New features

Q: "Howrse, I love your game! Are you planning on shutting it down anytime soon? That would be heartbreaking, Ngl."

A: And we love it too, very much! For now, there is absolutely no plan to shut down Howrse. Quite the opposite, actually... We are very, very, impatient to present you the changes brought to the features we previously launched, but also the new content on which we have been working on for some months now... :OwWink:

We know that some of you are worried about the future of Howrse, and especially the players on our smaller versions. Don't worry, we have no plan in closing any of the versions of the game!
(Answered by the producing team)

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Q: "Are there any plans to bring back a fair and even rotation of divines? There are divines that haven't been brought back in 3+ years, while others are back yearly, or multiple times per year."

A: We are still committed to releasing new divine horses and creating new divine series as it remains one of your favorite elements in the game, as we noticed in the results of the survey we sent a few months back. However, we are not satisfied with the fact that these horses are only interesting because of the rewards they provide and by the current limited availability of older divine horses.

We are currently working on a few things to:
:OwThumbup: Make these horses more interesting and fun.
:OwThumbup: Find ways to make older divines available to purchase more frequently for you to be able to complete your collections.

You will be able to see the beginning of these improvements quite soon, so stay tuned :OwWink:
(Answered by the producing team and the game designers)

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Q: "Will you be more clear regarding the creation space? How does the voting process work?"

A: First, we’d like to remind you that the selection of creations is done manually. We don’t automatically pick creations based on the votes. However, your votes are central in the system. For each category, we always start at the top of the votes, and we then filter some creations based on multiple criteria, which we are happy to detail here.

� Does the creation respect the Black pearl rules (https://howr.se/BlackPearl_Rules)? We check for plagiarism, fan art, unauthorized use of art line, photos and so on.
� Does the creation have unwanted traces, halos or stains that could damage its representation in-game? Kind reminder to our talented creators: please check that your creation is properly cropped and clean. If it isn’t, we won’t select it.
� Does the author already have an entry in this month’s creation space? As most of you probably noticed, we select one entry per player to give a chance to everybody.
� Is there a suspicion that the creation was made by AI? If there is a strong one, we won’t take any risks.
The votes are the first thing that we look out for when selecting creations. If the community placed a creation on top of the votes, we have no reason not to select it. We have a team specialized in detecting plagiarism and compliance with the Black pearl rules.

Once again, the selection process is manual, so mistakes do happen, and your tickets help greatly with fixing that. Don’t hesitate to use our customer support if you see a recent creation breaking the rules!

Lastly, we’ll take this opportunity to inform you that some categories are not as filled as we would like them to be :OwSad: For example, very few players are submitting unicorn donkeys, winged donkeys, winged unicorn donkeys. We also have a shortage of winged draft unicorns, draft pegasus and winged unicorn ponies. We would happily take more of these creations to keep the creation space as diverse as possible!
(Answered by the community developers)

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Q: "You recently sent out a survey to players to get feedback on the game and what the player base would like to see as possible changes or future features. Is there any plan in place to increase transparency regarding this feedback and how these suggestions are being evaluated or addressed?"

A: We understand you are curious about the survey data, and we might work on a new format to share with you some insights and data we collect from them! Surveys are the best way for us to collect your feedback and have a clear view and understanding of your expectations. But this is not the only system we use to know more about your expectations; we are also constantly reading your messages on our social networks, right here on Discord, or on the remaining forums. Once collected, the communication team classifies your comments and passes them on to the appropriate person or team.

We are working way ahead of the events. To give you an example, the game designers' team already knows what they want for Winter and is working on the 2024 events! That is one of the main reasons why you don't necessarily see the changes you request appear immediately in the game. Everything you say is, however, recorded, and the game dev team always tries to implement the relevant features you might request when there is a small place for them in our timeline.
(Answered by the community developers)

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Trophies & collections

A: You had a lot of questions about this precise topic. We have read them all, and instead of picking a couple of questions, we decided to answer them as a whole, to try to cover all your interrogations. We hope our answer will help you understand our intentions and the reason why we are changing these features.

Our initial goal with the Trophies & Collections redesign was to separate gameplay feats, such as winning competitions or completing contests, and the various collections one can pursue in the game. We wanted to prevent you from losing trophies you had already earned. We also wanted to make them more motivating by adding rewards for completing them.

We are still standing by this design; however, it seems like we underestimated your attachment to the visuals attached to each trophy and your ability to share that information on your player sheet.

We heard your feedback and are working to make both things come-back in the game as soon as possible.

We are also working on these topics:

� Increasing the quantity of new trophies that we add to the game related to other features besides contests & divine horses.
� Creating collections for Golden Apples and Helios Rays.
(Answered by the game designers)

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Q: The question was regarding fixing bugs and the rewarded videos, but the fixing bugs portion was a little copy and paste, so I'm just including the bit regarding the videos

A: Regarding the rewarded videos, we are aware of the current limitations of what we offer. Until we find better browser-based alternatives, we've decided to restrict this feature to the mobile app only. It's technically more and more complicated to offer videos on a web platform, so we're finding it difficult to offer something. For the time being, we have no plans to work on this issue.
(Answered by customer support and programmers)

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A few misc. answers regarding user experience and interface (answered by the producing team and game designers)

- Unicorn breeding
A few players expressed frustration over the chance to breed unicorns. We will work on a mechanic to improve these chances.

- QoL / User experience improvements
Many questions regarding the addition of filters in searches, redirections and other "quality-of-life" improvements. We added many of these suggestions to our (already extensive) list of improvements to work on. As for the UI improvements, we have to balance working on these upgrades with working on new content for the game. We will do our best to allow as many improvements as possible to make their way into the game.

- User Interface Improvements
About the questions regarding possible improvements to our website interface: each new design for one of the pages on our site requires a considerable amount of work. This is why we must balance working on interface upgrades with working on new content for the game. We have decided to focus on quick wins for the interface, while dedicating most of our dev team taskforce for new content. For example, if we ever wanted to release a "dark mode" to our site, we don’t plan to work on it in the coming months.

- Black Market Items availability
You’ve asked if we could make some items available for sale in the shop: Some of these items are too advantageous for being on sale constantly. We try to make them available regularly as reward in contests, be ready :OwWink:
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