Bugs and Issues that have NEVER been fixed, defeating user experience - I am getting frustrated and angry.

[feeva]

So I am having to say that I get extremely frustrated with the Frontier by now. I have been playing Planet Coaster for over 200 hours and Planet Zoo - also for 200+ hours. I won´t purchase any more games from this company - as it is crystal clear to me that they are doing NOTHING to fix issues and bring out ONE DLC AFTER ANOTHER. They are clearly interested in the money without giving the player any help or enjoyment.
I am saying this for the following reasons:

1. In both games -Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo- the path-builder is utterly horrendous. I have over 500 hours experience with it - it is almost the same. Building paths is a nightmare - especially for a creative person, who wants to design things.
If the terrain is not 100% flat it looks awful, building elevated paths or bridges takes forever, the tunnelling would be a nice feature if it were usable. I have zero interest in acquiring a computer-science degree just to be able to play this game. Same goes for the building. I am not saying it´s buggy- I am saying that the learning curve is high and the user experience is frustrating.

2. The “hard shelter” issue: This is what frustrates me the most, because there is CLEARly a BUG here, which has not been fixed in all these years - and they still put out DLCs.. The game encourages players to build their own Shelters and then they do NOT work. Not even the vanilla shelters work.
For example: I have a Tapir habitat: I build everything according to the rules. I put 2 animals in - the hard shelter is at 100%. Two hours later - (I changed nothing) the same shelter does not get recognized anymore - the bar dropped to 40%.
Another example: I recently built a new Bengal Tiger habitat. I built a custom cave out of mossy rocks. It is BIG. I put the animals in - the bar is at 22%. I think wtf - i PUT IN 2 MORE SHELTERS - another custom one and the standard vanilla one (both wood)- I mess around with the beddings in all of the shelters - the bar climbs from 22% to 25% - with 3 shelters!!! I replace all of the beddings 5 times, I check the traversable area 20 times (all of them are accessible - the tigers walk through the vanilla shelter, but do not lie down. All of the shelters are tall enough that a Keeper would be able to stand in there a bit crouched.I mess around with the z-axis on all of the shelters 10 times. I reload, I go on the internet. There are other people having the exact same problem - yet the answers on the discussions are always the same: user error.
There is NO USER ERROR here - it is clearly a BUG. If it were user error - which it´s not - the fault still lies on the developers side, for not explaining it well enough. But it is not the case - it is a corruption of the save files or something else. The developer is DOING NOTHING for YEARS. It was buggy from the beginning and it has not changed in 5 years.

3. The most RIDICULOUS BUG ever: The Steam overlay issue:
This game is made for using the steam workshop - it encourages using it. I DO use it. But the most ridiculous BUG ever has also not been fixed in 5 years! The bug: you press Shift+Tab to access the steam overlay, mess around in it for a while and enjoy looking for new things other people built, you press Shift+Tab again to continue playing. All of the sudden the camera is panning either left or right without any reason. It pans fast to the edge of the map. It is uncontrollable. It is unstoppable. It will continue even if you try to stir it in the other direction. It will continue no matter what. Exiting the game does nothing. On re-entering it will continue. You have to exit the whole game or kill it in the task manager. In fact- I am pretty sure this bug is corrupting the save files and is causing the shelter issues by now.
This is the most ridiculous mistake I have ever seen. It took me HOURS to even find the reason for this bug, I had to dig deep on the forums to even find people who know why this is happening. I found out a year ago that it is the steam overlay and by now I can 100% confirm it. To the point that now, when I want to look at the workshop, I save the game, exit the game, go into the workshop, get the stuff, and then open the game again- WHAT A JOKE IS THIS EVEN????? On a game that is MADE with the workshop in mind???? AND THEY STILL PUT OUT DLCS!!!!

4. The “sorting system” of blueprints:
I have to say that this has been made a lot better in Planet Zoo - because in Planet Coaster it is an absolute Nightmare. In Planet Zoo it is at least bearable. In Planet Coaster one has to make a “custom tag” and apply it to blueprints one by one. This can take an hour in case one decides to do it... In Planet Zoo it is a bit better, but as I said it is just bearable. I do not want to go into detail with this because I refuse to spend any more time writing this. I am sure players will understand what I mean - especially players that are creative builders and are serious about it.

I saw they are making a new game with dinosaurs or something. I would advise anyone that is serious about tycoon games not to give this company any more money. They do not deserve it. They are not interested in a pleasurable user experience. They are not interested in fixing their messes. They have a buggy code and slap paint over it and make you spend over 100$ for it. They want money. Nothing more. This behaviour is not respectable - this behaviour is ruining their reputation. I cannot respect that.

[Varick]

I will grant you that the learning curve can be high; I do not use workshop habitats so I can not speak to those. I have a lot of fun in Planet Zoo and do not have any problems with it.
Not here to agree or disagree with you; just saying it may not be to your liking but others may find it fun. Whatever. :)

[audiolady]

I like to use make the path going over the habitat, then if it's high up enough, it counts towards hard shelter. Or pretty roof/floor pieces floating above the habitat. It stays as a constant hard shelter.

[grampers62]

Simply put, all games are not something that is suitable to every player. Many of the things you've listed are simply a matter of learning how things in the game work. The camera issue is indeed a game issue and is directly related to how the game initializes mouse functions. Probably will not get addressed due to the complexity of redoing the entire system.
The blueprints issue is actually more of a steam interface thing but it is indeed a cluster of nonfunctioning.
But for those that wish to continue playing we just work with what we have and find ways to work around the little things. But for those that have issues with it, they are free to play or not to play and that's okay.

[Beastmonger]

your problem it's that you obviously don't understand how game actualy work... it's not about numbers of shelters but about coverage they provide... and that can be difficult manage because:
1. animal hitbox is usually way bigger then animal itself
2. animal need to reach sheler by traversable area
3. dimension of shelters are sometime irrelevat and they don't reflect real coverage (this should be always checked by heatmap if you don¨t have experience) again... problem is that animal hitbox can collide with building pieces (pilars/stones/walls)
4. lot of basegame prefabricated shelters are crap (especially those from wooden logs)
5. lot of workshop shelters are also crap because people build it in sandbox with animal welfare turned off

[Just Kevin]

Anything substantial that an animal can get under is classed as shelter. I often use the terrain tool to build caves. Even flyover paths count.

[Wimpy Weasel]

well, well , well, hum somethings going on. I don't have any problem with the game and I have a whopping 5 hours in the game. Some people when given a cookie they want a glass of milk. Just set back breath in the good air and exhale all the bad air and be happy that you have a PC, some kids in Africa don't have a PC.

[Pezza83]

Not jumping on you in any way but these seem like you problems rather than everyone else's problems, 200 hours in game is nothing really in all truth, a little bit of playing around with things and everything works out all fine. I have not encountered any of these issues that you have, admittedly I did find the pathing a little frustrating at first as I didn't play plan co but soon got used to all the features, using the flatten terrain tool really helps in creating nice slopes for your paths. Stick with it if you can, the game is awesome

[asd]

too long to read

[grampers62]

I actually feel the op should have put this in a revue rather than a post in the forums.
It does seem more like an opinion rather than a request for input...

[Varick]

Well, the OP did post a review the same date as this. Not sure why posted a review unless thought their review would get lost among the 78,000 plus reviews? Whatever.

[Just Kevin]

So, one person's 'bugs' are another person's tasks to learn how to overcome and are not bugs at all. It's quite a complicated sim and does take a lot of getting in to.

[Hauw2x]

100.00000% hard disagree with the shelter part, it's one of the BETTER part of this game if not the best. It's a HUGE improvement over cow barns!
A lot of people including you make caves because it look natural, some people make office building because heck why not. I myself make temple because it's fricking gorgerous

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3231449672

In anything else you said I have to agree that sometimes it's an inconvenience and UI fix feels somewhat overdue. Especially pathing. Can't we just pick a desired size, tile type, press X and tell the game, basically needs to go HERE, then it's done like a charm

[Fuzzy]

I would also add poor optimization to the list, guests are extremely janky and like to break the game

[feeva]

OP here: People do not seem to understand, that I have ZERO problems with the hard shelter. I put 230 + hours into it - i know how the hard shelter works. I am talking about the BUG here - for when the save file is corrupted and ALL the shelters - IN EVERY HABITAT- are corrupted. When you reload it is stays the same. The only way out of this is to load a savefile before the corruption and loose hours of progress. If a person has not reproduced this bug, they cannot know what I am talking about.

[grampers62]

There is a workaround that usually fixes that shelter issue. First simply move an enrichment item in the habitat, wait a moment then tap ctrl+z to undo the move. If still no joy, do the same with a barrier post. Many players will tie an object in in habitat to a single build group together so that moving that build group resets all habitat in one move.
But yes, the saves getting fouled or losing habitat data is a big issue for many players.