Planet Coaster 2 Announcement

[Tonkso]

Planet Coaster 2

Construct the theme park of your dreams with an intuitive piece-by-piece building system, as you meticulously craft and customise every aspect of your park down to the smallest detail.

www.planetcoaster.com

It's here! Planet Coaster 2 has been announced. In the trailer we can see:
- Customisable flat rides.
- Water slides, including drop capsules.
- Pools.
- B&M Surf Coaster.

Anything else?

 

[Ollie]

Well it's finally happened. Planet Coaster 2 has finally been announced.
Releasing in Fall/Autumn this year on PC and console at the same time. We'll get our first look at gameplay footage at the end of this month.

A few content creators have already had an early look at the game who reveal some more information that isn't already in the trailer.

Love that they've introduced water parks. Brings back proper nostalgia from Playing RCT3 and the Soaked expansion back in the day. Looks like there's been a big improvement to pathing as well which will be super helpful for building plazas.

EDIT: Just seen someone beat me to it. Feel free to delete/merge this thread

 

[Matt N]

Nerdchacho has confirmed that they were given an exclusive first look at Planet Coaster 2 by Frontier, and they can confirm a few additional features that Frontier did not explicitly reveal in the initial announcement. Here’s the video they’ve uploaded explaining these:

If you don’t want to watch the video, the new features they discuss include the following:

• Weather has been added. The presenter said that while this wasn’t shown as part of the demo they saw, the GUI “appeared to have space for weather”, and Frontier confirmed the addition of weather in a Q&A following the demo. They’ll be diving into the weather more in a future preview.
• You will now have the ability to rescale and resize theming objects. It will no longer be the case that your scenery piece has to be a certain size like it is in the base game; you can change it.
• The event trigger tool has been updated. This has apparently been updated to be a “timeline-based” tool. There are also various new special effect types.
• The paving tool has been updated. It feels “familiar to the original tool”, but apparently facilitates the creation of plazas and wider areas far more easily and allows you to do far more.
• The coaster builder has been updated. It has apparently been updated to make it easier to use, and “many more smoothing options” have apparently been added. It was also confirmed that drop track coasters have been added, and there will be both returning favourites and new coaster types coming with the game.
• You can now add scenery to both rides and coaster trains. As shown in the video, you can now add theming to flat rides, but you can apparently also now create your own themed zero cars using in-game scenery items.
• Facility management has been added. The management of water and power requirements for rides has now been added, and there is an element of needing to have enough water and power facilities to match demand.
• Water is more dynamic. This was speculative from the presenter, but they said that it appeared as though water had been redesigned to be more dynamic than that in the original game.
• Guests have been rebuilt from the ground up. This is to allow for greater guest diversity and for a greater variety of guest types to visit parks.
• New shop and facility types have been added. Facilities such as changing rooms and ticket offices have been added.
• New staff types have been added. With pools coming, lifeguards have been added, and we also have two new mascot types in Queen Splash and one that looks like a shark of some kind.
• Water park attractions have been added. As previously explained, water park attractions have been added. There will be a wide variety of slides available, including body slides, flumes, water coasters, and drop capsule slides, as well as a range of facilities like custom-shaped pools. Slides work similarly to coasters in terms of construction, being built piece-by-piece.

This all sounds very exciting, doesn’t it? I’m very happy with some of those feature additions, personally!

 

[JoshC.]

All sounds good.

I'm not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, and whilst I enjoyed Planet Coaster for its Sandbox mode, I ultimately have dabbled in and out of playing it because the scenario / career / whatever it was called mode was pretty rubbish. This was RCT's greatest strength for me - it was fab going into Sandbox mode and going wild, but being able to challenge yourself with some cool and interesting scenarios was an absolute highlight, and kept me playing so much longer.

I hope that this is a big improved feature in the new game.

 

[James F]

The emphasis on watersides was expected given the demand and I am sure it will be a lot of fun in addition to what's already in the game. The news about adding weather is music to my hears as it will add so much realism. My only hope is that we see more modern coasters and advanced coaster building options such as being able to create switch tracks.

Looking good some far.

 

[Tonkso]

Gameplay footage on the 31st, I'm at a friend's wedding on that date (my partner is even MoH) so I don't think I'll find the time to watch. Got something to look forward to in the morning though to fight off that hangover.

I'm weirdly pleased to hear about the power management aspect, Planco always seemed to lack the management that RCT had. In reality, it didn't, including staff management, security management and various other bits. This brings it in line with other sims like Prison Architect. I usually try and fake back of house in my parks, including power rooms and whatnot so it will be interesting having to include something like this as part of the game.

I want to see more balance on some of the flat rides and water rides. The rapids were notably underpowered with a reasonably realistic layout drawing no visitors, and I've never been able to establish a queue for the Pirate Ship, even with optimal sequence config. I hope they can address that, or make it moddable.

 

[Nicky Borrill]

Well... I was thinking of building a new PC anyway... RTX 3070 and R7 3800x is feeling tired...

No idea what I'm going to build yet, because if the first release is anything to go by, there's nothing on the market yet that will be able to handle PC2!!!!

 

[Matt N]

Well... I was thinking of building a new PC anyway... RTX 3070 and R7 5800 is feeling tired...

No idea what I'm going to build yet, because if the first release is anything to go by, there's nothing on the market yet that will be able to handle PC2!!!!

Planet Zoo doesn’t have overly excessive system requirements compared to Planet Coaster despite being a good few years newer, so I don’t see why your current system wouldn’t be able to run Planet Coaster 2 competently, if that’s anything to go by.

Apparently, Frontier did considerable optimisation improvements between Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo that made the game less intensive, so hopefully Planet Coaster 2 carries these over and doesn’t have overly excessive system requirements.

 

[emoo]

So this is why YouTube was suddenly filled with speculation and rumour about PC2.



Been following Satisfactory through a couple of updates an am already planning for 1.0 to take over in a couple of months. Now one of the best ever games appears out of nowhere extra soaked. No spreadsheet required just fun. Hopefully the Cities Skylines 2 release debacle doesn't happen here and its in a good place from the start. I play few games and from them all I want them to get this one right.

Planet Coaster 1 did have a lot of room for improvement in areas perhaps only a goon would appreciate. Better throughput. Give me an option to choose how well rides are operated and guests load on and off. Silly stuff but makes a big difference, along with all the amazing flashy stuff and upgrades.

 

[Ollie]

One thing I do love about the Frontier games compared to other theme park games is that they add stuff for us coaster nerds and try to make them swing towards realism than fantasy.

Hoping to finally find time to nail Blender before this releases so I can jump in and design custom scenery for the workshop that's optimized and to scale. TMTK was one of the best features of PC1 as anything that wasn't already in the game you could just download if someone had made it.

 

[Tonkso]

Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if someone on the team lobbied for really nerdy stuff like functional transfer tracks, I doubt we'll see that in the game though.

I do want to see on-ride photos make an appearance though, they were such a good little extra earner back in the RCT days. It also makes having the ride exit via some sort of gift shop that much more logical. Fast-pass was a great additional to the original which really added to the challenge of designing a good queue line, I'd love to see disabled access as an option too, little lifts or up the exit ramp. Proper nerd-level realism, I always ensured at least the exit path and ideally the entrance was step free on my rides on Planco 1. I tried for hyper-real on my last park, with proper bins in the station, a medical kit, evac points on the flume... all that good stuff that defines a real park landscape. There are other games that cater to the fantastical, Planco definitely draws the realist crowd, the kind who are currently on Twitter complaining that the B&M dive in the trailer doesn't drop off as sharply as the real ones.

...I really want Transfer Tracks. I always stick a fake one and a fake maintenance shed in on Planco 1. Even the Lego rollercoaster has a functioning one with optional second train.

 

[Hixee]

Merged two threads.

 

[Matt N]

Planet Coaster 2 released on 6th November, for those not aware.

I've had my first play about with the game this evening on PC, and while I have only played for a few hours, I've certainly got some preliminary thoughts!

The Good:

• The graphics are much improved compared to the original, with a definite dose of additional realism, while also maintaining the cartoony fun of the original as well.
• The addition of some new ride systems is very much welcomed, and elements such as the trick tracks on coasters work very well indeed.
• The coaster building system is much improved while also being highly familiar from the original game. I could very easily pick up the coaster builder and play with it... but my word, that new smoothing tool is a thing of beauty! In the original, coasters sometimes had an odd "shunting" sort of profile even when you smoothed them, but smoothed coasters here look ever so realistic and have beautifully smooth curves!
• That scenery brush... what a game changer! It's so much quicker than placing greenery items one by one, and I also think it appears more organic and in-keeping with the surroundings as well!
• In general, some of the tools seemed better than in the original, such as the mass deletion tool. The paving tool took a bit of getting used to, but also seems quite good.
• I was impressed by how wide the water park aspect is compared to RCT3. The water slide types boast a wide array of potential elements, and there are also bits like lazy rivers and such that I don't remember from RCT3.
• On a similar note, I do think the ride selection is very broad given that this is the base game. I bought pretty much every DLC of Planet Coaster 1, and there are very few ride types even from those DLCs that are missing from the game. And that's before you consider the numerous new ride types added! Given that this is the base game and more ride types will inevitably be added through DLCs in the future, I'm impressed!
• Performance seems very good. FPS was a little lower than the original (an empty park in PC2 was around 80-90FPS for me versus well over 100FPS in the original game), but I expected this given the system requirements are higher and I certainly didn't notice any significant difference if ignoring the stats. The FPS drop as guests enter and more rides get built also seems less noticeable than in the original, with a good 1,000+ guests, a few rides and a small amount of added scenery making no difference to FPS, and the loading times seem quite quick compared to the original!

The Not So Good:

• The physics of the water slides is very questionable. Your slide will launch out of the starting area at 15-20mph (this is not vaguely realistic), with no ability to change this, but then also lose speed at an inordinate rate once the slide has started, meaning that it's very tough to integrate special elements unless you put them very close to the beginning with little preamble. I would quite often build a slide with only one or two introductory curves before a special element, but then have it stop in the middle of the special element. Furthermore, many of the special elements are very jarring and jerky even when taken at a relatively slow speed.
• On a semi-related note, I also think it's disappointing that they don't let you resize the special elements on the water slides like they do with the pre-made elements on the coasters. A bigger water slide will need bigger elements, and the inverse is also true.
• If I'm being honest, I thought that some of the new management features were a bit unnecessary. I admittedly never have been one for the management side of these games, and largely ignored it in the original, but it feels a bit more obtrusive and harder to ignore here. The power and water filtration aspect in particular is one that I didn't feel I needed and very quickly turned off.
• I know this is incredibly minor, but with the omnimover, I noticed that the whole thing would always stop if there was no one waiting to board, and wouldn't restart until the next person came to board. I don't feel this is terribly true to life; in parks like Europa Park, some of the omnimovers go with loads of empty seats.
• I'm not quite sure on some aspects of the new UI. I find it a bit disruptive how you can't move the camera or do stuff while looking through certain menus.

Overall, it does seem promising! There are some tweaks to make, in my view, but I'm hoping that these are rectified with time.

 

[Tonkso]

Very similar to my thoughts. I'll try to avoid duplication.

Good:
- The Graphics are now fantastic. Genuinely very detailed, particularly the plants.
- It has Willow trees, something the first game missed. The foliage in general is incredible.
- That brush.
- I actually always wanted a power management system to provide functional back-of-house. I'm very pleased with this feature. I've not delved enough into water yet.
- Coaster building is vastly improved from a smoothing perspective.
- The flats are gorgeous and now have smaller land areas.
- Apparently people will actually ride the pirate ship now. This used to really bother me in Planet Coaster 1.
- Scaling. Oh yes, scaling.

Bad:
- Building and editing are split.
- The path system is actually harder to use now if trying to build stairs. I hope they fix this.
- Lack or scenery choices. I'd have hoped to see more brought over from the first game, as even with constructing my own elements some pieces were missing.
- No grid-snapped pillar pieces. I used these blocks in the original to help build structures by using them to snap to. This doesn't seem to exist here.
- Station entrances and exits wont snap to the grid properly. This one is actually infuriating.
- Build/Edit being too separated is frustrating.
- Cant edit land with water in it!!?

It's a good foundation, but honestly feels unfinished. The UX is pretty clunky compared to the original. I hope future updates (of the free kind) resolve this, and the paid DLC introduces some more scenery content. I wouldn't mind paying for a package containing the remaining content from the original.

Get on the Issue Tracker. If there is a genuine bug, report it. They wont fix what they don't know about. https://issues.frontierstore.net/
I reported this.

 

[Pixelnicks]

- Cant edit land with water in it!!?

I think if you delve into the settings somewhere, there is a collision option to disable it. Not sure why it's like this by default but I do recall in PC1 accidentally draining entire lakes with the accidental click of a button.

 

[Tonkso]

I think if you delve into the settings somewhere, there is a collision option to disable it. Not sure why it's like this by default but I do recall in PC1 accidentally draining entire lakes with the accidental click of a button.

I need to look into that, it's one of the things that's really bugging me. I must say though, the Friday hotfix did address a lot of the immediate concerns, and the December update should resolve a lot of the community's biggest complaints... and add seperate load/unload stations!!