Yes, if they would have wanted they could have seen those animals. In fact, there are people happily seeing timber wolves in their enclosure at the same time that other people leave the zoo claiming that they would have wanted to see them. And the same with almost all the animals in the zoo. And a proof that that is not the problem is that, for example, it happens with exhibit animals too. I have people saying that they would have wanted to see the Scorpions exhibit that is placed just next to the zoo entrance.
Where the game still fails to give guidance for a successful zoo operation
- Thread starter marcnesiumHH
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Yes, if they would have wanted they could have seen those animals. In fact, there are people happily seeing timber wolves in their enclosure at the same time that other people leave the zoo claiming that they would have wanted to see them. And the same with almost all the animals in the zoo. And a proof that that is not the problem is that, for example, it happens with exhibit animals too. I have people saying that they would have wanted to see the Scorpions exhibit that is placed just next to the zoo entrance.
Well... more or less. I have a monorail network. The only issue that I noticed before this update was that queues were full just after opening the ride, but after some time they started not taking the ride and the queues got empty. Now, after this update the queues issue seems to be Ok, they are not empty anymore.
I see. Than there must be something wrong.
Maybe closing the zoo, letting everybody out, then re-open with new guests could help?
Or did you already do that?
It's a wild guess, but maybe (some of) your current guests are bugged?
Ok, this sounds like the update might have improved it. Is the monorail having a profit? Would be very happy if you can share a more long-term experience in like 2-3 more (IRL) days
Ok, this sounds like the update might have improved it. Is the monorail having a profit? Would be very happy if you can share a more long-term experience in like 2-3 more (IRL) days
I have in fact 2 transport rides, one boat and the monorail. The boat is profitable and the monorail non profitable. But it's Ok, I can assume it since I never built those transport rides to give me benefits, I did it for letting people move around the zoo. I could assume those losses if it weren't for the crazy refunds that I have because of the unhappines that not seeing X animals is causing in guests. Pictures attached. So.... I guess i'll leave that franchise zoo at least for now, since I can no longer assume losses of 50k per year.
And yes, I closed and reopened my zoo but nothing changed, after some time the new guests start thinking again that they would have wanted to see animals that are in there, just three steps away.
I have, but not for all animals, especially not for exhibit ones. and the guests (example no1) went to see the chimps, which frequently "escape"
To be fair to the AI (which is far from awful), you have 9000 guests, xxx many animals, xxx staff, all doing calculations ALL the time, the AI is pretty solid. Yes it can be limited and you need to know how to work with that, but to scale the AI it needs to have some limitations.
My rides worked pretty well before the patch and pretty perfectly after. I have a boat, a train and a mono moving a LOT of people, I run a similar size zoo, 8,500.
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Whilst I agree they are failing at some stuff, breaking 'a dozen more' is a bit much. Bearing in mind that 3 of the 4 thing we are talking about werent even in the game before the patch and are quality of life improvements.......
Been paying a lot of attention to visitor happiness in my current zoo, and I've now seen maybe a dozen instances of unhappy people leaving with the message being "I wish I could have seen..." for animals I did have in my zoo. I then checked the stats of these visitors, and every one of them showed a time in zoo of between 57 and 59 minutes. I then paid attention to other, happy visitors leaving the zoo and they also showed time just shy of 60 minutes.
My conclusion is that visitors will leave the zoo just a bit before hitting 60 minutes, regardless of if they have seen everything they wanted to or not and for some, not seeing the animals they wanted to because they ran out of time makes them unhappy. Doesn't matter that the animals are there and can be seen, just matters that they didn't have time to see them. Conclusion: The larger your zoo, the bigger disadvantage you will be at for this particular metric.
If this is accurate, Frontier really needs to take a look at refunds related to this. That being said, these visitors are STILL profitable for your zoo. When I looked at the unhappy ones, they all spent a decent amount of money before leaving. And, keep in mind that a refund is NOT a loss of money. It's merely a net zero on the ticket price. It may show up as a negative in the finance report but keep in mind that every one of those refund dollars was also a positive in the income-zoo ticket row at some point.
I should mention, I show 0 refunds for the past 2 years in my current zoo where I was doing this, so there's more that goes into the visitors deciding they want a refund than just happiness + if they saw the animals they wanted, because even the unhappy ones who didn't see what they wanted to who were leaving my zoo were not asking for a refund.
My conclusion is that visitors will leave the zoo just a bit before hitting 60 minutes, regardless of if they have seen everything they wanted to or not and for some, not seeing the animals they wanted to because they ran out of time makes them unhappy. Doesn't matter that the animals are there and can be seen, just matters that they didn't have time to see them. Conclusion: The larger your zoo, the bigger disadvantage you will be at for this particular metric.
If this is accurate, Frontier really needs to take a look at refunds related to this. That being said, these visitors are STILL profitable for your zoo. When I looked at the unhappy ones, they all spent a decent amount of money before leaving. And, keep in mind that a refund is NOT a loss of money. It's merely a net zero on the ticket price. It may show up as a negative in the finance report but keep in mind that every one of those refund dollars was also a positive in the income-zoo ticket row at some point.
I should mention, I show 0 refunds for the past 2 years in my current zoo where I was doing this, so there's more that goes into the visitors deciding they want a refund than just happiness + if they saw the animals they wanted, because even the unhappy ones who didn't see what they wanted to who were leaving my zoo were not asking for a refund.
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Refunds should only happen if there is an escape, I can't ask for a refund at the local zoo cause I ran out of time to see x animal..that is my fault. It's a bad mechanic and should just be removed.
Thanks for sharing the results of your 'further research"!
It's definitely a huge disadvantage, especially because you cannot influence this (maybe with the transport rides, which are unfortunately bugged/ very hard to make them work). And my guests paths are already wide enough for a fluent walking.
And from my initial guest example you can see that they could have spent more than just eating/ drinking, they did visit any of their favorite animals at all. And its habitats weren't half way of the map but at least two of them are very close to the shops visited.
Yah, the sheer number of different food and drink shops shown in your pictures...it was the same with the visitor groups like this in my game. I can only assume that what is happening is that each member of the ~5 members in the group wanted to go queue for different food and drink so they ended up spending literally all of their available time in lines at vendors. The groups move as one unit, but each member has seperate need bars so I guess it's also possible that each member got hungry/thirsty at different times.
Either way, it looks like its an issue for larger groups that can cause them to end up doing nothing but visiting shops. It's a good example of why training your vendors is a positive thing. It will speed up those queue times so fewer groups lose too much time in lines.
I would totally agree with that refund system if it were working properly, but in my case guests leaving the zoo do it much before 60 minutes, mostly between 10-15 minutes after entering the zoo and only having visited some food/drink stalls and maybe one or two enclosures, and asking for a refund because they are unhappy for not having had time enough to visit all the animals they want. And well... Of course the refunds are just the ticket price being returned but when those refunds represent 70% of the tickets the zoo becomes impossible to manage.
All of my 80 (!) vendors have 5 stars
This is a good point. I am wondering about why I am all of a sudden seeing these new messages since 1.1 patch and assumed it was because of the patch and something changing ( intended or inadvertent ). But, maybe it is because I am doing more fancy/spacious habitats so maybe the time spent looking at the animals wasn't actually spent looking at the animals. Methinks I need to do some tests on a new zoo design.
Edit: Just checked in one of my recent zoos. It just has a hippo pair in at the moment but thought I would see what the visitors say .. actually they are not saying that message at all. You know the one about wishing they had been able to see xxx animal. Well, because the guests had no issues seeing the hippo in its enclosure they had no negative thoughts about it
Edit2: Just checked my other recent zoos where I saw tons of these messages appearing and they are not there now .. could it be a sneak bug fix in 1.1.1 that stopped the messages from appearing ? Or did that thought get replaced over time because they did get to see the animal. The latter more likely but you never know
Where I do continent/biome specific zoos I tend to have the need to have multiple habitats/exhibits for the same animals. So I scatter these around the place so that if they want to all of a sudden see the timber wolves, they can go to the one nearest them.
I tested this for a post on steam and found that there is a set distance that people are willing to walk before turning around. The moment something is placed at that point they continue further in. So, it might not always be a sticky path or bad path segment but how much walking the guest is willing to do to get to where they want. I found they were more willing to walk to the shops a bit further on than view the exhibit they were quite happy viewing before I put the shop there. Rofl. I think there is a priority system in place ( normal for AI algorithms ).
Is there a shop nearby ? Okay, lets go there first ..
Where is the nearest habitat ? Aww that far away .. ok next question ..
Is there a quicker way for me to get where I want to go ? No .. ok lets start walking
Is there anything to see around me ? Nope, ... next question
How far have I walked without seeing or doing anything ? Too far, lets go home this place is boring
Am I hungry/thirsty/bored ? Where is the building for me to alleviate this need ? No shops .. I'm going home
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The guests only donate once if they see an animal, thus is an economically bad decision. You pay several times the food for the same species and only get donations once. This is also consistent with IRL zoos. Which visitor will go to a zoo with 5 habitats of the same wolf species?
This is not how the AI/ visitor pathfinding works. Is has already been explained by several people in this thread as well other recent threads.
The wolves were an example .. but once the habitat has enough of the animal .. and the trade list is full .. I am going to waste a good supply of animals by releasing them all ? Nope, I am going to place them into another habitat. And if it keeps the guests happy I'm not going to complain. But I was going on the theory that if they went passed habitat one to get to food and drink then habitat two further on maybe have been worth a visit and an opportunity for a donation they may not have provided before for one reason or another .. first habitat animals not as happy as second habitat animals due to crowding perhaps .. surely that would mean no donation at the crowded one but a donation at the spatious one ? Also, if several people want to see the same animal and it is too crowded at the first to be able to see, could they not then think of going to the next habitat with the same animal they want to see ? Or does that go against the AI/pathfinding theories already discussed or even confirmed by frontier ?
As to the AI pathing. Thanks for the confirmation. It was only a theory made without seeing all the ones posted before .. with so many posts popping up on steam I haven't spent half the time I spent here during beta so I've missed tons of posts.