New features

I have to wonder why have the test site and have players give feedback if they don't actually listen to players?

As someone who doesn’t enjoy Ascent of Olympus, I’m glad to see that it’ll be disappearing for periods of time. Maybe that’ll make me want to play it when it does come around? But that’s unlikely because I’ve been burnt by the stupidly high fail rates when I have a win chance of >90%.

Then to see that this new thing is not available to mobile players? Stupid. I reckon that’ll cut out a fair chunk of players. I am a very long term player. This is my third (and longest living) account. I used to play exclusively on classic, but with life happening, I’m only able to spare minutes here or there and so the app is more convenient these days to keep things moving along.

I’m soo happy to know that Howrse values the long term, casual players… the ones likely to have money to spend on passes or events because, well… they are probably older, have a job and a life…

I’m always happy to get a free divine, but if I can’t get it from my current, casual way of playing. What’s the point? If it was available on mobile then I’d happily join in, breed 5 horses and walk away with a free (probably useless) divine. The only reason I haven’t quit yet is because I like completing collections/trophies but even that’s getting hard and making me question whether I should just cut my losses

I really wanted to say this, but I didn't want to give them ideas.

As a tester, this is VERY disappointing and slightly upsetting to me, because when we were testing the doors event, they listened to us. I'm not sure how much I can say outside of the Spoiler Zone because it involves currently unreleased content but I will say that Feliz was NOT the original grand prize and a lot, if not most, of testers were pretty displeased (putting it mildly) at the original grand prize.

As a player who's been here for 17 years(!), I'm starting to wonder where the red line is that says I'm done. There were times that I've been close to breaking my F2P status and buying a few passes. With this update, I'm glad my finances never worked out to where I could, so the only thing I would be losing is the hours of my life I've spent here. The site as it is now, ESPECIALLY after this update, is NOT a product I want to invest in, even if/when I DO have the funds to splurge a little.

The test server exists for them to find bugs. They'll respond to bug complaints quickly, but it'll take the entire session for them to reconsider prizes like what happened with feliz. They even limited how much we can test by removing the ability to age up divines so we can't test their drop rates anymore. The test server isn't about getting feedback on testing things. Or at least it isn't in my experience. Someone who's been logging on for recent sessions can probably give more updated info because I haven't really bothered since I started university.

The only changes that they make based on player feedback are small changes like changing the final prize or fixing divine designs. E.g. they accidentally added a special 5th element as a final event prize a few times and tried to remove it from the prizelist. We gave them backlash, so they added it back. Or how the designers didn't know horse anatomy, so we just ended up with divines who were missing legs, ears and tails. They fixed that before it went live. They will also change something if we call it offensive, like how they renamed Otaku to Anime even though they fought us outright for that entire session because they couldn't see why it was offensive. Or they'll let us vote for something if we really hate it. Like getting feliz instead of the useless horse or switching the zonkey colors from oversaturated droppings brown to what it is now. That's the only kind of changes I've seen implemented based on feedback. Besides bug fixes. As I said, they're fairly proficient in the bugs department.

But as for big changes... if they decide that that's the direction that the game is going, then our feedback doesn't matter. They'll implement it no matter what. The tax? "This game is outdated and it will be updated whether you like it or not". I think that was an admin's response to all the negativity when it went live? The trophy update? Testers urged them to reconsider... "you have time to improve it before it goes live..." and they still threw it out and ruined our trophies. If they decide that they want a certain feature in the game, then it's going to be added no matter how much we hate it. I think both ephemerals and ascent falls under here given how they just announced it...

Also, another thing to note is that our feedback gets censored. Take the 2nd edition of the forgotten country. The test forum unanimously said "you ruined it and turned it into a cash grab". The admin said that she knew how passionate the developers were (she knew them in person) and refused to tell them that we saw it as a cash grab. So I'm not sure whether the developers understand just how much we hate certain changes because I don't know how much of it was downplayed or if any of it was at all. There are different admins now and I haven't really bothered with testing since I started university, so what I've experienced the test server to be could be outdated now. Maybe they added the ability to age divines back... regardless, I probably won't check now that university is starting up again.

Maybe all the 1 star votes will do something...?

And just for those who's going to argue about the tax: yes, they decided to take a percentage of our income and use it to fill a piggy bank meter or something to unlock equus BMI sales. But I'm going to keep calling it tax because I couldn't care less about those sales. I never use them and yet I still need to overprice my horses just to get the profit I'm looking for... I'm sure there are times when I miss the sales completely too because I'll login one morning and then again at the end of the next day. But I don't care about that because I don't use them anyway.

I'm not even a fan of Ascent and even I'm disappointed they're nerfing it. "Permanent gamemode" and all. Mostly cause I can see what a huge ripoff this was to players who paid money for the Divines that give Ascent tokens. It doesn't *seem* like the entire downtime will be enough to cap it with the Divine drops if you only have a single one, but someone who paid for 10 copies of the Divines in order to keep in tokens (the way they were advertised at the time of release!!!) will absolutely be getting short-changed by this.

I mean, free players are also getting shafted cause the new setup will make it impossible to get the featured Divine free in the allotted time, we're losing however many free daily tokens per downtime, etc. etc. but mostly I feel for the people who poured money into this and are now getting left high and dry.

Also the Ephemeral thing should have had prizes for everyone instead of just the top 5 players. Could be similar to the battle/GC where there's top 5 prizes but also everyone can at least get something for playing. "Breed 10 Ephemerals and win 12 age points, Enter 50 competitions with your Ephemerals and win 100 carrots, BLUP 15 Ephemerals and win Artemis' Arrow) that kind of thing. I'm sure people would still complain about it being too time-consuming, but at least there'd be incentive to play. As it is, I have no interest in wasting a bunch of time in order to compete for 5 prize slots that'll be worth less than the time and money needed to obtain them.

I don’t know the drop rate of obol or drachma dropping divines but when they come back Im probably only getting one of each.

@Crookedstar, there are prizes for everyone, exactly like in the great challenge. The leader board is an addendum, something extra.

That said, the fact that you need real money puts me off them.

Oh, I didn't know that part, I thought it was only the top 5 players who got anything and the rest of the players get a "Heritage horse" which is literally just an immortal Appaloosa.

But yeah, if it's strictly pay-to-enter I'm not bothering.

The Ascent daily obol is literally the only reason I try to log in every day, then I usually get pulled in by other events/my divines/promos and play for a little bit after that. With this Ascent "downtime" I'm worried that I'm going to forget about Howrse all together! Not a very smart move to get rid of a daily log in incentive for a game that already has fewer and fewer players...

I enjoy the Ascent myself as it's given me the chance to get a number of divine horses that I didn't have before. I'm working my backside off to get the female Greyfell before it disappears and I'm almost halfway there.

I did test, hate the new change. It will be another game and prizes for the "top" players only. New players will not have a chance since this is yet another pay to play. I do understand that Howrse needs to make money. The endless events and divine sales shows how desperate they are. I will not be participating in this new event and eve am questioning on still playing this game. I've been here a LONG time and have seen a lot of change some good and a lot bad. I just wish the Devs would fix the original game or improve it. Like for instance make a Grand Prix for donkeys and drafts. Or allowing crossbred teams. Fix some of the horses stats. For instance Quarter Horses should be good for Reining (it's even in your Obstacle question in the current event) Sorry Lippizaners but that horse is more of a Dressage horse. Nut I'm sure this won't happen. However to improve the prix competition to be more inclusive, each comp should have 2 breeds that can excel at it. Again sure this won't happen. So as usual more players will feel that Howrse isn't listening and will leave and soon this game will die

I genuinely do not see the need for the changes to the bar. It's now messy and doesn't match up with the rest of the layout. The back button is a standard feature of all browsers, so I don't see how it's an improvement.

I had to do multiple computer changes just to get the page to line up in the center of the page. Before the page shifted to the right and cut off a part of the page.

I have it centered now but everything is a lot smaller.

This has been a game all about collecting divines since the failed board game. I cannot remember a time on this game that did not include promotions except for the two day break we get when one ends while the next one is queued up. They didn't care then, they don't care now because there's always someone who is willing to pay for a divine.

From the change log -

"These breaks will help clearly define the end of each season and allow for better preparation for the next.
During this time:

your Obols and Drachmas will, of course, remain unaffected,
your Hero horses will continue producing them as long as your storage is not full."

How are we supposed to prepare when you are taking away our daily obols during the breaks? All this does is both leave us out of practice and out of resources. I'd understand the logic if it was just a break, but that's a full inventory worth that we will be losing every break. I don't mind the break as much now that I've had time to think about it, but I do mind the loss of all those obols.

Yes, we could get cheap divines with saving them, but in exchange you had several hours of my time every session. Several hours I spent on your game and spending passes to finish it. I'm just not sure if I could part with an extra 600 passes every session if the time required was going to stay the same.

There were concerns of the obols going to waste due to only being able to collect up to 15 days' worth during the break... I see that was "fixed" by taking away the ability to gain any obols AT ALL during the break. Good news for if you have those divines: you'll be one of the few people to continue to receive obols during the mandatory 30 day break! If you don't have those divines: you're out of luck.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: this feels like a ploy to get rid of the ascent as a whole. We did NOT ask for any changes to be made, and yet here is a major change that actually prevents us from playing it. This will kindle resentment towards the ascent's change and I bet 10 to nothing that the Owlient team is banking on this resentment to justify removing the ascent as a whole. After all, what's this break if not dipping their feet in the water to test their cash flow once the ascent is gone?

Not to beat a dead horse, but: you guys need to start actually listening to your players. Many of us have continuously vocalized that we don't want any of these changes, I'm sure these changes were also received poorly in testing. Why are you forcing these HUGE changes on us when we continue to say "NO"? All you're doing is building resentment from the players to you and it WILL make people stop paying for the site or even leave the site as a whole.

Put the "Piggy bank" back in place! Now it is inconveniently located and hardly anyone will remember about it.

Yes I wholeheartedly agree. When I saw your post I had already forgotten where its moved to and had to go back to the changelog. Unlike some players I really appreciate the piggy bank and check regularly to see whats coming.

I didn't even know there were divines that give the obols out! Which divines are those?

The break should only be 2 weeks even for those that were able to buy those divines. I figure out the ascent by Artemis round. I came back from hiatus end of hestias round. Looks like i will get Apollo. I have 600 i think for Apollo. If the ascent becomes too hard i don't think people will play. I got a few free divines from it. I used passes from objectives to get most of them.

Nope. New ascent is garbage. I didn't even hardly play it because the win rate is already terrible, but the three-week 'break' idea is awful. Yall really just after all the disposable income aren't you? Well enjoy going down in flames then since the last few money grab changes have not gone over well

this has been the case since time immemorial.. which is why I no longer do the preprods..

Hello! I'm sure this is just a bug, but I noticed an issue with the mobile version of Howrse after the most recent update. The top part on the five main pages is blank, ie not showing Ascent of Olympus, etc. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could let me know if that is a bug or intentional for this update. Thank you in advance