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That is really, really not true. Many companies will chance it up to keep customers because they need repeat service and to be recommended.

For instance, just this week I called 3 tree companies because I have some dead trees that need to be taken out. The first bid was the highest by $225.00. I gave him the quote of the third company and he dropped his price to match. These were companies not individuals.



Yes, that is true but without happy paying customers a business can easily cease to exist.

[quote=1404402906][author]deimos[/author]And no, they are not obliged to tell us what they are working on. In my opinion that would not be a good move at all.[/quote:0]
Honestly I find this take a lot different to my own. See I play a hunting game on a console and follow their media accounts, why? because they keep the community updated with what they are planning, what we can look forward to and they genuinely listen to the community's feedback and try to give answers as quick as they can, plus if there's a problem highlighted they work on it. Howrse in comparison is shockingly horrid in my eyes, and that's just how I see it. Good communication goes a long way, just sayin'.

[quote=1404402906][author]deimos[/author]Never forget that what is a game to us is a business to Owlient and they are first of all answerable to the owners and shareholders of the business. Players are customers and consumers but that does not give us the knowledge or right to demand what we want changed. We can only give feedback and, preferably, back it up with good, positive examples.[/quote:0]
Yes they have to take the owners and shareholders into account but if there's no player base left to put money into the game or only a small amount of paying players, where does that leave those people then? A large majority of the time businesses are attempting to please the consumer or go above and beyond, do a good job and have good word of mouth travel. In no way shape or form should a company/business be treating its customers poorly. Building a good rapport is key for every business and to be honest Howrse's rapport with a big section of its player base is fraying, already frayed or just gone already.
Yes we can give feedback, which I'm sure many of us have. I feel like a lot of the divide happening now is that we don't feel heard. We don't see ANY of the feedback we've put forward even make its way into the game, even the small stuff that we've put forward for months that would make our gameplay a better overall experience. Not taking the option that maybe some player out there has seen something they put forward be implemented, but I feel like it would be a very slim chance type thing.

I'd love to be able to rate the dev changes again though, that'd sure be nice.

Yeah, and the suggestion to put updates towards what they're working on so they don't pop in here after a month saying "Hi we didn't do anything but change one sentence!" WAS feedback. They're welcome to ignore it and I fully expect them to do so, but if they ASK for feedback I have no idea why that's being dismissed as unreasonable and foolish.

What happened to that survey they gave us? Did anything come out of that? I felt like that was a huge positive but I'm not seeing any updates here or in prepod that were implemented due to the survey :/

I feel like players gave amazing feedback in that, from what I saw!

It may be taking a while. Or they simply don't care.

That's the frustrating part, they won't TELL us anything. We have no way to know if they plan to do any of it, or if it was just a quick fix to get us all to shut up.

And sure, they have a right to keep us in the dark about whatever they want to keep us in the dark about, but at the same time, when they ask us "hey, what would improve your experience with our product" WE have a right to say "stop keeping us in the dark about stuff"

It occurs to me that most companies would be more concerned about making sure their competitors are kept in the dark.

In all the many surveys I've done, I have never seen feedback.



Are you saying this is why we never hear anything? I don't believe the fixes or communication we have been begging for has anything to do with industrial espionage.

I'm saying that future plans or changes must never be released early and everyone on the dev team and Admin team will be very aware of that. So what communication are we talking about? If the fixes are technical ones relating to bugs on the game they are generally responded to in the individual tickets. If people dont send a ticket they wont get a response. If we are still on a 'fix' for trophies I would suggest it will never happen in the way you want as the new trophies are here to stay and they don't need a 'fix' because they are working as intended.

It would have been nice to have a back and forth communication about the trophies. Our concerns about them obviously fell on deaf ears which only tells us Ubisot just doesn't care. As a result for me, my wallet is closed to this game.

As far as "fixes" go, the Promotional Videos are still not working and I have sent many tickets getting only a 'canned' response. It''s been over a year that this has gone on.

I agree with you on this and have raised the question about it to Admin again. I will let you know if I get any news about it.

If the trophies are "working as intended" then that's a pretty poor reflection on Howrse and how it operates cause they didn't even bother to spell-check the lousy things. They've been letting them sit full of bugs and grammatical errors and layout problems for six months now.

I mean, obviously they can do whatever they want, but it looks unprofessional and sloppy and doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the site OR the company as a whole.

[quote=1404403048][author]Crookedstar915[/author]If the trophies are "working as intended" then that's a pretty poor reflection on Howrse and how it operates cause they didn't even bother to spell-check the lousy things. They've been letting them sit full of bugs and grammatical errors and layout problems for six months now. I mean, obviously they can do whatever they want, but it looks unprofessional and sloppy and doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the site OR the company as a whole.[/quote:0]
Please never hesitate to report these things to Contact Us.

It's one thing to get a setback that you can recover from eventually.
Remember when oats cost the same to buy as they did to sell? I would budget by keeping most of my Equus in oats so I always had a limit and never spent a ridiculous amount on buying horses or contests or whatever (I was a relatively new player, unaware of the rich tax for vets or anything at the time).

When the change was made without any warning, tons of people essentially lost huge sums of money (for me, it was about half of it) - though we have a lifetime supply of oats and I will never need to buy more. It sucked, but I got over it and now have several million Equus as well as 800,000+ oats.


The trophy change isn't like that. We can't recover. It's a change that is permanent and there is no hope for it. We lost and can never regain. Yes, that is a dramatic way of putting it.

But it's not inaccurate. We will never have the dozens of beautiful trophies proudly displayed on our profile pages to show off our gaming style and hard-earned achievements. We can't even see them ourselves - once we achieve a trophy it disappears and becomes a number next to a simple, ugly medal graphic. This is not a change made to avoid people cheating, like the oats change purportedly was. There wasn't a bug, a flaw, something wrong with the system.

The only positive to this new trophy system, the prizes, are not worth the change by any stretch of the imagination. Even if we absolutely needed to introduce prizes to the system, we could have added it to the old one instead of rehauling and cutting down and spoiling it. We could have given out retroactive prizes or even just given prizes for the ones we get in the future (apparently new players get all kinds of shiny prizes when they start now) and we would have been happy.

We are not happy with this change. Still. We aren't going to get over it. Yes, most people have stopped complaining. You can only shout into empty space for so long. Several people have quit. Some of us are just barely hanging on. But we are not happy and we are not going to be happy with the trophy system as is. Even with a male pastry on top.

One of the other things that stinks is that they ARE willing to listen - to the right people.

This wasn't a released change and it's been pushed back as of now but


The pushback was absolutely justified, especially for the sheer cost of that trophy, and I am absolutely glad they listened and will not be removing those player's progress and the money they spent.

But then, when it's pointed out that all the wiped collection trophies cost as much if not more for some people? Nothing. They haven't even TRIED to fix any of it or do anything to make up for the loss. Nor, when it was pointed out to them PRIOR, did they show the same grace they're showing to the rosette winners and put the trophy overhaul on hold so as to make it fairer to all players and lessen the ultimate loss.

It's just... really disheartening to be a player that they seemingly do NOT want playing the game, and to not be shown the same courtesy. I think my Ray trophy alone cost me some 5000 passes, and that's not cheap. I know my Metal Element coats and my Violet cost me around a thousand each, so that's up to 8000 in losses. And this was pointed out to them prior to the change and has been brought up again and again, with no response or plan to fix. Yet, they clearly ARE willing to cancel changes if they'll do financial damage to a player. You just gotta be the right kind of player, I guess.

[quote=1404403481][author]ShadowKokufu[/author]This message has been censored since it does not follow the forum rules.[/quote:0]

Yeah, I don't think the surveys mean anything except to make us feel like they care. Over the years, I have completed many. Never heard anything back and nothing changed.

Colour me confused.

Preprod is all about having players test, experience, and know things early. Like a change to the rosette trophy, for instance, which was met with such huge backlash that it was postponed. Or testing a new divine series, like the Zonkeymillies, which were a flop but still implemented on the live versions.

Yeah, nothing is set in stone, but preprod says "hey, we're going to be implementing a couple of changes, here's what we're thinking/doing."

I think what most people are looking for is something similar but not only limited to those who get entrance into preprod - a "hey, next month we are planning on adding a filter for showers/troughs in EC boxes. And yes, we know there's an issue with the advertising videos and we might get a fix by July, no promises though."

Not anything that would have devastating consequences should some other horse game company catch wind of. Which I can't come up with an example for, but I'll trust it's a possibility. Competitors knowing that Howrse is changing a description for one of their divine horses is something we are desperate not to have happen, of course.

But its not only limited to people with access to preprod is it? Anyone who wants to see what is coming from there only has to go to the spoiler topic which is open to everyone. There they can see what is coming and ask questions about it as much as they like as long as they use the spoiler banner.

Please stop telling people that 'everyone' liked or did not like something. You do not know what other players think any more than I do. The numbers that post in here are very small compared to the overall player base and that does not then take into account all the players on other servers.

Quoting (or paraphrasing) previous Admin in a negative fashion when they are not able to defend themselves is very rude and unacceptable.

When I was a manager in a customer service department we always knew that someone who was upset told at least 10 other people. Someone who was happy told one other - if you were lucky. Those who simply do not care just really dont care. I see no reason to suspect that although the numbers may vary the general principal still applies.

Discord howrse servers pretty much have the same opinion as people do here. That's a few thousands of players from all servers. Well, not sure about official howrse discord since its probably heavily moderated.

It is true that the overall numbers that post in here are very small but that doesn't mean we are the only ones that feel as we do. And yes, we have no idea what other players feel except for our many friends who do not choose to post in the forums for their own reasons.

I truly don't think the players posting in here are the only ones unhappy with the change. Didn't someone run the numbers and find that there was a massive drop in older players right after it happened, and that it was still declining as of a few months ago? That doesn't mean those older players aren't replaceable by new ones and I guess that's what the company is banking on, but it also doesn't mean it was a negligible change that had no reprecussions and that the majority was happy with.

Also iirc someone posted the approval rating for the change and it had something like a 60% approval rate which, while that's more than half, is BARELY more than half and I wouldn't say a change that angers and alienates 40% of the playerbase (and that's of course only the ones who voted) is a very good or successful one, or one that should be ignored.

I know they WILL ignore it, but that's just my thought on it.

Are the new 'collectable cards' a joke?? The response to player complaints that there is no way to complete the card collection is to introduce a 'pay-to-complete' system that gives absolutely no reward whatsoever apart from some measly general ranking points after you buy up years' worth of collections???

On the bright side, I've saved so much money since I stopped buying passes as a result of this ridiculous trophy overhaul. I've not bothered with the May packs at all, and boy am I glad I haven't