Now this is something important i saw nobody talking about.
Yeah yeah packs are cool and all but really what makes me come back to the game are the updates much more then the dlcs, as the dlcs are optional and just add stuff, but the updates truly are what enhances the game by a large margin, atleast thats how it would be in a perfect world.
So heres a little thought experience how i would adress the updates for next year, especally after this year kind of left me underwhelmed as most of the focus tend towards fixing up educators do a decent point and the exhibit "update" leaving them just as sucky as before, with mostly small but not very significant changes otherwise, eventhough new animal behaviours were nice.
So some ground rules:
While i cant really make hard differentiations for major and minor features, i trust you guys to be reasonable and not put something like an entire exhibit overhaul as a minor feature.
So anyways here we go without a clear order but all updates roughly themed around one thing.
Update 1: Hitbox Update
Major Update: Hitbox Overhaul
Minor Update 1: Passable Objects
Minor Update 2: Recolorable Staff Uniform
Minor Update 3: Smaller Electricity Generators
Minor Update 4: New Weather Thunderstorm
Update 1. Focus is about making the game less frustrating and clunky regarding the then hopefully not anymore atroucious hitboxes and giant, ugly and not really realistic generators, giant grounded solar pannals and wind turbines, while also adding two new cosmetic effects that everybody should enjoy with the much requested staff uniforms and a new weather with gameplay implication. It also gives mechanics a bit more to do and some extra utility.
Update 2: Reptile Update
Major Update: #FreeTheIguanas
Minor Update 1: New Animal Behaviour: Sunbasking
Minor Update 2: 4 New Animal Variations
Minor Update 3: Scaling Reptile Size
Minor Update 4: Exhibit Caiman
- Cuviers Dwarf Caiman as a Hybrid Animal as well
Update 2. has a focus on the sadly often overlooked reptiles, giving them a new taxonomic order, 2 new base game animals, a new hybrid mechanic and a new behavior fitting for them.
The scaling size gimmick could be a bit to much, but honestly it would just be a really cool idear to flex who has the largest tortoise + it would fix the size issues in a more fun and organic way that references the fact that reptiles never stop growing. Neat
Update 3: Fixing Annoying Stuff Update
Major Update: Interspecies Overhaul
Minor Update 1: Size Fixes
- Multiple simple resizing Fixes (Spotted Hyena, Bison, Californian Sealion, etc)
Minor Update 2: Malayan Tapir
- You guys know what this mean i dont need to explain it
Minor Update 3: Disabling the Tradecenter
- God Mode Cheat Devise unabled as a storage engine outside of sandbox mode, animals that have been bought must immediatly be placed in a habitat, making backroom storing facilitys an usefull house keeping thing for players to manage with the money cost for both the animals food but also the drop in value or even death of the animal if you take to long/forget about them. Actually meaningfull decision making when adopting, incredible right?
Minor Update 4: Walkthrough Overhaul
- Going through all the animals and checking if they are actually kept in walkthrough enclosures or not so that once and for all we have a sensible walkthrough list till the next dlc arrives and messes things up again
Update 3. were general fixes and personal petpeves cough cough making a literal god mode available in the "challangeing" game modes about management cough cough, while mostly checking of rather simple fixes but in a high volume.
Update 4: Vetenerian Update
Major Update: Disease Overhaul
Minor Update 1: Vetenerian Talks
- Vetenerians can perform Vetenerian talks at animal talk points, educating the visitors
Minor Update 2: New Animal Behaviour: Musth
Minor Update 3: Animal Appeal Overhaul
Minor Update 4: Better Caretaker workzones
So and thats it.
4 Updates, allmost 3 hours (sheesh) and a lot of thinking later, this is how i would design the updates for next year.
Are they realistic? Propaply not
But they were fun to make, tackling things i activly think need to be improved, most notably hitboxes, electricity the disease system, god mode and basicly everything else in update 3, but i also tried to put a focus on fleshing out the vetenerian and also the mechanic a little to get them to be a bit more interactive and offer more utility, while also trying to encourage meaning full decision making (better work zones, musth, no god mode, diseases, new possible electricity providers with their own positives and draw backs and the two new interspecies systems.
And then theres the reptile update, which is pretty much there because reptiles got kind of left in the dust and could really deserve some love + iguanas.
But what do you guys think?
Do you agree with my update idears?
Any improvements you would make?
Anything you disagree with?
Your own cool update idears?
Id love to hear them
Yeah yeah packs are cool and all but really what makes me come back to the game are the updates much more then the dlcs, as the dlcs are optional and just add stuff, but the updates truly are what enhances the game by a large margin, atleast thats how it would be in a perfect world.
So heres a little thought experience how i would adress the updates for next year, especally after this year kind of left me underwhelmed as most of the focus tend towards fixing up educators do a decent point and the exhibit "update" leaving them just as sucky as before, with mostly small but not very significant changes otherwise, eventhough new animal behaviours were nice.
So some ground rules:
- 4 Updates with 1 major and 4 minor features instead
- 4 new animal variations = 1 minor feature
While i cant really make hard differentiations for major and minor features, i trust you guys to be reasonable and not put something like an entire exhibit overhaul as a minor feature.
So anyways here we go without a clear order but all updates roughly themed around one thing.
Update 1: Hitbox Update
Major Update: Hitbox Overhaul
- Smaller Hitboxes for all animals that better fit their actual size
- Making all Hitboxes better adaptable to smaller items cough cough Faux rocks cough cough
Minor Update 1: Passable Objects
- Pieces can be Choosen as Passable Objects that do not register as solid matter in the habitat and can be clipped and walked through by the animals
- Would allow building closed shelter doors which are easier and often prettier to do, but still have shelters for the animals
- Could need a Mechanic outside of Sandbox to switch pieces from Passable to Normal and vice versa to give them more utility
Minor Update 2: Recolorable Staff Uniform
Minor Update 3: Smaller Electricity Generators
- 2 New Pieces: Fuse Box and Roof Solarpannel
- Fusebox: A much smaller Piece then the generator that can be placed up to double the range of a electricity generators normal provider range and provide in a smaller area around them electricity from the generator while being easier to hide away with a much smaller guest disturbance radius, but they need to get much more regular check ups from Mechanics
- Roof Solarpannel: A small solarpannel piece that can be freely placed, but only generates very little electricity compared to the other methods, but can be much more easily be put down in large numbers to make up for it. They also have an only half as big sphere of influence as the larger generators
Minor Update 4: New Weather Thunderstorm
- a new weather type based on rain, being stronger, darker and more uncomfortable for both animals and visitors alike with all of them trying to seek shelter
- New Thunder and Lightning Sound and Visual Effects
- Possibility that Fuseboxes will shut down and need to be repaired by Mechanics
Update 1. Focus is about making the game less frustrating and clunky regarding the then hopefully not anymore atroucious hitboxes and giant, ugly and not really realistic generators, giant grounded solar pannals and wind turbines, while also adding two new cosmetic effects that everybody should enjoy with the much requested staff uniforms and a new weather with gameplay implication. It also gives mechanics a bit more to do and some extra utility.
Update 2: Reptile Update
Major Update: #FreeTheIguanas
- Both the Green and Lesser Attilean Iguana are now also habitat animals, being the first animals that can be kept both in exhibits and free
- New Iguana Rig and Animations
Minor Update 1: New Animal Behaviour: Sunbasking
- Animals can now activly seek out Spots where the light shines to stand or lay down aslong as the temperature isnt above their comfort zone
- Reptiles have the highest chance to seek out the sun
- New Enritchment Item: Heating Lamp (Creates an Artifical Basking Spot)
Minor Update 2: 4 New Animal Variations
- Orange Green Iguana
- Green Lesser Attilean Iguana (Juvenile and Addult Females only)
- Dark Blue/Black Gharial
- Reddish Nile Monitor
Minor Update 3: Scaling Reptile Size
- Both Giant Tortoises and Saltwater Crocodiles will now constantly grow towards a fix max of 6,5 meters for Salties and 1.9 meters for the tortoises
- The Size Gene will give them a headstart and depending on how low it is also cap out the max size at a lower size
- Appeal will rapidly increase once these animals have grown to impressivly large sizes
Minor Update 4: Exhibit Caiman
- Cuviers Dwarf Caiman as a Hybrid Animal as well
Update 2. has a focus on the sadly often overlooked reptiles, giving them a new taxonomic order, 2 new base game animals, a new hybrid mechanic and a new behavior fitting for them.
The scaling size gimmick could be a bit to much, but honestly it would just be a really cool idear to flex who has the largest tortoise + it would fix the size issues in a more fun and organic way that references the fact that reptiles never stop growing. Neat
Update 3: Fixing Annoying Stuff Update
Major Update: Interspecies Overhaul
- 2 New Distinct "Interspecies" Systems: Interspecies enritchment and Interspecies education
- Current Interspecies enritchment will become Interspecies education, giving guests extra education for watching combined habitats from animals that live in the same area, passivly generating education
- New Interspecies enritchment will make the animals happy like now, but with completly overhauled groups. Some obviously stay like the lemures but others like the african and asian elephant get added, to make these actually about animals that like to be around each other. Also yes capybara enritchment bonus with everything that wouldnt murk it would be hella fun
- Animals with Interspecies enritchment would have animations with each other, so its resonable to assume that it would start with a few and add more over time
Minor Update 1: Size Fixes
- Multiple simple resizing Fixes (Spotted Hyena, Bison, Californian Sealion, etc)
Minor Update 2: Malayan Tapir
- You guys know what this mean i dont need to explain it
Minor Update 3: Disabling the Tradecenter
- God Mode Cheat Devise unabled as a storage engine outside of sandbox mode, animals that have been bought must immediatly be placed in a habitat, making backroom storing facilitys an usefull house keeping thing for players to manage with the money cost for both the animals food but also the drop in value or even death of the animal if you take to long/forget about them. Actually meaningfull decision making when adopting, incredible right?
Minor Update 4: Walkthrough Overhaul
- Going through all the animals and checking if they are actually kept in walkthrough enclosures or not so that once and for all we have a sensible walkthrough list till the next dlc arrives and messes things up again
Update 3. were general fixes and personal petpeves cough cough making a literal god mode available in the "challangeing" game modes about management cough cough, while mostly checking of rather simple fixes but in a high volume.
Update 4: Vetenerian Update
Major Update: Disease Overhaul
- Diseases should have a transmission radius, from where it can contamine other suitable animals in different enclosures, instead of being bound by the barrier
- After researching a disease, a vaccine is unlocked that can be toggled in an extra tab in the habitat menue like the food quality, where different vaccines can be chosen and toggled how frequent the animals get vaccinated, obviously all with the cost of more and more money.
- Diseases have a much higher lethality rate on non vaccinated animals, that gets lower and lower to practically zero on the highest level on vaccinations.
- Pregnant, Elderly and Baby animals are at a much higher risk to die and/or have a misscariage.
- Different Diseases have different lethality rates, different vaccine costs and different needed frequencies to get them freshed up (im not a doctor but this sounds logical to me both from a game design and a medicine stand point)
- Diseases can have 3 different detection levels: visitors can notice them allready early one, zoo keepers notice them on checkups and vets notice them on check ups
Minor Update 1: Vetenerian Talks
- Vetenerians can perform Vetenerian talks at animal talk points, educating the visitors
Minor Update 2: New Animal Behaviour: Musth
- Musth is a periodic condition in male elephants that increases their aggression due to large rise in reproductive hormons
- The elephant in Musth becomes intollerant of other animals and will attack them (1/0/0 Group tollerance and aggression towards other species)
- Together with the trade center nerf, this means that zoos should have a seperate angry jail enclosure for their male elephants in case of musth
- Extra uniqe challange to deal with one of the largest and most unique animals in the game
Minor Update 3: Animal Appeal Overhaul
- The animal appeal system could use of some rearanging now that the dlc animals are here. Some deserve to be moved up, others down for a ballanced and realistic version
- Exhibit animal appeal should be nerfed to fight of the exhibit cheese start
- giving around 1/3 of the visitors either arachnophobia (fear of spiders), ophidophobia (fear of snakes) or just in general disliking insects would not only be realistic (according to wikipedia about a third of the world population is atleast one of those 2) but also be a good logic reasons why customers would dislike a zoo highly focused on exhibits with not much else to see
Minor Update 4: Better Caretaker workzones
- Being able to select trash bins by hand or by a drag selecting multiple trash bins + toilet
- Caretakers might actually clean where you want them now
So and thats it.
4 Updates, allmost 3 hours (sheesh) and a lot of thinking later, this is how i would design the updates for next year.
Are they realistic? Propaply not
But they were fun to make, tackling things i activly think need to be improved, most notably hitboxes, electricity the disease system, god mode and basicly everything else in update 3, but i also tried to put a focus on fleshing out the vetenerian and also the mechanic a little to get them to be a bit more interactive and offer more utility, while also trying to encourage meaning full decision making (better work zones, musth, no god mode, diseases, new possible electricity providers with their own positives and draw backs and the two new interspecies systems.
And then theres the reptile update, which is pretty much there because reptiles got kind of left in the dust and could really deserve some love + iguanas.
But what do you guys think?
Do you agree with my update idears?
Any improvements you would make?
Anything you disagree with?
Your own cool update idears?
Id love to hear them
