Xbox One, One X, & PS4 species hardcap limit thoughts

[IG Lord Ragtag]

This post is meant as constructive criticism.

As has been stated, the 'older' consoles will have a max 50 species hard cap. Dirty Pool.

It's kind of funny how this information came to light well after the pre order announcement. I wonder how many 'older' console players purchased the game already and paid full price for the ability to only play half a game? It feels like a bait and switch to me.

In this case the game should never have been marketed for the Xbox One, One X, or PS4 due to thier hardware limitations. The argument will be made that the older consoles can play the game but with restrictions. I'll argue that it's not the same game.

I can see that restriction for the campaign, chaos theory, and challenge mode due to the overhead of cpu cycles required to have the territory system and micro management of the scientists, 30% bigger maps, etc. I do not see why it would be required in sandbox as we should be able to turn off those features.

Frontier, please do not place a hard cap on sandbox.

So with a species hard cap, is it restricting it to the same 50 species for all game modes or just any 50 species available in game?

 

[Nioell]

My guess would be you can choose the species with which you wanna play.

As for your other thoughts: I'm pretty sure there's some way to refund games for those consoles as well (kinda like the 2h of play time you got in steam) so if you really don't want the game because of that limit canceling the order shouldn't be a problem, especially since it's not even out, yet. Also not sure if that bit really isn't included in the game info for those platforms since I'm a PC player myself, but it really should be in there from the start if it isn't already, not gonna argue that.

Gonna have to disagree with the next point, though, because I am pretty sure that lots of owners of older consoles, who can't afford a new one right now, would rather play the game with a species cap than not at all...I know I would if all I had was a PS4 and choosing 50 out of 75+ species doesn't make it only half a game either. You still get everything else to play with and all the species to choose from. So yeah, gonna have to go with restrictions instead of not releasing it at all in this case.

The cap will probably apply to all modes (if other modes even have that many speacies at once available) and it totally makes sense to limit sandbox for those very reasons as well. Just because you can disable some stuff doesn't mean everyone will do so and people tend to fill sandbox maps with way more stuff than career maps e.g. Though I'm kinda wondering if it's a UI thing as well because one would think a population cap would make more sense than a species cap when it comes to performance issues or maybe it's a combination of both

 

[Thylaco]

It's progress, other Frontier consumers have certainly had it a bit worse off in the past when it comes to knowledge of limits (a few days before launch for Planet Coaster Console edition).

In terms of the cap itself, my understanding is that you can have any 50 species in your park at once, if you completely remove a species you can replace it with another (same as the switch species limit for JWE1).

 

[Jens Erik]

is it restricting it to the same 50 species for all game modes or just any 50 species available in game?

On PS4 and Xbox One, you can't have more than 50 individual species in your Sandbox Park at the same time, but you can have as many dinosaurs of those 50 species as you think your Park Teams can handle.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

JPOG had a limit of 15, increased barely because of modding. Y'all, get a grip.

 

[Thylaco]

JPOG had a limit of 15, increased barely because of modding. Y'all, get a grip.

On console it was lower actually, a limit of 3 sites on PS2, so up to 9. Your first site always being Morrison A, Hell Creek A or Judith River A, so only really two sites you choose, with out resetting.

Many have the expectation that things won't be limited on their console, take the JWE1 Switch port for example. It's not really a logic thing, more an emotional one I think, with people getting invested in the current setup they spent money on.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

On console it was lower actually, a limit of 3 sites on PS2, so up to 9. Your first site always being Morrison A, Hell Creek A or Judith River A, so only really two sites you choose, with out resetting.

Many have the expectation that things won't be limited on their console, take the JWE1 Switch port for example. It's not really a logic thing, more an emotional one I think, with people getting invested in the current setup they spent money on.

oh wow, even lower!

 

[IG Lord Ragtag]

On console it was lower actually, a limit of 3 sites on PS2, so up to 9. Your first site always being Morrison A, Hell Creek A or Judith River A, so only really two sites you choose, with out resetting.

Many have the expectation that things won't be limited on their console, take the JWE1 Switch port for example. It's not really a logic thing, more an emotional one I think, with people getting invested in the current setup they spent money on.

Partially emotional, but more so on the perceived bait and switch tactics used by game developers to ramp up expectations prior to pre orders, to maximise sales.Nowhere on/in thier pre order communications was it even hinted at that on the sytems it's designed to play on, some would have restricted features. One of the key points was 75+ dinos that they had front and center. Yes the total will be there but you can only use half. It's like being 17 and given the keys to a Corvette and told you can drive it, but only to the end of the driveway.

I give Frontier credit for announcing the hard cap, but at this point the dinos already left the hatchery, so to speak.

 

[PCMR4Life]

Ouch! only 50 dinosaurs per park. Glad I am a PC gamer. LOL

Not surprising given the new dynamic AI, the territory system and so on. Some cuts had to be made cause those things are going to eat up a lot of CPU cycles and the Xbox One and PS4 both use what is basically an APU. The graphics hardware uses the CPU as part of the GPU. So it can't render all that much.

Also I like how the OP basically decides that if he can't have no limits than no one should be able to play the game. lol Yeah that's now how that works. You should expect limits with a consoles. You are playing on hardware that is almost a decade old and it was obsolete when it was sold to you. Sucks, but that's how it is. The older consoles always get terrible ports of new games meant for newer better hardware. Back in 2008 I bought the PS2 port of Mercenaries 2 World in Flames. Terrible port of a game that was terrible no matter what.

But the 50 Dinosaur limit is a hard hit. Still better than the JPOG limit. I had it on Xbox in the late 2000's and I got the PC version later on. I modded JPOG to have 999 dinosaurs in my parks. I never made that many. There wasn't enough space to have too many dinosaurs anyway.

But I wouldn't totally avoid playing the game because of it. It's up to you though. I think preorders can be refunded. I preordered the day the release date dropped and they allowed preorders. But I have a gaming PC so it won't be an issue for me. You could always get a refund and buy it in November. I heard some where that the PS4 version will count as a PS5 version so when you manage to get a PS5 you can just play it on that with no dino limit.

Anyway, it's up to you.

 

[Nioell]

Ouch! only 50 dinosaurs per park. Glad I am a PC gamer. LOL

It's a limit of 50 species in a park at once not 50 dinosaurs, you can have as many dinos in your park as it can handle. So if you have 50 species and then decide you'd rather have a spino than the corys or something you can go in, get rid of all the corys and then place that spino. Or the other way around, get rid of that one spino and then place a bunch of corys in instead. You just won't be able to have all 75+ species at once in the park.

 

[PCMR4Life]

It's a limit of 50 species in a park at once not 50 dinosaurs, you can have as many dinos in your park as it can handle. So if you have 50 species and then decide you'd rather have a spino than the corys or something you can go in, get rid of all the corys and then place that spino. Or the other way around, get rid of that one spino and then place a bunch of corys in instead. You just won't be able to have all 75+ species at once in the park.

I thought it was only 50 per park. Limiting the number of species doesn't make any sense. If you can have 50 species and as many as you want of each one then how does that effect performance? The whole point of the dinosaur limit in JPOG was to keep performance from dropping.

Maybe there is something going on I don't understand. But it would seem better for performance to limit the number of animals per park and not just the number of species. I don't think I ever managed to put 50 dinosaurs in any of the parks I built in the first game. I still managed to get 5 star ratings on all my parks before I moved on to the next island.

It's a pretty weird limitation for performance gain.

 

[Thylaco]

I thought it was only 50 per park. Limiting the number of species doesn't make any sense. If you can have 50 species and as many as you want of each one then how does that effect performance? The whole point of the dinosaur limit in JPOG was to keep performance from dropping.

Maybe there is something going on I don't understand. But it would seem better for performance to limit the number of animals per park and not just the number of species. I don't think I ever managed to put 50 dinosaurs in any of the parks I built in the first game. I still managed to get 5 star ratings on all my parks before I moved on to the next island.

It's a pretty weird limitation for performance gain.

The territory system is itself a soft limit, you put too many things in they either die of starvation or kill each other trying to stake a claim.

In JPOG the skins were loaded when you picked a digsite (the files actually being the same for the sites that shared species), the PS2 being limited to 3, I would only assume keeping that loaded added to the strain a bit.

 

[PCMR4Life]

The territory system is itself a soft limit, you put too many things in they either die of starvation or kill each other trying to stake a claim.

In JPOG the skins were loaded when you picked a digsite (the files actually being the same for the sites that shared species), the PS2 being limited to 3, I would only assume keeping that loaded added to the strain a bit.

Kind of like how the size of the maps in JWE were a limit as well. You only had so much space to build on. Dinosaurs had enclosure size requirements and social limits as well. Some wanted large enclosures and that takes up space.

I can see how the territory system is a limit kind of disguised as a interesting game feature.

 

[velicoraptor3]

This post is meant as constructive criticism.

As has been stated, the 'older' consoles will have a max 50 species hard cap. Dirty Pool.

It's kind of funny how this information came to light well after the pre order announcement. I wonder how many 'older' console players purchased the game already and paid full price for the ability to only play half a game? It feels like a bait and switch to me.

In this case the game should never have been marketed for the Xbox One, One X, or PS4 due to thier hardware limitations. The argument will be made that the older consoles can play the game but with restrictions. I'll argue that it's not the same game.

I can see that restriction for the campaign, chaos theory, and challenge mode due to the overhead of cpu cycles required to have the territory system and micro management of the scientists, 30% bigger maps, etc. I do not see why it would be required in sandbox as we should be able to turn off those features.

Frontier, please do not place a hard cap on sandbox.

So with a species hard cap, is it restricting it to the same 50 species for all game modes or just any 50 species available in game?

The fact that we cannot mix era's either got me off the fence about pre-ordering. I did not pre order it nor will I buy it full price. I feel like this isnt the only thing we should be concerned about.