after a little over 60 days of seniority i can safely say that howrse has become a LOT less unforgiving than it used to be. back in my beginner days you were given a barebone horse - just ONE (1) horse or pony of a breed of your choice, no BMIs, nothing. building up your account demanded a lot of patience and resilience from players. and now? between multiple horses gifted to players from the start, riddled with free BMIs, even more handouts from the tutorial + objectives + an endless row of events i'd say that it'd actually take a lot of effort to fail these days lol. as a howrse veteran, it would have taken me about a year to grow my account into 6 figure wealth + almost 100 horses in "old howrse", while it's only taken me about 2 months now, with HUGE restraint on my part on not purchasing more horses to collect as future GA's. i did not expect to need to downsize the amount of actively played horses so soon either haha.
but the most influential change in my opinion is the new pass system. for one, i'm honestly glad i wasn't around while howrse was busy revamping the system, because i was always short on passes to begin with and major changes like these used to be reasons for me to lose all fun in playing further. (the biggest turn-off was the introduction of the current graphics, but more on that later!)
personally i LOVE the new pass system because the daily objectives are much less stressful for me than sending pass horses to heaven was. i disliked having to send horses to heaven, because most of the time i'd prefer to keep them to build my herd or have them join my GA collection. even sending 10 pass horses per month to heaven was a chore i rarely managed.
last but not least, there is one change i hoped had already happened during my absence, which is the overhaul of the current graphics of all horses. it's been a decade since their introduction and i can't believe they still haven't been exchanged for more aesthetic graphics that feature physical characteristics of the breed - in short, horses and ponies that actually look like the breed listed on their profiles. with the gaming industry becoming ever more competitive to attract (and keep) new players i'm surprised howrse still hasn't done anything about this. they don't even need to change their characteristic art style either, just make them more realistic-aesthetic looking? frankly, the existence of the vintage apple also seems to low-key confirm that the version 3 graphics have been a downgrade from version 2 graphics (and they certainly are for most breeds... for example, you'd never see friesians outside of the top 5 popular breeds before they got their current appearance). not to mention that multiple breeds sharing the same graphics takes away interest from less-popular breeds because they are nothing but lookalikes to older, more established breeds, but one type of graphic being used for multiple breeds simultaneously has been howrse's only flaw since day 1.
"there is no reason why there can't be individual aesthetically-pleasing graphics
for each horse and pony breed", and that's the hill i'll die on.
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I accept all friend requests to help each other out during special promo events and I always congratulate back. 
