Strange zoos.

[Just Kevin]

Planet Zoo is a zoo simulator, but it's not as realistic as it could be. Zoos do not keep fully wild animals. They are usually bred in captivity, and never have the type of space wild animals have. The Welfare space expected in PZ is crazy, which few zoos would have. Zoo animals don't have to hunt vast areas for food, it's handed to them. The reason for all the toys is to stop them getting bored by stimulating their natural instincts. Few zoos could afford such vast enclosures or have the space. Also, being born in captivity usually stops the shy ones being shy.
That the visitors seem to constantly gravitate towards food and drink and toilet buildings is also unrealistic (and a throw back software to previous games by this company no doubt). These are zoos not themeparks. One should not have to have food and drink places everywhere just to get visitors to pass the enclosures! Most zoos just have one central area, not dozens. People go to see animals, not to stuff their faces. Often they take a packed lunch.
Zoo animals don't cost as much to feed as this game shows. Bears, for example, are not fed on prime beef fit for humans, and they buy meat in bulk, not by the kilo from the local supermarket. You could buy a herd of cows for what it costs to feed these bears!
Visitor mind-reads. "I can't tell if it is an elephant from here". Err, it's that huge grey thing 100 feet away! Perhaps all the zoo shops should sell binoculars? However, the Welfare habitat size, and shyness of some animals, in PZ can stop visitors getting too close to them, so what is a builder to do?
I could go on ...

[Kajsa_Kavat]

Not all zoos are the same, you know? Neither are guests. Of course a video game can't perfectly reflect reality, but it is a pretty nice take and Frontier always emphasised their focus on animal welfare which is why this game won't allow you to put your animals in mini-habitats. :)

[XELA]

Why do you care so much it's just a video game.Games are not made to be 100% realistic

[MIGHTYANDYMAN]

think outside the box

[val]

I understand your point, but speaking from my own perspective, I have nothing to complain about this game. The one thing I agree with you is the distance at which guests will complain about anmals. It's kind of dumb considering they're looking at giant animals that require giant enclosures.

Regarding food prices, I think they are expensive but very reasonable, considering a real animal would cost so much more than just food and having some staff. What I mean by this is, the game doesn't charge you for fixing the barriers or utilities (where are they getting the materials from?), nor does it charge you when an animal gets sick (where do the meds come from?). I don't have zoos that are that full of shops and I still make enough money to have enclosures with animals at max capactity, and I don't experience the problem you have with guests not visiting habitats, I just make sure to put the most attractive animals at the back of the zoos so that the guests can visit all animals and don't just stay on the fancy ones.

Also, I don't think all captive-bred animals lose fear of people. Cheetahs are very skittish even in captivity, for example.

[kadraws]

Sandbox mode has options to make the animals happy no matter what enclosure you put them in, if your desire is to build a zoo that would be poorly by today's standards.

[Just Kevin]

Just a game? It's a simulator that tries to be accurate, especially with the animals, but things that don't need to, let it down. Who ever came up with PZ knows little about zoos, have they never, for instance, watched The Secret Life of the Zoo? They are not theme parks, at least not in the UK. For a start they don't buy top of the range meat, they mainly buy stuff not for human consumption, and at bulk trade price. And visitors know there has to be staff and their buildings. The buildings don't radiate hate. If PZ wants to do that at least let us hide them behind things that the field of distaste bounces off., not to go right through a pretty hedge for example. The space the animals needs is not realistic either. Zoo animals are not wild, they don't need vast areas to hunt in, they get fed. The food enhancements and toys are to stop them getting bored. It's no wonder visitors moan they cannot see even a large animal, because it's half a mile away.
In most zoos also, staff facilities are usually part of the wall of a habitat, as are the animal's places to sleep.

Almost all zoo bred animals are quite tame. Granted to big cats are still dangerous because I playful tap could have your guts out, but keepers are still able to call them in by name, and feed them with tidbits through the cages. All the animals are very used to people. Oh, and many are nocternal. Anyway, it's still good. Shame about the partly fixed bug.

[s_linkletter]

I don't think keepers wander through an enclosure of lions with an open bucket of meat, as they do in this game. Keepers are very cautious with carnivores. It has been decades since I lived in a city with a decent zoo, but before that I went to zoos quite often. The keepers were always careful around carnivores.

[シャドウ]

Originally posted by kevlms:

Planet Zoo is a zoo simulator, but it's not as realistic as it could be. Zoos do not keep fully wild animals. They are usually bred in captivity, and never have the type of space wild animals have. The Welfare space expected in PZ is crazy, which few zoos would have. Zoo animals don't have to hunt vast areas for food, it's handed to them. The reason for all the toys is to stop them getting bored by stimulating their natural instincts. Few zoos could afford such vast enclosures or have the space. Also, being born in captivity usually stops the shy ones being shy.
That the visitors seem to constantly gravitate towards food and drink and toilet buildings is also unrealistic (and a throw back software to previous games by this company no doubt). These are zoos not themeparks. One should not have to have food and drink places everywhere just to get visitors to pass the enclosures! Most zoos just have one central area, not dozens. People go to see animals, not to stuff their faces. Often they take a packed lunch.
Zoo animals don't cost as much to feed as this game shows. Bears, for example, are not fed on prime beef fit for humans, and they buy meat in bulk, not by the kilo from the local supermarket. You could buy a herd of cows for what it costs to feed these bears!
Visitor mind-reads. "I can't tell if it is an elephant from here". Err, it's that huge grey thing 100 feet away! Perhaps all the zoo shops should sell binoculars? However, the Welfare habitat size, and shyness of some animals, in PZ can stop visitors getting too close to them, so what is a builder to do?
I could go on ...

If we were going to get technical about real zoos vs this game, then that is a stretch. I actually don't support zoos in real life and think animals should be allowed to live free and not be kept as entertainment for humans. I like games that allow you to run zoo-like businesses, but I don't like real zoos.

I guess my point is the realistic aspect doesn't matter to me provided the animal facts are correct and are not doing something like saying "Wolf packs have ranks" when they in fact do not have ranks. As long as the facts they give about the actual animals are true and not false or misleading, I wouldn't care if we were able to have unicorns, dragons, and bigfoot at our zoo.

[GunRunner89X]

I'd love a zoo/theme park game where guests actually came in via transport (cars, bus, etc) instead of spawning on the same tile :/ Probably need a NASA level computer to deal with that kinda processing though. Same with moving animals/garbage/food around the park, actually having to move them using vehicles and close to real life. That's one area I really would like more realism, but it probably very heavy going in terms of coding and so on.

[シャドウ]

Originally posted by Gun-Runner89X:

I'd love a zoo/theme park game where guests actually came in via transport (cars, bus, etc) instead of spawning on the same tile :/ Probably need a NASA level computer to deal with that kinda processing though,

I play Jurassic World Evolution which is another game on here also made with Frontier and they do come in via monorail, and my computer certainly isn't NASA power levels, but it is a gaming computer. Works fine and isn't laggy for me.

[Just Kevin]

Most zoos nowadays are for the breeding and conservation of endangered species, PZ depicts that, if not for such zoos a lot more animals would now be extinct. It's OK to say they belong in the wild, but their 'wild' is vanishing, plus many large animals get shot mainly for profit.

[Just Kevin]

If you find the guest spawning tiles too unrealistic, hide them in a hill or whatever :)

[MrHappy]

There is no reason people can't go totally overboard with designs and constructions in Planet Zoo as happens in Planet Coaster. I mean completely dream-like inspired imagination.

Realistic Zoo theme is just one idea and the obvious one.

[kesi96]

In my opinion it is not that far from reality. Of course you need to simplify lots of things to attract players. Who would buy a game where you need hours to check the international breeding books to see which species you can breed at the moment and which male/female you can use or where you have to get a partner from to avoid inbreeding as much as possible? Same for asking for animal food in supermarkets for products which are over the use-by-date. Not that much people I think. Me neither. You need to focus more on the zoo and the animals itself to make a zoo simulator attractive.
And I love to see, that the animals in the game need that much space. It is at least as it should be in real zoos too. Of course no zoo would give away half of its species to give the other half bigger habitats. The problem here is very simple, visitors who bring the money want to see diversity and they want to see the animals. I have seen a few zoos in real life and for me the best zoos are the ones, which have less species, but bigger habitats for these species. And I prefer looking for a while to detect an animal, than watching e.g. a tiger in a 10x10m² glas box. But I think as an Biologist I am not like the "average" visitor, who is more likely to run through a zoo taking as much pictures as possible from the most attractive animals and go home after one hour. And I think they did a really good job to insert this problem Zoos have into the game, which makes it a little bit more difficult. Where is the excitement, if you put a pair of animals in little cages and get cubs in a regular basis in your zoo while thousands of people run around and no animal feels disturbed?

And to the shyness: I don´t think it is that easy. Most animals are instinctively scared of humans and it is a lot of work to make them feel comfortable or habitate them to humans around. Especially prey species like e.g. antelopes are very shy and get nervous with humans too close, even if they live their whole life time in captivity. Its more likely to get them kind of tame for the zoo keepers when they are born there and you have access to them short time after birth, but still many animals stay shy or are just used to very few people and are shy as far as another person appears. The really tame animals you see in zoos are often (not always) animals which where raised by humans for some reasons. So it is still kind of stress for the animals with people around nearly the whole day, if they can´t hide anywhere. So for me it is kind of realistic that animals get stressed when there are too many people around, imagine small kids playing around, thats really noisy from time to time in a real life zoo, where even I can get stressed from time to time xD

At one point I totally agree with you: Most visitors should be able to read the zoo plan to find out where which animal and which restaurant or the souvenir shop can be found and simply walk there if they are hungry or thirsty, that could have been solved a little better. Also they could simply bring their glasses or contact lenses if they are unable to recognize you elephant :D

[boomerkin]

but it honestly does cost a lot to feed the animals, i find it interesting that "The Secret life at the Zoo" was mentioned as i do believe that in one of those series that they had said that paying for the food wasn't cheap. one of the prime examples that they gave was the sheer
amount of eucalyptus that each Koala needed to feed them.