The grid pathing problem.

hudsonbear · Sep 21, 2021

I really, really hope a fix is on the cards for this. It drives me crazy. I've just finished building a big entrance plaza I am really pleased with but because there's a large section of gridded pathing, I have clumps of guests all over the place, just rotating in circles getting more and more unhappy. I'm spending all my time going round picking them up or replacing the pathing. Honestly, this issue is borderline gamebreaking for me at times.

Not sure what I'm hoping to achieve with this post - just wanted to vent really and say please Frontier, if you see this, it's my number one request right now. I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed yet. I've added to the issue tracker as well - just thought it couldn't hurt to add a little plea here on the forums as well.

Does anyone have a better workaround for this than picking up all the guests, or constantly deleting and relaying sections of paths?

NZFanatic · Sep 21, 2021

Honestly, the strangest thing to me is how some bugs only seem to affect some players even though we're all playing the same game. I've never had this trouble before.

SchokoKitsune · Sep 21, 2021

I've recently had that same problem and it's driving me crazy!! I'm just glad that so far, it has only impacted my Sandbox Zoos. People standing around when Zoo rating and money don't matter isn't that bad. Annoying, but okayish... <_<

ZSHplays · Sep 21, 2021

I’ve had this ever since I started Tekton Zoo, drives me mad!

KellyL · Sep 21, 2021

Yup, I don't even do gridded paths anymore, too frustrating.

ElectricMonk · Sep 21, 2021

I’ve not had this problem but maybe a workaround would be to use floor/roof or panel pieces to create the appearance of a plaza and lay paths (not gridded and without curbs) just underneath? I sometimes do this just for a different texture than the paths can provide but it can also be used to make guests not clip through things you don’t want them to (pillars etc)…. Might work for this issue also?

GGG2021 · Sep 21, 2021

I've had this happen on nearly every gridded path I have created since a few updates ago - especially entrance areas - XenoPeeps - I call them - a flagella flailing mass of peep-like spawn. I put chairs and tables in to stop their spawning activity; which is sometimes bad for it blocks the traffic flow to shops - if this is where the spawning outbreak occurs.

LindaBroer · Sep 22, 2021

It's an extremely annoying issue. I send my zoo files to Frontier at their request but haven't heard anything back from that. Not even that they received it. I love building gridded and interestingly enough if I build the zoo gridded but without using the grid tool (incredible tiresome and difficult to do btw, but it works) I have no problem. But as soon as you use the grid tool people get stuck.

For the interested: I use the 4m path, length 1 and the rotation set to an x number of degrees so I can make 90 degree angles. Than I just start with creating a line and adding the next line to it by adding a single tile and connecting it back to the line. It takes much longer than using the grid tool, but my most recent zoo now has nice gridded plazas without clumps of people so it seems to work.

hudsonbear · Sep 26, 2021

Good suggestions there, thanks. I will try some of these out. It's just so frustrating having to "workaround" this to make a functioning zoo and I hope it can be fixed soon... I love the new stuff being worked on as much as the next person, but I'd rather serious bugs that alter my enjoyment of the game get taken care of first. Appreciate that not everyone experiences the pathing issue, so this is just my opinion, but I also think it's clear that quite a few of us do.

LindaBroer · Sep 26, 2021

hudsonbear said:
Good suggestions there, thanks. I will try some of these out. It's just so frustrating having to "workaround" this to make a functioning zoo and I hope it can be fixed soon... I love the new stuff being worked on as much as the next person, but I'd rather serious bugs that alter my enjoyment of the game get taken care of first. Appreciate that not everyone experiences the pathing issue, so this is just my opinion, but I also think it's clear that quite a few of us do.

Totally agree that Frontier should fix this. Perhaps not instead of creating new content (really like the new pack), but it should receive as much attention as creating new content at least. I'm sure they know of the problem (they didn't ask me for my save files for nothing) but I don't see a lot of progress being made or it even being acknowledged that this is an issue for some/many players. I love PZ more than any game I've played in a long time and in general I love that Frontier seems to listen to some of the major gameplay concerns players have, but when it comes to these kinds of bugs communication is lacking to say the least.

Neviren · Oct 2, 2021

It really is a pathing issue. When making a new zoo, I stay away from using the grid pathing so have no big plaza areas. However, even when using large paths, like the 10m or even the 8m paths, guests and staff still can get stuck on those. I know they corrected the 4m path, but obviously not the rest. There's no rhyme or reason why it happens on some of these paths and not all the others. I can totally see why some players have this problem and others don't because I also have some older zoos with gridded plazas with no problems and yet, some others do.