[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: October 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
 
Ow
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The Fifth Queen wrote:


I can't see a fortune equipped to the horse linked here, either. I *do* see the comb, hoof pick, and tub of grease the item was supposed to be replaced by, though.


I don't know why you guys can't see the Fortune. Borvo definitely has it.

So the point is if you can see the Fortune on my other posts then the bonuses have not been added retroactively. All these Divines and howrse, plus many others, had combs and hoof picks already because I work them every day.
Arabians are best
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Arabians are best wrote:

I don't know why you guys can't see the Fortune. Borvo definitely has it.


The horse Legacy Ann linked to was Yōkai, who doesn't have the Fortune.

Oathkeeper
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Oathkeeper wrote:

The horse Legacy Ann linked to was Yōkai, who doesn't have the Fortune.


But Yokai is not one of the four that I listed. default smiley (lol)
Arabians are best
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Arabians are best wrote:

But Yokai is not one of the four that I listed.
I get sent to Yokai whenever I copy and paste the 3rd horse's link. The other two divines I see are Hrimfaxi and Dagda. The links look longer than the usual format of a horse's public page link, so perhaps there is something throwing it off when someone else tries to navigate to it. I'm not sure.

My suggestion is to take a screenshot of your horse to show that it currently has the Grease and the Fortune, then when it loses it, take another screenshot showing that the bonus is no longer there, and then send that to Contact Us
Legacy Ann
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Crystal Coven wrote:

Trot Prix is Tuesday. As a team we have a dedicated 24 hour tearing window that starts when entry to Cross Prix opens. In that time we tear as many mares as needed to fill orders from players and hope to get a few extra for direct sales. Once Cross Prix runs our tearing window is closed and preps are either reserved to those who places an order with extras put in directs so buyers have 24 hours to complete skilling before trot Prix.

With GP so high the range of IBS is now over 500 points from lowest to highest. We only use foals that are within 25 points of top IBS. Unless luck is in our favor we can tear up to 10 mares trying to get skiller worthy IBS. 20 minutes to breed each mare til she's 30 years old. 10 mares is over 3 hours.


Why such a narrow window? Start a day or two earlier.
Why stop when the mare is 30? With the passes you get from prep sales that should cover the need to use extra aging points. I totally get prix teams, been there from the beginning but if you wait until the day before then it's not going to work out (most of the time). If nobody else on your team is able/willing to use passes or items to tear than you should be evaluating participation because if you're distributing passes to them by definition some should be reinvested in the team.
Ruffian
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@Ruffian

Let me first note that the current cost of ap is 9p per ap. Prix prep sells for 889p. Let’s say members have tears priv so they don’t have to spend passes or items on the tearing itself. After tax, 800p would be the equivalent of 14 years at the 9p/ap rate, so a little less than one MA tearing mare (which would be 20 years). There’s an average of about 0.75 preps per mare. At the cost of a prep, you have made 0.525 of a prep.

Now let’s assume we use an ap pack instead, so 490p for 100 ap. Again, 800p after tax and we won’t count in the cost of tearing items themselves. That would get you an additional 22 years instead of 14. That’s 0.84 of a prep. Better.

But then we have to remember that for both of these circumstances, black orchids will need to be used. Black orchids cost 90p and will give you about 7.5y if you work the horse, less if you don’t. So if we take that into account, 9p/ap will actually only give you 11.5y (rounded), or 0.43 of a prep. Using the ap pack would actually only get you 17.5y (rounded), or 0.65 of a prep.

None of this takes into account whether the team is in a GP war and tearing instead of gaining GP, both of which take time. It also doesn’t take into account the pure amount of resources required to be on a Prix team in the first place, which is the reason why members get paid. Instead of considering the investment of passes only into a team, it is best to consider all qualitative and quantitative investments. The reason why most Prix teams work similar to how Crystal Coven stated is because after years of experience with the teams feature and the Grand Prix market on Howrse, hundreds of people have come to the same realization of the optimal target between efficiency, being able to keep members happy, and being able to BE a Prix team.
Nexa
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censurer This message has been censored since it does not follow the forum rules.
@Ruffian

It’s just simple math. One doesn’t need seniority to see the logic. I do appreciate that you have experience with Prix teams, so if you see an error in my calculations and observations, I’m more than happy to be educated on them.
Nexa
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Nexa wrote:

@Ruffian

It’s just simple math. One doesn’t need seniority to see the logic. I do appreciate that you have experience with Prix teams, so if you see an error in my calculations and observations, I’m more than happy to be educated on them.


I've never used an orchid on a mare default smiley *-) so let's start there.
Ruffian
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All that aside, you aren't a new player default smiley (h)
Ruffian
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Legacy Ann wrote:


I'd love for the Safe Haven payout to, not only increase, but possibly get changing daily bonus amounts based on easy characteristics like breed, skill, GP, etc. (for the love of Pete, please no BM itemsdefault smiley (lol)). I'd actively seek out horses to buy and save for Safe Haven bonus potential. It may help shake up the sale prices a bit if players are out looking for horses that suit the daily bonus, but aren't desirable for competitions, breeding stock, or even ranking boosters


I want to chime in on this. Before I go into my explanation, please know that I'm a Howrse oldie circa Xanthos' introduction to the game but took a many year hiatus and lost my account. default smiley :'(

So, I have been a long-time player of a breeding SIM game called Mweor. The original owner/previous coder of the game was experiencing the same issue, and their solution was exactly what you're proposing. It seemed like a fantastic idea at first, but ultimately what happened is it unbalanced the entire game because people began to mass breed in order to achieve these rewards/bonuses from the creature deleting feature. I was on the development team for the past year and we just managed to successfully remove this feature and undo a lot of it's damage, but it severely infuriated our already small userbase and the site as a whole still hasn't settled down yet from it.

I think Howrse has enough systems and limits in place to not become as dire of an issue. But I think you very much begin to "play with fire" when you reward players for producing and then clearing out low quality stock that could be produced en masse.
Alyria
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Ruffian wrote:


Why such a narrow window? Start a day or two earlier.
Simply, so if/when buyers look at our production they can see they are getting the best of what we have. It was brought to our attention a few years ago that buyers were upset paying 889 passes and then losing to members entering their own skillers. Totally understandable so unless it's breeders week, our team members are not allowed to compete in Prix with current GP skillers comparable to what our buyers purchase. We value our customers and try our best to keep them happy and as repeat customers.

If we started tearing a day or 2 earlier there's a very good chance that the GP of the first teared mare compared to the final mare is significant. A top hit from the first mare may not be competitive against a top hit from the final mare so it won't sell for top price and essentially is a waste of resources. There's been weeks where we've gained 12-15 GP during the tear session due to very bad luck tearing.

Even simpler math than what Nexa mentioned is this:
For each teared mare the cost is 300 passes for Arms. 1000 passes for 10 A. Tears.
1300 passes spent on 1 mare. If she produces 1 hit she earns 800 passes. For the breeder that is a 500 pass loss. When they use my free tear privilege they are saving the 1000 pass cost of tears and actually making 500 passes.
Crystal Coven
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Thank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions on the latest game update!

I'm sharing all of your comments with the team.
EchOw
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EchOw wrote:

<font color="9900FF">Thank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions on the latest game update! <br /><br /> I'm sharing all of your comments with the team. </font>


I'm still waiting for an answer from Contact on the Croesus' Fortune. How long does it take to see that it is not working correctly?
Arabians are best
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Still waiting and now another weekend. All I can say is wow........
Arabians are best
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Just saying, but what's the reason behind including the pass option when you don't have enough passes to purchase the item? It does get really tedious having to switch to the item payment, especially when the option it has selected isn't usable. The option didn't use to show up unless you had the passes and it only changed a month or two ago.

Oathkeeper
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I know that everyone probably won't agree here, but I am actually quite happy with the team coverings now being limited to team horses from the team, it makes bulk covering a lot less tedious. I'm currently in my last few days of tears and wands and have been breeding a bunch of mares with MAs, not having to mess with the details each time has meant it goes a lot quicker. That said, it still took 3-4 hours to do 11(?) mares and 134 coverings (only lesson + age due to having P Stones), so probably closer to 5 hours if I had to put in the details every time. default smiley (lol)

However, it would be nice if we could eventually get a way to reserve coverings to all our mares and also have them in a tab.
Oathkeeper
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Legacy Ann wrote:

I'd love for the Safe Haven payout to, not only increase, but possibly get changing daily bonus amounts based on easy characteristics like breed, skill, GP, etc. (for the love of Pete, please no BM itemsdefault smiley (lol)). I'd actively seek out horses to buy and save for Safe Haven bonus potential. It may help shake up the sale prices a bit if players are out looking for horses that suit the daily bonus, but aren't desirable for competitions, breeding stock, or even ranking boosters


This is a FANTASTIC idea, 10/10

Maybe I'm just in a good mood, and perhaps speaking from somewhat of an outside perspective since I'm not really active anymore, but I was really, really excited about the team changes and was surprised to see how disliked they were in this thread. Everything about them, max GP sale caps, loans to all players, free team horses, etc- these aren't the changes I'm used to from Owlient. These are changes made by people who know how teams tick and how they can get easily hurt. These are changes made without a profit incentive in mind, just to help keep teams safe and running smoothly. I really couldn't believe my eyes when I read the PM today (yes, about a month late, I really am inactive) There are a few places where I can tell there will be snags in how players are used to things running, but overall there are no huge blocks added to your gameplay, and a LOT more failsafes added for team protection.

Anyway. As a long time team player, and someone who has been vocally critical of Owlient/Ubisoft in the past, this is a good one, gang. Good work default smiley (y)
ghost stories
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Check out this month's brand new features in the new Devs’ Corner!

Best Regards,
The Howrse Team
EchOw
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So WoW, the Croesus' Fortune is still not fixed.

Contact told me it would be fixed at the next update. Well, it's not. This puts long time players that actually play the game at a disadvantage.

Just so tired of not getting results for a problem they created.......
Arabians are best
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Arabians are best wrote:

So WoW, the Croesus' Fortune is still not fixed.

Contact told me it would be fixed at the next update. Well, it's not. This puts long time players that actually play the game at a disadvantage.

Just so tired of not getting results for a problem they created.......
what's wrong with the CF? i missed that. thanks
Hiram Farmer
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Hiram Farmer wrote:

what's wrong with the CF? i missed that. thanks


When you purchase the CF now you get permanent hoof pick, comb and tub of grease. However, if you already had a CF you would still lose the ToG and there was no way to fix that.

Since so many players complained Ow promised that by the next update, all old CF's would also have the permanent ToG. Well now, two updates have gone by and my Divines and regular howrses with the old CF's are still losing the ToG.

Hope that makes sense. Last month I had to complain and complain for them to just understand and believe what I was saying. Finally they told me that by this update it would be fixed. It's soooo exasperating.
Arabians are best
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By Retired breeder, 22nd June 2022 17:00:07
With the new update I now get a message at the bottom of my screen that I should update my browser. I am curious to know what could happen if I don't. Is it insecure now or something? If so how would I go about updating my browser on a very old iPad? Thank you!
I have a question, how do you get passes?
thunderdash
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Retired breeder wrote:

With the new update I now get a message at the bottom of my screen that I should update my browser. I am curious to know what could happen if I don't. Is it insecure now or something? If so how would I go about updating my browser on a very old iPad? Thank you!
It's always recommended to keep your browser updated, both for security purposes and performance. Outdated browsers will work more slowly. You should be able to google whether your device can still update its browser, and how to do so.
Legacy Ann
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