6/6/2023 0 Comments Planet zoo starting layoutSecondly, those animals which bred faster or easier became more prominent in 'for sale' listings, as they were the ones proving most successful in the grinding operations. Firstly, as the mass-produced offspring of the grindhouses flooded the market, CC values for these species plummeted still further. As the liquidity crisis set in, these animals became the stock in trade for new zoos, which began breeding them en masse in order to grind CC for lions or whatever. What was left to new players, with literally nothing on sale for cash? Well, those animals that fell into the Venn diagram intersection of "low prestige" and "unendangered", and were thus were neither hoarded, nor subject to the same rapid inflation as all the big ticket mammals. Prices have soared, making gorillas, tigers and the rest completely inaccessible to new players, while Pandas have become virtually mythical: beasts that might as well be made from pure diamond. In any case, the fact nobody is selling for cash has put CC at a massive premium: those who had got in early on endangered, prestige or hard-to-breed animals are now hoarding them, only selling them for wild sums. This is what happens when you search for cash listings on the animal market. At the time of writing, Frontier animals are either being bought up the second they enter the market, or are not being listed at all, due to a potential bug. The problem was, it proved way easier to make money than it was to make CC, and so almost immediately, players stopped selling animals for cash - even with unendangered creatures, it was always more desirable to sell for CC, as that was the only way of getting the currency besides faffing about using your in-game avatar to visit other zoos.ĭevelopers Frontier attempted fiscal stimulus, pumping cash-sale animals into the game from their own market presence, but it was not enough to change things. Eventually, this would earn them enough to buy the really cool animals, which tended to only be buyable for CC, and with hefty price tags to boot. Since a new player franchise starts off with barely any CC, the idea was for fledgling zoos to buy a few animals with cash, foster breeding programmes for the endangered ones, and release them for CC. Animals can be listed for sale either for a cash price, or one in CC. It runs on two currencies: money, and conservation credits (CC), which represent your good standing internationally, and which are earned through the release of captive-bred endangered animals. PZ's animal market simulates the way real zoos swap animals, in order to keep gene pools diverse when trying to breed rare species for reintroduction to the wild. You can see my first mesa here, with the staff area in the centre, surrounded by two-tier enclosures, and the public path round the outside. I'm doing a second attempt at my mesas design, but starting a bit slower this time. For anyone who cares by the way, this is my new zoo. I've had to piece this all together from observations, deductions and a few forum posts over the weekend - but I think it makes sense. And I stress "think", because economics is never an exact science, and I'm rubbish at it anyway. Now, unfortunately, economics has happened to Planet Zoo. But any attempt to simulate an economy risks also simulating economics, which is what we call it when millions of individual, rational decisions act together to create utter madness on a grand scale. It was working just fine when I reviewed the game. The root of the current crisis, as is so often the case when weird metagames emerge from massive multiplayer systems, is Planet Zoo's simulated economy: the animal market, which lets anyone online buy and sell beasts from each other. It's very much a case of Go Pig or Go Home, and here's why. And you'll be seeing a lot of them, too, because grinding out millions of them is currently the best hope of you've got of getting other animals. Because, for anyone starting a game right now, that's pretty much all you can expect to see in your zoo for a good, long while. Well, warthogs, ostriches and Indian peafowl, to be precise. But, in the game's franchise mode at least, the promise of "build your own zoo, with whatever you like in it" has quietly been phased out for "in the grim darkness of the international animal trade, there is only warthogs". I think it'll be fixed easily enough, possibly even today, and I'm still having fun with it as it is.
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