Several MAJOR issues I am having with the game

[seevert7225]

So after playing the campaign a couple of times when PZ first came out, I decided to jump back into it recently and played Franchise mode. I've played about 30 hours on it so far and I have run into several issues, some annoying and some bonkers.
1) I started my Franchise zoo in my hometown of Miami Florida, USA. For those that may not know, all of south Florida is Subtropical. It has snowed once in Miami, in 1978, for about 5 minutes. The rest of the state also does not generally see snow. Nevertheless, Frontier has somehow put all of Florida into the "Temperate Biome", which I found out when it began heavily snowing in the game. Is there anyway to turn this off? Its just stupid to have to put down heaters and deal with feet of snow on my coconut palm trees in Miami.
2) The lack of information about each piece in the game is ridiculous. What does the chew toy do? What types of animals can go in the walk-through exhibit? What does the "Do Not Feed The Animals" sign actually do? I shouldn't have to pause the game and go hunting on the web for these things. A simple question mark toolbar would be helpful like there is for general information.
3) Why are African Lions and other animals incorrectly listed and treated as Endangered when they are listed on the IUCN as Least Concern or Vulnerable? For a game that prides itself on animal/plant/biome information, they sure do have some big mistakes roaming around.
4) Why is there hardly any interactions between animals in an exhibit besides mating? The babies don't stick by mom or nurse (if mammals), herd animals don't herd together, different species don't interact at all even though they give bonuses for multi-species exhibit etc.. I mean these are things that happened decades ago with ZT2 and currently in Frontier's other game JW.
5) As a former education specialist at two zoos in real life, the education part of the game is severely lacking and I hope they at least make a DLC that expands on it. An identical babbling speech and throwing a piece of food in the exhibit leaves a lot to be desired.
6) The financial section is too flimsy. Putting it on hard and placing donation bins everywhere rakes in the money making it too easy and not realistic to most zoos. I tried only putting a handful of donation bins down (like at conservation points or critically endangered species habitats similar to real life) and jacked up the entrance prices, but quickly ran out of money and had to revert back.
7) Why does the stats only show for 3 years? My zoo is "43" years old lol, I want to see how my growth is over a decade, 2-3 years is not enough.
8) The hard shelter stat is the hardest thing to deal with in the game. There are limited options for them outside of importing from the workshop, and trying to build one is bonkers. Move it to the left and it drops 10%? What? In an open field? Trying to lower it so the concrete is not exposed, loses 34%? Putting hay on it to hide the concrete docks 40%?
9) I am surprised at how limited the path options are, even with a few of the DLCs being added. Cant change the railing type? Only 4 staff paths that look basically identical? Yuck.

[grampers62]

So many little things for one to learn about in the game...
Remember this is about what happens in an average zoo rather than out in the wild so animal count and behaviors are a little different in the two situations.
Management is a little tricky. In career each scenario focuses on different issues and some are easier to gain cash. In sandbox we can set the zoo up in so many different ways management is sort of weak. In franchise is where management is key. setting a franchise zoo to difficult can be areal challenge and perhaps some players might never be able to play on that setting. On the other hand, setting the zoo to easy is exactly that. Whereas medium setting should provide a bit of a challenge while being no problem to get a well balanced and attractive zoo up and going.
Indeed the hard shelter thing can get a bit confusing as there isn't a lot of visual clues to go by. The best way to see what changes do to a shelter is by using the heat map to see where an animal is allowed to go. For those shelters the height can play as much of a role as the area. shelters must be high enough for the animals in the habitat. In habitats there is a no-go buffer area around objects to keep the 3d model of the animals from passing through solid objects. This where a lot of players get confused as to why their shelter isn't large enough. An open walled shelter will have more usable space than a closed wall shelter. And if the door isn't wide or tall enough the shelter won't count at all.
I agree the path type options are a bit weak and could have used some changes. But it seems the game is done with that type of changes unless one uses outside mods to get something different. We can do some little tricks with staff paths though. ( I'll see about commenting a video about that later)

[grampers62]

One way to make better staff paths.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3147081509

[SLG]

5. There are different items for education: educational boards, educational speakers, educational tours, etc.

3. You have to remember that each animal was released at different times so their information will reflection that year's information. Just like in Zoo Tycoon 2.

[marcellof97]

In Pz there aren’t African lions, but the subspecies “West african lion” (Panthera Leo senegalensis), listed both in IUCN and in Zoopedia as Critically endangered; btw they update this kind of info, I remember they did it with scimitar oryx

[Anthracite]

You made the mistake of thinking this is a management game, it's not, it's basically a game for making pretty things with a few animals wandering around.

[seevert7225]

Originally posted by marcellof97:

In Pz there aren’t African lions, but the subspecies “West african lion” (Panthera Leo senegalensis), listed both in IUCN and in Zoopedia as Critically endangered; btw they update this kind of info, I remember they did it with scimitar oryx

A few issues with this, while it does say West African Lion, it does not refer to them in PZ as Panthera leo senegalensis, instead referring to them as the generic Panthera leo. Also if you look at this distribution map in PZ for this species, it shows the generic African Lion populations throughout African and not the West African Lion subspecies.
On top of that, I could find no record on IUCN that lists the West African Lion as anything. Searching by common name or species name, shows no results. All I could find was a few articles advocating for it and a dead end wiki link which ironically shows at the top of google search results saying it is listed a critically endangered, but provides no links or sources other than the dead end wiki page.

[seevert7225]

Originally posted by grampers62:

So many little things for one to learn about in the game...
Remember this is about what happens in an average zoo rather than out in the wild so animal count and behaviors are a little different in the two situations.

As a person who has worked in multiple zoos, I can assure you that animals do interact with each other...

Originally posted by grampers62:

Management is a little tricky. In career each scenario focuses on different issues and some are easier to gain cash. In sandbox we can set the zoo up in so many different ways management is sort of weak. In franchise is where management is key. setting a franchise zoo to difficult can be areal challenge and perhaps some players might never be able to play on that setting. On the other hand, setting the zoo to easy is exactly that. Whereas medium setting should provide a bit of a challenge while being no problem to get a well balanced and attractive zoo up and going.

As stated in my post, I am playing on Franchise mode on hard... and its frankly too easy. I put all my animals on level 3 food, trained all my staff to 5 stars, and I am raking in about $25K profit an in game year... its frankly unchallenging so I am surprised when you said that franchise can be the most difficult. Again my issue being that 70% of my profit is from donations.

[anaris]

"i am an expert in running a zoo and my zoo is somehow doing well" is maybe not the biggest issue

[Pezza83]

Its a game

[GlassRose]

So... okay, a lot to digest there. Let's just take each issue one at a time.

1. Not everyone lives in Florida, or even the USA. I get where you're coming from but frankly put the world is very large and its possible whomever was responsible for that didn't realize Florida was tropical, not temperate. Seems like a minor irritation, if you don't like snow just pick another zoo biome to build in that better suits your knowledge of the area you imagine it to be.

2. It's a game and although its fairly intuitive it does require some original thought. A "chew" toy should be fairly obvious what it does. For other things, sure google is required but if you're inconvenienced by having to go look for things you've got bigger issues than this game.

3. This game was made over 5yrs ago at this point and its entirely possible in that time that some populations of animals have been re-classed. It's also not the kind of thing that most people are going to realize, and you have to consider that a game requires balance... which sometimes requires creative license more than direct reality. Again, I get where you're at on this one, but its a really minor thing that most wouldn't notice.

4. The limited interactions between animals is kind of pathetic, I give you that but I for one am very thankful that the herding animation that was in ZT2 is not in PZ because it frequently backfired and made animals hungry/thirsty because they were constantly herding. I'd have to check them all the time and remove leaders to let the herd recoup. It's a nice aesthetic but a horrible mechanic.

5. The education mechanic is sub-par... but again, this is a game. Don't cling so close to their statement of "realism" as compared to other games even in similar genre, they really are the most realistic. If a coffee shop says it has the best latte, are you going to chase down all the others to ensure that it is? This entire post probably has more to do with the fact that you've worked in a real zoo and see these things... 99% of people don't. And they're not making the game to suit niche populations of ex or present zoo staff, they're making it for nerds like me that just love the idea of managing a zoo and have no actual hands-on knowledge.

6. I can't argue with this one.

7. Because some people have very old zoos and each year of data it saves comes at a cost. The more storage of data you require in a game, the less actual content you get... you gotta choose. Would you rather have 43yrs of "maturation, birth, death" etc... or would you rather have playable content? You don't get both. You talk about reality but the reality is that a server hosting way more than just you has to remember and create all of these things. It's probably a beast, but still just a machine. It's resources are finite.

8. You can build custom hard shelters by simply buying one, going into edit mode, and doing what you want with it. You don't have to have a concrete floor, you don't have to have anything but a roof and you can cover it with rocks if you want to make it more natural. You can also make caves and tunnels with terrain and rocks, or even use your raised footpaths as the roof and just decorate beneath it as a shelter. Get creative, you're not stuck with ugly pre-mades unless you wanna be.

9. And yea, pathing needs work and more options... but again you have to kind of pick and choose. I'm sure they put thought into it, came up with their number of options and tried to put a selection that would satisfy most of their customers' preferences. You might be someone they just couldn't find a color/pattern for. Unfortunate, but not game breaking.

I don't mean to come off argumentative but I've played a LOT of games. Games more expensive to buy and made by larger studios than this one that have loads of game-breaking bugs, glitches, and unbalanced content. All of these seem more like petty grievance that is easily worked around. The two that are fairly legit, I would submit on a suggestions forum (I've never looked but I'm sure there is one). You never know, maybe they'll see it and try to implement. Many game devs do. Otherwise I'd personally, just try to relax and have fun. If its not fun, play something else. It's your down time and you should enjoy it. Just my two cents.