2x Christmas Reindeers, Dasher & Vixen and the Stellar Horse White Dwarf(offers 1x Cu-Sith

Howrse has also announced that pass gods will no longer appear in Olympus, as "cheaters" are generating too many passes this way(from the Q&A from Discord)

I think this is useless

I really don't get how it is cheating if it is a literal part of the game. Pass droppers drop passes, so if you have pass droppers you get free passes, that's the whole deal... And if you get them through the Ascent, then... you get them through the Ascent? Like it's supposed to be? Because you get divines through the Ascent? I don't know, I'm really confused how it is considered cheating if it's just playing the game

That will cause a massive uproar and it will hit you guys who spent real money to get those divines a LOT harder than it will hit us who haven’t. That will probably be enough to kill this game entirely as the last straw. That said, whoever is authorizing these constant cash grabs and downgrades probably doesn't have enough common sense to see that considering that they repeatedly do exactly what players don't want despite getting a lot of backlash, so I won't put it past them to authorize this.

A better way to get the same effect is to introduce a new currency and sell future divines through that instead of passes. That way, players are forced to spend real money to get the currency because there are no divines that drop it in the game.

Or to somehow make this new pay to blup thing the norm... as I said, I think it's a trial to see how we respond to it before they make it the only way to play this game. Because blupping is a normal mechanic and possibly their most profitable mechanic given how competitive the GP is, and nobody is going to do side blups for no reward. The only way to get players to pay to blup is to make it the only way to blup. My theory is that they're going to make this game pay to play or something like that and this event is just them trying to figure out how they're going to go about it. It will also cause an uproar, but there are definitely players who will be too attached to their horses to leave just because it costs money to play. Those players will stick around and monetize the game. The free players that can't pay up will have to go or at least we will be at a disadvantage by default to make it extremely difficult to get anywhere without paying. E.g. how those "extra horseshoes" could turn into a +0.5% GP gain per breeding or something when they integrate paying into normal blupping. This may be a temporary event, but I think they're using it to explore mechanics that they want to keep permanently because again, nobody will be interested in paying to do side blups so there won't be much interest in the event at all unless they use it to replace the free mechanics. This event is not going to be profitable to them when the only incentive to play it is the 1st place prize - we already know that we won't get anything out of it unless we place 1st, so why bother participating at all?? But they have the idea to make us pay to blup and I don't know what they'll do with it... I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think this will be an optional game mode given that players are not coughing up for their constant cash grabs anymore. Or they'll just make it so unfair to players who don't cough up that this game will be nearly impossible to play without money. As if it isn't difficult already with divines costing thousands of passes.

Why can't they just fix the downgrades and give players what they want?? You know, bring back the old trophies. Redo the horse graphics. Do stuff that players have been asking and begging for instead of forcing what they want and putting us off the game/giving them money instead...? Not that I can afford to sink cash into the game, but I'm pretty sure there's other players who used to but decided to refrain from it because of all these unwanted downgrades.

People spent real money to get the old trophies and they removed those, so, it's not impossible.

But, yeah, a smarter thing to do would probably be to make some kind of divine currency you can't get without real money. It'd devalue passes and make people mad, but they don't care about that.

Also the "pay to BLUP" thing already kind of exists, at least with skillers. You can't get a maxed-out foal without Aphrodite's Tears every single breeding which costs 95 p. In addition you can't get a fully-skilled horse without either a Sisyphus Stone or Water of Youth, both 100 p.

You already can't be competitive on this game without spending a fortune, it's just not possible to be a free player and compete at all. The one upside is you technically don't have to and can just focus on side projects.

How can it be cheating if you are playing the game they made it by the rules they set up. Players who have the passes pay real money for passes to keep doing rounds to get those divines they place in the Ascent in the first place. Or gotten those divines that have passes as what they give out which the players either gotten by real money or by working hard on the game to earn them. I don't know how I feel being called a "cheater" by playing the game the way they made it. That is not the way to keep players on the game or customers on the game because that is what we are a customer to this product which is a form of entertainment.

Decem