[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: May 2024
 Our developers have something to tell you! Every three (3) weeks, our devs will provide you with information about their work in the “Dev’s Corner.” This publication is a way of keeping everyone updated on what’s happening with the game. We invite you to discuss and leave your feedback for each of the publications. Note: All posts must adhere to the forum guidelines and be constructively made. Take a look at our very first Devs' Corner publication! Warm wishes, The Howrse Team |
"By Crookedstar915, 1st August 2023 21:35:14 1
Yeah I'm confused too. There wasn't a notification email sent, nor is there an update. Is there just nothing to report, or was the post about the update made in error?" Looks like a hiccup. I think there was meant to be a Devs corner because of the news item about maintenance this morning but maybe it didn't happen or the message went wrong. I didn't get a pm so it looks as if a problem was spotted and stopped.
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HellOw everyone,
I'm sorry for the confusion on this. I've checked and there is no Dev's Corner update for yesterdays maintenance. I've changed the forum title back to reflect July 11th. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention.
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I have no idea what to do I'm new to the game
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Do your beginner objectives. Read the Breeder Manual. Look through the forums. When you have specific questions they should be asked in the Game Play forum
Good luck 
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Two months passed since QnA sessions with devs.
Will answers be posted here in forums? Topic disappeared from discord where session was held. (two months. TWO MONTHS) |
Two months passed since QnA sessions with devs. Will answers be posted here in forums? Topic disappeared from discord where session was held. (two months. TWO MONTHS) I completely forgot that was even a thing, but yeah, it would have been nice for it to be shared with the larger community, but alas. 
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Thank you for sharing your messages with us everyone! As always, your messages are always shared with the team.
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Any chance you can share messeges from the team with us?
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Missing the previous trophies - just hit 8 years on the game and didn't realize until I looked by chance. Looked in the current trophies and didn't see one for seniority (if there is one please someone tell me lol maybe I'm blind) whereas the previous one you could go and the little white circle would be creeping ever so closer to the ten years
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Missing the previous trophies - just hit 8 years on the game and didn't realize until I looked by chance. Looked in the current trophies and didn't see one for seniority (if there is one please someone tell me lol maybe I'm blind) whereas the previous one you could go and the little white circle would be creeping ever so closer to the ten years It bugs me even more that I have no idea what trophies I have. I've four gold medals but no clue what I got them for. We only see what trophies we can earn in the future, not the trophies we already have. What kind of messed up system is that? Trophies are to celebrate achievements that have already been earned. "And next we have player #728, who may in the future complete Trophy W or maybe even Trophy F. Oh, they already completed a few. Which ones? Who cares? But if they purchase Divine 83 they can earn Trophy Y! We won't tell you that they did if they actually do, though, since this is all about pointing out what they don't have rather than what they do." I really want the old system back. Or at the very very least they could tell us what trophies we have earned (other than the random 3 we achieved "last."
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Unless I misunderstood the above question, there is still a seniority trophy. Mine currently is says I’m working towards 100 days. It just shows the percentage of how far along you are now so maybe you just missed it when you read through your trophies.
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Missing the previous trophies - just hit 8 years on the game and didn't realize until I looked by chance. Looked in the current trophies and didn't see one for seniority (if there is one please someone tell me lol maybe I'm blind) whereas the previous one you could go and the little white circle would be creeping ever so closer to the ten years There is one. It's between the Yggy trophy and the manure trophy above all the divine trophies at the bottom of the list.
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Would love to buy the 2 horses I put in S.H. all those years ago...just gotta get enough passes in order to do it.
 I also have a suggestion to make: show tack on the donkeys!
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Missing the previous trophies - just hit 8 years on the game and didn't realize until I looked by chance. Looked in the current trophies and didn't see one for seniority (if there is one please someone tell me lol maybe I'm blind) whereas the previous one you could go and the little white circle would be creeping ever so closer to the ten years There is a seniority trophy, but it's by days not years. Not sure if that's better or worse - my next one is for 5000 days, so I'm due in about a year? Was over a year and a half when I started though. The wait time is almost too long to be enjoyable. Which is another thing I really dislike about the new system that they've made no effort to improve (actually, they haven't made ANY effort to improve on it, at all, since it started, despite numerous suggestions from the players) - the gap between trophies is ridiculously high and slow to achieve. I FINALLY got the 5000 UFO one after I think 8 months of effort and all I got was - nothing. Nothing at all. 8 months of work and it wasn't even enough for a prize, and all that happened was the meter bumped down to 10000 or whatever I need to get now. I feel like I'm back at the beginning, and have no desire to even bother trying to get it again after all that. Before, when you put in a lot of hard work, you'd get something for your display page, so that others could see what you did and you could feel like you got something for the effort. Now you get zilch. I've been trying and trying to have fun with them but they really are just not... fun. They suck the joy out of trying to get them when the meter just clicks down and all your progress looks wiped and you don't even get anything to show for it. Honestly, why bother?
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There is one. It's between the Yggy trophy and the manure trophy above all the divine trophies at the bottom of the list. Ohh thank you! There is a seniority trophy, but it's by days not years. Not sure if that's better or worse - my next one is for 5000 days, so I'm due in about a year? Was over a year and a half when I started though. The wait time is almost too long to be enjoyable. My next one is 2500 days  I should have eclipsed that by now but I started this game when I was super young and logged on once every like 4 months until I started playing consistently in 2020..But just because I don't have the 'days' to show doesn't mean I haven't been here for the 8 years, and being a tester for about 5 now, so that sucks. Next seniority trophy coming in late 2025/early 2026. Can't wait. Yayyy They suck the joy out of trying to get them when the meter just clicks down and all your progress looks wiped and you don't even get anything to show for it. Honestly, why bother? I do wish you could click on the trophies and they'd show you what the player has accomplished. My favourite was looking through people's RCs unstead of having to find them in the breeding farms. We're coming up on a year now with these changes and they haven't done any of the improvements they said they'd look into. I kept my expectations low and I'm afraid I was right to because the communication is something to (not!) behold. 
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I really, really, hate the Trophies.
Please know "Powers-to-be", that just because players are not posting much about them any more doesn't mean we're getting use to them or appreciate them in any way. You ruined what a lot of us truly enjoyed working on. Now the game is just truly a chore..... 
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Also, I don't think I've seen anyone mention it, but on Discord they finally posted a batch of the dev Q&A questions and answers. They plan on answering more in the future.
I'll post some of the most interesting questions and answers under a spoiler. There is a question regarding the trophies in here. I left out some questions I thought were boring, and there was a bonus Q&A session with a game tester and an associate lead programmer I left out. Click to display Q: "Howrse, I love your game! Are you planning on shutting it down anytime soon? That would be heartbreaking, Ngl." A: And we love it too, very much! For now, there is absolutely no plan to shut down Howrse. Quite the opposite, actually... We are very, very, impatient to present you the changes brought to the features we previously launched, but also the new content on which we have been working on for some months now... :OwWink: We know that some of you are worried about the future of Howrse, and especially the players on our smaller versions. Don't worry, we have no plan in closing any of the versions of the game! (Answered by the producing team) ---- Q: "Are there any plans to bring back a fair and even rotation of divines? There are divines that haven't been brought back in 3+ years, while others are back yearly, or multiple times per year." A: We are still committed to releasing new divine horses and creating new divine series as it remains one of your favorite elements in the game, as we noticed in the results of the survey we sent a few months back. However, we are not satisfied with the fact that these horses are only interesting because of the rewards they provide and by the current limited availability of older divine horses. We are currently working on a few things to: :OwThumbup: Make these horses more interesting and fun. :OwThumbup: Find ways to make older divines available to purchase more frequently for you to be able to complete your collections. You will be able to see the beginning of these improvements quite soon, so stay tuned :OwWink: (Answered by the producing team and the game designers) ---- Q: "Will you be more clear regarding the creation space? How does the voting process work?" A: First, we’d like to remind you that the selection of creations is done manually. We don’t automatically pick creations based on the votes. However, your votes are central in the system. For each category, we always start at the top of the votes, and we then filter some creations based on multiple criteria, which we are happy to detail here. � Does the creation respect the Black pearl rules (https://howr.se/BlackPearl_Rules)? We check for plagiarism, fan art, unauthorized use of art line, photos and so on. � Does the creation have unwanted traces, halos or stains that could damage its representation in-game? Kind reminder to our talented creators: please check that your creation is properly cropped and clean. If it isn’t, we won’t select it. � Does the author already have an entry in this month’s creation space? As most of you probably noticed, we select one entry per player to give a chance to everybody. � Is there a suspicion that the creation was made by AI? If there is a strong one, we won’t take any risks. The votes are the first thing that we look out for when selecting creations. If the community placed a creation on top of the votes, we have no reason not to select it. We have a team specialized in detecting plagiarism and compliance with the Black pearl rules. Once again, the selection process is manual, so mistakes do happen, and your tickets help greatly with fixing that. Don’t hesitate to use our customer support if you see a recent creation breaking the rules! Lastly, we’ll take this opportunity to inform you that some categories are not as filled as we would like them to be :OwSad: For example, very few players are submitting unicorn donkeys, winged donkeys, winged unicorn donkeys. We also have a shortage of winged draft unicorns, draft pegasus and winged unicorn ponies. We would happily take more of these creations to keep the creation space as diverse as possible! (Answered by the community developers) ---- Q: "You recently sent out a survey to players to get feedback on the game and what the player base would like to see as possible changes or future features. Is there any plan in place to increase transparency regarding this feedback and how these suggestions are being evaluated or addressed?" A: We understand you are curious about the survey data, and we might work on a new format to share with you some insights and data we collect from them! Surveys are the best way for us to collect your feedback and have a clear view and understanding of your expectations. But this is not the only system we use to know more about your expectations; we are also constantly reading your messages on our social networks, right here on Discord, or on the remaining forums. Once collected, the communication team classifies your comments and passes them on to the appropriate person or team. We are working way ahead of the events. To give you an example, the game designers' team already knows what they want for Winter and is working on the 2024 events! That is one of the main reasons why you don't necessarily see the changes you request appear immediately in the game. Everything you say is, however, recorded, and the game dev team always tries to implement the relevant features you might request when there is a small place for them in our timeline. (Answered by the community developers) ---- Trophies & collections A: You had a lot of questions about this precise topic. We have read them all, and instead of picking a couple of questions, we decided to answer them as a whole, to try to cover all your interrogations. We hope our answer will help you understand our intentions and the reason why we are changing these features. Our initial goal with the Trophies & Collections redesign was to separate gameplay feats, such as winning competitions or completing contests, and the various collections one can pursue in the game. We wanted to prevent you from losing trophies you had already earned. We also wanted to make them more motivating by adding rewards for completing them. We are still standing by this design; however, it seems like we underestimated your attachment to the visuals attached to each trophy and your ability to share that information on your player sheet. We heard your feedback and are working to make both things come-back in the game as soon as possible. We are also working on these topics: � Increasing the quantity of new trophies that we add to the game related to other features besides contests & divine horses. � Creating collections for Golden Apples and Helios Rays. (Answered by the game designers) ---- Q: The question was regarding fixing bugs and the rewarded videos, but the fixing bugs portion was a little copy and paste, so I'm just including the bit regarding the videos A: Regarding the rewarded videos, we are aware of the current limitations of what we offer. Until we find better browser-based alternatives, we've decided to restrict this feature to the mobile app only. It's technically more and more complicated to offer videos on a web platform, so we're finding it difficult to offer something. For the time being, we have no plans to work on this issue. (Answered by customer support and programmers) ---- A few misc. answers regarding user experience and interface (answered by the producing team and game designers) - Unicorn breeding A few players expressed frustration over the chance to breed unicorns. We will work on a mechanic to improve these chances. - QoL / User experience improvements Many questions regarding the addition of filters in searches, redirections and other "quality-of-life" improvements. We added many of these suggestions to our (already extensive) list of improvements to work on. As for the UI improvements, we have to balance working on these upgrades with working on new content for the game. We will do our best to allow as many improvements as possible to make their way into the game. - User Interface Improvements About the questions regarding possible improvements to our website interface: each new design for one of the pages on our site requires a considerable amount of work. This is why we must balance working on interface upgrades with working on new content for the game. We have decided to focus on quick wins for the interface, while dedicating most of our dev team taskforce for new content. For example, if we ever wanted to release a "dark mode" to our site, we don’t plan to work on it in the coming months. - Black Market Items availability You’ve asked if we could make some items available for sale in the shop: Some of these items are too advantageous for being on sale constantly. We try to make them available regularly as reward in contests, be ready :OwWink: ----
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Thanks wynter12 for posting the Q&A responses! There's a lot in there that's interesting (most of it's... pretty disappointing but I hope they mean it when they say they'll give the GA and Ray collections back? Iris Coat is still dead in the water, I guess.)
One thing that I don't understand at all is why they're not happy that people only go after Divines for their gifts? They can't really be serious thinking that every player is going to become a "completionist" Divine collector, can they...? I mean, I understand that the original Divines were more of a collector's item and much harder to obtain; and people got them for the sake of having one, not for the perk, but. That was over 300 Divines ago.  We're WELL past that. With how expensive they are and how hard they are to get and how quickly they get shuttled out, of COURSE most people aren't going to bother collecting the whole set. That's insane.And what's even wilder is that the one thing that maybe did motivate people to collect, the trophies? They got rid of those! I was on my way to completing the Wilds collection for the trophy but I haven't bought a Wild since, and I never will again! They're useless. The only Divines I'm going to get now are ones that give a perk I can use, otherwise? No.
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Feedback for Trophy Q&A, with some frustration.
"Our initial goal with the Trophies & Collections redesign was to separate gameplay feats, such as winning competitions or completing contests, and the various collections one can pursue in the game." Okay, sure. Not something we needed, but not horrible either. Have trophies in two sections: These trophies are for collections (divines, coats, etc.) and these are for achievements (winning rosettes, reaching 5 years of seniority, etc.). Done. Next! Also, seeing as there are a couple (admittedly non-specific, grindable) collection trophies still in the trophies, I would say you didn't do such a great job. "We wanted to prevent you from losing trophies you had already earned." Leave them alone. Seriously. Don't delete any. Don't get rid of any. Don't touch our trophies. Let us keep our trophies. Nothing needed to be changed to achieve this desire. In fact, we lost trophies we had already earned when you implemented the new system, so you flat out failed at this. You even managed the opposite - not only did you not prevent us from losing trophies, you caused us to lose trophies. "We also wanted to make them more motivating by adding rewards for completing them." Great! Lovely change, asked for, appreciated! Could just add that in. 'From now on, when you complete a trophy, you get a random BMI (or a very small chance at winning a divine (from a limited selection)). This will be applied retroactively so trophy hunters, head on over to try your luck!' Cool. Should have just added that on top of the existing system. "...it seems like we underestimated your attachment to the visuals attached to each trophy and your ability to share that information on your player sheet." Oh, you mean you didn't think players would mind having all their unique, beautiful, and hard-earned trophies displayed proudly on their profiles reduced to numbers next to an ugly medal without even being able to see what they had earned, let alone show them off? ...I'm not sure what to say to that. Overall feedback: Wow. You totally failed at this. The new changes were not necessary to achieve the stated goals, and some thwarted them. What in the nine realms of insanity made you think that straight up deleting tons of trophies players had already earned would 'prevent [us] from losing trophies [we] had already earned"? This is the one that upsets me the most, because the other two goals were met through the changes (it's absolutely NOT how I or many other players would have wanted you to meet them, but it's apparent those two are in the same direction as your goals), but this one was quite the opposite and there was no benefit and much loss. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for feedback/information (not that they actually shared it on Howrse, the site it's actually applicable to), but this is absurd and almost offensive. This is not, of, course, directed at the helpful wynter12 (thank you for sharing this info), but rather at the people who looked at these goals and decided that this was the way to go about achieving them.
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I wonder if there was any questions about the game becoming more 'mobile friendly', like are they planning on turning it all mobile, or keeping the web (I desperately hope the latter)
Because the trophies definitely look more like a mobile app thing then a web game. But being a web game is honestly part of the charm for me. I love it.
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I wonder if there was any questions about the game becoming more 'mobile friendly', like are they planning on turning it all mobile, or keeping the web (I desperately hope the latter) Because the trophies definitely look more like a mobile app thing then a web game. But being a web game is honestly part of the charm for me. I love it. I can do a bigger sweep later, but I searched for the word “mobile” in the channel, and there was one question asking if they plan on going mobile entirely with the game. The person said they’re discouraging people who like to play on a PC. I don’t know what they mean by that lol. Then someone asked this: “Taking into consideration that Equideow is almost the last of its kind as a browser game, proving it got a strong player retention over the years, **does Ubisoft think about making a spiritual successor of the game** on the same media (browser) or another one (PC, Mobile, Nintendo Switch ...) in the future rather than expanding the game? I know Tale of Etria, which was developped by Owlient, did not encounter a lot of success. However, Horse Haven World Adventures did, and is still kicking to this day (but it was produced by Ubisoft Shanghai). I'm also aware these games don't target the same specific audience, but also that the horse trend is a wide-targeting one.” (The asterisks in their paragraph are just how you bold text on Discord) I also just searched for “app” and found this question, too: “Are you working on the app at the moment? Because for me personally, it just doesn't have the same standard as the desktop version. Not being able to see, if the bonus is activated on some divines etc.” So, maybe they’ll answer these in the future.
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As someone who’s mostly on mobile for various reason, the mobile version is terrible compared to the desktop in my opinion and is seriously lacking. So I hope they don’t plan on scraping the desktop version because the second I can I’m back on it.
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 Check out the latest features on the game via the newest Dev’s Corner! Best Regards, The Howrse Team
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The game was originally a desktop game and works best, in my opinion, on a pc or the classic version on a tablet or phone. It's the only version where it's relatively easy to find things and where most things are available. I can't find anything on the mobile version and have never even looked at the app. I suspect moderating might be even harder on the non-desktop version too as, again, finding things would be harder and more fiddly. I just hope that the desktop version soldiers on and keep my fingers crossed that they don't make everything on it so that it fits one a phone - I can use the desktop version pretty easily on a phone if I need to and just zoom out if something is a bit too small for my aging eyes.While I realise a lot of new players are young and brought up on the existence of mobile phones, many players are old enough to remember a world when the internet didn't exist (yes, I know
 ) and I hope the game will manage to cater for everyone, whatever their tech skills and preferences are.
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I submitted a ticket but if I have VIP should I be able to chose the second horses gender still. Picked female on second horse this morning and found out after blupping it was definitely a male
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