Attempting to understand the "value" of animals in trading

[Dinoman]

So one thing I've never understood in Planet Zoo is the popularity and pricing between species.

Obviously the big ones like lions, elephants, apes and so on make sense. These are hard to get, harder to breed, harder still to breed good genes into, and hardest to breed good genes with the rare variants, and they rake in the cash from visitors.

But what about the other animals? The smaller species that aren't blockbusting or that don't have rare variants. What determines their value?

For example, Dingoes are a relatively popular animal to breed, and they go for a decent chunk. Unless someone tries to crash or overinflate the market, you usually get 500 CC for a good, gold gene rating dingo. But Dingoes have no rare skins, and as far as sources for getting CC from releasing to the wild, there are much better options for "farming". So what makes the Dingo so popular? The story is much the same for Cassowaries. They have no variant, and they sell for 500 a head easily, and they're even harder to breed since they only have two at a time and can only have one pair per enclosure.

But then you look at something like the Thomson's Gazelle and you're lucky to see anyone selling them at all, and a gold rated gazelle is practically unheard of on the market. If anything they're easier to breed than Dingoes or Cassowaries, and they also don't have variants, but they simply barely exist on the market, the same goes for the Komodo Dragon.

"They're from the Deluxe Pack!" I hear you cry, but dear friends, so is the pygmy hippopotamus, and those DO get bred and sold on the market quite regularly despite also lacking a variant.

And it's not a Deluxe pack only thing. Fennec Foxes are bred a lot and priced very expensively. Dall's Sheep barely exist on the market, same with Spotted Hyenas. Snow Leopards there are more of on the market than probably are left IRL. Yet none of these animals have rare skins.

What are the reasons behind this huge disparity that I'm clearly missing? Some species are constantly being bred and sold, others might as well not have been added to the game as far as Franchise is concerned. What gives?

[Razamanaz]

Supply and Demand

[Dinoman]

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

Supply and Demand

I mean I have a demand for Thomson's gazelles. But there's no supply! Hardly anyone breeds them

Originally posted by chasbar:

I own all DLC. There are a lot of animals in the game and I have not yet used them all. Then there are mods which many people are using. With the great variety, who can breed them all. I only sell animals with all green stats so the others get released. I have a third zoo in progress and have three animals in it that I have never used before which I am starting to breed. I have a habitat with emu, kangaroo and wallaby and a habitat with bison and prairie dogs so far. It takes me forever to build a zoo so many of the animals I previously bred are sitting in a two save files. I also like to try to do career parks sometimes. Lots of animals to breed with little time equals not many variety from me on the market. This is probably true of a lot of players.

It just seems peculiar to me that with as many people as there are that play daily, there's animals that go unused unless I'm severely overestimating how many people play Franchise which, to be fair, I could very well be doing. But just by sheer numbers alone you'd figure just about every species would be being used and bred...SOMEWHERE

[grampers62]

It does seem there might be some algorithm for frontier's suggested prices in trade that relates to base appeal rating versus number of trades in the market over an undetermined length of time. So that an animal with low appeal would receive a lower value as expected but also an animal with high appeal could receive a lower value if they were not being traded much. Likewise a lower appeal animal could get a higher suggested value if they were being traded often. Prices that players manually set in the market often show the varied value that individuals put on an animal regardless of any actual data other than what they want for a specific animal.

[Jendowoz]

Maybe we should all start trading some of the more commonly omitted animals, because isn't it up to players to trade them, perhaps if we all bred a few of these it may help others out if that is the way it works. I'm not up with all the logistics of the game and algorithmns etc.

[grampers62]

Very good point Jendowoz. While frontier is always making a few animals of each species available, the real drive of availability is in what species players are trading. And to some point what players have placed in their zoos. It could be interesting to have some of that trade info available when we select what we put in our zoo as well as what we put on the market. But I'm also certain a good number of players simply find that dealing with managing the trades from their zoos a distraction from running and building other aspects of their zoo. And then those times when we go to trade animals and we see the trade price is close to the same as release so we just release and be done with it.

[swskydancer]

I know I mostly trade animals used in the franchise zoo that I am most invested in right now, which is my North American zoo. I also think that with the amount of DLC used now, that animals are going to just fall into and out of favor with players, with some of them not used or traded as frequently as they used to be. I don't base my animal choices on what will sell the best in the market. I breed and trade what appeals to me. If there aren't buyers, I just release them to the wild. If the animals on the market are all priced excessively high, in my opinion, I don't worry about buying them. As grampers62 has pointed out many times, two low stat Frontier animals can produce animals with very good stats. The compare mates function is your friend. :)

I think what I'm trying to say is that the value of an animal to me is determined by what I am most interested in breeding at the current time. I don't get caught up in coat color, unless my end point is a morph that I particularly like, not what others think I should want. I don't want a Beaver habitat with white animals, I want the normal coloration and breed towards better stats. On the flip side, I am so smitten with a habitat bursting with Melanistic Timber Wolves, I've traded all others away. Because those melanistic wolves normally trade for outrageous amounts, I trade at low prices to try and get them into the hands of a new player. I have had that blow up in my face, though. A wolf I put on at like 45 cc because I thought he was getting older but could still provide excellent stat litters for someone else, showed up within minutes relisted for more than 6000 cc. Anyway, value of an animal to me is a personal choice dictated by what I'm looking to accomplish. What is valuable to me may not be to someone else so it's hard to define value. Just my play style.

[Jendowoz]

That is a fair comment sky. Perhaps those of us that could help out would like a list of those animals most wanted for trading and, if we choose to, and help them out.