[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: May 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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By Retired breeder, 1st June 2021 15:05:49
2
default smiley (y) on updates
I do however like the foals genetics and skills being shown on their birth page. This was a pleasant surprise while logging in today
Crystal Clear
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All I can say is the downfall of this game is coming quicker and quicker. They probably make like what, several hundred thousand dollars a year, and many of us have been playing for several years and have been very loyal to the game. Would it really kill them to listen to us, ask us what we want, rather than just assuming what we want. Many of the biggest players are leaving because of a lot of the changes being made to the game. I mostly played in 2012-2016 and it was so much more fun and addicting back then. I just wish they would listen to the people who gave them the privilege of having a high-income and now somewhat successful game. If Howrse wants a future they should really start listening to us. This is probably going to get taken down, cause Howrse can't stand negative opinions, even though they're literally asking for people's opinions default smiley (d) and it's sad that we can't voice our opinions without fear of our account being taken down or losing Karma points
χ σвѕι∂ιαη
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If I'm using top public covers and they run out I am NOT going to breed to a lesser stud because the game "caps" his maximum covers available. Why should a player be penalized because they blupped the best available colt and put up a tonne of covers? This is ridiculous.
Crystal Coven
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Why did the profile link have to be moved to below the foal's naming box? What was wrong with where it was? default smiley (o)
Crystal Coven
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The foal's GP and IBS being shown on the birth page: EXCELLENT!!! Just excellent. I typically name new foals with an initial for Colt or Filly, then their GP / IBS, and that "Achievements" block makes that so, so much easier. Thumbs up!!

Crystal Coven wrote:

If I'm using top public covers and they run out I am NOT going to breed to a lesser stud because the game "caps" his maximum covers available. Why should a player be penalized because they blupped the best available colt and put up a tonne of covers? This is ridiculous.
Does anyone actually put up THREE HUNDRED cover offers a day from top public release stallions?? As in, 300 cover offers in one day from one stallion.

Is this actually a thing? I've seen a couple pages of offers all from the same stallion in more popular breeds (e.g., Thoroughbreds), adding up to a few dozen covers from the same stallion, but not 300 from the same horse. Besides the fact that it's pretty boring to sit there clicking to put up offers, there's the fact that putting up so many would make them worth less, so how many would sell at top price, and how many would expire and just be wasted energy?

People never cease to surprise me, but I have my doubts that this is a regular thing for large numbers of players. Especially all from one horse.

If you don't like the stallions on offer on a particular day, there are two basic options available to all players -- wait for a few hours or until the next day and see what comes up.... or go look in the sales to see if there's a stallion there with GP you like and buy him. *shrug*
Becky Barnes
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By Retired breeder, 1st June 2021 17:34:58
14
Annalise wrote:

I think if we got some kind of explanation or answer it might clarify the whole ordeal and make it less confusing.



It's Howrse, when have we ever gotten an explanation from anything default smiley xd

The fact that Howrse hardly listens to use players is quite frankly ridiculous. The last few years they've been going downhill and I can't wait for the day this game ends. In previous years our voices were heard but now we are just tossed to the side. Which is hilarious as without happy people their money from passes goes down because why pay for a game like that. And don't get me wrong, Companies do need to make certain decisions occasionally but the way we players are treated is ridiculous.
Next Update: A limit to how many horses you can blup a month. Maybe a limit to how many foals you can breed. Or maybe your game gets shut down after you've farmed over 1000 horses every day. Playing this game is now cheating. Putting time and effort into obtaining resources instead of simply throwing money at the company is outlawed.

I mass breed horses with the breed and gp I want for them to work as auto fillers, and I sell the rest that don't make rookie cap as AP horses. It's already pain enough finding a few hundred horses of the breed I need with a high enough gp now with a 300 cover limit...

Why not set the limit to something completely unreachable for a human player, not something anyone with a few hours to burn could easily achieve? Or if the intent is to root out people who put up covers through scripting, you had no problem randomly docking players who blupped or farmed too fast without evidence, why change your methods for putting up public covers of all things?
ᴄoʙᴀʟᴛoʟoɢʏ
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Retired breeder wrote:

The obly reason why the Mods are agreeing with this update is because they are forced to otherwise their Mod privileges would be snatched away by the all powerful OW.
default smiley (lol) I actually think you will find some of us are quite outspoken, be that in support of a new feature or if we are not in support! We are only players like everyone else. It probably says more about the game that we are actually allowed our own opinions, and to air them, even when they are not always in support of changes and new features.
haffyfan
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By Retired breeder, 1st June 2021 20:36:14
2
I find the GP and skills next to the horse when birthing is weird. I thought it was a glitch when I bred my horse for the first time today on the US server... Why can't the horses names still be on the side? And why is there a max amount of covers? I know just about no one puts 300 covers up daily, but for the bigger breeders with time... I feel like we should at least have a max for a horse, for example 20 or 30 per horse daily, or 10 at the least.
I know I'm in a minority but I dont like the new breeding page lol..My favourite part was going and clicking on the genetics for a little surprise after I named it an such.

That being said I don't have an overabundance of horses and therefore dont need to categorize so I can see why most big players enjoy it

I just don't default smiley (lol) Also, why isnt the skils UNDER the naming box? Thats driving me bonkers default smiley xd
jsniper
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I personally feel that people are making a big deal out of this covering change; I mean, who here seriously puts up more than 300 coverings on the daily consistently? They could have made it a lot smaller, but 300 coverings is still around 50 horses offering 6 each day.

While we're at it, what percentage of those coverings actually get taken? Perhaps part of the reason for this change is to try and encourage people to blup before they put up coverings, instead of just getting to breeding age and throwing a bunch of unblupped coverings up, therefore flooding the market with poor quality horses.

I've personally MA'ed a male before and have put up to 100-200 coverings up from him in one day, but that was such a boring task to do, despite the profit, so I honestly doubt that people have been doing hundreds every day without fail.

For some rough calculations, this is what you can get between each day if you do 300 coverings based on what you set the price at and they all get accepted -

500 x 300 = 150000
7500 x 300 = 2250000

So that is a range of 150000 to 2250000 if all 300 get accepted, which is really not an amount to sneeze at, especially if you happen to have a top stud at 7500 equus.

It could be worse, but I do feel that people need to give this a bit of a chance before they call it a terrible update, as it may very well improve the overall quality of horses offering coverings due to the limit. I also understand why this can be upsetting to those that do put up hundreds each day, but I am personally of the mindset that the majority don't even come close to that amount.

That said, I also don't agree with the reasoning being "to prevent cheating"...
Oathkeeper
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Why can't achieving the objective be enough? Why must it be pending validation. I mean, some of them are dependant on time or on other players, ie. receive an item, sell a horse, be congratulated, win x# of comps. Not everyone can sit around clicking their refresh button, or if you log in shortly before update... why the need for the validation step?
Timberowl
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First, how is offering coverings with your stallion cheating? How is an actual game function with no feasible means of being exploited cheating?

Secondly, what part of the gameplay is the coverings feature compromising that it needed to be changed that desperately?

The team is literally just poking at things for the sake of it right now and it's frustrating.
ᴋᴀᴡᴀsᴀᴋɪ ɴɪɴᴊᴀ
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Oathkeeper wrote:

I personally feel that people are making a big deal out of this covering change; I mean, who here seriously puts up more than 300 coverings on the daily consistently? They could have made it a lot smaller, but 300 coverings is still around 50 horses offering 6 each day.

While we're at it, what percentage of those coverings actually get taken? Perhaps part of the reason for this change is to try and encourage people to blup before they put up coverings, instead of just getting to breeding age and throwing a bunch of unblupped coverings up, therefore flooding the market with poor quality horses.

I've personally MA'ed a male before and have put up to 100-200 coverings up from him in one day, but that was such a boring task to do, despite the profit, so I honestly doubt that people have been doing hundreds every day without fail.

For some rough calculations, this is what you can get between each day if you do 300 coverings based on what you set the price at and they all get accepted -

500 x 300 = 150000
7500 x 300 = 2250000

So that is a range of 150000 to 2250000 if all 300 get accepted, which is really not an amount to sneeze at, especially if you happen to have a top stud at 7500 equus.

It could be worse, but I do feel that people need to give this a bit of a chance before they call it a terrible update, as it may very well improve the overall quality of horses offering coverings due to the limit. I also understand why this can be upsetting to those that do put up hundreds each day, but I am personally of the mindset that the majority don't even come close to that amount.

That said, I also don't agree with the reasoning being "to prevent cheating"...


It’s precisely that it might only affect the top 1% of breeders that makes this change so frustrating. Howrse is constantly “dumbing” the game down to cater to those who put less effort in. Not everyone will put out hundreds of covers every single day, but exceptional players should be given the option to if they feel like it on one particular day. It’s like putting a cap on the amount of leather someone can sell in a day because “most people don’t sell that much”, or capping the number of comps a player can enter.

I also don’t think it’s the players that can’t be bothered to BLUP their horses that are the ones putting in the effort to put out hundreds of covers. To me it would be a disincentive to buy a foal and BLUP it because my profit is now restricted. It’d make marginally more sense if it was a horse cap, not a player cap (still not a worthwhile change though).
PaintaPicture
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PaintaPicture wrote:

It’s precisely that it might only affect the top 1% of breeders that makes this change so frustrating. Howrse is constantly “dumbing” the game down to cater to those who put less effort in. Not everyone will put out hundreds of covers every single day, but exceptional players should be given the option to if they feel like it on one particular day. It’s like putting a cap on the amount of leather someone can sell in a day because “most people don’t sell that much”, or capping the number of comps a player can enter.

I also don’t think it’s the players that can’t be bothered to BLUP their horses that are the ones putting in the effort to put out hundreds of covers. To me it would be a disincentive to buy a foal and BLUP it because my profit is now restricted. It’d make marginally more sense if it was a horse cap, not a player cap (still not a worthwhile change though).


I do think it is worth pointing out that on a previous account I was within the top 150, an active blupper and very active on top prix teams, and even now I am within the top 300 and on several teams, so could very easily fall into that 1% of "top breeders", so I'm not just speaking from the stand point of a casual player.

I do think it's also worth mentioning that, based on the breed, you can now buy a close to top colt for under 100k, then MA it for a little under 300k when the MA offer is on and blup it, meaning you would only need to use 54 of those coverings to get your investment back if you price them at 7500 each, a little over a sixth of the daily cap.
Oathkeeper
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To be quite honest I was wondering if, and when, Howrse was going to follow the Jockey Club.

For those who aren't into real-life horses the Jockey club was trying to put a cap on how many horses breeders could offer (it I believe was 300), so I just kinda find it funny.
superocelot02
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Though I'm not quite sure how putting up over 300 covers is considered cheating? I understand how it tries to ensure that not only a few players' covers are seen (though 300 covers is still a lot of horses to offer up.) But I don't quite understand how it would be cheating and not just playing a part of the game because it's extremely hard to cheat in offering up a horse. Unless they mean cheating players out of money? But even then if a horse is not up to other players standards (be it too expensive, or not enough GP, or anything else) then players could just choose not to use that cover? So it's still unclear how it proves the players to be cheating
superocelot02
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By Retired breeder, 2nd June 2021 06:11:32
12
Has anyone complaing about the covering change actually looked at the public coverings much? A mind-numbing multitude of coverings from, to put it nicely, sub-par studs. Maybe now players will stop flooding us with pages and pages of the same terrible stud. This benefits F2P players in that instead of one stud covering everyone's mare, others will have a chance to make a profit by blupping studs.
This is a good change, and this is coming from a non-pass buyer who's been on and off the game since 2007. Plus, 300 coverings is a LOT. This will only affect a handful of players who have been flooding and spamming the section and won't affect the rest of us. Out of all the changes we've had recently, this is not the one to be angry at...

The problem with the coverings isn't necessarily because of "cheating", but more of spamming, which is super annoying for everyone. Seriously, I would've thought everyone would be happy to see spammers get capped?


PaintaPicture wrote:

Not everyone will put out hundreds of covers every single day, but exceptional players should be given the option to if they feel like it on one particular day.


"Exceptional" players usually reserve their coverings for teams, so they won't be affected and they rarely help out F2P either.
I think that they call it cheating because those covering offers end up flooding everything. I wouldn't call it cheating (but spamming instead), but I understand the point of view of those that visit the covering's page and come across so many offers of the same horse, making it difficult to find others. It's similar to what sometimes happens in the direct sales, when someone puts up thousands of horses and the page gets flooded with them.

This new feature might seem unfair to whom puts the covers, but from the perspective of whom also has covering offers that get lost in everything, it makes sense.
AncientMyth
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Thumbs up fro " Added a "Performances" section indicating a foal's genetic potential and skills on its birth page."

But It would be good if the foal breed could also be seen in this window. default smiley :)
Niina
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Niina wrote:

Thumbs up fro " Added a "Performances" section indicating a foal's genetic potential and skills on its birth page."

But It would be good if the foal breed could also be seen in this window. default smiley :)


where do I access the preformances section I'm confused on where the birth page is located...
вєαυтιƒυℓ ∂ιѕαѕтєя
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вєαυтιƒυℓ ∂ιѕαѕтєя wrote:


where do I access the preformances section I'm confused on where the birth page is located...


It's on the page where you name the foals at birth, just above thier image
funnyone
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The update is great my only complaint is that if we put our male horses up for stud and we choose the stud fee we don't see any of it. If you could make it to where we see the fee coming to us that would be great
TinaSofranko
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Oathkeeper wrote:

I personally feel that people are making a big deal out of this covering change; I mean, who here seriously puts up more than 300 coverings on the daily consistently? They could have made it a lot smaller, but 300 coverings is still around 50 horses offering 6 each day.

While we're at it, what percentage of those coverings actually get taken? Perhaps part of the reason for this change is to try and encourage people to blup before they put up coverings, instead of just getting to breeding age and throwing a bunch of unblupped coverings up, therefore flooding the market with poor quality horses.

I've personally MA'ed a male before and have put up to 100-200 coverings up from him in one day, but that was such a boring task to do, despite the profit, so I honestly doubt that people have been doing hundreds every day without fail.

For some rough calculations, this is what you can get between each day if you do 300 coverings based on what you set the price at and they all get accepted -

500 x 300 = 150000
7500 x 300 = 2250000

So that is a range of 150000 to 2250000 if all 300 get accepted, which is really not an amount to sneeze at, especially if you happen to have a top stud at 7500 equus.

It could be worse, but I do feel that people need to give this a bit of a chance before they call it a terrible update, as it may very well improve the overall quality of horses offering coverings due to the limit. I also understand why this can be upsetting to those that do put up hundreds each day, but I am personally of the mindset that the majority don't even come close to that amount.

That said, I also don't agree with the reasoning being "to prevent cheating"...


Being a player who has actively participated in the development of Howrse since 2008, I will say that there is a large population of children (preteens and teenagers) that play here. When I first started, I did throw out a few coverings when my horses reached breeding age because I didn't understand that there was more to the game than just looking at, admiring, and sometimes owning gorgeous horses that I couldn't otherwise own in real life. It wasn't until 2016 that I learned that mathematics were heavily involved in rising through the ranks. So, from personal experience, I can understand why people would be upset, especially players who make most of their income from coverings. For a newer or younger player, 2.25 million is a lot of money; it's still a lot to me. I think most people forget the days when they first started where they talked to mostly players of the same or similar ranking and stage in gameplay as themselves. I think we need to remember that there are players on here for many different reasons. Personally, I've been a high ranking player and I've been a very low ranking player; I know the difference between playing for fun and playing to compete against millions of players around the world. I prefer to play for fun now due to my life outside of the game, but for those who prefer to devote most of their day to this game might not appreciate these changes that alter their gameplay negatively. Truthfully, I'm not too upset about the covering page changes, but then again, I don't play enough on here anymore to really care. I've been just as disappointed with many of the cosmetic changes that the developers seem to prioritize over mechanics. But, in the end, it is just a game, and like Chit Chat City, Fantage, Weeworld, and other games that came out around the same time as Howrse, this game will eventually become obsolete and the developers will move on with their lives.
Livey
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