What are YOUR expectations/wishes on variants?

[Jeminyne]

This has already been discussed A LOT, but I figured it be nice to have a simple thread on what we dream of VS what we expect to see. Just want to hear peoples' thoughts! Plus I'm bored and excited at the same time, since all we can do is wait at this point. Might as well chat.

I think the most "controversy" about variants comes from fear that they'll just be a few slight shifts of the hue or saturation. Like shifting the wolves on few different hues of brown to grey. Though we're appreciative that we're even getting variants at all, let's face it: many people don't just want slight palette-swaps. They dream of solid black wolves, piebald reindeer, and king cheetahs. They want piebald peafowl, golden tigers, and proper black-skinned chimpanzees. But we also can't expect every possible colour or pattern ever.

So dreams vs expectation. Here's some examples...

What I'd LOVE is if the male lions ended up like this:

But what I EXPECT is, at best, we'll get something like.... just the three at the bottom. Plus the one albino variant we already have. But only in terms of colour, not mane-shape. Depending on how complex the genetic inheritance is, there could be subtler variants in between them.

I'd be happy with that, as I assume most people would be.

Another example:

The ~dream~ would be something like this. (Well, uh... but with better light/dark contrast, and actual fur pattern differentiation. Here you can REALLY tell they just took one base coat, and moved the sliders up and down for hue, saturation, and brightness.)

But eleven variants seems unrealistic to me, for Planet Zoo. I'd be happy with just like... six? The original, a solid black, a solid white, another grey coat with a different pattern from the original, and two different browns coats. Most people would probably love that. But many fear (due to the provided image) that it won't even be that complex.

Not sure what I expect in that regard.

And then there's the other thing-- who knows how complex the breeding system is. Would breeding a grey wolf with a brown wolf produce offspring that are either a clone of the grey or the brown? Or could it produce a colour that lies somewhere in between? I have no idea how hard that would be for Frontier to implement.

There's even fears that they'll completely replace the white Llama with only the new colours. Quoting Urufu1997:

"The Llama should have more Variations. They do already have 6 but these are 3 Variations with light Fur and brown Patches and 3 Variations with completely brown Fur. If they don't change anything it seems to be even impossible to get the white Standard Variation."

So that's definitely more than just "slightly shifting the hue".... but as you can see, new potential problems arise.

Thoughts?

 

[Moonfox]

I’ve been looking through the animal market in franchise and writing down every variation I find. So far, most animals have 3-4 variations and an albino/leucistic. From descriptions alone, it’a hard to know how dramatic the colour differences are.

Personally, the more subtle differences in shades and hues are the most exciting to me. I would love to have the dramatic colours like black wolf, king cheetah and tabby bengal tiger, and I really hope for those variants, but those animals should be rare, like albinos/leucistics are now. The subtle shade and hue differences should be far more common, so we can see our animals as individuals without it becoming a bit of a fantasy effect. I agree with the piebald peacocks and reindeer being a cool inclusion too. Honestly, I think Frontier handle rarer colour variations or morphs really well by setting their frequency to about 6% or less, so I think this will be perfectly balanced if they are included in game.

I’ve seen a few differences in the descriptions that sound pretty distinctive: wild dogs have cream, red or brown based coat colours; nile monitors can be yellow or green-yellow; wolves I’ve seen are grey, grey-brown and red-brown, etc. Others are less obvious, but still more than I expected (red pandas can be bright red, red-brown or dark red, wildebeest can be brown, grey-brown, black). There’s also sexual dimorphism where the males are all identical but females vary (black male sable, females are tan, red-brown, etc). We also have no idea what will be given to us once the patch releases - we might only be getting a glimpse right now with what descriptions we have. I’m going to celebrate what we have, the differences are amazing, and hope that we get the more striking variants on the 25th.

 

[FoxyDee]

I will be happy even for each animal to have 3 fur variations (but then again I was not bothered by the same fur as many people here).

Although so far it seems flamingos will be unchanged, which is in my opinion a missed oppurtunity. I know they get their colour from food, but since that is not possible in game (would be cool if for example they would be more pink if they were fed grade 3 food), I think colour variations would be very welcome to them. Right now they kind of look boring in their habitat, they are just white, while most people imagine all those pink shades when flamingo is said.

 

[Moonfox]

When I saw the flamingo description my first thought was “Is that describing the colour changes on the same bird, or for individuals in a flock?” I don’t remember it word for word, but it was along the lines of “varying pale to dark pink and orange to black wing tips”.

I really feel like so much effort has been put into variations that it would be odd not to include king cheetahs or to replace white llamas or have identical flamingos. Even if those variations aren’t there on the 25th, I could see them being patched in pretty soon after.

I’m super curious about the breeding and inheritance of colour. The wording in the announcement makes it sound like there is a colour spectrum that offspring fit into between parent colours, or maybe the colours combine to make new shades? Either of those sounds so complicated to program, so I’m very interested to learn more about how it works.

 

[Sheep]

I'm hoping they implement a system that gives flamingos stronger pink tones depending on their food quality level<3 More realistic and it could put the already awesome food quality system to good use<3

 

[NZFanatic]

Honestly I'm just glad they're increasing the odds of finding the black jaguar in Sandbox mode. Anything other than that is a huge bonus to me.

 

[VetGirl330]

I'm hoping they implement a system that gives flamingos stronger pink tones depending on their food quality level<3 More realistic and it could put the already awesome food quality system to good use<3

To me the most interesting management games are when management decisions have an actual meaningful impact on the gameplay. I have thought of this example before. Since Frontier already included the different food grades (an awesome detail that I don't remember from any other zoo games) and now they are introducing color variants, this should be easy to program. After eating an improved food grade for X months, they become a shade darker. Would be really interesting, and let's be honest this is a species that needs a little love in the game! It would also be more realistic to have all flamingos in the flock reflect the food grade rather than random color variants pop up. Personally I would love to see a pale flamingo purchased from some poor-grade zoological institute on the market eventually turn a rich pink to the match the rest of my flock. (Though I think some people are thinking of the American flamingo species when they visualize the uniform bright red/pink birds).

 

[KevinBevin]

Current hopes: animals in the major category will get 15+ colours, medium 7-15 and subtle 2-7. Seeing as giraffes are in the medium category, I doubt it'll be like this.

Having a tiny little hope in the back of my head that zebras might be placed in the medium category. I'll add some examples of stripe and colour variety:

^ a plains zebra with quite wide stripes

^ a plains zebra with much thinner stripes. Look at the lower part of the legs for good comparison.
The underlaying actual colour can vary too. All from the darkest of blacks, to a sun bleached brown. Most zebras are dark brown, and it can be difficult to spot unless you get quite close. The nosebridge is often lighter than the rest of the body, varying from as black as the rest, to an almost sandy colour. Around the eye is a great place for variety too.

How could zebra variety be implemented? Make about 4-6 base colours (example: jetblack, blueish black, sunbleached black, dark brown, light shaded black, etc) and 4-6 stripe patterns.

Of course this is just hopes, and I don't at all expect this to be implemented. I'll be a happy man with just three colour variants for them

 

[NZFanatic]

The thing with zebras is that their stripe patterns vary from subspecies to subspecies. Chapman's zebras tend to have distinctive light brown shadow stripes, and of course Burchell's are very distinct with their tertiary stripe shading, and then there's the maneless zebra which is a whole other thing...

The current in-game zebra is closer to the Grant's, i.e. the 'basic' zebra (were it not for the extinct quagga, I would say the Grant's ought to be the nominate subspecies).

Zoos do make concerted efforts to preserve individual subspecies where possible, and the plains zebra is an animal where the subspecies are very varied and distinctive.