical South American animal like Tamandua or a bird like the Scarlet ibis would've been much better. The other problem with the Tropical pack is that it should've been an animal pack. Scenery is amazing i wouldn't want for it to go away but tropical rainforests have soooo many popular and charismatic animals that making the pack a scenery pack felt very restrictive.
But realistically, would they cut a reptile in favor of adding a third climbing mammal to a pack like that? They always tend to go for a "mix" of species types. The lone exception there is Twilight... So I don't know that we would have gotten another climbing animal or a bird. I'd tend to agree that a tamandua (or literally any bird, TBH) would have been a better get but I'm not sure that would be
realistically in the cards, anyway.
I tend to agree with you WRT the Tropical Pack as well in that it
really should have been animal pack. Which is a point I raised: The issue is generally with the pack formats rather than the picks themselves. Nobody would have batted an eye at the monitor if we had another three habitat slots filled with South American critters. But I also
really like the scenery we got and not sure I'd like to go without that brick wall set or the temple pieces at this point. So, like I said, it's all about trade-offs...
Honestly, reflecting on it, I would have preferred that we got another primate instead of the siamang for the Conservation Pack (or heck, a tree kangaroo!) and we just got the gibbon. I think that would have made that pick far more exciting, anyway.
The Wetlands animal pack was another one that for.me has some of the biggest misfires. I've said before that the spectacled caiman is my favorite caimán in game but having already the Cuvier's dwarf caiman it felt very redundant. The pack was missing a waterfowl (a proper waterfowl) and either the lechwe or the caimán could have been it (and having the swan does not compensate because we are still missing a duck). The lechwe was a weird choice as well. Yes looks pretty yada yada but there were some more popular options avaible like the Pere David deer
I thought somebody might say this, but I much prefer the spectacled caiman to the Cuvier's so this was a welcome addition. Similar to the gibbon above, though, if we had gotten the spectacled caiman in the base game and something else here... It would have worked better. As for the lechwe? I didn't ask for it, and honestly had no idea they existed until we got it in-game, but now they're one of my favorite ungulates to build for.
Then you have the saiga in Eurasia... When the blackbuck was right there, at the very least as a companion piece to the sloth bear. But i know the saiga was Indeed popular (like i was very surprised to learn after release) so i know this is a personal gripe more than anything.
And yeah Arid was the worst case of all.
Oceanía feels like a last minute change to.me now that i've learnt that the quokka has climbing animations. Like they were preparing for the tree kangaroo but had to change them for the quokka in the end because it didn't work out.
For all of these scenarios we're talking about a single animal, rather than a complete misstep for an entire pack (sans Arid, but that's two animals versus one that I'd consider to be a total "miss"). And in each case, I can see some logic in including what they did for one reason or another (e.g., skunk is undeniably an iconic nocturnal animal; saiga is unique looking; quokka was likely just simpler and quite Internet popular). And there was probably a reason for it (e.g., simplicity, balance of animal "types" in a given pack).
My point is that given the pack formats, and what people want, there's no scenario where
everybody is happy with 100% of the content. There's always going to be something folks would prefer. We see this all the time in the conversations around pack themes - depending on where people are from and what they see in their local zoos? People want different stuff. And I've always felt the static pack sizes and themes they picked were limiting, and some smaller species and scenery packs between the bigger ones would have been a much more satisfying and effective way to flesh out the game (e.g., getting a scenery-only or 3 species animal pack between the bigger DLC). But that likely wouldn't have worked with whatever Frontier had planned, resources available, etc.
But I digress! What I'm saying is that.... By and large, if they manage to make the majority of players happy with 3/4 or 6/8 of the habitat species in a given pack? I think it's a win.
I want to have tempered expectations, but if this is “totally the last pack this time” I also want to believe we could get something different/ bigger. JWE2 was always treated a bit differently than Planet Zoo, so that final pack may not be equivalent. It may also have only 7 animals if they go the barnyard path, which will make me even more curious to see those choices.
I also hope we could get more than 1-2 birds in this last pack, but somehow I find that less believable than getting something like the manatee lol
So long as you take a "hope for the best, expect the worst" approach I'm not sure how anybody could be let down. Haha. Personally, I'm choosing to
hope that the final pack is going to be bigger like they did for PlanCo and JWE but I know there's a chance that it might just be a regular ol' 7 habitat + 1 exhibit species pack. And if that's the case, so long as the species are good? I'll be happy.
Focus on what things
are versus what they
aren't and we'll all be good.
