Spoiler Zone!

By Ow, 13th February 2014 09:39:57
1383




Hello,

On this topic, you may discuss what isn’t in the game yet.

You can share spoilers concerning new features that will come to the game in the future.

For example, players participating in the test server can use this topic to share their findings.

Please remember to use the spoiler feature when sharing new information with everyone.

To make the Spoiler Banner, you can:

↪ Use these tags: [spoiler*] the text you want to hide [/*spoiler]
Make sure that you remove the asterisks (*) before posting.

↪ You can also click on the "eye" button on the message formatting options available.

You can post screenshots as long as you also use the spoiler banner to cover them.

Warning: We do not guarantee that any of the info that is posted in here is true or accurate. Nor that the features will be launched on the game.

Please remain polite with one another; no one has the right to spoil or claim ownership of the rumors and spoilers related to the game.

Thank you for your collaboration and understanding.

Kind regards,
Ow
 
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By LouisLegend, 23rd June 2018 13:12:48
14
I remember when there used to be the suggestions forum where players would offer ideas to Owlient and they'd go over them. Players being able to put their two cents in to improve ideas to better the game.
Can't imagine why they'd delete it, it's the perfect way for players to express how to make things better where everyone can see and know what's going on. Especially because not everyone looks in this forum.
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By minkthepink, 23rd June 2018 14:58:30
18
LouisLegend wrote:

I remember when there used to be the suggestions forum where players would offer ideas to Owlient and they'd go over them. Players being able to put their two cents in to improve ideas to better the game.
Can't imagine why they'd delete it, it's the perfect way for players to express how to make things better where everyone can see and know what's going on. Especially because not everyone looks in this forum.


The Ideas forum was removed because players persisted in posting the same ideas over and over when Howrse had said they wouldn't consider them and not to post them. The forum was flooded with things that had repeatedly been refused and so wasn't useful to them. And those who shout the loudest aren't always representing the majority of players either - I think that's why they're trying out the ambassadors idea to try to get feedback from a smaller group of players about ideas Howrse wants to bring to the game. Any change is always going to please some and not others and, no, not everyone hates all the changes that are causing so much upset to some.
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By nlriver, 23rd June 2018 15:26:48
5
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The issue with the competitions/stomping has been here for years. It is why they changed the foundation system so that newbies would not struggle as much to get the wins that they need. They introduced rookie comps before that to try to handle it but that didn't help any. I still see stomping going on and bad sportsmanship. If anything the competitions still need to be looked at again and overhauled with either a GP cap introduced to them or make it so that if the horses have 20 wins by the time the competition runs then the horse doesn't gain anything including wins, or limit the number of rookie comps that horses can enter. There are a few different ways of trying to fix them. Will it help the overall situation? In theory yes, but it's sometimes a good or bad idea in theory can still be executed to the advantage of players. The playerbase will ... twist isn't the right word here but it's the closest that I can think of, or they will accomodate said changes.

With regards to the supposed pass horse change, I haven't seen anything on it in a while either until it was brought up here a few days ago. The team changes hadn't really affected me but what about putting in a log of who has logged on and done what that the account owner can check over to see if there is being any foul play. Maybe the log only lasts a week or a few days or something like that, but that would help any... deviant (again not the right word) behaviour from happening. Or at least identify it? I'm only just getting to grips with how co works...

Regarding the inactive accounts, as someone has pointed out, there are a multitude of reasons that someone may require access to another's account. Yes filling comps I can see as being the main reason so that comps are not getting stuck and horses are not getting stomped by high teams/individuals. There is nothing more frustrating than this. On the other hand you do have players that have passed away and we know that Howrse does a cleanout of inactive accounts now and then. There are always other ways to get around getting into someone's account if someone was really desperate.
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By phönix, 23rd June 2018 15:56:05
16
nlriver wrote:

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The issue with the competitions/stomping has been here for years. It is why they changed the foundation system so that newbies would not struggle as much to get the wins that they need. They introduced rookie comps before that to try to handle it but that didn't help any. I still see stomping going on and bad sportsmanship. If anything the competitions still need to be looked at again and overhauled with either a GP cap introduced to them or make it so that if the horses have 20 wins by the time the competition runs then the horse doesn't gain anything including wins, or limit the number of rookie comps that horses can enter. There are a few different ways of trying to fix them. Will it help the overall situation? In theory yes, but it's sometimes a good or bad idea in theory can still be executed to the advantage of players. The playerbase will ... twist isn't the right word here but it's the closest that I can think of, or they will accomodate said changes.

With regards to the supposed pass horse change, I haven't seen anything on it in a while either until it was brought up here a few days ago. The team changes hadn't really affected me but what about putting in a log of who has logged on and done what that the account owner can check over to see if there is being any foul play. Maybe the log only lasts a week or a few days or something like that, but that would help any... deviant (again not the right word) behaviour from happening. Or at least identify it? I'm only just getting to grips with how co works...

Regarding the inactive accounts, as someone has pointed out, there are a multitude of reasons that someone may require access to another's account. Yes filling comps I can see as being the main reason so that comps are not getting stuck and horses are not getting stomped by high teams/individuals. There is nothing more frustrating than this. On the other hand you do have players that have passed away and we know that Howrse does a cleanout of inactive accounts now and then. There are always other ways to get around getting into someone's account if someone was really desperate.


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Regarding using other players horses to have a comp run... It's so incredibly big-servercentric to completely ban the use of other players horses to push a competition to start. I CAN NOT wait for comps to run, it can take weeks or even sometimes MONTHS for competitions to run because my "home" server is rather small. Not to mention we have a limited amount of competitions, sometimes there aren't that many in a certain discipline and not being able to fill comps may seriously make it close to impossible to get 20 wins. This change may make the game unplayable on certain servers. At least with the somewhat recent BLUP-change. Before we'd simply not do comps (because even with filling comps it took too long) but with the BLUP-changes we are more or less forced to do wins. Please Howrse. Be reasonable. LISTEN to your players for once.

It's not like I can't see why they'd do it, there's a lot of .. weird .. gameplay going on but it doesn't take into account the problems it may cause
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By Retired breeder, 23rd June 2018 17:01:54
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what is the next promo?
By bezo93, 23rd June 2018 17:21:50
1
Retired breeder wrote:

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what is the next promo?


Bumping up:

EmilyClaire wrote:

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Discussion starts towards the bottom of page 2220.
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By Retired breeder, 23rd June 2018 17:22:54
6
Retired breeder wrote:

If anybody is interested, I've created a spreadsheet to track the amount of players on the game daily. Ill be updating it between 6pm and 12am PST each day.
Feel free to leave comments and/or PMs.

Link to the spreadsheet.


Click to display

hello in the Czech version
day 22-38316 players
day 23-38176 players
today-38007
no commentdefault smiley (8)
By phönix, 23rd June 2018 19:26:51
5
Retired breeder wrote:

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hello in the Czech version
day 22-38316 players
day 23-38176 players
today-38007
no commentdefault smiley (8)


Click to display
Swedish server is the same. Went under 20k players sometime in late winter/early spring and now we're down to 13k. We're talking 35% of the server's players disappearing in a few months time.
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By The_4th_Doctor, 23rd June 2018 21:48:27
2
I understand the ideas forum was removed for that/those reasons, but maybe it could be redone, but with changes?

On another virtual pet website I play on, Chicken Smoothie (strange name I know default smiley :p), they have a suggestions/help board, where players can post their own topics asking questions about the game or offering suggestions for how to improve it. Players can then comment on those threads, answering or offering support or criticism of ideas.

Since the Game Play board already exists, a separate board purely for ideas could be made. Players can then make their own threads like in Game Play, offering suggestions and having people react to them. Mods can lock threads as needed, as well as people being able to lock their own threads if they are told the idea already exists on a separate thread or has been denied in the past.

Also on CS is a thread that lists ideas people have posted in the past and why those certain ones won't be implemented. That could be pinned to the top of the Ideas board so people can check there before posting.

(this isn't in a spoiler since it doesn't relate to new info, but let me know if it should be)
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By nlriver, 23rd June 2018 21:53:20
2
The_4th_Doctor wrote:

Players can then make their own threads like in Game Play, offering suggestions and having people react to them. Mods can lock threads as needed, as well as people being able to lock their own threads if they are told the idea already exists on a separate thread or has been denied in the past.

Also on CS is a thread that lists ideas people have posted in the past and why those certain ones won't be implemented. That could be pinned to the top of the Ideas board so people can check there before posting.


From what I remember they did this, and mods were having to spend a LOT of time trying to sort it out and keep it clean as repeat ideas were being posted all the time. This is I believe part of the reason why it got shut down. There was also the issue of players upvoting their friend's ideas then downvoting anyone else's ideas because of associations and such. In short, we tried that and it did not work. Yes there was a few really good ideas come out of it but the amount of time and effort it took to sort it out resulted in it being closed down.

(someone more active can feel free to correct me on this as it was something I stopped paying attention to after I saw the havoc that was in it)
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By The_4th_Doctor, 23rd June 2018 22:04:43
1
That's what my idea would hopefully fix; instead of people have to scroll through hundreds of pages to see if their idea had already been suggested and turned down, they only have to check one thread at the top of the board to see if it's there, and if not, they can post it. If there was already another thread about it or one that was posted and turned town, people can comment on their thread linking to that post and then the person can lock their thread.

And since Howrse has threads deleted after a certain amount of pages on a board, less popular ideas and topics that have been locked will disappear automatically without needing a mod to do anything.

This is only a possibility though, there's no for sure way to tell how it would work out in practice default smiley :)
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By bezo93, 23rd June 2018 23:25:17
10
The_4th_Doctor wrote:

Players can then make their own threads like in Game Play, offering suggestions and having people react to them. Mods can lock threads as needed, as well as people being able to lock their own threads if they are told the idea already exists on a separate thread or has been denied in the past.

Also on CS is a thread that lists ideas people have posted in the past and why those certain ones won't be implemented. That could be pinned to the top of the Ideas board so people can check there before posting.


That is pretty much what the ideas forum was, including the "ideas we don't need/will not be implemented" topic. It didn't stop people from posting duplicates of ideas, even when there was a post with the same idea as theirs right at the top of the forum. Most days you could take a glance through the first page of posts and find at least two or three ideas that were virtually identical, including almost matching titles. A huge number of the ideas posted were for new divines, free passes, animated/rideable horses and SH adoption ideas, despite it being repeated ad nauseam that they were not ideas Howrse wanted. Few of the ideas had anything to do with gameplay, beyond people wanting new shinies and lots of free stuff (preferably for little work). Even with posting restrictions the forum was buried in duplicate ideas, and boring-but-useful ideas such as ways to solve the comp problem were largely ignored in favour of voting for more 'fun' (but ultimately unhelpful and often unfeasible) ideas about divines and BM items.

An ideas forum would be a good way to have better communication with the Owlient team but it's been tried twice and hasn't worked well either time. Too many people seem to think that the umpteenth post about a rejected idea will be the one to change Owlient's minds about it.

I suppose a possible alternative now that we have ambassadors would be, rather than allowing all players to suggest ideas, only allow ambassadors to post ideas or suggest areas of concern on the game and then allow the players to comment and vote which ideas/areas of concern they think are best/most important. It would at least avoid the issue of constant duplicates of ideas that cannot/will not be implemented while giving the player base more say in what they think is important and changes are needed.
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By The_4th_Doctor, 24th June 2018 00:55:15
3
I like your idea about having the ambassadors start ideas and people respond to those; it will install the sense of communication between Howrse and the players through the ambassadors and also keep the duplicate ideas out!
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By Glory Days, 24th June 2018 02:30:26
18
I don't understand why anyone would be against bringing back the Ideas Forum. Even if there were multiple repeat ideas and ones that Howrse already said no to, it's not hard to remove the post and temp ban the player, or restrict them in other ways. Plus, with Howrse tanking in player traffic, it wouldn't happen as much. (Oh, and Howrse implemented their own banned ideas. Winged unicorns, anyone?)

It was our way to be heard, and now they clearly aren't listening. Wish I could time travel and plead with the creators of Howrse to not sell to Ubisoft...
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By doodlebug, 24th June 2018 04:27:39
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Glory Days wrote:

I don't understand why anyone would be against bringing back the Ideas Forum. Even if there were multiple repeat ideas and ones that Howrse already said no to, it's not hard to remove the post and temp ban the player, or restrict them in other ways. Plus, with Howrse tanking in player traffic, it wouldn't happen as much. (Oh, and Howrse implemented their own banned ideas. Winged unicorns, anyone?)

It was our way to be heard, and now they clearly aren't listening. Wish I could time travel and plead with the creators of Howrse to not sell to Ubisoft...

And drafts, if I remember correctly.
I was decently active on the ideas forum, I remember lots of mini modding being an issue as well. However I think an ambassadors ideas forum with player feedback is very reasonable
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By minkthepink, 24th June 2018 06:29:26
14
Can we get this thread back on topic please. It's not meant as an ideas forum in itself and *is* meant to be a place where players can discuss things that are coming to this server. Maybe some of the ideas that they didnt want repeatedly , like winged unicorns, were not wanted because they were already working on those but not ready to go public - we will never know.

Thank you
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By deimos, 24th June 2018 06:34:54
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Please let me remind you that this is the spoiler zone. It is not a general discussion area neither is it a replacement for the ideas forum.

That forum was removed because it had served its purpose and took up a lot of time to read through when 99% of it was just requests for new breeds and new Divine horses. As has been said before, requests to stop sending certain things were blatantly ignored until the whole thing became unuseable.

At this point I will also tell you that there were no 'banned' ideas. Just ideas that could not be implemented at the time so players were asked to stop the hundreds of repeat suggestions. All the ideas in the forum were read through and all original ones were kept for possible use at a later date. This is what happened and for all I know there could still be things yet to be implemented

There are no plans to bring it back in any form as far as I am aware although there is a feedback section as part of the Contact Us form if you do have any novel ideas for real improvement
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By deimos, 24th June 2018 06:35:51
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Oh dear. My typing as always a bit slow default smiley (b)
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By Retired breeder, 24th June 2018 18:16:02
There is an ideas forum in the VIP forums, isn't there?
By minkthepink, 24th June 2018 18:28:42
5
Retired breeder wrote:

There is an ideas forum in the VIP forums, isn't there?
Not an official one, no, and please let's move on from that and use the forum for its intended purpose.
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By RowanGreen, 24th June 2018 18:46:59
Any more info on...

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The really annoying-sounding kids promo? default smiley ;)default smiley :d
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By Retired breeder, 24th June 2018 20:02:59
Legacy Ann wrote:

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Water Balloon fight is back with some changes


Special page for the Rainbows


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I'm curious what Hippogriffs divine page looks like, since his description is rather vague. Does anyone please have a picture?
By Ayjay, 24th June 2018 20:11:23
Retired breeder wrote:

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I'm curious what Hippogriffs divine page looks like, since his description is rather vague. Does anyone please have a picture?


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Not sure why the Spoiler for something that is already on the game, but if you go to the Directories, to the Horses tab, type Hippogriff into the search box and click the 'Divine horse' box, you will find a lot of Hippogriffs.
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By Retired breeder, 24th June 2018 20:17:06
1
Ayjay wrote:

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Not sure why the Spoiler for something that is already on the game, but if you go to the Directories, to the Horses tab, type Hippogriff into the search box and click the 'Divine horse' box, you will find a lot of Hippogriffs.
Click to display
I like to put everything in a spoiler here just to be sure. I know that already but that's not what I'm asking for. I don't know if there's a name for it, but I'm not looking for his public page, but the page where you can take care of him
By Ayjay, 24th June 2018 20:20:19
most people know it as the care page.
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