The thing the game can't figure out...

[Sclurp]

There's this one common thing in all my zoos that I know must be difficult to solve but I wish could be fixed and baked into the game and that's the inability of guests to take in and appreciate vistas or grand views of animals in an enormous habitat coexisting with multiple species.
I struggle with setting up any safari type habitats because there's always some spot that guests will stand and view it from miles away and then complain about the lack of a good view of so and so animal - then they're done and will move onto the next animal. In reality, that view would be breathtaking and then you'd go and find the actual viewing area/transport ride to experience it close up. But this can't be done in Planet Zoo and so I have to kind of smother my habitat with things that block out all views that are far away. It's a shame.
It seems like the AI seeks out the closest view of the habitat's barriers from where they currently are, even if they're watching animals from the other side of the zoo, through the gaps in the tree branches. Over, say, seeking out the best view. I thought education items might be a solution to this - that maybe they would draw guests to those spots but still guests complained from all around the place and then moved on.

What do you all think about this and how do you design your zoos around this issue (if you experience it)?

 

[Cile]

I have similar issues, example, These people are viewing my Jaguar enclosure, through the stone wall, when they should be going to see my Tigers.
I wonder if placing the new vending machines in popular viewing locations could help, I did add more stone inbetween the stone and it stopped them from looking over it, but now there is entirely too much stone there. I hate making raised viewing locations because of this issue, guests wont go view the animals at locations you set up, they will stand up top and anything their eyes line of sight sees they comment on it, its super frustrating, I don't want guests viewing the enclosure on the other side of the zoo when they should be following the path to the correct viewing spot. It would be nice if they included a sign or something that lets the AI know that there is a good view at certain locations, kind of like the 'shh' and the dont feed signs, but like its a sign with a little mountain and a camera or something, idk. Would be cool.

 

[onk]

For some reasons, especially with height differences, the line of sight does not really seem to apply in the game. I also had a group of visitors on various spots, that "tried" to look onto a habitat in a quite distance, sometimes through various obstacles. I got rid of this by placing barriers there, mostly hidden within those obstacles/objects.

 

[TobiDaDog]

I struggle with this as well. It also appears that the guests get their 'eyes' set on one animal, (even if it's far away) lock onto it, and ignore the animal that's actually closest to their current location. Say, you have two giraffes in the encloser and they decide to look at the one at the BACK of the encloser, when there's a giraffe literally standing right over their head. They will still complain that they can't see any giraffes.

 

[NZFanatic]

While I agree that it would be nice for this issue to be fixed or at least mitigated in some way, I tend to just completely ignore the guests. Of course I'm playing in Sandbox so they aren't really a big issue for me to begin with. I imagine this sort of thing causes more problems in Franchise or Challenge modes.

 

[Lea_G]

I totally agree that this is annoying, and the ability to mark viewing spots or invisibly attract people to a certain area would be amazing. Right now, I'm trying to work around it, as many others do. I try to design the habitats with the AI in mind and block certain spaces completely. But this is a learning curve and does not always match my sense of aesthetics, so I also just ignore it to some degree. You get used to all those "well, the view was okay"-thoughts

 

[Sclurp]

Hey all,

I've read your comments. I can see how it's not really an issue for those who ignore the guests but for me, I want the guest experience to be a key part of the gameplay and it's in this area particularly that you can see the ai struggling. I'm not totally sure what the solution would be...say if we were given the ability to assign locations as 'viewing areas', would the player be penalised when animals have gone off to sleep elsewhere or get out of the rain?

The thing that comes to mind is a rating system that adds percentages (backstage in the guest programming) as they experience different things when they reach a decent viewing area for a habitat:

• How many animals/ species they can see at once (regardless of distance -- you wouldn't go on safari and complain about seeing thousands of animals across the plains from so far away)
• How many animals they can see close up - adding a boost to the overall score
• Animals using items or eating
• Animals that have a high rating

I don't know if any of these are baked into the game already but from what it plays like, it comes across as:
Guest reaches habitat and attempts to view an animal from a checklist. The guest then snipes the animal from their vantage, regardless of distance and then review bombs your entire habitat.

 

[Khaidu]

One possible solution that could be implemented to solve this is have a vista where you can assign what animal it is for like you can the billboards as a POI for the visitors to go to to see the animal with the best view.

I am unsure why such a thing doesn't already exist when a major part of zoo rating does revolve around guests and seeing the animals with a good view contributes to that.

 

[Urufu1997]

I struggle with this as well. It also appears that the guests get their 'eyes' set on one animal, (even if it's far away) lock onto it, and ignore the animal that's actually closest to their current location. Say, you have two giraffes in the encloser and they decide to look at the one at the BACK of the encloser, when there's a giraffe literally standing right over their head. They will still complain that they can't see any giraffes.

Had that Problem yesterday. Someone complained about not seeing the Bactrian Camels but the Herd is really huge and they can be seen good from everywhere and almost all Camels are outside the whole Time. Maybe that Person was blind
We need Aviarys so these blind People have at least a lot to hear