WingardiumLevicoaster
Volunteer Moderator
If you check the latest patch, there was a bug fix related to mechanics. Hopefully it helps 
The in-game speed of time has remained unchanged as of release day.
- Thread starter SleepyEngi
- Start date
I agree their silence is very unprofessional, just give an answer, this was the second major issue that popped up in the beta. The first being the need for an offline challenge mode. They handled that wonderfully. Then they completely flunked it by tweaking birth rates and now lifespan of the animals. You're tweaking the symptoms not the cause, the cause is the pace of the timeflow. If you say you can't do it for whatever reasons, people will understand. People don't need an immediate fix, just be clear if you're going to adress the issue at some point and if not, why?
This seems to, unfortunately, be par for the course with Frontier. They were very much the same way w/ JWE. Always very cryptic and non-committal in their replies. I thought it was just because they had Universal looming over their heads with that project but now I wonder if that was ever the case, given how they're handling PZ's gamebreaking launch issues.
Maybe I'm just spoiled and used to indie devs who communicate well w/ their playerbases? Is this the standard in the greater video game industry?
I was excited to get it but now seeing how stressful this game is it doesn't even seem fun.. and devs response is very sub par as they are hearing but not listening. If they care and want sales, just address the timescale issue.. until then I'm postponing my order
Yeah unfortunately it seems Triple A and larger game companies don't seem to be very transparent about their development process, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe something to do with their investors? I don't know.
But this is the reason I trust indie developers over others nowadays.
Aye. At this point I'm glad I was unable to preorder in time, and will be waiting til the new year to see what, if anything, is addressed before I get the game. I'm very saddened by this whole kerfluffle cause I was really looking forward to the game.
Your icon, btw, is wonderful. [proud crestie owner!]
Yeah I just keep coming back to this issue. I work long hours in a high pressure environment, so I come to Planet Zoo for a slightly challenging but overall relaxing zoo building experience. But it's all just happening too fast, every time I play Franchise I inadvertently end up switching from relaxation mode back to work mode. Frontier, I beg you once more, give us the -option- to slow down the game flow. Let me enjoy my newborns for more than ten minutes before they get killed by their parents because they grew up while I was telling my keeper to stop starving my chimps. To be clear, I am swimming in money and conservation credits, I have no problems management wise (I'm actually quite pleased with the management side of the game overall).
I can imagine that people running the game at different base speeds may cause issues for the online Franchise mode. So I will limit my sincere request to the single player modes: please allow us to modify the base timescale in Sandbox and Challenge mode
I can imagine that people running the game at different base speeds may cause issues for the online Franchise mode. So I will limit my sincere request to the single player modes: please allow us to modify the base timescale in Sandbox and Challenge mode
How is it stressful? I can literally go afk for hours at a time and my zoo will be fine.
Using tigers as they are the current event animals, it take over 1hr for them to mature, thats over 6 times longer than your blatant lie
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You accuse a poster of hyperbole then do the same yourself.
There is absolutely no way you are leaving a zoo for HOURS (IE 2-3 or more) at a time, not paused, with no problems unless your zoo is very small or only has long lived species in it. Now I'm not saying that in 10 minutes the whole thing falls to e either because it doesn't, but I would say if you did nothing and let the game go on a medium to large zoo you would not make it an hour without something going wrong.
Ignoring hyperbole on BOTH sides of the debate, the bottom line here is PZ suffers from the same thing that JWE suffers from, and that is that in a normal large zoo you can't just set it on normal speed, sit back and watch your zoo. Something will go wrong within a short period of time requiring you to take action.
The argument being that you can just play say Sandbox mode isn't really an answer because many people like the challenge of having to deal with finances and the underlying simulation. They just don't want to have to put out fires every 30 minutes or so.
The argument being that you can just play say Sandbox mode isn't really an answer because many people like the challenge of having to deal with finances and the underlying simulation. They just don't want to have to put out fires every 30 minutes or so.
He present information to get a system changed, to misrepresent that information is to lie. As for me, I 100% went afk. I went and got something for dinner, ate dinner and watched a movie. To setup for it I added fresh animals to my exhibits and turned off breeding on my lions and komodos. When I got back my issues were 1 inbred hippo baby and 2 empty exhibits. You're welcome to add me on discord and watch for 2hrs if you like but don't make claims without proof just because you fail to grasp the very basic in game mechanics.
Myself personally would like a more slower speed, as I like to take my time and build up my franchise and use no prebuilds of blueprints. On the other hand you have stuff like the community challenges where you are encouraged to play the game at enhanced speeds top obtain rewards. I for one will not be attempting the first one mainly due to lack of time, and trying to get my head around the breeding aspect.
At the end of the day it's all down to personal preferences, I like the idea of community challenges but they need to either reworked or extended as they only cater for a certain type of gamer at the moment.
At the end of the day it's all down to personal preferences, I like the idea of community challenges but they need to either reworked or extended as they only cater for a certain type of gamer at the moment.
They really don't cater to a certain type of person. The first one may be more obtainable to those who work it out quicker but come a couple weeks when people have more animals and credits moving into an event will be easy for the vast majority of players. If the next one is an animal you currently have in decent numbers you'll do fine and other people will have more credits so they can get started quickly too.
Changing a mechanic like events based on week 1 of the games release is extremely shortsighted.
Based on the feedback about the time issue I agree and I will wait on the purchase of the game because of that issue alone. Along with the fact that Frontier has not responded with a response that shows me that they are looking into it. You made the game, correct the time, fix the balance if needed and give the players of the game the functions we are looking for. Totally makes sense to have a slow down of the game for those who want to build and watch animals and not during the pause. If I want them to breed etc. I can certainly speed up the game. But if not slow down mode is available I am stuck which is the point everyone has been making and I agree with the comments and I have not purchased yet. I will if they fix the issue of the time being way too fast as it seems pretty obvious it is way to fast for most people playing the game. I see the same comments on steam, it is the biggest thread.
I love this new strategy of "do as I demand or I won't buy the game because I know best based with no experience at all"
They addressed it during the beta. They marked the issue as fixed because the time is fine. I've spent the past 3 hours finishing up research and for the most part I've ignored the game. I've sold 3 hippos, purchased 2 snakes and sold some peacocks in 3 hours irl with a lot of X3 speed. For the most part the game is on auto pilot because even I am smart enough to figure out the basic mechanics. Yet people can't find the time to look at the animals apparently... The vast majority of people, 85%, have given the game a positive review yet they are meant to balance the game around the remainder of the people because they can't figure out the tools available. 85% of people have to play with their animals zooming around because a whingy minority. If they slow the game those currently complaining will then complain about something else because it's what they do, most likely slow breeding. Then you'll have the additional complaints from those who dislike the snails pace of the game which is balanced around the feelings of a tiny amount of people.
Wanna stare at your animals for hours and hours, play sandbox mode.
There’s no need to insinuate constantly that others don’t know how to play or are dumb, or don’t know how to use basic tools. This is just an opinion. If you’re fine with how the game runs now, that’s fantastic, but other people are not and have the right to voice it.
Besides, most people on this boat (not all of course) don’t really like sandbox or are not particularly interested in it. I am not, I like challenges. Wanting a little more time with animals or not having things breaking constantly doesn’t equate of not wanting a challenge at all. In fact I’ll argue that if there was only sandbox in the game, the time issue wouldn’t be brought at all, because it’s a problem that mainly affects franchise.
On another note, playing career now, and for some reason it feels more...balanced? I’m not having as much troubles managing my zoos there. The lifespan is still short and the barriers seems to be forever at the edge of collapse, but the generators run fine, babies don’t grow up all at the same time, they are not inbreeding, keepers feeds them long before starvation, they breed but not so much so it’s manageable...hell, even the exhibits take their time to breed and don’t inbred immediately after born. I’m in a scenario that ask you to create a new zoo from scratch too, so you can’t say it’s because the zoo is already managed.
It’s actually pretty relaxing compared to franchise. Not perfect, but if they balanced things more on that direction, it would help a lot. I’m not even sure what exactly is different, I just know it seems to work better for me.
Besides, most people on this boat (not all of course) don’t really like sandbox or are not particularly interested in it. I am not, I like challenges. Wanting a little more time with animals or not having things breaking constantly doesn’t equate of not wanting a challenge at all. In fact I’ll argue that if there was only sandbox in the game, the time issue wouldn’t be brought at all, because it’s a problem that mainly affects franchise.
On another note, playing career now, and for some reason it feels more...balanced? I’m not having as much troubles managing my zoos there. The lifespan is still short and the barriers seems to be forever at the edge of collapse, but the generators run fine, babies don’t grow up all at the same time, they are not inbreeding, keepers feeds them long before starvation, they breed but not so much so it’s manageable...hell, even the exhibits take their time to breed and don’t inbred immediately after born. I’m in a scenario that ask you to create a new zoo from scratch too, so you can’t say it’s because the zoo is already managed.
It’s actually pretty relaxing compared to franchise. Not perfect, but if they balanced things more on that direction, it would help a lot. I’m not even sure what exactly is different, I just know it seems to work better for me.
I don't understand why the same points keep getting hammered.
1) I don't have problems with management, I (and many other people have mentioned the same in this thread) am swimming in babies, cc and cashflow is constant.
2) Why are you assuming we are giving the game a negative review. I'd give the game a 7.5, that's a positive review. Yet the negative points still hold.
3) We want to play challenge or franchise mode, because we want a realistic management experience.
4) Meaning we don't want immortal animals (sandbox) or animals that die off every second to third hour. Ideally I'd like three to six generations of animals on one park build (one large park build could easily go up to 60-120 hours). Let's say I'm building on pause half of that time (which I am doing now, and would probably keep doing), that's one new generation popping along every ten hours on average. That sounds like very little, one baby in twenty hours of playtime (and ten hours of playing on normal speed), but keep into account this is just for one male/female couple you have in your zoo. The number increases for every couple you have and if you don't play on pause or normal speed at all it will be way more babies per hour, given that you can just add extra couples of animals and use fastforward at occasions, so the balance between using pause, normal, double and triple speed will be better.
5) If they make time flow a tweakable option, slow breeding won't be a problem for the other people who like to run a puppymill. In fact, you can speed up your puppy mill if you so desire. And I'd be happy for you to be able to that if that is what you want. I understand this is probably a bad idea for franchise mode, giving community goals, animal trade market, but it's a reasonable option for Challenge mode.