Brief submission regarding my time in the beta. I have over 1000 hours in Planet Zoo. This is a promising game, but a lot of issues need to be addressed. There's a lot of innovation here and if the team sees this I hope they know how excited a lot of people are for this.
BUGS
Guests don't respond to any sort of click interaction.
ALT scaling works about 50% of the time. I have to assume this has to do with gridding, but it's either poorly explained or improperly implemented.
UI/GAMEPLAY
-UI/Taskbar: I mention this below, but fluidity of play is about a 5 out of 10. In similar games I can get to essential infrastructure with a keystroke or on a taskbar. In Prehistoric Kingdom, I have to click everything, which is a pain, and makes building anything more than a prefab a nightmare.
I'll have other stuff to add to this, but right away a glaring issue is the UI. I have to click everything (insufficient hotkey accessibility), so I have to hunt for everything.
Essential menu items are buried. I think power was the one that jumped out to me, but it is not intuitive that I can't hit a key or big button that provides a dashboard or overlay.
I have to consult the user's guide for a few too-many essential things. Things that should be obvious. I'm glad the guide is there, but it's also sorely lacking in specificity or clarity.
QOL
My experience of the gameplay is extremely hampered because there are no hotkeys. In PZoo, for example, from which this either borrows or is influenced by given the layout, I can get to literally every menu item with a key. That's default, vanilla, right-out-of-the-box.
This also will likely cut down on your complaints received about a very difficult & unintuitive menu system (see UI). If I can hit a key, I won't sweat the fact that the icon for an essential piece of building is so small it's nearly invisible, or buried in another menu.
Camera: Along with vertical, altitudinal controls, there needs to be a rotate camera control. Keypresses on any keyboard, but esp. those many of us who play with hotkeys or altered peripheral maps prefer to use keyboard > mouse every time. Ease and precision.
All the great innovation here will be missed if users can't access it.
Brief submission regarding my time in the beta. I have over 1000 hours in Planet Zoo. This is a promising game, but a lot of issues need to be addressed. There's a lot of innovation here and if the team sees this I hope they know how excited a lot of people are for this.
BUGS
UI/GAMEPLAY -UI/Taskbar: I mention this below, but fluidity of play is about a 5 out of 10. In similar games I can get to essential infrastructure with a keystroke or on a taskbar. In Prehistoric Kingdom, I have to click everything, which is a pain, and makes building anything more than a prefab a nightmare.
QOL
All the great innovation here will be missed if users can't access it.