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.