Do you mean in total or just this year?
In total, it's anyone's guess. Support will continue until either the game stops making money or until Frontier runs out of ideas.
This year the answer is definitely four.
What can we realistically expect next
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In total, it's anyone's guess. Support will continue until either the game stops making money or until Frontier runs out of ideas.
This year the answer is definitely four.
I think the decision of making more packs beyond 2022 will depend on the profitability/success of the game in the 1st semester of 2022. That's why I think they'll go strong for the next packs, and probably one of them will be an Aviary pack. If PZ keeps selling well and having activity, we might get 2 further packs in 2023, but not much more.
My prediction is:
2022
Q1: Aviary pack (8 flying birds + 2 ground-dwelling birds)
Q2: Scenery pack (4+1 + 1 flying bird in exchange of 50-100 building pieces)
Q3: Animal pack (7+1)
Q4: Scenery pack (4+1 + 1 flying bird in exchange of 50-100 building pieces)
2023
Q1: Animal pack (7+1)
Q2: Animal pack (7+1)
My prediction is:
2022
Q1: Aviary pack (8 flying birds + 2 ground-dwelling birds)
Q2: Scenery pack (4+1 + 1 flying bird in exchange of 50-100 building pieces)
Q3: Animal pack (7+1)
Q4: Scenery pack (4+1 + 1 flying bird in exchange of 50-100 building pieces)
2023
Q1: Animal pack (7+1)
Q2: Animal pack (7+1)
I disagree. If Planet Zoo stays profitable at the end of 2022 I see no reason to exclude the possibility to get another full year of DLC. Perhaps we only get animal packs because I could Imagine that this would reduce the costs and manpower compared to scenery packs or we just get animals without major updates. It all depends on the selling numbers of course but to say perhaps 6 DLC and surely no more is also speculation. And kinds of this speculation were already proven to be wrong in the past as there were speculations of supports end in 2021 which was taken as real facts within the Forum. In fact we do not know anything about the future of PZ. Next DLCs are mysterious (biomes vs regions) and also the lifespan. Probably even frontier does not know the future after this year at the moment.
I am really looking forward to the next DLC and I am excited about what we will get. Now we are perhaps only round about one month away from the announcement.
Sure, it's all speculation on my side of course. I wish we had official support until 2025. I think that last year's rumours that PZ wouldn't get more DLCs beyond 2021 was baseless and almost nonsense. It's a bit silly to expect that PZ would get less DLCs than Planco, given that PZ is more successful.
This being said, expecting too much isn't realistic either. Of course, anyone can speculate as much as they want, but given the precedents and other videogames, getting 2 or more full years of support from now just isn't likely. I hope I'm proven wrong though.
I agree that animal packs are the way to go in the future because of the reason you stated and because the lack of animals is more 'pressing' than the lack of new scenery items as of now.
Following the 3 month formula and hype
One month after release: enjoying the previous dlc
Two months: may be a calm
Two 1/2 months: speculation begins
Three months: sometimes a leak happens, forums begin to speculate and we all become watchful on Facebook/twitter and acitivity on the forums increases untill a proper announcement
Does anyone have the formula when patches are announced, updates, proper trailers and release dates for both animal and theme packs? If so can you please share
If there’s a new formula we have not seen yet, then there’s no telling when we will start getting some hints
I’ve read on other posts that there is rumored to be capybara, lord Howe insect, buoys and on one post I sow someone say “flocking behavior” or something like that.
other then those rumors we are truly in the dark.
One month after release: enjoying the previous dlc
Two months: may be a calm
Two 1/2 months: speculation begins
Three months: sometimes a leak happens, forums begin to speculate and we all become watchful on Facebook/twitter and acitivity on the forums increases untill a proper announcement
Does anyone have the formula when patches are announced, updates, proper trailers and release dates for both animal and theme packs? If so can you please share
If there’s a new formula we have not seen yet, then there’s no telling when we will start getting some hints
I’ve read on other posts that there is rumored to be capybara, lord Howe insect, buoys and on one post I sow someone say “flocking behavior” or something like that.
other then those rumors we are truly in the dark.
If there was ever a formula/pattern, the last DLCs have soundly broken it. At this point we can't even be sure that a DLC will drop on a Tuesday. The NA animal pack was released on a Monday.
Honestly, with how good the new pieces of the last two packs were, I don't really know if I'd be willing to sacrifice 50-100 pieces for another bird
What I would be willing to sacrifice is an exhibit animal for a bird, and the fact that there are a hell of a lot of birds that only vary very slightly from each other, I think it's possible to do it within the same budget of a exhibit animal.For instance, if they use a base model/base pieces flow for their animal creation, once a scarlet macaw is made it is probably possible to then make a blue and yellow macaw within the budget of an exhibit animal. Sure, people would say it's a clone/reskin, but when it comes to birds having a bunch of "variants" is inevitable.
A lot of it was found using datamining and all of it had tags that referred to older packs/themes (capybara sign referred had the aquatics pack tag, howe insect had australia tag, japanese pieces had the ingame east asia tag) so it is most likely just scrapped content from older packs. There was also an emperor penguin sign tag that someone found during the beta and later on it turned out that we got a King Penguin instead. Not that that automatically means that a capybara will never come to the game, it is the most requested animal at this point and Frontier seems to take the meta wishlist into account; but it just doesn't mean that we'll get one in the next pack or so.
The flocking behavior was a bunch of tags that are also present in the PlanCo files, so just leftovers from that game.
There's essentially nothing in terms of leaks to go on to predict the next pack
Dont torii gates have OR tag? Heard it on Nick stream.
Perhaps, but even then we don't know if those are new or if it was just something that was originally going to be in the game and changed. There's an east asia canopy in the facilities tab that honestly pretty much looks like a tori gate, so I'm personally putting my money on that just being a leftover from the start rather than expecting a Japan based pack
If the devs are paying attention to what the modders seem to be focusing on, there seems to be a lot of work going into full aquatic animals there with large numbers of fish species and they've figured out how to do it in ways without any land at the moment. With people already doing them, I could easily see a dlc to make official versions of several of the more common ones.
This is exactly what I point out whenever somebody talks about aquaria being a completely separate game. The functionality is all there, Frontier just needs to give us the tools! At this point I feel like fully-aquatics are more likely to come before birds.
Modders aren't doing it due to demand, they're doing it because they can. Of course, none of the aquatic species I've seen so far in mods are particularly well-animated (not the fault of the modders). Good luck getting a modder to create a true flying bird.
All I'm gonna say... is that nearly every zoo I've ever been to has aquaria. Two examples from here in the Netherlands, and these are zoos that have a main focus on terrestrial animals.
Burgers' zoo, "Ocean"
Beautifully themed aquaria, where guests are guided from the shore all the way down to the deep sea where no light penetrates. You descend deeper and deeper underground, the water surface goes higher and higher until you can't see it anymore. It is an incredible experience.
Diergaarde Blijdorp's "Oceanium"
For fully aquatic animals, I would most especially love a manatee. This is a small part of the manatee habitat in Burgers' zoo:
Burgers' zoo, "Ocean"
Beautifully themed aquaria, where guests are guided from the shore all the way down to the deep sea where no light penetrates. You descend deeper and deeper underground, the water surface goes higher and higher until you can't see it anymore. It is an incredible experience.
Diergaarde Blijdorp's "Oceanium"
For fully aquatic animals, I would most especially love a manatee. This is a small part of the manatee habitat in Burgers' zoo:
No disrespect at all @NZFanatic but what you are stating is exactly what @WolfofAnarchy said. Purely based on the current mechanics available in PZ, fully aquatic species are easier to implement than flying ones. Meaning that logistically speaking, a pack focusing on fully aquatics would be easier for Frontier to achieve than an Aviary-based one. (This doesn’t mean though that Frontier wouldn’t do an Aviary Pack, just that more work would be required to achieve it.)
Also, you are making a very broad and generalized statement when you say “modders aren’t doing it due to demand” when it comes to modded aquatics. You can’t assume the intentions of an entire group of people. Additionally, even if all modders collectively agreed to not focus on species that are “in demand” (which is a matter of opinion in and of itself), you can’t really say that fully aquatics aren’t in demand. The only current way one could even get a rough measurement to use for such a statement is by visiting PZ’s Nexus page and seeing which modded species have the most downloads. And what’s actually interesting is if you do this, you’ll find that some of the most downloaded mods are of fully aquatic species (such as the Orca and Bottlenose Dolphin by @Nicholas LionRider).
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Part of the thing with official versions is that you tend to have a lot of people, now, who are watching play videos where they use the mods, which tends to leave people disappointed with a lot of the basic things with the mechanics of it. Sure, they can install mods to get it, but most people don't because they think it's a difficult thing to do, but they see all of the things that modders have added to the game and wonder why a lot of them aren't in the game from an official source...or at least some of the basic things there. I can't see all three (or four) manatee species being put in the game for packs, but I can see one official one and the modders going for the others from it if they want to, but most people would be satisfied with having a manatee in the first place.
I'd also love things like the cleaner cichlids that most zoos have in their hippo pools because it helps keep things easy to clean and they're very interesting fish to watch.
I like watching the videos with the mods, and there are several that I've liked, mainly because with several areas, that's about the only way to do it without a lot of the community pitching a fit about them being to similar to existing animals.
The implication of the post I quoted, not Wolf's, was that modders were creating aquatics due to the high demand of aquatic animals in the game. It is not, regardless of how "easy" you might think it would be to implement. I also don't trust any layperson's opinion on how "easy" something is to implemenent. Just because some modders can turn a caiman into something that looks like a barracuda doesn't mean it's "easy".
I never said that fully aquatics would be easy. However, they would be EASIER for Frontier to implement into the current version of PZ than species with flying mechanics. This can be said because diving mechanics already exist within the game and have received numerous updates since their introduction. Functionally speaking, the only major difference between fully aquatics and the semi-aquatic species PZ already has is that fully aquatics wouldn’t interact with terrestrial terrain.
This all said though, if Frontier was only interested in bringing to PZ what was easiest to achieve, we wouldn’t receive flying or fully aquatics species (but the same could have been said for semi-aquatics and their diving mechanics before December 2020).
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I don't believe that's true, especially considering the modded species are invariably "unfinished" compared to official content, due to the inability of modders to create new animations and import new sounds. Before the Eurasian lynx was added, there was a lynx mod that everyone sung the praises of, but it was shallow; it looked really good, but that was it. It had the same animations, behaviours, and sounds as the jaguar, which as far as quality is concerned completely breaks immersion. It was not a new species; it was a jaguar retooled with the appearance of a lynx.
This isn't the fault of the modders or a comment on their skills. There are limitations, put there deliberately by Frontier because they don't support modding, that prevent modders from creating actual new animals.