ZOwey wrote:

<font color="#b402cf">I have collected the ideas in this topic (looking at you GeneralLee and ~Echo~) and I have shared them directly with Ow.

It may take a few days for this to be resolved. We're heading into a weekend and it's likely that whatever we do won't happen until early next week. That's not ideal, but this isn't a simple issue anymore and so we need to make sure we don't make things worse!

FYI, I've come close to censoring a few posts in this topic in the last few days, but I haven't because I don't want players to feel like we don't want to hear their criticism.

Again, I ask you to consider if what you're saying to staff would earn you a sanction if you said it to a player. Feel free to complain about the changes all you want. But please don't complain about the people who make this game. Those are the comments that are generally rude. If you're telling us that we're bad at our jobs, etc, then you have made it personal when it doesn't need to be.

I know people are upset but we<i> can</i> discuss this calmly and politely, I believe.

</font>

spotpc wrote:

May I just point out one thing that always drives me nuts about these ranting sessions? People are saying that Howrse is dying because of all the changes being made. But that statement has been floating around since before Ubisoft took over. People have been saying it for years and it never happens. Right now, the Directories page states that there are over 130k players on this server with 280 connected at the moment. Howrse is not dying. The server's activity level has stayed fairly stable since I was a noob. Can everyone please stop spreading fake news? We get enough of that in the tabloids.

ZOwey wrote:

<font color="#b402cf">Hello again,

I've been able to catch up with the comments I've missed.

First, what was communicated to us was that it was just a change in how the AP were received, not a change in the amount of AP received. That's why I said 'roughly' because if there was an intended decrease it was likely supposed to be very small (or it would have been mentioned to us).

Clearly, that's not what happened. The team has asked admin from all versions to provide numbers from individual players showing how many AP they received before the change and then after the change. We compared those numbers to the number of horses woke that day to make sure we were comparing apples to apples.

So far what we are seeing is a drop in AP gained per day on most days since the change. We admin have submitted this information to the team and now we're awaiting further instructions.

I can only imagine that they wanted those numbers because they wanted to see if they matched up to what they predicted. I know this will SHOCK all of you, but sometimes we have bugs! Sometimes our coding does not work exactly like we expect.

Why didn't we test this change, you ask? Well, there are actually lots of little changes (I know, I know, this one turned out NOT to be little) that go into updates that our player testers don't test. We do have an internal QA department that handles a lot of the smaller changes that don't require a large amount of testing. You could definitely make the argument that this one should have been tested more and I can't argue with that.

Many of you have asked why we made this change and I have said that it was because we don't want people to feel like they have to care for 1000 horses a day to compete with those who do. If you want to spend a lot of time caring for all 1000 then you do get a benefit, it's just smaller than it would be if the odds were the same for all 1000 horses start to finish. I'm pretty sure THAT was the intention.

Additionally, we do think that large amounts of repetitive tasks cause people to try and cheat by using automation. We have made many changes that discourage that sort of behavior, so I would bet (though I haven't been told specifically) that this probably does have something to do with it. If the benefit is mostly in the first several hundred horses, then the benefits of cheating do not outweigh the risk. That's good for all players. I'm sure those that do try to use automation do so because they don't like to sit and press a button over and over and over!

I will share any new info I get.

</font>

Antheia wrote:

If it’s to stop people using automation programs then ban the people who do rather than letting everyone else take the hit?

Legacy Ann wrote:

New info for our current test session

Glory Days wrote:

Older comment, but I just wanted to add what I've experienced since joining. Howrse used to be booming- horse sales were incredible, there was never a shortage of competitions or studs, we could be and resell for a profit with passes, etc.

Retired breeder wrote:

Are all the season divines going to be released in the private sales?

ZOwey wrote:

<font color="#b402cf">Hello again,

I've been able to catch up with the comments I've missed.

First, what was communicated to us was that it was just a change in how the AP were received, not a change in the amount of AP received. That's why I said 'roughly' because if there was an intended decrease it was likely supposed to be very small (or it would have been mentioned to us).

Clearly, that's not what happened. The team has asked admin from all versions to provide numbers from individual players showing how many AP they received before the change and then after the change. We compared those numbers to the number of horses woke that day to make sure we were comparing apples to apples.

So far what we are seeing is a drop in AP gained per day on most days since the change. We admin have submitted this information to the team and now we're awaiting further instructions.

I can only imagine that they wanted those numbers because they wanted to see if they matched up to what they predicted. I know this will SHOCK all of you, but sometimes we have bugs! Sometimes our coding does not work exactly like we expect.

Why didn't we test this change, you ask? Well, there are actually lots of little changes (I know, I know, this one turned out NOT to be little) that go into updates that our player testers don't test. We do have an internal QA department that handles a lot of the smaller changes that don't require a large amount of testing. You could definitely make the argument that this one should have been tested more and I can't argue with that.

Many of you have asked why we made this change and I have said that it was because we don't want people to feel like they have to care for 1000 horses a day to compete with those who do. If you want to spend a lot of time caring for all 1000 then you do get a benefit, it's just smaller than it would be if the odds were the same for all 1000 horses start to finish. I'm pretty sure THAT was the intention.

Additionally, we do think that large amounts of repetitive tasks cause people to try and cheat by using automation. We have made many changes that discourage that sort of behavior, so I would bet (though I haven't been told specifically) that this probably does have something to do with it. If the benefit is mostly in the first several hundred horses, then the benefits of cheating do not outweigh the risk. That's good for all players. I'm sure those that do try to use automation do so because they don't like to sit and press a button over and over and over!

I will share any new info I get.

</font>

TerrierFancy wrote:

Do we know what event is coming after the Lottery?

Rogin wrote:

Found some images on the French version, thought I would share.

happygolucky13 wrote:

Does anyone know if we can expect to see specialty coat BM items (bewitched pumpkin, magic hat, etc.) come around again in promos or for sale?