[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: April 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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I honestly feel that a good compromise would be to replace the medals with a trophy that represents the requirements, like the companion one could be one of the animals, the promo ones could have a trophy that shows something based on that promo, like the lottery having a ticket trophy, and so on. It's not the same, but it would allow players to have some of their trophies back and something to display on their page.
Oathkeeper
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If its in the Aus server dev forum I'm assuming I can share it here as I haven't seen it posted on the intl dev forum
Tilley wrote:

All your concerned about is to put these add this, add that, all because your wanting to go mobile version.. Why is it so important to go mobile version ? What is wrong with the way things are now.. Why? Please explain.

From the amount of suggestions and feedback we have received, the team is giving the Classic version a more modern look.


A reply to players over on the Aus server when it was expressed that we hadn't heard of any one asking for these updates or expressing any thing of the like in the forums and that a large majority of us strongly disliked the Jan 3rd update.

Updates like modernizing the game takes into account all Howrse versions. Modernizing/updating the game visuals was requested quite a bit.


I feel most people when talking of game visuals and wanting new ones/modern ones generally refer to the same graphics that are over used for multiple breeds. Breeds that when searched up and compared to each other have noticeable differences. I honestly don't even know what to think of Howrse anymore when its happy to listen to a minority but not the majority and throw players that have been here for years under the bus. Yes I understand that its not easy to cater for every player, but from a lot of posts in this thread many of us feel as though we and our thoughts are being disregarded even if its not intentional. Not saying we are being disregarded that's just how it feels to me.

Also complete side note however, are Iris Coats no longer worth being recognized even in the collections. Additionally, if the collections were laid out like the old trophy page with the drop down boxes it'd make navigation easier and less time consuming. I detest the collections page, because I'm constantly scrolling past the things I'm looking for. Honestly the little pictures of each thing from the old trophy page definitely made it easier for my lil brain to identify what I was looking for.
If none of this makes sense my bad default smiley (lol)
ryanchi
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ryanchi wrote:

when its happy to listen to a minority but not the majority


How do you know what is a minority or majority. One thing I can tell you from playing here for a very long time is that people who are happy with a change very rarely come to the forums about it so all we see is the negative comments

ryanchi wrote:

Also complete side note however, are Iris Coats no longer worth being recognized even in the collections.


They are not and its something I have asked about because I find that particularly annoying as I'm still trying to find that violet one!!

ryanchi wrote:

Additionally, if the collections were laid out like the old trophy page with the drop down boxes it'd make navigation easier and less time consuming. I detest the collections page, because I'm constantly scrolling past the things I'm looking for. Honestly the little pictures of each thing from the old trophy page definitely made it easier for my lil brain to identify what I was looking for.


Can you build on this? Make suggestions to improve what we have. That is what we need now. Positive ideas.
deimos
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ryanchi wrote:

I detest the collections page, because I'm constantly scrolling past the things I'm looking for.


Yeah it's virtually unusable. I can never find anything either, the moment there's more than 2 items in a collection it becomes a cluttered mess. I gave up on it a while back. If they fix it to work more like the old page, it'd be fine. I still wouldn't like the layout, but it'd at least be readable.

The trophy page is unsalvageable though. I never go on there anymore, the only thing that would fix the issue would be to add the numbers back in and they've stated they're never going to do that because it doesn't work, so it's broken forever, basically.
Crookedstar915
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The last Chimera trophy is for 400 help requests/clicks.

Again, I have a suspicion that Howrse is going broke because all they do is chase their players away. They have no money and someone pointed out that it is cheaper to run a mobile version than a desktop, hence I think they're being cheap and failing hopelessly. Just look at all their cash grabs of late because of all the players they chase away.. I suspect that the only reason that they haven't converted more features to mobile yet is because they realised that it is a big mistake now that their income was stunned from the desktop players "rebelling". They already prepared certain features for conversion (e.g adding ECs to mobile so they can remove them from desktop) but they haven't acted out the plan, which says something to me. They're desperate for money and they refuse to admit it so they just stopped updating the game their direction.. temporarily. Unless they just don't have funding and they start shutting down big servers and then shutting down the entire game. But that's all my opinions.

I also think that they only keep the old version of the game for a month after updating to a newer version, so all the trophies and whatnot that we had would have been erased by now and they simply can't go back without redoing the entire thing (which is what I'll push for because i also hate the update..) but this is Howrse and you can't ever expect quality or even transparency from them, let alone admitting to and fixing their mistakes so I highly doubt we'll ever go back.
ShadowKokufu
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NB: I don't actually know how long they keep older versions of the game because I don't remember where I heard the month thing. Either way, the chances are that the version that we liked is irretrievable at this point so we'll never see it again. And Howrse is probably just way too lazy to bother redoing the trophies.

Unless they're not as broke as I think. I'm sure at some point you'd have to bring back the old features to save your game. Unless they're just stubborn (which I'm sure they are considering how much they repeatedly ignore their player base irrespective of the backlash they get).
ShadowKokufu
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@ deimos I have put forward ideas to make the collections page easier to navigate such as
-Alphabetize the Classic coats section on the Collections page
- Alphabetize the display of breeds in the Horse breeds section
which I have said in earlier posts and sent in to contact us. Alphabetization would be brilliant, super straight forward and easy to navigate. What would be even better is the drop down boxes from the old trophy page implemented in the collections page.

As to the first quote its merely just how I feel and my take from three servers, but there have been people who like the update posting in the intl thread so its not all negative responses.
As for the second quote I finally bred a violet Iris Coat a little while ago and I felt elation at finally reaching my goal and then disappointment when there was nothing to show for that feat anywhere.
ryanchi
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The smaller servers would probably go before they removed the desktop version, the app is just insanely tedious to use and would probably chase away the competitive players and the majority of coat collectors, who are some of the bigger spenders. I was blupping through it during the morning of the 26th and it took about 35 minutes, while desktop only takes around 10 minutes, that's a big difference. I would probably leave if the game went full mobile and stayed the way it is currently, it just isn't that fun to use.
Oathkeeper
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Merging the formatting of the two versions is not the same as getting rid of the desktop version.

I can't think of any pet sim (I know this is a broad category, but for our purposes I'm referring to games similar to Howrse's function) that is app only. All of the popular pet sims are browser based games, so I don't know that there's any indication in the market that a browser based pet sim like Howrse would perform better on a mobile only platform, due to how click and type heavy it is.

I've been quite vocal in my dislike of the mobile version, and the updates to making various site features look more similar to the mobile version. However, I've also disliked how different the two versions are, as it's quite confusing to offer game help if you're not familiar with one version, or if you don't know which version the other player is on. I also think that the classic version is not quite mobile friendly, because you have to zoom in a bit on smaller screens to perform quite a few actions, otherwise it's just too tiny. My guess is that they're just trying to finally bring the two versions more in line with each other to make it more cohesive, but I do think it has been at the detriment to the classic version because the mobile aesthetic is too big and clunky on it, and the new navigation (i.e., the Collections) isn't always an improvement.
Legacy Ann
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deimos wrote:

How do you know what is a minority or majority. One thing I can tell you from playing here for a very long time is that people who are happy with a change very rarely come to the forums about it so all we see is the negative comments


Sorry, but I don't agree. Yes, we don't know the feelings of the minority or majority. However, when talking to players over the last several years, I can't remember anyone saying, "Boy, this is the best game ever!" So many of my friends have left because they weren't happy with the changes and more keep leaving.

And, just to be clear, I know many unhappy players that never post in the forums for their own various reasons. Like I've always said I will be here to the bitter end but as of this change, I will not be funding it anymore.
Arabians are best
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Arabians are best wrote:

we don't know the feelings of the minority or majority.

I just remembered that the update log has that "average rating" thing. And I went to check it out for "Major changes to the Daily Objectives" (when we stopped losing our progress because of an uncompleted daily task) and for "Collect them all!" (the Collections change).

I think it's pretty high for the Daily Objectives change (4.39 out of 5). Indeed, most players were happy about this change.


-
And I believe it's pretty low for the Collections change (3.14 out of 5), and is an indicator that this change was not welcomed by the majority.
Asper
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Since changing my password i cannot sign in on test forum. Smh
Southern Girl
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Southern Girl wrote:

Since changing my password i cannot sign in on test forum. Smh


You should be able to sign in with your old password. The site is a copy of live a short while ago

Asper wrote:

And I believe it's pretty low for the Collections change (3.14 out of 5), and is an indicator that this change was not welcomed by the majority.


Thats interesting. I believe 3.14 is closer to 5 than 0

ryanchi wrote:

@ deimos I have put forward ideas to make the collections page easier to navigate such as
-Alphabetize the Classic coats section on the Collections page
- Alphabetize the display of breeds in the Horse breeds section


I think that is an excellent idea. Thank you.
deimos
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Legacy Ann wrote:

I also think that the classic version is not quite mobile friendly, because you have to zoom in a bit on smaller screens to perform quite a few actions, otherwise it's just too tiny. My guess is that they're just trying to finally bring the two versions more in line with each other to make it more cohesive, but I do think it has been at the detriment to the classic version because the mobile aesthetic is too big and clunky on it, and the new navigation (i.e., the Collections) isn't always an improvement.


I agree with this. I know it's easier for the game to be 100% the same across all versions so people can get their questions answered more easily, but the two formats just don't work with each other.

Like the major problem with the new trophy page (well one of them) is that they can't have the mouse-over number popup. On the old version you could mouse over and see the exact number of what you have, now you can't, and they said that it isn't possible cause the feature requires a mouse. So it's gone, but the objectives go so high now that the percentages mean nothing (and I don't think adding decimals to the percentages would fix the trouble, it would just look worse and be confusing.) We really do need solid numbers, but there's no way to do it on mobile, apparently.

I wish I had suggestions, but with just the percentage bars the trophy page isn't functional. And the sad part is, it'd be JUST as non-functional on mobile.
Crookedstar915
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Asper wrote:

And I believe it's pretty low for the Collections change (3.14 out of 5), and is an indicator that this change was not welcomed by the majority.


How do we vote on the change? Does it expire after a certain time because I am certain I never voted but I cannot vote.
EmmaKate66
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I don't think the update log votes are a good indicator of what the majority of players think about the change because I'd never heard of that until now and I doubt I'm alone, so it doesn't reflect the whole population of the site, only the few who knew it was there and voted on it. Does it say how many players actually voted? Like out of the amount of active players?

I also wonder how long it stayed open etc, if players just saw "you can get prizes from trophies now!" and gave it a high vote before they saw the change and realized, that kind of thing. 3.1/5 is pretty weak, though, considering. It's basically saying only a tad more than half the playerbase liked the change, which isn't great.

Certainly in this forum there isn't a 3/5 success rating. I remember early on someone did the math and said the amount of positive reviews was 20 and the amount of negative reviews was something like 160. I know this forum isn't an accurate read either, because again, not every player knows about it, but I don't think we can say for sure if anyone's in the majority or not. We just don't have good info on it.
Crookedstar915
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I also remember they did have that other thread about "how many trophies did you get this week" the week after everyone lost trophies because of the update. I don't think that one had a SINGLE positive comment and they took it down really quick default smiley (lol)
Crookedstar915
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Check out this month's brand-new features in the new Dev’s Corner!

Best Regards,
The Howrse Team
EchOw
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I'm very happy that I no longer can use passes by mistake. A great decisiondefault smiley (y)
satirama
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* "It is no longer possible to use passes by mistake on items you have the benefit of and meet the conditions for" – woohoo! default smiley <:o) *happy dance*

* "The twisted horsetail braid is now for sale on the Black Market on a permanent basis." – nice! Some of my rosette and Grand Prix horses will be delighted! :d


*does another little happy dance about the first one* default smiley 8-)
Dr Zig
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Confused on what it means no longer passes by accident? I thought it meant the default selection would be to use an item and not passes, but when I went to put an MA on a horse it still selected passes by default. So, what was the change?
Realms
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I've reached a point now were I simply don't care anymore.

I took great pride in having all breeds and colors etc before the change. Clearly they think the current settings are fine.
It's a jumbled mess, I've stopped even trying to make sense of it all.

Same with the GA and divine collecting. Does not matter anymore - I'll go for GA's or divine if I have FREE passes to spend.
If not then I'll just wait until I have collected more FREE passes.
If I do not ... moving along
Asfridur
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Realms wrote:

Confused on what it means no longer passes by accident? I thought it meant the default selection would be to use an item and not passes, but when I went to put an MA on a horse it still selected passes by default. So, what was the change?



I agree- it isn't the change I thought they were advertising. Interested to know how this majorly changes the game for anyone?

I think it is when like a horse has a harmony pack applied but the coat has not been chosen. When you then go from the horses page to add the coat then when you navigate to the GA page there is an option to spend passes on a golden apple despite the horse being already equipped with it. Maybe this is referring to that?
EmmaKate66
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For me, it's defaulted to stock the past few months, but it could be because it remembers your last choice?
Ruffian
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The Horn of Plenty has been the only item I've used lately that stays with inventory purchase, but that's only if I open them consecutively and don't leave the page.

I always use inventory option to buy items and it still defaults to passes
Legacy Ann
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