Hiya, we are a British developer so the metric system is standard for us. However, I hear what you're saying so I've passed on your feedback to the team
Gotta set those freedom units for the 'mericans
Your First Impressions
- Thread starter Sclurp
- Start date
Gotta set those freedom units for the 'mericans
Hey Bo,
Please allow me to hijack this thread because yesterday I noticed something that really could be improved IMHO. In Tutorial Scenario 2 (the one with the Monkeys), there's this habitat with Giraffes and Zebras. In this habitat there's something like 97 trees of a given kind (can't remember the exact one right now) among other plants. The only way I could remove them was to hover the plant in the Habitat info panel, recognize it in the habitat, click it, delete it, go back to the Habitat panel, hover again, delete again, repeat. IMHO there should be a nicer way to allow for these "bulk operations" -- even just a "Select All" button could do the work, actually.
Also, when duplicating (CTRL+D) an object, chances that I want to do more than one duplication are quite high, or perhaps move or rotate it. So why not automatically select the new object, so that I don't have to do it manually?
I did forget to add one "funny" incident. I am not sure how it happened. When I was adding/fixing the bedding in the komodo dragon shelter, sone of the sleeping areas decided to land on top of the shelter, overhanging it a bit. When I went to fix it, I noticed that a number of the plants where hovering in the air quite a bit. Not all of the plants, just about half. I took a bit of time, but they are now fixed. I wish I had thought to take a picture of my levitating plants, but I didn't. I thought it was funny.
I must preface my first impressions with the statement that I did try the beta briefly but quit in disgust shortly after realizing the game was on a path to a Simcity-esqe disaster before they announced they would not force online only play and would add an offline option that wasn't sandbox. However, since then I decided I'd give the game another go and a more fair assessment at launch and I'm very happy with challenge mode so far; in the little time I've had to play since the release came in the middle of my work week.
Anyways, being a player of this type of game I opted to completely skip the tutorial scenarios and decided to go straight into challenge mode to see how the new mode would hold up budget balance wise as this was a problem I often had in PlanCo when trying challenge mode. In PlanCo, there were difficulty options for challenge mode and I distinctly remember the harder difficulties actually being borderline impossible, starting you with barely enough funds to get a park going, and I often never could. My problem then was that the difficulty I did manage to get a park going on felt too easy. Place one flat ride, hit fast forward, acquire money. When I started up challenge mode for the first time I was surprised to see the seemingly generous budget of $40,000 you're started with and felt slightly concerned that the mode may also present little challenge. However this feeling left after I realized just how expensive the starting infrastructure you need in your zoo is. Two zoos of experimentation later I restarted a third time and decided to start as small as possible. I was often having trouble with the scale of the game, meaning my habitats were often 3 times larger than necessary for the animals I was picking as my starters, but then realized you can check the size of the enclosed habitat by clicking on it before you put anything in it. My first single enclosure then became home to a trio of Warthogs. It was right about now I realized just how little money I had left as I had set up all the staff buildings and some basic guest facilities beforehand, meaning all my warthogs had in their enclosure was a simple wooden shelter and a trough for water. I couldn't afford a food dish or even plant coverage, relying from here on guest donations to try and balance my budget as my wallet went into the negatives after I clicked unpause. Some time later my budget did balance out and slowly I was able to fill out the Warthog enclosure with some plants, better food and drink stations, and some enrichment which had been researched while I was waiting on funds. I really enjoyed just how absorbed I was getting with just this one habitat as I watched it grow over time as research was completed and money became available.
Something I expected from Frontier but was none the less impressed by is the game's visuals. I was happy to see that JWE's fantastic weather effects had found their way to this game as I remember being stunned by the rain in that game and how real it appeared to be, so when it first rained in my game I stopped what I was doing just to pan the camera down and have a look around as water splashed on the paths and rain off the roofs of buildings in such a way that was extremely grounded in reality. It was here I noticed how impressive the lighting is in the game as well. The light from the now mostly obscured sun was perfectly filtered by the rain and reflected off of now drenched surfaces. As I panned around I felt like one of the now very wet guests who I realized then I had built no shelters for. Some time later I experienced snow as the temp dropped below freezing and the warthogs made for their heated, now concrete shelter. The heat from the heater and shelter from the single large tree in their exhibit was melted or blocked in a very real, however two dimensional way. On top of that, the way snow would collect on all the variable surfaces of buildings and rocks and plants looked just how you'd expect. Overall I'm very impressed with the game's visual design; this is something I've come to expect from a Frontier game after playing things like Elite Dangerous and JWE.
Also something I expected to be impressed by was the sound design. I was very surprised just how sensitive the camera position was to what sounds you could hear, and it made it all the more baffling that there is no dedicated first person walk-around mode in the game as panning the camera indoors would appropriately muffle sounds from outside. Something I've grown fond of doing is panning the camera down to ground level and using the restricted camera mode to create my own pseudo-first person mode so I can see my zoo from my guest's point of view. I did this in one of my previous zoos where I made an attempt at a indoor lemur habitat which did work as intended despite being monstrously ugly on the outside. Inside the habitat there was a very realistic echo from the chattering lemurs and guests I had allowed inside, further confounding me as to why Frontier opted to not have some kind of dedicated first person mode when so much work has gone into the sound and visuals. However I feel unable to criticize it too much as the camera functions as they are still allow me to achieve what I want while simultaneously allowing me to still manage the zoo. The first person "keeper mode" from Zoo Tycoon 2 was a much loved feature of that game but even then you couldn't "walk" around and manage the zoo at the same time without exiting the mode first, lending Planet Zoo to have an advantage.
As impressed as I was with the visuals and sound, there was something I was overtly not a fan of and that's the UI. Something that I found immediately frustrating is that the Animal Market tab does not remember your filters when you exit it, forcing you to find the animal or animals you want every time you open it. I'd go to look at the selection of animals currently available and then close it to have a look around my zoo to pick a space for a new exhibit in what space and the budget would allow, only to go back to the market and have to reset the filter to what I had it to before. This became doubly frustrating when I decided to put Flamingos in an exhibit but the market only had a few at a time so I'd periodically check back for more but once again had to set my filter back to Flamingos every single time I checked. Strangely this does not happen with any of the other menus. I ran into a similar problem when trying to deal with a snake breeding problem as my snakes would have many offspring at once and overload their tiny exhibit, necessitating releasing some of them. However this is easier said than done as the management panel for the exhibit is woeful at telling me anything about the snakes in it. I'd click on one to see which of the original 4 I bought it was or if it was one of the offspring, the info panel for the individual would open up, and then I'd have to reclick on the exhibit, go to the animals tab, and repeat the process about 8 times to determine which snakes needed to be removed. A better system for managing exhibit animals wouldn't go amiss. Habitat animals are generally large enough that one doesn't need to click on the habitat itself to determine who is who, but their management could be made easier as well. Back in my experimental lemur habitat, once the lemurs were inside the compact and dense with foliage lemur enclosure, my options for managing them were to repeat the snake process or zoom all the way in and find them myself. Fortunately once all the snake I wanted to release were removed it is extremely easy to get rid of them all at once since you can select as many as you like to release simultaneously with a single click.
Another thing I found somewhat bizarre is that there is no universal "delete" tool. I spent more time than I care to admit trying to work out how to delete a path only to realize it was above the path selection box and completely spelled out on a button of its own.
I later figured this might be a symptom of the hilariously bad path building system that was transplanted from PlanCo that is only marginally saved by being able to build paths on a selectable grid. However this system does not play well with paths that were placed off grid leading to some hair pulling frustration trying to achieve exactly what you want. While many of the building tools are "unintuitive" and "janky" to say the least, of them all the path system has to be the worst. I've seen many videos now of both PlanCo and Planet Zoo where players simply give in to the game's whims and build scenery to hide gaps in paths after trying in vain to widen a path beyond the limits of the tool; or cases of players giving up and rethinking their design to operate within the limits of the tool. My third experimental zoo uses this principle as I placed all the paths before anything else, knowing trying to change it later would be an exercise in futility.
All that said, I feel as if I haven't played enough to elaborate further. But these just be my first impressions. Despite the janky controls and some frustrating UI elements, I'm quite happy with the game and find myself getting absorbed with it easily as I've waited half my life for a worthy modern addition to the neglected Zoo Management genre as I loved the original Zoo Tycoon games back when I was younger, and I'm willing to deal with this game's quirks to experience the vastly expanded management aspects and massively expanded building tools and systems to create everything I've ever wanted and more. I hope the game goes on to get many bugfixes and improvements in the future as well as some worthwhile expansions. There's plenty of room to grow for a game like this and certainly more animals to be added in the future. One can only hope we aren't charged for every single one.
Anyways, being a player of this type of game I opted to completely skip the tutorial scenarios and decided to go straight into challenge mode to see how the new mode would hold up budget balance wise as this was a problem I often had in PlanCo when trying challenge mode. In PlanCo, there were difficulty options for challenge mode and I distinctly remember the harder difficulties actually being borderline impossible, starting you with barely enough funds to get a park going, and I often never could. My problem then was that the difficulty I did manage to get a park going on felt too easy. Place one flat ride, hit fast forward, acquire money. When I started up challenge mode for the first time I was surprised to see the seemingly generous budget of $40,000 you're started with and felt slightly concerned that the mode may also present little challenge. However this feeling left after I realized just how expensive the starting infrastructure you need in your zoo is. Two zoos of experimentation later I restarted a third time and decided to start as small as possible. I was often having trouble with the scale of the game, meaning my habitats were often 3 times larger than necessary for the animals I was picking as my starters, but then realized you can check the size of the enclosed habitat by clicking on it before you put anything in it. My first single enclosure then became home to a trio of Warthogs. It was right about now I realized just how little money I had left as I had set up all the staff buildings and some basic guest facilities beforehand, meaning all my warthogs had in their enclosure was a simple wooden shelter and a trough for water. I couldn't afford a food dish or even plant coverage, relying from here on guest donations to try and balance my budget as my wallet went into the negatives after I clicked unpause. Some time later my budget did balance out and slowly I was able to fill out the Warthog enclosure with some plants, better food and drink stations, and some enrichment which had been researched while I was waiting on funds. I really enjoyed just how absorbed I was getting with just this one habitat as I watched it grow over time as research was completed and money became available.
Something I expected from Frontier but was none the less impressed by is the game's visuals. I was happy to see that JWE's fantastic weather effects had found their way to this game as I remember being stunned by the rain in that game and how real it appeared to be, so when it first rained in my game I stopped what I was doing just to pan the camera down and have a look around as water splashed on the paths and rain off the roofs of buildings in such a way that was extremely grounded in reality. It was here I noticed how impressive the lighting is in the game as well. The light from the now mostly obscured sun was perfectly filtered by the rain and reflected off of now drenched surfaces. As I panned around I felt like one of the now very wet guests who I realized then I had built no shelters for. Some time later I experienced snow as the temp dropped below freezing and the warthogs made for their heated, now concrete shelter. The heat from the heater and shelter from the single large tree in their exhibit was melted or blocked in a very real, however two dimensional way. On top of that, the way snow would collect on all the variable surfaces of buildings and rocks and plants looked just how you'd expect. Overall I'm very impressed with the game's visual design; this is something I've come to expect from a Frontier game after playing things like Elite Dangerous and JWE.
Also something I expected to be impressed by was the sound design. I was very surprised just how sensitive the camera position was to what sounds you could hear, and it made it all the more baffling that there is no dedicated first person walk-around mode in the game as panning the camera indoors would appropriately muffle sounds from outside. Something I've grown fond of doing is panning the camera down to ground level and using the restricted camera mode to create my own pseudo-first person mode so I can see my zoo from my guest's point of view. I did this in one of my previous zoos where I made an attempt at a indoor lemur habitat which did work as intended despite being monstrously ugly on the outside. Inside the habitat there was a very realistic echo from the chattering lemurs and guests I had allowed inside, further confounding me as to why Frontier opted to not have some kind of dedicated first person mode when so much work has gone into the sound and visuals. However I feel unable to criticize it too much as the camera functions as they are still allow me to achieve what I want while simultaneously allowing me to still manage the zoo. The first person "keeper mode" from Zoo Tycoon 2 was a much loved feature of that game but even then you couldn't "walk" around and manage the zoo at the same time without exiting the mode first, lending Planet Zoo to have an advantage.
As impressed as I was with the visuals and sound, there was something I was overtly not a fan of and that's the UI. Something that I found immediately frustrating is that the Animal Market tab does not remember your filters when you exit it, forcing you to find the animal or animals you want every time you open it. I'd go to look at the selection of animals currently available and then close it to have a look around my zoo to pick a space for a new exhibit in what space and the budget would allow, only to go back to the market and have to reset the filter to what I had it to before. This became doubly frustrating when I decided to put Flamingos in an exhibit but the market only had a few at a time so I'd periodically check back for more but once again had to set my filter back to Flamingos every single time I checked. Strangely this does not happen with any of the other menus. I ran into a similar problem when trying to deal with a snake breeding problem as my snakes would have many offspring at once and overload their tiny exhibit, necessitating releasing some of them. However this is easier said than done as the management panel for the exhibit is woeful at telling me anything about the snakes in it. I'd click on one to see which of the original 4 I bought it was or if it was one of the offspring, the info panel for the individual would open up, and then I'd have to reclick on the exhibit, go to the animals tab, and repeat the process about 8 times to determine which snakes needed to be removed. A better system for managing exhibit animals wouldn't go amiss. Habitat animals are generally large enough that one doesn't need to click on the habitat itself to determine who is who, but their management could be made easier as well. Back in my experimental lemur habitat, once the lemurs were inside the compact and dense with foliage lemur enclosure, my options for managing them were to repeat the snake process or zoom all the way in and find them myself. Fortunately once all the snake I wanted to release were removed it is extremely easy to get rid of them all at once since you can select as many as you like to release simultaneously with a single click.
Another thing I found somewhat bizarre is that there is no universal "delete" tool. I spent more time than I care to admit trying to work out how to delete a path only to realize it was above the path selection box and completely spelled out on a button of its own.
I later figured this might be a symptom of the hilariously bad path building system that was transplanted from PlanCo that is only marginally saved by being able to build paths on a selectable grid. However this system does not play well with paths that were placed off grid leading to some hair pulling frustration trying to achieve exactly what you want. While many of the building tools are "unintuitive" and "janky" to say the least, of them all the path system has to be the worst. I've seen many videos now of both PlanCo and Planet Zoo where players simply give in to the game's whims and build scenery to hide gaps in paths after trying in vain to widen a path beyond the limits of the tool; or cases of players giving up and rethinking their design to operate within the limits of the tool. My third experimental zoo uses this principle as I placed all the paths before anything else, knowing trying to change it later would be an exercise in futility.
All that said, I feel as if I haven't played enough to elaborate further. But these just be my first impressions. Despite the janky controls and some frustrating UI elements, I'm quite happy with the game and find myself getting absorbed with it easily as I've waited half my life for a worthy modern addition to the neglected Zoo Management genre as I loved the original Zoo Tycoon games back when I was younger, and I'm willing to deal with this game's quirks to experience the vastly expanded management aspects and massively expanded building tools and systems to create everything I've ever wanted and more. I hope the game goes on to get many bugfixes and improvements in the future as well as some worthwhile expansions. There's plenty of room to grow for a game like this and certainly more animals to be added in the future. One can only hope we aren't charged for every single one.
Maybe I am the odd one out, as I usually am , but my first impressions are what an improvement over the Beta and a fantastic game. Yes I could point out a few things that I want done differently or some minor bugs (at least for me) but I love it.
I was a little concerned after putting so much time in the Beta that it wouldn't be as exciting at launch but there are so many improvements that I am really enjoying it. I am especially loving the noises of the animals when walking and the sounds they make, in particular the wolves so far. 70+ animals at launch of this quality is far more than I expected and I am sure more to come, with so many at launch I don't mind paying for more in time. I would rather not see any aquatic DLC at anytime, while you can make the same case for Zoo's not historically being kind to animals some have at least a research use. I would stop playing if I saw some Killer Whale, Dolphin etc DLC come out. Penguins, Otters, Polar Bear would be fine. Hypocritical maybe.
Just one other point, where can I buy the PZ cushions I see on the streams ?
p.s. Honeybadgers please......
, but my first impressions are what an improvement over the Beta and a fantastic game. Yes I could point out a few things that I want done differently or some minor bugs (at least for me) but I love it.I was a little concerned after putting so much time in the Beta that it wouldn't be as exciting at launch but there are so many improvements that I am really enjoying it. I am especially loving the noises of the animals when walking and the sounds they make, in particular the wolves so far. 70+ animals at launch of this quality is far more than I expected and I am sure more to come, with so many at launch I don't mind paying for more in time. I would rather not see any aquatic DLC at anytime, while you can make the same case for Zoo's not historically being kind to animals some have at least a research use. I would stop playing if I saw some Killer Whale, Dolphin etc DLC come out. Penguins, Otters, Polar Bear would be fine. Hypocritical maybe.
Just one other point, where can I buy the PZ cushions I see on the streams ?
p.s. Honeybadgers please......
Thanks for looking into this. It ended up being a multi-pronged issue and it's all due to those of us who played Planet Coaster a lot. In Planet Coaster you have vender shops with windows. You line those up with the path. So when we got the shell we had to put the research center into (especially since there was no opening for the windows in the back of the shell), and since doors were fake - thus ignored in Planet Coaster, we just assumed the research building went in window side out. It never even occurred to us to flip it around. To help people in the future, I'd suggest editing that shell you add the research center into so there are open window slots in back so people mind's click and consider putting it in more than one way.
No. All scenarios, even the hardest were way, WAY too easy. I begged Frontier to give us scenario designers more tools to adjust back-end numbers (adjust what people would pay for items, adjust the curve for attendance based on ride pop etc) so we could make a good challenge.
As far as the interface is concerned - it's a mess. The Planet games have by far some of the worst, most unfriendly interface design I've ever seen in a game. Odd since they hit it out of the park with JWE and know how to design a beautiful and easy to use interface as evidenced there.
Hiya! What a great first impression and glad to see you found some surprises in there too!
Just wanted to quickly address some of your negative points:
- Have passed on the feedback about Wolves;
- Please check the Issue Tracker for most common bugs/issues, and if you don't see yours (you haven't specified them here so couldn't check for you) please report them so we can investigate and help you
- Which UI elements aren't working for you? It'd be good to see some feedback so I can pass something more concrete to the team!
- All the other points are being looked at, so thank you for taking the time to write it down!
May I add to the UI feedback and say that I'd really love to see search bars for the animal lists and animal trading? Something to quickly find specific species to adopt or to find our own animals in a long list. It's a little frustrating to have to scroll through a long list of animals to find what I'm looking for.
I'm loving the game!
Animal list and animal trading have filters. You can easily filter the species you are looking for.
You still have to select the species from another long list. I don't enjoy scrolling through the entire list of animals each time.
First impressions are that the possibilities for creativity seem limitless. That’s amazing but also intimidating and a bit overwhelming. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m only just starting.
Everything is so beautiful and the tundra map in particular takes my breath away, I can almost feel the cold mountain air.
Coming to the game from the perspective of someone who has played Zoo Tycoon 2 for many years, the way you construct fences and lay down paths seems unnecessarily complicated. It certainly isn’t intuitive but hopefully I will get used to it.
It would be great if you could have keeper mode or guest mode to move around the zoo. I’m still getting used to the camera controls but I try to look left and end up flying hundreds of metres away or up in the sky whilst changing height all the time.
One very specific point, it feels the menu covers too much of the screen when building.
Everything is so beautiful and the tundra map in particular takes my breath away, I can almost feel the cold mountain air.
Coming to the game from the perspective of someone who has played Zoo Tycoon 2 for many years, the way you construct fences and lay down paths seems unnecessarily complicated. It certainly isn’t intuitive but hopefully I will get used to it.
It would be great if you could have keeper mode or guest mode to move around the zoo. I’m still getting used to the camera controls but I try to look left and end up flying hundreds of metres away or up in the sky whilst changing height all the time.
One very specific point, it feels the menu covers too much of the screen when building.
The very first thing I did was check for new animals and the list is amazing, with so many species and some wonderful unexpected inclusions. The foliage options are endless and I’m so excited to build with them and the scenery pieces. The maps are beautiful.
I opened the ape tutorial with one goal in mind: to watch the animals interact. They don’t. Ever. Baby primates run around alone and never interact with their mothers (who should be carrying them, at least sometimes). None of the animals acknowledge each other at all. They run around like crazy and clip through each other and never once do they stop to socialise. To me, there is no point in having animals if they’re going to ignore each other and have no behaviour beyond walking, climbing and eating. The animals were supposed to have personality, character, realism and variety, but they’re just identical animatronics. I watched different species ignore each other for a total of two hours (real time) and then I switched the game off. Planet Zoo was supposed to be about the animals, but the game is just about building pretty enclosures.
How does a team spend so much time and effort on poo mechanics and completely ignore the maternal and social interactions of every animal? We were promised social interactions and coat variety, and assured that they were just switched off for beta. That now seems to be a lie.
I’m so thankful for the team who have made this beautiful game, and I hope that these features will be patched in soon. But right now, the game is unplayable for me when my animals are not animals.
I opened the ape tutorial with one goal in mind: to watch the animals interact. They don’t. Ever. Baby primates run around alone and never interact with their mothers (who should be carrying them, at least sometimes). None of the animals acknowledge each other at all. They run around like crazy and clip through each other and never once do they stop to socialise. To me, there is no point in having animals if they’re going to ignore each other and have no behaviour beyond walking, climbing and eating. The animals were supposed to have personality, character, realism and variety, but they’re just identical animatronics. I watched different species ignore each other for a total of two hours (real time) and then I switched the game off. Planet Zoo was supposed to be about the animals, but the game is just about building pretty enclosures.
How does a team spend so much time and effort on poo mechanics and completely ignore the maternal and social interactions of every animal? We were promised social interactions and coat variety, and assured that they were just switched off for beta. That now seems to be a lie.
I’m so thankful for the team who have made this beautiful game, and I hope that these features will be patched in soon. But right now, the game is unplayable for me when my animals are not animals.
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I hope this doesn't sound too rantyThanks Lou! I've passed on this thread along with the Beta UI thread to the team again
pass on my congrats to the team on making such a great game so far tooI did observe 2 bonobo interactions after staring intently at them for 2 in game years. One could have been agression, I'm not sure. One was actually a mom grabbing her baby and grooming her. But other than that the baby was never close to mom and the animal AI seems to be...minimal to say the least. I was expecting so much more. I had a ton of fun playing Zoo Tycoon and even Zoo Tycoon 2 was better than this besides the visuals. Babies of every species I've tried consistantly flee from the moms so I'm hoping perhaps there is a major bug causing problems and that we weren't misled. I could live with the clipping (although I've never played a modern game that clipped this badly) if we got interactions. I just find myself thinking "what's the point" when I am building because I know that nothing I do, no matter how happy my animals are, will lead to actual even semi realistic behavior. I never get hyped about games so getting super excited for this one was a huge let down. I wish wish wish the team had been honest about the state of the game, delayed the release, and given us the awesome game I still hope this can be.
This is exactly how I feel. No matter how beautiful my zoo is, no matter how well managed, my animals will never do anything interesting. The whole point, for me, is to make a wonderful zoo and, when all of my animals are happy, I can watch them socialise and interact and bond. Now there’s no sense of achievement.
I think that's the point.Seems like this game is not about the animals,but about the overall building mechanics with the piece by piece building.(Oh,and poo of course)
I get the feeling that it's about building pretty enclosures and a pretty zoo overall as top priority.The animals are just a means to this end in this case.
Maybe we will finally get a honest answer today..
I've been reading your comments and Xerosic I read your detailed description of your experience. Interesting stuff...
re the animal behaviour/ animations, I was also expecting a bit more after we heard from the devs (during the beta) that what we saw in the beta wasn't indicative of the final experience. Now I can't say I've sat and studied every animal in the game but the ones I have, I have seen varying degrees of interaction.
Right now I would say the most animal to animal interaction I've seen is between elephants. I have seen interactions between adults, adults with their young, as well as interactions between baby elephants. Next door, in the next exhibit along I have my lions and I haven't seen any new types of behaviours that we didn't see in the beta (apart from unique animations for enrichment items that weren't available in the beta). The lions run in zig-zags, eat, poop and sleep. Occasionally you'll see a cub try to catch a fly and that's pretty much all I've seen so far. It also appears that lions do not want to traverse across rocks - I might do an experiment and have a null-barrier exhibit lined with rocks across the floor to see if the lions are willing to walk across them to get out.
What I would like to see is female lions grouping together and carrying their cubs in their mouths from time to time - as well as grooming/cleaning them. Cubs in real life usually follow their mother or aunt as opposed to running off.
As for fur/colouring - this is equally important as we were told animals would have unique markings etc.
I'd settle for just a bit more variation and for Frontier to say they couldn't achieve what they wanted to. Timber wolves need some urgent TLC in almost every way.
EDIT: I wouldn't say this has stopped me from enjoying the game. I'm getting stuck into the campaign presently and I'm having fun. But as we're on this topic, I'll deffo home in on it and share my thoughts.
re the animal behaviour/ animations, I was also expecting a bit more after we heard from the devs (during the beta) that what we saw in the beta wasn't indicative of the final experience. Now I can't say I've sat and studied every animal in the game but the ones I have, I have seen varying degrees of interaction.
Right now I would say the most animal to animal interaction I've seen is between elephants. I have seen interactions between adults, adults with their young, as well as interactions between baby elephants. Next door, in the next exhibit along I have my lions and I haven't seen any new types of behaviours that we didn't see in the beta (apart from unique animations for enrichment items that weren't available in the beta). The lions run in zig-zags, eat, poop and sleep. Occasionally you'll see a cub try to catch a fly and that's pretty much all I've seen so far. It also appears that lions do not want to traverse across rocks - I might do an experiment and have a null-barrier exhibit lined with rocks across the floor to see if the lions are willing to walk across them to get out.
What I would like to see is female lions grouping together and carrying their cubs in their mouths from time to time - as well as grooming/cleaning them. Cubs in real life usually follow their mother or aunt as opposed to running off.
As for fur/colouring - this is equally important as we were told animals would have unique markings etc.
I'd settle for just a bit more variation and for Frontier to say they couldn't achieve what they wanted to. Timber wolves need some urgent TLC in almost every way.
EDIT: I wouldn't say this has stopped me from enjoying the game. I'm getting stuck into the campaign presently and I'm having fun. But as we're on this topic, I'll deffo home in on it and share my thoughts.
Bo has now addressed this in another thread. They are aware and will be trying to fix the socializations. I think sharing the interactions we do see/ones that are clearly missing (like babies fleeing moms) will be helpful. Perhaps a new threat to catalog those rare interactions, how long it took to see them, and even a picture of the habitat if possible.
I have a related issue: The required barrier height in the Zoopedia is being given in feet, despite the fact that everything else is in metric. It'd be nice if everything were at least in the SAME system...
I came back here to post further feedback even after the latest patch:
1. Felt the game runs smoother. I experienced an even higher framerate.
2. My Lemurs and my peafowls still got a bug of having simultaneously boxed for unknown reason. I think the peafowls got boxed has something to do with them having a certain disease. Cannot replicate yet once the vets cured them all.
3. I encountered one crash when removing water, modifying terrain elevation then placing the water back.
4. I hope the UI will remember my filter when browsing the animal market and the animals list.
1. Felt the game runs smoother. I experienced an even higher framerate.
2. My Lemurs and my peafowls still got a bug of having simultaneously boxed for unknown reason. I think the peafowls got boxed has something to do with them having a certain disease. Cannot replicate yet once the vets cured them all.
3. I encountered one crash when removing water, modifying terrain elevation then placing the water back.
4. I hope the UI will remember my filter when browsing the animal market and the animals list.