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Planet Coaster 2: General Discussion

Matt N said:
Where did you see this, out of interest? It sounds like a nice little touch, but I don’t remember seeing it in the Deep Dive video.

It all looks very promising from the video, though!
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I wasn't aware the Deep Dive posted above wasn't the full video. The stream Steve linked to starts with the Deep Dive but reveals a lot more after when they actually did a live play of the game. Definitely check it out if you havn't.
 
I think looking at the coasters they have shown, alot of the track looks almost hand drawn, they look very good.

If you know what you are looking for, it does appear a node based system such as what RCTW used has been implemented. (The only thing that had potential in that game).

All of the coasters shown actually, looked like they had been drawn by an in experienced node based user.

This is a huge plus for building very good coasters, quickly and smoothly. Seeing what they have done with the path based systems, I would expect the old coaster building ways being there for PC1 for those who want them too. As you could see the original parh building systems are still present even though I thought they were crap, it's good to have the option. Pretty sure the same would happen here.

At a minimum, it is clear from the the look of the coasters and transitions, that the coaster builder has had huge upgrades. Can't wait to see exactly what. But it is clear from the end result, aka the finished coasters, that things have changed for the better.

Some of the transactions and elements shown, would have taken hours and hours with the old system, I guarantee they haven't done that. They have upgraded the system instead just look at the wooden coaster shown, that's the best example of something looking hand drawn and node based. But they all show node traits.
 
I think it will be a mixture between node based and the current system. The hall marks of node based track are there in the stream, exciting to see what they implement. I do not think we will loose the current system however. I think we will have the freedom.
 
Park Beyond used a system like that as does No Limits 2.

It's basically like you click to where you want track pieces to go aka the nodes. It then auto fills the track in between and to some extent, works out the curves in between.

Easy and intuitive, the power then comes from being able to edit the nodes you have placed. Giving you much more freedom than piece by piece. You can create far more complex pieces of track much easier and in much less time, without loosing control.

It takes some getting used to, but is a far better system. I think they will implement both the current and it appears to be a node system. So a win win.
 
The new path tools are just perfection. Nice they have given us all the options including custom colours as well. Another big upgrade is being able to save queue lines as part of a ride blueprint. Adding scenery to trains and flat rides is also going to be big for creativity (with mirror & copy tools). It's a bit odd they got rid of hotels given that their demo park had a fake hotel fascade.
I hope the stations are going to change though. The airgates are just so comically large. No raised platforms for the motion rides. No turntables for the water rides.
 
Still a massive unanswered question from Frontier though. Will the use of Planet Coaster 2 be permitted in @Matt N 's annual speed build contest? It's basically more important than the World Cup and the Olympics these days, and opens up the potentially for more coaster types of which @Poisson can build a wacky worm from.
 
I guess the new path tool, one of the new options is essentially drawing paths node based. Where you click to draw a path and it fills in the gap between your mouse cursor and the last piece of path.

That's another good example for people who were wondering.

Sooooo looking forward to this.
 
MaxPower said:
There needs to be a fencing tool that works the same way aswell.
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Better still extend it to anything you want to place repetitively like walls and custom shapes. For example, you create a custom near-vertical and horizontal piece to make a concrete walkway and side wall of the rapids trough to create something similar to Towers' rapids, then tell the game to "attach" it to the trough and extend it all round the circuit, with a mirror option to do it on the other side too, literally hours of work saved right there!
 
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Josh555 said:
Really hoping they’ve found a way to make the Eugene counter on console go further - one way of doing that would be to stop paths taking up so much capacity.
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Never really understood why it did that. I can only guess that the paths directly linked to the pathfinding data for guest movement. Which would use up large amounts of memory.

If this is what was causing the counter to go high quickly, its already been hugely optimised for Planet Zoo, because that pre calculates alot of this during loading. Saving huge amounts of memory on run time (when in game).
 
Matt.GC said:
Still a massive unanswered question from Frontier though. Will the use of Planet Coaster 2 be permitted in @Matt N 's annual speed build contest? It's basically more important than the World Cup and the Olympics these days, and opens up the potentially for more coaster types of which @Poisson can build a wacky worm from.
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Good question!

The release of Planet Coaster 2 is certainly giving me a headache in this regard… I’m currently erring towards no for the next one (2024/25), as the game will likely have only just come out and I wouldn’t like to assume that everyone is an early adopter. I certainly intend to be an early adopter of Planet Coaster 2 as long as my computer can handle the game, but I wouldn’t like to assume that everyone else is.

But in future years once the game is a bit more mature and more people have had the chance to buy it, I’ll certainly be considering it!

On that note; what do we think the system requirements are likely to be for Planet Coaster 2? Am I going to have to take out a mortgage and buy another new PC only 3 years after spending comfortably over £1,000 on a brand new one? For some idea, my current PC specs are:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6 cores, 3.7GHz base clock speed, potential turbo boost up to 4.6GHz)
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB VRAM)
  • RAM: 16GB
This is a PCSpecialist desktop that I purchased in 2021 for around £1,350. With the associated desktop peripherals (e.g, screen, keyboard, mouse, speakers), the whole rig came to around £1,500.
 
Matt N said:
Good question!

The release of Planet Coaster 2 is certainly giving me a headache in this regard… I’m currently erring towards no for the next one (2024/25), as the game will likely have only just come out and I wouldn’t like to assume that everyone is an early adopter. I certainly intend to be an early adopter of Planet Coaster 2 as long as my computer can handle the game, but I wouldn’t like to assume that everyone else is.

But in future years once the game is a bit more mature and more people have had the chance to buy it, I’ll certainly be considering it!

On that note; what do we think the system requirements are likely to be for Planet Coaster 2? Am I going to have to take out a mortgage and buy another new PC only 3 years after spending comfortably over £1,000 on a brand new one? For some idea, my current PC specs are:
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6 cores, 3.7GHz base clock speed, potential turbo boost up to 4.6GHz)
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB VRAM)
  • RAM: 16GB
This is a PCSpecialist desktop that I purchased in 2021 for around £1,350. With the associated desktop peripherals (e.g, screen, keyboard, mouse, speakers), the whole rig came to around £1,500.
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Stuff is too pricey. Dust off your Wii’s, everyone!
 
I have a feeling that Planet Coaster 2 could run better on older machine's than the original did.

I know someone that joined Frontier around the time PlanCo came out, meaning they didn't have much involvement with that game but were heavily involved in the console version and Zoo.
They were especially proud of their work on the console edition as the game needed a massive amount of optimisation to even get it working on the older consoles.
Planet Coaster 2 will have been designed with that optimisation already included. Add to that all the new quality of life features will significantly improve piece count. No need to hide paths and edgings if they already look great. No need to make a roof out of 1000 pieces if you can scale a few pieces and get the same look. Assuming the letters from Planet Zoo are brought over (and also scalable) then custom signs are far less necessary.

Of course grahicaly I suspect it to be more demanding, and the base requirements will be higher. But across the board the requirements will be more balanced so I expect any PC that can run Planet Coaster well will run this fine too (with only older graphics cards potentially needing upgrading). That's my theory anyway.
 
From the videos and information released, it seems Planet Coaster 2 is taking the RCT2 approach of “Don’t which what ain’t broke” which I’m sure will be a relief to many players!

All I would say though is that Frontier’s focus on “More, more, more! Here’s this vast array of scenery pieces. Well give you the rides, but it’s up to use to use the thousands of pieces available to make them look good.” is getting a bit tiresome.

Sandbox is great, but it shouldn’t be the default, it should be an option.

It shouldn’t take half an hour just to design a toilet block, or 2hrs to design a fully-themed coaster. And frankly, frontier shouldn’t be relying on people using workshop items as “shortcuts” to making things look decent. It then doesn’t feel genuine, it’s no longer your creation.

What I’d really like to see (but unlikely to see given frontiers attitude) is a game where all ships for example have a default building for each theme that are all similarly sized, and cost the same to build.

Same goes for ride skins. Give the option of a default ride skin, and one of each theme. Again, this shouldn’t affect the build cost (due to some scenery prices being more expensive/extensive)

Then the career mode. Please for the love of god less of the fantasy stuff with dragons and huge monsters with hovering spacecraft! In moderation fine, but not every scenario!

We need a truly grounded career mode. I.e “You’ve inherited the position of fairground manager, but your guests want more than just your average run-of-the-mill funfair. Improve the park, theme the rides, and show the local authority that your park can be a permanent fixture drawing in crowds from around the country!”

Have a bit of realism. Some surrounding houses, car park/train station that are fixed. Some topography constraints and tailored research tree specific to each scenario. Each scenario should build on the last in scale and challenge. Challenge bring something the game needs a lot more of!

The way the transportation options work needs overhauling too. This is a big one. For instance, if you build a monorail, the train spends far too much time in the station, as guests don’t begin exiting the queue onto the platform until the train arrives. This could easily be solved either with air gates, or allowing a trains worth of people to access the platform. Passengers should enter/exit at the same time. If you build the station with entry one side, exit the other, this should make boarding/disembarking 4x quicker and more realistic.

Finally a wider array of map sizes for each scenario, with unlock able areas and more challenging terrain would go a long way! This could be used in sandbox/challenge too, so players aren’t over-faced with a huge area of flat land with no constraining features to guide the park layout and present some challenge/realism.

The scenery/build menus also seem to remain overly-complex. You should be able to just click “pirate” and see a variety of wall sets within that theme, and the same for scenery. The current system of endless categories and sub-categories is overwhelming and results in decision fatigue which makes the game less enjoyable, and often a bit of a chore!

If only Chris Sawyer and Frontier were to combine forces again. The results could be fantastic!
 
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I'd love the game to have a day-to-day type scenario, where you have to manage your park as if it was only a day, i.e.,
- get the rides ready in the morning, if a ride flags as 'not ready' then you'll have to get it sorted
- manage issues and breakdowns throughout the 'day'
idk I think it would be cool
 
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