Timed Scenario based on realtime are not ok design

[Roxxsmom]

Realtime games that can't be paused pose a problem for those of us with pets, families, or obligations that can't be "paused" themselves. I find strict time limits kind of stressful too, as I feel rushed and have no time to think about layout.

I just tried one anyway, because I think that manor house zoo is a gorgeous setting. Money wasn't the issue for me, as the zoo started to make that quickly. But I have no idea how to get 11 animals in the time allotted, let alone the breeding pair of lions. There weren't even that many habitat species available without spending more eco credits than I had (and there weren't enough eco credits at the beginning to purchase even one lion, let alone two). And the other animals in the zoo didn't produce young quickly enough for me to sell them off for more eco credits.

I'm missing something, clearly, as it must have been possible for the beta testers.

 

[Cocolori]

Realtime games that can't be paused pose a problem for those of us with pets, families, or obligations that can't be "paused" themselves. I find strict time limits kind of stressful too, as I feel rushed and have no time to think about layout.

I just tried one anyway, because I think that manor house zoo is a gorgeous setting. Money wasn't the issue for me, as the zoo started to make that quickly. But I have no idea how to get 11 animals in the time allotted, let alone the breeding pair of lions. There weren't even that many habitat species available without spending more eco credits than I had (and there weren't enough eco credits at the beginning to purchase even one lion, let alone two). And the other animals in the zoo didn't produce young quickly enough for me to sell them off for more eco credits.

I'm missing something, clearly, as it must have been possible for the beta testers.

Not an expert on this as I have struggled with some of the timed scenarios and I haven't tried the new ones yet. However, I found a couple of things helpful on some of the others...

1. If you need to actually pause you can click on the top right settings button and the timer stops
2. Fast forward time is your friend. I rarely use it in any other mode so i had kinda forgotten it existed but for goals like getting 5 star animals or building up credits etc. it is a life saver.

 

[knicholew]

Realtime games that can't be paused pose a problem for those of us with pets, families, or obligations that can't be "paused" themselves. I find strict time limits kind of stressful too, as I feel rushed and have no time to think about layout.

I just tried one anyway, because I think that manor house zoo is a gorgeous setting. Money wasn't the issue for me, as the zoo started to make that quickly. But I have no idea how to get 11 animals in the time allotted, let alone the breeding pair of lions. There weren't even that many habitat species available without spending more eco credits than I had (and there weren't enough eco credits at the beginning to purchase even one lion, let alone two). And the other animals in the zoo didn't produce young quickly enough for me to sell them off for more eco credits.

I'm missing something, clearly, as it must have been possible for the beta testers.

Could not agree with this more. I am no beginner to this game having sunk well over 300 hours into it. I'm also no expert, but I consider myself well-versed in how the game operates and different gameplay options. I've been playing architectural/construction games since childhood, so I'm not a newbie. I've been able to complete all scenarios and difficulties. I found them delightfully challenging yet achievable with some strategizing. I don't tend to dabble in blueprints or too much DIY construction from parts, as I don't have the patience or commitment to perfection. Those just aren't aspects of the game that appeal to me.

All that said, I'm finding the timed scenarios downright impossible. It often takes me 30 minutes to simply build one habitat, so there's no way I can build 10+ in less than 2 hours. Sure, I could try to adjust how I play and expand into blueprints, but I'd probably get frustrated and bored, which would lead me to stop playing altogether.

What might be nice is to have a few expanded settings to control difficulty on a more custom level than just easy to hard. I too would appreciate if time stopped while the game was paused. If you'd rather the clock not stop, simply don't pause. Or maybe allow users to toggle paused time vs. paused clock on and off.

I also 1000% agree with OP that there is too much unnecessary scrolling in filter menus, especially as more and more biomes and animals become available. It's becoming so cumbersome.

Bottom line: all of us love Planet Zoo but may prefer to play in different ways. I can appreciate that Frontier will never please all of us, but I think the timed scenarios have a long way to go before they're accessible for the average player.

 

[Roxxsmom]

Not an expert on this as I have struggled with some of the timed scenarios and I haven't tried the new ones yet. However, I found a couple of things helpful on some of the others...

1. If you need to actually pause you can click on the top right settings button and the timer stops
2. Fast forward time is your friend. I rarely use it in any other mode so i had kinda forgotten it existed but for goals like getting 5 star animals or building up credits etc. it is a life saver.

I discovered this finally At least one can take a bio break or help the spouse put groceries away.

I haven't had any luck with that Scoley Manor one, except to get Bronze. And that took me hours of playtime! I was able to buy a lion right off with the starting eco credits, but no lions came up for sale again until past the gold star time limit, and I didn't have enough credits saved up when a fertile male lion was available again. Then the lions disappeared from the market for another long stretch, and they were even more expensive when they reappeared.

It took forever to get the guest education up to the desired level too, and I found placing buildings and habitats to be incredibly diddly. I found turning of terrain collision or whatever it is called helped with building the train, at least, as it made laying track easier without having to make sure every segment was perfectly level and all the brush was cleared. Still, the train took a long while too.

The hardest thing with that zoo was that some of the goals weren't attainable without researching things (because animals start getting sick, even with quarantine and keeping their enclosures clean and you have to research the diseases), and that alone takes forever. And hiring more than the bare minimum needed of vets and mechanics makes it hard to make money at the beginning (and that's on easy mode).

I tried that swamp zoo once too, and I was well past the silver time limit when I gave up. Again, placing things was so diddly, just getting the habitats, staff buildings, and paths down took more than the gold time limit.

I was wondering if the secret to getting more eco credits faster is to run the game faster, since the time limit is in real life time, not game time. But generally when playing, things go to heck in the zoo if I do that and forget to pause when building things. I'm just a slow builder, I think. I never realized how bad I am at laying paths and placing staff buildings, and at getting habitats to line up with paths and so on, until I try to do it quickly. And I am terrible at getting the ride tracks to go at the angle I want and at getting the last station connected without hitting autocomplete (and then it sometimes sticks the track right through a building or habitat).

I'm telling myself I should just play each one through with no goal except to get the bronze, by exceeding the time limits but eventually achieving the other goals. That way, I can enjoy the new maps, make pretty habitats and zoo scenery, and get a sense for what works in case I want to repeat them and try to do it under time.

But having that timer ticking away is a bit of a stressor, even if I decide to ignore it on the first play through.

 

[FoxyDee]

I discovered this finally At least one can take a bio break or help the spouse put groceries away.

I haven't had any luck with that Scoley Manor one, except to get Bronze. And that took me hours of playtime! I was able to buy a lion right off with the starting eco credits, but no lions came up for sale again until past the gold star time limit, and I didn't have enough credits saved up when a fertile male lion was available again. Then the lions disappeared from the market for another long stretch, and they were even more expensive when they reappeared.

It took forever to get the guest education up to the desired level too, and I found placing buildings and habitats to be incredibly diddly. I found turning of terrain collision or whatever it is called helped with building the train, at least, as it made laying track easier without having to make sure every segment was perfectly level and all the brush was cleared. Still, the train took a long while too.

The hardest thing with that zoo was that some of the goals weren't attainable without researching things (because animals start getting sick, even with quarantine and keeping their enclosures clean and you have to research the diseases), and that alone takes forever. And hiring more than the bare minimum needed of vets and mechanics makes it hard to make money at the beginning (and that's on easy mode).

I tried that swamp zoo once too, and I was well past the silver time limit when I gave up. Again, placing things was so diddly, just getting the habitats, staff buildings, and paths down took more than the gold time limit.

I was wondering if the secret to getting more eco credits faster is to run the game faster, since the time limit is in real life time, not game time. But generally when playing, things go to heck in the zoo if I do that and forget to pause when building things. I'm just a slow builder, I think. I never realized how bad I am at laying paths and placing staff buildings, and at getting habitats to line up with paths and so on, until I try to do it quickly. And I am terrible at getting the ride tracks to go at the angle I want and at getting the last station connected without hitting autocomplete (and then it sometimes sticks the track right through a building or habitat).

I'm telling myself I should just play each one through with no goal except to get the bronze, by exceeding the time limits but eventually achieving the other goals. That way, I can enjoy the new maps, make pretty habitats and zoo scenery, and get a sense for what works in case I want to repeat them and try to do it under time.

But having that timer ticking away is a bit of a stressor, even if I decide to ignore it on the first play through.

I feel this, I like the career mode, but when there is not a timer to stress me. I was forunately be able to get all gold levels but man I am glad I have this finally over. What helped me with credits is getting a fast breeding exhibits animals such as bugs, let them breed like crazy then release them into wild, its a constant management of them, especially when you have to play on fast forward, but at least I was able to get the lions with the credits. Its a bit of luck though, I had only like 3 minutes left when finished the gold, so more tries will be probably unnessecery.

As for the diseases, I did not research them. It was better to just research the animals to get higher education and let the extra vets take care of the sick animals.

 

[SirTophamHatt]

... using ingame years would render the timer pretty much useless since you could simply pause the game, set everything up and then unpause when adding the animals, not much of a challenge left then.

Which is perhaps a hidden good thing about the timed scenarios.

I found most of my regular scenario time was me having the game paused while spending money, then worrying the money was low all the time.
Using the timed scenarios would be a good challenge not to pause things.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I feel this, I like the career mode, but when there is not a timer to stress me. I was forunately be able to get all gold levels but man I am glad I have this finally over. What helped me with credits is getting a fast breeding exhibits animals such as bugs, let them breed like crazy then release them into wild, its a constant management of them, especially when you have to play on fast forward, but at least I was able to get the lions with the credits. Its a bit of luck though, I had only like 3 minutes left when finished the gold, so more tries will be probably unnessecery.

As for the diseases, I did not research them. It was better to just research the animals to get higher education and let the extra vets take care of the sick animals.

Wait, is it possible to release exhibit animals you've bred into the wild for eco credits? How do you do this? All I've ever had when I play is the option to sell them for cash.

Getting the research up was the hardest thing in that scenario, and I think it was key. Research into the diseases, research into the animals (for increased education and better chance at breeding and happier guests when the animals are suitably enriched). But with just being able to afford a couple of vets at the beginning, getting the research numbers up to where they needed to be was glacially slow and involved a lot of "vet has not visited this habitat for a long time" messages.

 

[FoxyDee]

Wait, is it possible to release exhibit animals you've bred into the wild for eco credits? How do you do this? All I've ever had when I play is the option to sell them for cash.

Getting the research up was the hardest thing in that scenario, and I think it was key. Research into the diseases, research into the animals (for increased education and better chance at breeding and happier guests when the animals are suitably enriched). But with just being able to afford a couple of vets at the beginning, getting the research numbers up to where they needed to be was glacially slow and involved a lot of "vet has not visited this habitat for a long time" messages.

Really? I know you cannot release exhibit animals for CC in franchise, but I was able to release them for CC in career. Will take a screenshot for you once I get home later today.

As for the research, I had just one vet not assigned to a research and he was able to go though the habitats and check the animals alone somehow. The rest of them were researching the animals. When disease occured I unassigned one more to help the other one cure animals and then assigned her back on the research. Its a management hell and truly the hardest of the scerios though, true that. My lions were unable to reproduce for like 20 minutes and I was just there watching the time slowly go down. Luckily they reproduced last minute so I got the gold but...would not go through that ever again lol.

 

[Roxxsmom]

Lol, I never checked in career mode, since I was unable to sell to other players or to release them for eco credits in franchise, I assumed it would be the same throughout the game.

On a different note, doing the timed scenarios is really frustrating, because you get one of the achievements required, then it goes away again. For instance, I got the "have three animal talks in one year," which simply entailed having two different educators assigned to two talks each. Easy peasy. Then a couple of years later, the achievement went away, as one or the other of my educators evidently stopped giving talks >.< so I had only two given in that year.

Having to give two talks a year three months apart is not exactly a grueling work schedule, and I have plenty of staff rooms near the habitats, so I don't know what the issue is.

 

[Animastar]

I fully agree that the timer needs to stop when time is stopped. It does not insert challenge, it only inserts anxiety and necessitates an obscene amount of pre-planning, a whole lot of pre-building everything in a test world, which again isn't challenge, but annoyance and a whole of time consuming for something that's supposed to be fast.

Not to mention, good grief. I'd hate to be the designers of the free maps. All the time and effort they put into them, and instead of them being a decent back-drop to be worked with, it just ends up being ignored, if not bulldozed entirely just to make completing the scenario on time doable.

If people really need a reason to do things in stupidly unreasonable times, something as simple as giving them a leaderboard to fight over would grant it, while still allowing the completion goals to be reasonably achievable to all players.

And all those talking about complaints being about not being their 'play style', well. It's easy to say this when it's not your 'play style' that frontier seems to have completely given up on providing new scenarios for. If timed scenarios are all they are going to be giving us for the foreseeable future, they need to be geared for everyone, not just the people who want it as close to impossible as it can get.

 

[Roxxsmom]

All my pre planning goes to heck. I burned the first 20 min or so of the last timed scenario I tried just getting the paths to connect in the staff area! Then I discovered the water and power thingies did not quite reach where I needed them to and I had to fiddle with that.

These kinds of things make me wonder sometimes if I have some kind of undiagnosed processing issue or something. I hear people say they get gold, or at least silver, on their first try, and here I am trying to hurry and clicking on the path menu when I mean to click on the barrier menu and so on. Then I'm scrolling through those menus when I click on the right one. More time lost. I feel so slow, like I can't get my neurons to snap fast enough to even find what I need quickly.

 

[Animastar]

All my pre planning goes to heck. I burned the first 20 min or so of the last timed scenario I tried just getting the paths to connect in the staff area! Then I discovered the water and power thingies did not quite reach where I needed them to and I had to fiddle with that.

These kinds of things make me wonder sometimes if I have some kind of undiagnosed processing issue or something. I hear people say they get gold, or at least silver, on their first try, and here I am trying to hurry and clicking on the path menu when I mean to click on the barrier menu and so on. Then I'm scrolling through those menus when I click on the right one. More time lost. I feel so slow, like I can't get my neurons to snap fast enough to even find what I need quickly.

Yeaaah, I'd say who ever is saying they are getting gold or silver on first try, are either lying or stretching the definition of "first try". It takes at least one try just to figure out what you need to do.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Yeaaah, I'd say who ever is saying they are getting gold or silver on first try, are either lying or stretching the definition of "first try". It takes at least one try just to figure out what you need to do.

I imagine they are defining "first try" as their first actual attempt to complete it. I've gotten gold on my "first try" on several of them with this definition. What I do is start the scenario, immediately save the game, and then look at all the objectives and what animals are available to purchase, the terrain layout, etc.

Then I reload the save I made and actually start playing.

Someone who wants to get technical could argue that the reload means it is not my first try...but the fact that I didn't even attempt to do anything other than look means the initial visit to review everything was not actually a "try" at all.

Simple fact is that the timed challenges are not actually "challenging." What they are is "limiting"...it's quite easy to get them to gold if you just focus, 100%, on the objectives and ignore ALL other aspects of the game. I agree with the others in this thread that call them bad game design.