Discord Q&A

I must agree that things feel redundant. It seems as though the game has moved more towards collecting divines and companion series more so than actually breeding and competing with horses. There’s a new divine or companion released every month but we don’t get very many updates with the actual horses.

I hope the team addresses this and whether we can expect some changes that may bring the “spark” back into breeding regular horses.

Ahhhh yes, this nonesense forum that's clearly just for show.

When are you going to disable fragment popups??? I decided to play the mazes for the first time in years, and I have been getting repeated reminders about why I stopped bothering with your annoying popup ridden events for the last few years and I still can't stand it. I'll be rage quitting your events again soon enough with all these unnecessary pests that plague all you events. Quit treating me like an idiot who can't understand that clicking confirm on objectives or collecting 5 fragments will get me passes/fragments

I'm waiting impatiently for your disable popups button. All those nuisance pests do is ruin my game experience. And quite frankly, they're offensive at this point

I have not and never will download discord.I did check it out and found it difficult and confusing to use. I think it is just lazy and impractical to expect all members to move outside the game to ask questions , get answers, or find out information about this game! Why are you using discord? It seems to me that very few have a positive view!! Why not in game?

yeah, not just encouraging but *REQUIRING* children to download and make an account on an unmodded social media app (we won't get into the security/privacy concerns here) to interact with their kid's game properly is.... a very poor look, and imo dangerous to be forcing on your younger players. howrse doesn't own or control the platform like they do their own site, I don't understand the draw at all, unless it's specifically to remove people asking for answers or voicing criticism that don't use the platform.

if no one has yet, I am begging y'all to please ask them if their future plans involve any ACTUAL interaction with players *on the actual game's website itself* (why else do you still have forums if not!), or if they're gonna continue this nonsense. :|

Gathering fragments for our choice of a gemstone horse: Cute way of making us start all over at 0 to grind for the one we want. I hate it.

Instead: just give us the fragments, and let us choose which horse to use them on. I'm 90% of the way to Jade, and I harshly resent being made to start over, rather than add these fragments to my existing progress.

The flagrant greed and psychological manipulation is disgusting. What happened to games being casual and fun?

What happened to the rounding within the last 10 when we're opening luck items for fragments? A bit back you instituted a rounding system so we didn't have to pay for whatever luck pack just to get a measly few (under 10) fragments at the end of the 1000 so we could get the divine? I just had to open yet another Crown just to get 7 fragments. Not thrilled about it since it was supposed to be rounded up at the point I hit 993. Getting only 18 fragments per opening is bad enough as it is, making divines really expensive at 170passes per 18 fragments, but to then have to spend another 170passes for the final 7 fragments when it's supposed to round up is unfair and infuriating.

@Vtel

It rounds the last 5, not 10.
Also this thread has absolutely nothing to do with your question, it would have belonged into Gameplay or maaaaybe the thread about the Dev's Corner.

Could anyone please paste the Answers to the Q&A for those of us who don't have Discord? Thank you

Hello,

I'm updating the Q&A announcement topic and will also let everyone know in here when it's updated.

Thank you for posting the QnA here on the game! The answers given however, have not left me reassured at all.


The Ascent is my favourite addition to Howrse in over ten years, as well as the addition of fragment meters. Having any progress made towards a divine saved, no matter how small and then in some years time being able to complete it is worth so much for wanting to stay on the game. Not to mention that we were all able to test the Ascent on pre prod before launch, and able to give feedback (although what was implemented was that 50 fragments were too much for the non olympian gods and reduced to 25).

There haven't been any opportunity to give feedback to this change before now, less than a month before it will be implemented. Well, for what it is worth here is my feedback:

Please don't reduce the time able to play the Ascent by half. Since the time needed to create new bosses seems to be one every three months then have that season going for 2 months, then 1 month for the repeat olympian gods, and then on to the next new boss. Even if there are no new boss, I will still play for four divines inbetween. Allmost all of my passes go towards bying obols.


What do you mean by cheaters in this context? Is it only people who pay passes and play enough to earn more than one of each divines in the rotation? Why not have a maximum of 1000 fragments possible for each divine then, if this is the issue? If the goal is to get more people to play the Ascent having pass offering divines sure is an incentive...

Purely speculation, but I believe that you don't want to continue the Ascent. Some people have gotten too good in your eyes, not by "cheating" as you put it but by spending hundreds of hours playing it. So by making the changes too outrageous (which they are, with halving the playing time and getting rid of pass giving divines) then people will stop playing altogether. Then you can truly say that not enough people play and therefore it should be discontinued.

Well if that is the concern I repeat the feedback of only having a maximum of 1000 fragments available. Stop punishing us for playing your game!

I'm seconding that.
The Ascent is by far my favourite thing to do on Howrse. I'd have a lot less incentive to spend time on Howrse if the Ascent was unavailable half the time.

If having the Devs maintain the Ascent is too time consuming compared to how many people actually play it, then there are ways to reduce the amount of effort put into maintaining it, without reducing its availability.
Instead of having four divines on offer for three weeks, you could put twelve divines on offer for nine weeks, reducing the amount of re-coding needed. This would also make it harder for people to target play for certain divines, so that way these "Cheaters" can't farm valuable divines easily.


And I sort of understand not putting pass-giving divines in Ascent, as that just makes it easier for people to farm divines through Ascent in future. But surely you could put divines that give decent BMIs in there? Most rounds we're stuck with divines that drop companions, wanderer's spirits, or even nothing at all. When you put pastries through, you avoid putting the matching pastry in, making them functionally useless. There'd be no harm in giving us divines with more useful drops.


Just, whatever you do, please don't half the Ascent's availability. You advertised it as a permanent gamemode; let it stay a permanent gamemode.

There is a lot to this. I can see the good and bad of most of the updates and most I agree with or have already been answered. So I'll just throw this in until I can think of better responses:


I have wrist issues which can make the repetetive motions of general gameplay, but Ascent is the worst aspect of this. Repeatedly clicking when I already have the 4 optional divines on offer does nothing but interfere with my health as there's no gain for me. If I already have the other 4 divines, then I don't play the Ascent other than occasionally building up the hoard of coins for the next round. Having a break makes sense for me so I don't have to worry about getting hurt from it.

But on that note, can you create an automated option to let us play through the Ascent? If I have to set the path I want, click a button and do that, it is much easier than the multiple clicks I currently have to do even if I don't want to actually progress a round.

I do like the option of going for some of the Greek Gods again as I did manage to miss one the first time through. It also means newer players who have joined since the Ascent was implemented will get a chance to complete their collections if the Greek Gods series is going to stay tied to the Ascent.


Regarding this:
"We want to avoid giving away Divines which give Passes in the Rowgue, it's already very easy for cheaters to get "free" passes, and it's hurting the whole game and thus our ability to maintain it, so we want to avoid digging our own grave (and yours as well). "

This has been an issue for a while, which we've seen implemented with the severe reduction in pass giving divines and appalling drop rates for those divines. One of the divines dropped 9 fragments. NINE FRAGMENTS - I want to say this was maybe Jupiter? There will be no way around this, and this is going to hurt those of us who don't cheat and do just want duplicates of certain divines. This also hurts newer players or those who don't spend money on the game as there is almost no way for them to get these very generous pass dropping divines.

Another thing to consider is maybe not putting trophy divines in the Ascent as those will be obtained for free anyway by playing through the game.

However, on one of the aspects of the game: Do you have plans to add an auto-AP farm mode to the game?

This would be a breeding farm ideally where I can throw some of my daily divines into and let them auto harvest APs, drops, etc. on a daily basis and will free up my time to focus on my actual breeding projects, which always seem to fall to the wayside due to how many divines require daily work these days to get the rewards


Er... Divine horses are "optional" and yet there are trophies dedicated to them seems a bit... there's a word for this and it is completely escaping me at the moment.

The issue with the retired golden apple collection has been pointed out many times since it was added to the game. It is one of the collections that does need to be removed as there is literally no way for anyone to complete that one in full. Changing this to a collectable trophy like the "Put X amount of golden apples" makes more sense and has been repeatedly asked for. And yes, this is again me asking to add this and the Helios Rays to the Trophies side (NOT Collections)

As for the new breeding event, if it is the one discussed, I think for me it will be like the Howrse Cup game. I'll look at it but if the current version is to stand, I have no interest in playing it unless one major change is made to it.

Dropping in here to contribute to the discussion on the Ascent and other comments I've seen!

Re: Ascent Seasons
I don't particularly feel strongly one way or another about this. However, it will greatly reduce play time for players who do regularly play Ascent. It is disappointing to see, but I can definitely understand where the team is coming from on a business standpoint with this change.
I also really like Avre's suggestion on the season change, it's a decent alternative because it would reduce the number of fragments able to be earned through the Ascent.

Re: Ascent Divine Re-Run Season
I am thrilled to see this! I was on a game hiatus for quite some time, and missed many of the Ascent divines, so having another chance to get them is a welcome change.

Re: Cheaters getting "free" passes
This comment / line of thinking is a bit confusing to me, as the specific parameters that are being used to define what a "cheater" is haven't been discussed. If players have paid real money for passes or for the promotional offers in order to collect pass-giving divines, or have used existing game mechanics to earn divines, surely it isn't cheating? I would be curious to hear more about what Howrse defines as a "cheater" when it comes to this topic.
I agree with Hippolyte's point that capping the number of fragments you can earn for pass-giving divines overall may be a good approach to help with mitigating this problem.

Re: Limiting Pass-Giving Divines in Ascent
I totally see where the team is coming from on a business standpoint with this. However, it's disappointing that we may rarely or never see them in the Ascent anymore from a player standpoint, especially for those who regularly play the Ascent.


Oh I would adore having something like this! It would definitely make me want to play the Ascent a lot more. I regularly don't play because it can be quite time-consuming, and I simply don't have enough time in my day to play all of the parts of the game I want to play. An auto-AP function also suggested by nlriver, even if just for VIP members, would also be a fantastic option on the time-crunch front. Though I could definitely see the need for a strict cap on the number of horses per-player that could be added to an auto-AP option.

The game used to mine for aging points automatically as part of the update. That’s how I wound up with 30k after returning from a break.

Love how they're calling "people that actually play our game" "cheaters", since they certainly aren't giving any example of actual cheating going on in the ascent, and I legitimately cannot fathom how someone could "cheat" the game unless they're literally hacking into site to, idk, give them more coins? get better percentages? literally what on earth is that reasoning.

I figure out how to play ascent it still has to do on luck if you don't have all 100 percents. I get the main divine during second round now mostly drachma rounds on my phone. I only have control over choosing first cards on drachma round. I really like the ascent.

The whole point of ascent is to win divines, if players are winning numerous divines per round and Howrse calls them cheaters for doing so then isn’t that completely Howrses fault for giving them the means to be able to do so. They are not cheating they are just playing the game and benefiting from it. If they choose to spend heaps of passes to buy the coins then that isn’t cheating. Most are probably using real money to buy the passes in the first place, so still not cheating. If Howrse is so worried about players winning numerous pass giving divines then limit the number of divines each player can win per round, simple.

Well the main boss is limit to one. I was hoping they would end up putting a perk on them. Artemis arrow, aphrodites tears, hera pack, zeus lightning bolt etc

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but why does every change like this always circle back to players cheating? I understand that there are players that cheat, but I just struggle to believe that it's a big enough problem to require all these limitations. In my near 17 years on the game, never once have I cheated, so why are players like myself going to be limited? I'm always so careful to respect the rules, yet it just feels like I'm just as guilty as those that actually do break them.

I completely agree with the consensus on the Ascent change. I spend hours on that gamemode, it's very fun and Howrse has reiterated several times that it is a permanent addition to the game, so why are you cutting the time in half? Because players actually got good at it? Why are we being punished for participating in an aspect of the game?

If the issue is that Divines are being obtained too easily, which for the record they have barely put any pass giving divines in Ascent to begin with, then I believe the solution is to limit the amount of Divines that can be obtained per cycle to just one, like the Greek Gods. But to completely take it away for three weeks at a time to me is completely absurd, and will directly affect how much time I spend on the site, as I'm sure it will for others as well.

I agree with what other have said about Divine rereuns, many of us would be delighted to get previous Greek Gods back as several of us joined later and did not have the opportunity to get them, so I don't see why we can't keep the regular season runtime with the old Gods? Or even cycle through them, you could do two seasons of old Gods then one season of a new god, meaning that only 3 new Greek Gods would be introduced in 2026, greatly reducing art costs.

Whatever you do, please don't reduce the playtime on Ascent. Personally it's one of my favorite features of the game and many other players have dedicated both time and money into this gamemode.

Couldn't agree more with what others have already said. AoA reinvigorated the game for me. I'm not sure I'd still be playing if it wasn't here. It's extremely unfair that you promised this was permanent, so players like me invested a lot of time, energy, and passes into getting good—and now you're dramatically cutting down what we can get from all our hard work learning the strategy of the game. AoA is most of what I spend my passes on. Guess now I'll just save them until I have enough to get a free pass giving divine in the weekend offers. Please just listen to your players. Like you did with the divine prize for the Christmas event, please actually care about player feedback