Where the game still fails to give guidance for a successful zoo operation

[marcnesiumHH]

Here is my list where the game (help, tutorial missions, whatever) still fails to give guidance and it would help a lot if Frontier could give any form on guidance:

1) guest needs. with 1.1.0 there is a new form of guest thoughts ' I wish could have stayed longer'.

As you can see the guest is happy and also has a lot of cash left and his happiness ratings are all green. She did not visit the Bengal Tigers, though it is directly on the way from the scorpions. There is enough room on the guest paths and in front of the habitat to see this animal

2) Vandalism
The new heatmap for the vandalism does not help me in preventing vandalism before it happens. Or are we supposed to spam security cameras everywhere? The most vandalism has been happening for the last 100 ingame years right below security cams.

3) transport rides
Transport rides have been bugged since Beta, that's the reason why I haven't integrated them since release. With 1.1.0 people are still reporting that they are bugged. We desperately advice on how they are supposed to set up to run economically successful.

4) Education rating
I have been having an overall education rating of 5 stars for 300 ingame years now (every research has been done). With 1.0.0 there was no single alert of overlapping/ misplaced education item.

However, I am frequently failing in fulfilling the task of optimizing an education rating for a species (regardless of which species).

Dear fellow commentators, please do not post any YT tutorial (done in franchise) or any other form of tips. This thread is meant to be about more guidance to understand the intended game mechanics better.

 

[HeatherG]

You posted this in General Discussion, but you say you don't want any tips from anyone. I can move this to feedback then close it? Frontier can still see it.
BUT others are willing to help if you want.

Edit: Heat maps show where vandalizing is happening. Like if there's a broken bench or garbage can.'
What I think is needed for a successful zoo:

• Keeping the animals happy (click on an animal and go through their menu tabs to see what they need (terrain, plants, habitat requirements and they also need all their enrichment items.
• Keeping guests happy as well with food and drinks etc

 

[marcnesiumHH]

You posted this in General Discussion, when you say you don't want any tips from anyone. I can move this to feedback then close it? Frontier can still see it.
BUT others are willing to help if you want.

sure, however a discussion of missing guidance is appreciated

 

[HeatherG]

If you are looking for guidance I will leave it here in Gen. Discussion Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[theaminator19]

I agree with a lot of what you said here, the only thing in the way of guidance I can offer is about the time the guest spends in the zoo.

A group of guests has an amount of time that they're willing to spend in the zoo associated with them, so they will attempt to achieve what they want to in that time frame. However if the AI of a guest works in the same way as Planco then as the guests move through the zoo and they see something (Like a food stall) and they are hungry enough, they will go and eat there. Same principal for anything a guest can interact with. It looks like they spent a lot of money while moving through your zoo so its possible after spending time in lines for different stalls and visiting other habitats they eventually ran out of time before making it to the tigers. The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you have plenty of stalls so the queues are short, high trained staff to reduce queue times and use transport rides to aid quick travel (I see your part about them not being profitable). Personally I don't mind losing out on a transport ride and offer them as a service for my guests because I'm making around 20000 a year in profit with only 4 habitats and 6 exhibits. If you can't absorb the cost of losing money with a transport ride then maybe look at why you aren't making enough profit to do that

 

[Sclurp]

I really don't understand what I'm seeing, that guest's needs are in the green, the education bar is maxed out and they've spent $1,222 and yet their happiness is the lowest it can go? Is this caused by not seeing the other animals in the zoo or are guest's still losing happiness based on how much distance they're walking without interacting with any attractions?

Why can't they stay longer?

OP, did they own a map?

 

[kubas]

Maybe its connected with escaping animals bug? And these guests are leaving zoo because they were running out from "escaping animal"?

 

[Moosegun]

Here is my list where the game (help, tutorial missions, whatever) still fails to give guidance and it would help a lot if Frontier could give any form on guidance:
2) Vandalism
The new heatmap for the vandalism does not help me in preventing vandalism before it happens. Or are we supposed to spam security cameras everywhere? The most vandalism has been happening for the last 100 ingame years right below security cams.


3) transport rides
Transport rides have been bugged since Beta, that's the reason why I haven't integrated them since release. With 1.1.0 people are still reporting that they are bugged. We desperately advice on how they are supposed to set up to run economically successful.

I would say the education and vandalism heatmaps are still a massive improvement and have made dealing with it far easier. As for transport rides, I have four in my zoo at the moment and they are all running very effectively. Seems to have improved since patch.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you have plenty of stalls so the queues are short, high trained staff to reduce queue times and use transport rides to aid quick travel (I see your part about them not being profitable). Personally I don't mind losing out on a transport ride and offer them as a service for my guests because I'm making around 20000 a year in profit with only 4 habitats and 6 exhibits. If you can't absorb the cost of losing money with a transport ride then maybe look at why you aren't making enough profit to do that

Thanks for sharing your insights from PlanCo.
I am not worried for losses of the rides as a priority, it's more that in 80-90% players report (or in every stream I saw with transport rides) the guests do not use the rides at all or a lining up like hell but aren't transported at all and in the latter case they get unhappy/ thirsts/ hungry after a certain time and then leave the zoo.
And I also would like to get guidance for outlining a ride to plan a large zoo ahead. I.e. how many habitats it's supposed to pass/ go through. What should be the minimum distance for it to keep guests longer in the park.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

more insights for point 1., which also add to the topic of a better outlining guidance

This group leaves unhappy without having seen any animal. They only visited drink and food shops, but the drink happiness is in the red.

This is the overview. Blue 'E' is the entrance, red marked areas are the places visited (only food and drink shops). Habitats with the animals, which the guest wanted to see, are marked black. Two of them at least very close to the shops visited.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

@marcnesiumHH, based on all the names of shops in the thought bubbles for just those two circles, it seems like you have built food courts and then front loaded them in your zoo. This is not super effective for keeping people happy in PZ. Instead of food courts, use individual/pairs of shops with each 1-2 habitats.

Shops and rest rooms draw people with a lot more strength than habitats so sprinkling the restrooms, drink and food shops in positions that pull the visitors past habitats gets visitors spread throughout the zoo and seeing all the animals. This especially holds true if there is a lot of walking involved in getting to the habitats.

Also make sure you have an understanding of animals that are big draws vs. ones that aren't, and do the same thing. Put the less popular animals between where visitors will be and the animals they are going to be most interested in seeing.

 

[LN]

You have information shops?

 

[marcnesiumHH]

@marcnesiumHH, based on all the names of shops in the thought bubbles for just those two circles, it seems like you have built food courts and then front loaded them in your zoo. This is not super effective for keeping people happy in PZ. Instead of food courts, use individual/pairs of shops with each 1-2 habitats.

Shops and rest rooms draw people with a lot more strength than habitats so sprinkling the restrooms, drink and food shops in positions that pull the visitors past habitats gets visitors spread throughout the zoo and seeing all the animals. This especially holds true if there is a lot of walking involved in getting to the habitats.

Also make sure you have an understanding of animals that are big draws vs. ones that aren't, and do the same thing. Put the less popular animals between where visitors will be and the animals they are going to be most interested in seeing.

I have shops every 40-50 meters. I just haven't marked them all.
Regarding placing most appealing animals around the zoo. That's not how the game works. Every guest has a pretermined set of animals, which he wants to see.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

I have shops every 40-50 meters. I just haven't marked them all.
Regarding placing most appealing animals around the zoo. That's not how the game works. Every guest has a pretermined set of animals, which he wants to see.

Yes, but they visit other animals too and some animals have a lot stronger draw than others, I see it in all my zoos. If you follow visitors regularly you will even find places where you can see the effect in action, visitors will be heading to one thing and then hit some kind of attraction radius. Their destination will change and they will do a quick turn and head for a different habitat.

I don't have annual refund averaging more $1,000 in any of my zoos and the majority of the refunds I do have are from escapes due to that bug, I like to think that means I'm at least semi-competent at understanding how to lay out the zoos.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

Yes, but they visit other animals too and some animals have a lot stronger draw than others, I see it in all my zoos.

That's the reason why I intended the thread about the game or Frontier giving more guidance for the management part of the game, and not for example having to follow different guests for several ingame years. I have 9k guests in total...

However, I cannot confirm you findings.
The game tells me that they only visited shops and haven't seen ANY of the animals they WANTED to see although at least two habitats are close to the shop areas visited. They are leaving the zoo unhappy and thus will receive a refund. Which adds to the economical loss, which occured them having not visiting the animals they want to see and donate for these.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Do you have any path issues where visitors get stuck or clogged? The only times I've seen visitors leaving without seeing any animals in my zoos has been if there was a section of path causing problems, which was the case in pretty much all of my zoos after the 1.03 update (there were path sections that just started being sticking points that I needed to redo). Visitors who get stuck for too long just leave after being unstuck, and they aren't happy campers.

 

[Traffyl]

Regarding your first point, I have the same issue. It's funny because I have people claiming that they wish they could have seen timber wolves, which enclosure is literally on the way of the chimps enclosure, which they have seen. And the same for almost all the animals. And I think is not a matter of the time they spend in the zoo or the queues, because they mostly leave just after 10-15 minutes with all their needs in green and money in their pockets. And it's not related to the shops or transport rides, since they are working well and this issue has happened after last update, because that zoo was working perfectly fine until yesterday...
My personal suspicion is that there are guests that, for whatever reason, are unable to see the existence of certain enclosures even knowing that those animals are in the zoo.

 

[LN]

Do remember it's not the enclosure they want to see. Can they see the animals?

 

[marcnesiumHH]

Do you have any path issues where visitors get stuck or clogged?

no, because my most important lesson already from Beta was that the path finding AI is awful and that's why I have visitors paths at least 20m wide, up to 35m. Which is really ugly but it works, at least in having no guests being stuck since 380 ingame years.

 

[marcnesiumHH]

And it's not related to the shops or transport rides, since they are working well

Do the rides still work fine after yesterday's update? What kind of rides and you never had any problems with them in franchise mode?