New features

4. Who thought it's a good idea to refresh the page with every new question we have?

In the old help center, you just had to hit the search button and it will reload the results but it will not refresh the page.

Refreshing the page for every new question ruins the user experience by a lot -- imaging a scenario where you have to change your query multiple times because you're not sure of the exact keywords to get you the answer, it's an uncomfortable old-style website design.

5. Why did you not improve the most important feature of the help center -- the search engine??

When I searched "trick" I expected to get no results or maybe some results about the "trick or treat" promo, instead I got a result about "How do I send a ticket to Contact us?", needless to say that nowhere in that thread did the word "trick" was mentioned.
https://www.howrse.com/member/helpCenter/search?q=trick

Maybe Howrse implies that sending a ticket is only to trick ourselves because we'll get no good answer from them.

That is so true! I felt the same thing and it was exactly what I meant to say in my 4th point.

7. Where's the new/unanswered category or filtering like we had in the previous help center? It's important so that we can answer the new questions and make sure no question is left buried without an answer.

My motivation update

Notifications: 24
Day: 16
Taken care of horses today: no

I liked the tab where you could see your answers in the old help center..It helped if you were wrong so you could see the proper answer to the question as well as keep track of the threads :/

6. When you vote on someone's answer it says "Your vote has been registered successfully." but the votes won't change until you refresh the page, that's so unintuitive.

I hate the new Help Centre layout. And they had this on prepod months ago even before they took away the old version - I didn't notice any improvements despite them working on it for months. It's not like they made the search filter any better. I haven't gotten a relevant result yet, so it seems to actually be worse. And I can't find unanswered questions.

Plus, why is the new "ask a question" "submit a topic"? That makes no sense. A topic would seem to be wanting to spawn a conversation on a particular topic, while we are expressly told
NOT to discuss things but merely answer the question.

And yes, still very VERY upset about the trophies. I was choosing a foal's coat colour and went to check the Trophy page to see which colours I was missing for that breed... and then I just gave up and picked one I liked. We don't even have a trophy for that anymore.

The trophy page is just absolutely useless for seeing what you need or where you are or even what things are. Just line after line of the same ugly, simple medals next to bar after bar of meaningless percentages.

The new Help Center is completely hideous...I hate how they're switching the format of the game to this ugly simplified 'mobile friendly' format, when we still have our forums in the old format that are easy to sort through. Not to mention when I looked up '5th element' in the search engine it brought me to a totally unrelated topic that did not mention '5th' or 'element' anywhere in the post or response. Not that I expect the brand new center to have topics on the 5th element, but come on now. And it's a shame they didn't keep the asked questions from the previous iteration of the Help Center.

Actually overall as a whole, all these new formatting updates have been poorly executed, senseless and shoddy as can be. These are some of the most annoying things I've noticed over the past few years:

1. The Black Market page for every (I think) BMI has been updated with the new format EXCEPT for the Medusa's Blood, which is still on the most recent previous format. Why? Idk, but I go to that page to look at it whenever I feel depressed about how ugly the other BMI pages look. (Also, correct me if I'm wrong but I think that years ago the BMI page defaulted the selection to using the BMI in your inventory if you had it...not to using passes. A sneaky cash grab if so).

2. Golden and Retired Apple pages...ugh, this is terrible beyond belief.
You used to be able to click on a Golden Apple or Retired Apple coat in the sales or on a horses' personal page and be taken to the page where you could see the information about the coat. If you didn't have that particular species, you were still able to view the coat, see the creator and add it to your favorites if you so chose. Now, however, say I wanted to look at a Donkey Unicorn coat, but I didn't own a Donkey Unicorn. If I click on the apple, it takes me to page that says none of my horses can benefit from this item. It pisses me off every time. Should I not be able to view the coat even if I don't own a horse from that species?? What purpose does that have for not letting me look at the darn coat and add it to my favorites if I'd like to purchase it later?? The only way I'd now be able to find the coat is to go to directories and search through pages and pages of Donkey Unicorn coats. This is so incredibly STUPID and inefficient.

Not to mention the collections page only has an option to show retired coats and rays I don't have, and it takes FOREVER to load the coats...which is totally stupid, what if I'd like to see the coats I DO have? It's far more efficient to go the creations directories, where you can see ALL the Golden Apple, Retired, Rays, AND see what coats you don't and do have as there is an option to see which coats you already own and which are favorited. And you can sort them by color as well. The collections is quite literally a shoddy version of the creations directory.


3. That when we purchase a horse, we are no longer able to click the username of the player we purchased it from. I really liked this because I used to like to visit the player's page an congratulate hem when I purchased a horse.

As well as we are no longer able to click the username of a player and visit their page when they give our horses an apple. I also used to congratulate people when they gave my horses apples...it's extremely inconvenient to have to go to the directories to look them up, and I feel like Howrse really stunted the community by doing this.

And to all of you who still think using Contact Us is some sort of viable option for players to voice their opinions, this is their response to me regarding this:

"Hello,
I have noticed recently that there has been a significant change to viewing player pages, in two areas specifically.

In the past, when you received a notification of a purchase or sale of a horse, the player name is stated in the notification. However, the player name was also a link that you could click and be taken to the player page. As well as for when a player gives an apple to another players' horse, the action notification would be visible in the dropdown action menu with the name of the player who gave the apple to the horse. The name also used to be a clickable link.

I do not understand why that link has been removed, it was an excellent way for players to meet new players and to easily visit their page to give them a congratulations, or send them a PM. Many players used these links and it created a much more connected sense of playership within the game.

I would really like to see that come back into use, there was no reason for it to be removed."

Their response:

"Clicking on a notification already redirects to a page. And to void any miscliks, we prefer to avoid having two links in a single pop-up.

We hope this clarifies the situation. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns."

To which I responded:

"No, first a player has to click the bell notification or go to the office which opens the player to view the notification. It does not immediately redirect them to a page. The player would still be able to view the notification and choose to click either the player name or the horse name. There is zero issue of having a 'mis-click', and no reason that going to another players page would be a problem. If the issue was really a 'mis-click' then every single dropdown menu in the game would pose a risk of a 'mis-click'.

I'd be willing to believe that if that only happen with SALE notifications but it didn't. You also removed a link to a player's page when they give an apple to a horse. There are no other links in that notification and no way there could be a so called 'mis-click'.


So I am asking you again, what is the REAL reason you removed links to player pages that used to be easily accessible in the past. Because so far all that has changed is that you have made it more difficult for players to visit other players' pages for no reason."

"Hello Joblitzen,

Thanks for coming back to us.

As we wrote in our previous reply, we prefer to avoid having two links in a single pop-up. Therefore, the link was removed.

Thank you for your understanding."

In their first response they didn't even spell 'avoid' or 'mis-click' correctly. So that's how much a of a flying heck they give, in case you all were wondering.



4. Miscellaneous random glitches...
One time I went to one of my horses' pages and named it 'Four Leaves'. Afterward I started going to my other horses' pages to take of them...and the game renamed about 4-5 or so of those horses 'Four Leaves' as well. It was totally bizarre and it hasn't happened again, fortunately, but it was annoying.

5. The trophy update, of course.

My overall response to this game is literally just for the past few years.

8. When I try to search for only one character it says I have to type in at least 4 characters.
Why would you need to restrict us on this matter?
Anyway, you can bypass that restriction by changing the link -- for example, here's a search for the keyword 'a'.

https://www.howrse.com/member/helpCenter/search?q=a

Perfect it worked. But what if I search for the keyword '0'? It will show an empty white page

https://www.howrse.com/member/helpCenter/search?q=0

Please Howrse why do you insist on "fixing" so many perfectly working features?

9. Help center when you're not signed in is a thing. When I was playing a smaller server I used to search for answers on the International help center since it had more answered questions, so I tried the new system when I was logged off.

Let me start by asking Howrse, did you even bother testing the feature before publishing it?
And when I'm saying testing I'm not talking about bugs (which exist as seen in my 8th point and 6th point), I'm talking about testing it from the standpoint of user experience. (My bet is that you didn't bother at all)

Ok so you're able to access the new help center when you're offline, that's perfect, but why make it so inconvenient to use?

Every time I was clicking on a category it redirects me to the login page, I have to hit the "go back" button to return to the previous search page...

And it's not like it can't sort by category when you're offline, it's just that Howrse refuses to let us have any new feature with a good user experience.

Here's a gif I filmed to showcase the scenario.
https://i.imgur.com/8WHobJm.gif




10. Continuing on with the same thought of using the help center when you're signed off I tried accessing a question.

You can't answer any questions when you're offline
You can't vote when you're offline
Wut?? It seems like you can report when you're offline.




The thing is when you submit the report it just redirects you to the login page disregarding your report. So why give the option to report when you're offline in the first place?

Okay, I'm really trying to settle in and learn to like the new layout for the collections since it's either that or quit the game at this point, I'm not ever gonna make it as a competitive breeder and everything else is so boring.

So, here goes.

1. The little toggle switch to see what you don't have thing is a nice idea and is honestly a little better than the old version where they'd just be tiny greyed out icons in a big huge row.

2. The size difference and clarity of the designs is improved. Like I said before the old versions were tiny. I sometimes had a hard time telling what I was looking at, particularly with the daruma and pinata companion collections.

That being said

1. The replacement of the trophies did lose a key visual element. Before if you wanted to see what all Wind Divines you were missing, you clicked their icon and received a handy drop down box. Now you have to search through the list of words. The trophy served as a much handier visual.

2. The listing is still REALLY weird. I have no clue why the horse breeds, for example, aren't in alphabetical order. Means you have to hunt through the list which is annoying.

3. I'm not even going to talk about the Retired Coats. I have NO suggestions. I don't see how that can possibly be fixed under the new system but it's depressing.

4. I wish there was still some kind of place where you could see your GA and Ray collections. Not a "all you're missing" but just the ones you have? I miss that so much.

5. PLEASE put back the Iris Coat why was that even removed in the first place? It's literally the same type of item as every other customization coat item that counts. Even arguing it's a breedable coat wouldn't work, since Pestilentia is counted.

6. For some reason when you toggle on and off the "breeds by species" collections the coats will randomly switch up and flash at you which while it's a bit of a nitpick is weird and distracting. Like I had to recheck a few times cause I thought the order was changing.

That's all I have for now. I'd still love to see them be displayable somehow, also.

And I KNOW they can be edited cause originally all the Inkwell coats were shoved in under "Animated" by mistake and this was rapidly fixed, so why no Iris Coat?

My only guess is because it's a recolor of the horse's base design there's no "one" way for it to look (like it'd look different on a Brumby vs a Standardbred) so it's harder to make an icon for but??? There's display art for every color on the item's Black Market page. I don't see why those can't be used for the Collections display as well.

Imagine they made up for the different displays for every breed by adding an iris coat trophy for having an iris coat of every colour for every breed. Now THAT would be a trophy to collect I mean, I know they're not going to do it, but I find it hilarious to think about.

I wish they brought back the fifth element trophy.. I literally got Ruaumoko just for it and saved my special fifth element from that other lottery so that I could finish it all and have all of them display on my page. I was really looking forward to that, now it's ruined. Ruaumoko just dropped a metal element a day or two ago, so I would've just completed the fifth element set that I literally spent YEARS working towards. Now I don't even get any satisfaction or joy out of it. Hell, I haven't even bothered putting the metal elements on yet because there just no motivation to do so.

I want the old trophy system back.. I miss the time when completing trophies was actually fun and enjoyable

In regards to the help center, why is the banner for the video ads there? VIPs are supposed to not see ads of any kind, that includes banners related to the game.

All this "effort" (haha) for a mobile friendly site and the mobile site still works like it could win a manure collecting trophy. The help center is so ugly and not intuitive at all. Glad to see the Howrse devs have been ignoring our trophy concerns for a good reason: to make the help center even worse! Good job, everyone.

I noticed this as well! It is so strange a decision it could not have been intentional.

How Admin works is none of our business and is not discussed in public forums. They are human beings and entitled to as much respect and privacy as everyone else here.

I... actually wouldn't hate that? I mean it'd be a pain to get every Violet but since Iris are one of the most obtainable coats because you can breed them it'd be a fun challenge. That may just be me, though. I had JUST started getting into Iris breeding before the change, it's lost a lot of its luster now.

To be honest I haven't even really looked at the help centre update, I sort of feel like the release of this update at this time is to stop the flow of outcry about the trophy update. However, given the comments above me, all they have managed to do is switch the outcry from one topic to another.

I might have a look and submit my third contact us in recent weeks.

I got Ruaumoko for the exact same reason, and now I feel no motivation to even work him. I was also counting on being able to sell horses with the metal coat to others trying to finish the series, but I'm guessing demand will be greatly reduced now

^^same, thousands of passes spent on the metal series for it to all be pointless

It would be interesting to see some statistic detailing what players spent towards obtaining the old trophies that now no longer exist.

The problem as well is that the divine that drops the metal element is so infrequent, it takes anything from 4-6 months to fill his meter, roughly twice as long as Rehua to drop the Nyx Pack. The other problem is that the metal element also dropped so much in value after the introduction of the Iris' Coat and all the items that can be paired up with it.

I personally liked that the metal element had such a low drop rate, it made it keep its value, but now that its value is pretty much a few hundreds passes when sold, its drop rate should be better, maybe every 2-3 months instead. It shouldn't take longer to drop than a Nyx divine with the exception of Balios.