The building themes of Planet Zoo (and Planet Zoo 2)

Aramar

Aramar
We are often discussing what new animals or features we would like to have added to PZ1 or included in a potential PZ2, but today I want to discuss the building themes. Currently we have 20 themes:

  1. Planet Zoo
  2. Classic
  3. New World
  4. Indian
  5. East Asian
  6. African
  7. Arctic
  8. South American
  9. Australian
  10. Aquatic
  11. North African
  12. European
  13. Conservation
  14. Twilight
  15. Indonesian
  16. Oceanian
  17. Rustic
  18. Zookeeper
  19. Fiesta
  20. Festival

After getting so many DLCs, the themes are starting to be quite similar. However, there are still some basic stuff missing like more mesh panels or flexicolour horizontal logs and wooden planks. While I would love all theses building pieces to return in the sequel of Planet Zoo, I don't think it's realistic to expect that everything returns at launch day. So this is how I would rearrange the building themes:

Base game:
  1. Planet Zoo
  2. Backstage
  3. Classic
  4. Outback
  5. Indian
  6. African
  7. Mexican
  8. Aquatic
  9. Farm
  10. Chinese
  11. Indonesia
  12. Arctic
DLC:
  1. Alpine
  2. Amazon
  3. Japanese
  4. Research campsite
  5. Nocturnal
  6. Festive
  7. Arabian
  8. Islands
  9. Inca
  10. Mediterranean (fishermen village)
  11. Himalayan
  12. Safari
WHat about you? What themes would you like to get in a future DLC for our first game or how would you choose the themes for the sequel?
 

nutrit

nutrit
Indonesian, Chinese and North African are my favorites so I would really count on those.
From the ones we did not get I would really love Tibetan and indigenous North American.
 

Markiz

Markiz
Pacific Northwest (or something along those lines) could be a good theme for combining both Native American scenery and lodge building pieces.

Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't recommend Museums. But I'm aware that it wouldn't make for the greatest building theme, if we're being strict with the definition, but could bring in loads of new scenery.
 

RightWhale

RightWhale
I really feel like for my needs I need some much more basic building pieces:
  1. Museum/ Education: bones, antlers, more signs, the whole works. Basically anything you can find in a zoo that adds to the Education aspect. I honestly find it hard to build without these stuff. Having a bare wall would be much more fun to build for if I could put anything educational on it.
  2. Log Cabin: another basic theme, could be as simple just some half decent horizontal wall pieces. Combining this with the theme above some taxidermy would be nice.
  3. Exploration/ Poaching/ Science: this can fit into the education theme, but think of when zoos display a poaching section with guns and a truck, imagine a zoo displaying all the equipment required to transverse Antarctica, or just imagine the helicopter, trucks, tracking equipment, and everything else required to manage elephants in the bush.
Now for some more themed stuff this is more simple:
I don’t need whole sets of them, but I do love when we receive building pieces of cultural significance. I thought the Indonesian pack was good for this, except for the statues. Hot take, but I’m not the biggest fan of a packs themes containing animals that make no sense. Indonesian statues of the gibbon, and a stylized dragon/ snake for the monitor lizard is cool. And Indonesian statues of featuring an animal native to Africa though???? Not my cup of tea.
 

Xrystal

X
RightWhale said:
I really feel like for my needs I need some much more basic building pieces:
  1. Museum/ Education: bones, antlers, more signs, the whole works. Basically anything you can find in a zoo that adds to the Education aspect. I honestly find it hard to build without these stuff. Having a bare wall would be much more fun to build for if I could put anything educational on it.
  2. Log Cabin: another basic theme, could be as simple just some half decent horizontal wall pieces. Combining this with the theme above some taxidermy would be nice.
  3. Exploration/ Poaching/ Science: this can fit into the education theme, but think of when zoos display a poaching section with guns and a truck, imagine a zoo displaying all the equipment required to transverse Antarctica, or just imagine the helicopter, trucks, tracking equipment, and everything else required to manage elephants in the bush.
Now for some more themed stuff this is more simple:
I don’t need whole sets of them, but I do love when we receive building pieces of cultural significance. I thought the Indonesian pack was good for this, except for the statues. Hot take, but I’m not the biggest fan of a packs themes containing animals that make no sense. Indonesian statues of the gibbon, and a stylized dragon/ snake for the monitor lizard is cool. And Indonesian statues of featuring an animal native to Africa though???? Not my cup of tea.
Click to expand...
I would like to be able to build/place an education center where you could schedule educators to teach about animals in the zoo and conservation.
 

RightWhale

RightWhale
Xrystal said:
I would like to be able to build/place an education center where you could schedule educators to teach about animals in the zoo and conservation.
Click to expand...
I feel like in the sequel that could pair perfectly with ambassador animals and bird shows. I know exhibits can have educators hold animals but it isn’t as fair as I think the idea can go.
 

Fallax

Fallax
I really hope in particular that the Indonesia, Twilight and Oceania themes come back. Those are some of my favourites
 

NachoB

NachoB
Base game themes: Classical, Modern (New World), North African, East Asia, Indonesian, Ocenian, Arctic, Australian, European, Gothic (Twilight without the crap pieces), Indian (but flexicolor), Aquatic (Coastal?), Farm and Conservation.

I wish for a better SA themed set with pieces for colonial building and better "temple" ans "amazon" pieces. Maybe something andean themed as well?

And of course an aviary set, with modular mesh pieces.
 

SpookDoc

SpookDoc
Being more of a creative builder, I hope almost all the themes from PZ1 show up in some capacity in PZ2. This said I’m also totally cool with pieces being “rebranded” to fit under different theme umbrellas than what we got with PZ1. For example, the Africa Pack’s scenery could have easily been divided into two separate themes and sold in different DLCs had they been further fleshed out. A fully-developed Egyptian and Middle Eastern/Islamic style set would be nice. And the same could be said for a number of other themes that showed up in PZ1. There’s plenty of potential for them to be developed out more.

Though I will say I’m largely indifferent about the “themes” that came with the animal packs we got later in PZ1’s development. There’s only so many celebratory themes that feel useful in a zoo space, and most of the pieces we got in them were largely redundant/niche.

Honestly I’m hoping that a PZ2’s building system will take some leaps forward from what we’ve even seen in PC2 and JWE3. Frontier has clearly been using every new “breakthrough” they make in an existing game as the typical starting point in following titles. I wouldn’t be shocked if they re-develop how the theming/texturing of objects is handled in future games. Just like flexi-colored walls and building pieces have become expected, who’s to say that flexi-texture pieces aren’t also possible? Instead of flooding the selection menus with “repeating” pieces for different themes, why not allow a user to change the object material and color when applicable? Want your already placed wall to be a different type of brick or pattern? Just tinker with its settings in a pop-up menu like we have for flexi-color. Similarly, you could also group apply this to multiple pieces at once.

Obviously there’s some cases where this would be less practical, specifically in pieces that aren’t minimal in form/function but it’d still be great for architectural pieces/blocks. A lot of different softwares for 3D architectural modeling offer systems like this to their users for maximizing customization and I feel Frontier’s future CMS games could really benefit from something similar.

As for future themes, I could go on and on but at the end of the day, a theme’s usefulness lies entirely in the specific pieces it includes. I have a list of pieces/object types I’d love to see included in a PZ2, but I couldn’t care less how Frontier decides to market them.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
I'd like more generic themes. The current Classic theme is a good example.

For starters, I'd go with:
  • Classic.
  • Modern.
  • Gothic.
  • Safari.
  • Jungle.
  • Cabin.
For DLC I'd make things more specific:
  • Indian.
  • Himalayan.
  • Mediterranean.
  • Seaside.
  • Japanese.
And so on. Of course this all excludes the likes of the basic plaster set or a hypothetical mesh set.
 
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