Hayo Zookeepers!
We're thrilled to announce free Update 1.2, coming to Planet Zoo on 7 April, 2020.
This free update contains a variety of different features and improvements based on community feedback; this post will give you more information on what we will be implementing in our next update and how it may affect your gameplay.
Genealogy
Building further upon your great feedback, we are ready to reveal the Genealogy UI. Upon selecting an animal, you will be able to see which animals are their parents, siblings, mates and offspring. Each animal is selectable, allowing you to ‘walk’ along animal bloodlines, so you can see close relations easily, and even work out common ancestors – all handy to avoid inbreeding.
We’re also exposing deeper genetic information - for the first time you’ll be able to see the Genetic Identity of genes (a simplified genetic code). While it’s not necessary for all of you to dig into this much detail, (avoiding inbreeding is fine), we still wanted to give you the chance to see these mechanics in action.
New Difficulty Settings
We are introducing new difficulty settings to Planet Zoo. You will now be able to choose between Easy, Medium (the current game difficulty) and Hard. These settings will affect:
Whether animals get bored of enrichment items (Hard Difficulty only).
- How quickly animals get stressed.
- How difficult it will be to maintain animal welfare.
- Whether guests will request refunds (Hard Difficulty only).
- How willing guests are to spend money.
- How much guests learn from education sources.
- What percent of Guest Happiness is require for the 5* rating.
- How fast your staff get tired.
- How large of a happiness boost staff get from training.
When loading into a Zoo in any mode, you will get the opportunity to choose from the three settings. For more information on these settings, you will be able to select the question mark icon above the settings to learn more about what will change when you play. You are free to change the difficulty at any time via the settings while you’re inside your zoo too, so the difficulty settings will be able to change to suit you at any moment.
Changes to Animal Feeding
Since launch, we have received a lot of feedback regarding the way Keepers feed the animals in your zoos. We thank you all for taking the time to explain to us the changes you would like to see to this system. Here's what's going to happen in the new update:
- Keepers will now fill feeding stations in a different, more efficient order by filling up the one that's closest to the Keeper first, before moving on to the next one, and so forth.
- Keepers' food prep time has simplified so that it will be the same for all habitats, regardless of the number of animals, and mix of species. Previously, this caused intermittent hunger in some habitats.
- New Keeper thoughts have been added, so that you can identify issues in your habitats easier.
- Animals in mixed species habitats will now be able to eat any upgraded versions of shared foods. Previously, food theft could cause intermittent hunger in some mixed habitats.
- For example, all animals that eat level 1 Hay will be able to eat any upgraded version of Hay. All animals that eat level 1 of Monkey Chow will be able to eat any upgraded version of Monkey Chow. But, animals that eat Hay still cannot share food with animals that eat Monkey Chow.
- Keepers will now sprint to and from the habitat when doing a feeding and water refilling task, when the task is critical.
- Keepers will be able to sprint when carrying their buckets.
- Juveniles will cost less to feed. The amount is different per species, and is estimated by body mass.
Breakdown of Guest Happiness in Guest Information Panels
The team have made some great changes to the Guest Information Panels to help you learn more about your zoo and how you can improve it.
- Guest Education has been split from happiness and now offers a spending bonus multiplier, meaning a well-educated guest will want to spend more money. We’ve also added a new management screen for education, more on this further down the post.
- The Guest Information panel will now include a new tab, the History tab. This will show their opinions on their entire stay in the zoo, to indicate what they might have liked or disliked during their visit. The Guest History tab will include ticket price, environment (litter/vandalism/staff facilities), their feelings about the animals, and security, as well as any other issues they had that affected satisfying.
- Guest thoughts will now have time stamps on them so you’ll know how long ago a guest had that thought, and whether it’s still relevant or not.
- All the opinions that guests have will be classed as happy (green face), neutral (orange face) and unhappy (red face).
Guest History will not be applied retroactively to existing zoos and Guests. For the Guest History to become available, you will need to play in that zoo for a while so that the History can be generated and applied to the tab.
Guests will now also display their arrival date, projected leaving date and the progress of their visit. You can view this in the Guest Information tab.
Guest Education Management tab
We have implemented changes to make Guest Education clearer. The Guest Education tab, which is found in Zoo Management screens, will show:
- A breakdown of the Guest Education Rating, which includes the average guest education level.
- Which animal your guests have learnt the most about.
- More information on Audio Guides, such as
- How many were sold over the last year.
- Average time of the visit spent using them.
- Average number of species they've been educated about.
- This tab will also show more information about Zoopedia Education Research and Vets that are doing Advanced Research.
- In a separate tab, there will also be a breakdown of each animal and how well the education is performing. This will help highlight any issues with the layout of zoos and how it affects education.
- This will include another tab for conservation boards.
Increased Social Interactions
All animals in game, including Deluxe Edition and Arctic Pack animals will now trigger their social interaction animations more frequently.
Reducing the Negative Impact of Staff Buildings
After building a shell around your staff buildings, or placing decorations around them, the negative impact radius will be reduced. The radius can be reduced by up to 50% - to get the full 50%, your scenery rating for the facility must be at 100%.
Search Added to Zoopedia UI
When using the Zoopedia, you will now be able to search for the species by typing, as well as being able to scroll through the UI.
Research Shared Across All Franchise Zoos
Completed research will be shared across your Franchise. If you load into a Franchise Zoo, the research data will be saved so that the highest levels of research will be carried over between all Franchise zoos. It's important to note, that if a Staff Member was researching a research category where the jump in levels is less than 1, then when you load into the zoo, they will no longer be assigned to that research and you will need to re-assign them. In comparison, the research should continue if, for example, they were researching level 1 Chinese Pangolins, and level 1 was completed in another zoo, then when you load back into the zoo they should be researching level 2.
In order to make sure you've got all of your research data from across your Franchise you'll need to load into each zoo individually. This is due to the fact that if we were to do this in the background, it could create incredibly long loading times for you, so to make the game more seamless when loading zoos, your Franchise zoos will load research individually once you load into them. Once your Franchise zoos are all up to date, this will create a new baseline of research shared across them, until you upgrade research further.
Path System Improvements
We have added a variety of improvements to our pathing system. Staff buildings will connect to Staff Paths with a staff path, and standard path will connect up with standard path. Guest facilities will continue to connect with standard paths. You will now be able to click over normal path to replace with a staff path, similar to how you change the texture of a path, and vice versa. Double clicking a path piece will now open the Path Editor with that path type and texture selected to continue building with. We’ve also added the ability to set step height in half metre increments, making it easier to shape your paths around terrain.
Player Settings for Units (Meters VS Feet etc.)
You can now specify preferred units of measurement in the Settings Menu → Interface Tab → Units. These values default to the English standard units. This will not work for Zoopedia descriptions.
Added Creativity!
Of course, we couldn't complete this free update without some new enrichment items, building pieces, and foliage! Among other items, we will be adding in new Tropical and Moss Rocks as well as the much requested Glass Panel pieces! We can't wait to see what you'll build with those!
Update 1.2 will arrive alongside bug fixes and gameplay tweaks that will improve your Planet Zoo experience, and you'll get the full Update Notes when it goes live on 7 April!
Thank you for all of your wonderful support and feedback on Planet Zoo! We are grateful to have such a caring, enlightening community!