How to make competitions more popular

[Nate]

For me, recently, its been a matter of economics. Local shows are SO lucrative, granting money, pony tokens, and days. You can only get money from shows and its not as reliable as local shows. So while I used to train and show 14 or more horses, I won't be training more after my current batch moves out of the barns.

If player shows granted days, tokens, and/or special items, and were fixed so that there was a more steady progression of skill through the levels, I would be far more inclined to continue training and showing. As it stands now though, I want those pony tokens!!

[ledger2]

The local shows are great for steady money and pony tokens.You should look at them as your training yard they are very accurate.If you have a horse winning at level 5 then losing at level 6.then level 5 is what the horse is.But if you have a horse breaking records at level ten in the locals ,then it will do the same out there in the real races.A Agree there are to many out there not giving value for money with your entrance fee and your better of running the local races.The site itself should not allow them to make races.like 10000 to enter for 750 quid prize.There should be a minimum rate like 12time your stake.eg 50quid to enter £600 prize money after all its got to be split 4ways.But a do get why players do it.when its coming out your own pocket,and there are players out there that give you real great prize money for your entrance fee.Me personally came here to race horses and have found that the site has been great fun.You got to work real hard at the begining to get started.and the locals are realy accurate for times.so you do know what level to race your horses at.If you have a star in your yard ,the locals will tell you that..A think we need the site to make competions to aim for like the triple crown,Cheltnam festival for the jumpers and so on.Does not need big money for prizes.Just somthing to aim for.Having a derdy winner would be a big thrill and something to shoot for.But a dont have any gripes about the site i am a free player and have found it very enjoyable to play.May be they could use pony tokens as the big prize for winning these races.

[Kintara]

Are there game generated shows, all are all the shows player generated? I must admit half the reason I don't show is that there isn't usually a show for me to enter with my low level horses! Well not in the competitions I seem to be interested in anyway

[MysticSinZ]

I read it and totally agree with it! I am currently up to 3 shows to host and Level 7 and working toward hosting more and higher levels. I run all 3 but can not do concurrent due to not having a premium account.
Downfall
5th place not winning any earnings
The competitions state that the top 5 horses win the purse, but only 4 horses win the money. None of my horses that place 5th have earned anything.
Oh and great work Totina and Larissa I know you got your hands full but keep the improvements coming.
Love the game MysticSinZ

[Tjigra]

I recently started to actively show my horses at last, and I started to think that right now getting the titles feels a bit anti-climactic, you might say. You win some shows, lose some shows, get a message saying you got the title, win some more, lose some more, get a message etc. And if it's not the first title of the kind for the horse, nothing even changes (the first at least gives a ribbon or changes the colour of the ribbon).
If there were some additional prizes tossed in for getting the titles (like pony tokens or something), that would be an additional motivation to work on those few extra + signs at your horse's name

[Bitapetrone]

I really like the idea of making competitions more appealing by adding additional rewards, but I see a problem implementing this with the current state of the show system.

I generally have about 12-25ish fully trained competition horses on my ranch at any given time. I also like to get an idea of how my broodmares compete (untrained) so I know which ones are worth keeping around. I've got about 18 broodmares right now, which is a bit low for me. I love that I can use local shows to get an idea of their aptitude for competing, but it can be a bit of a trial to check the scores of each individual by running through a series of local shows. So what do I do? I make several Working Ranch competitions and enter all the horses I want to analyze into them. I can get a pretty good idea of what each horse is capable of score-wise without having to compete in multiple local shows with each individual. I love that I can do this for testing, but it raises some concerns if we implement more rewards and additional leaderboards. There's nothing to stop players from abusing this system to get to the top of the leaderboards or acquire a ton of items.

If we want a system like this, I think the competitions that award these extra bits would need to be hosted by the server. That's the only way I can see the system functioning. Have two separate leagues: player hosted competitions and the more serious server hosted competitions. This completely removes the ability for people to cheese to the top of the leaderboards by spamming competitions and only entering with their own horses, creating competitions with ridiculous prize earnings to instantly amp their horse to the top of the earnings board, etc, etc.

I'd also really like to see an additional section added to the leader boards. I go look at the current leader boards (world records aside), I don't necessarily see the horses with the best performance, I see the horses that have been floating around long enough to acquire a metric ton of points, wins and earnings. I'm not saying that all of these horses don't deserve to be on the board, but I think that an additional section based on score would benefit competitors and breeders alike. I don't think the points are a bad thing as they have the potential to show consistency of performance, but alone I don't think that they're a good representation of the skill of a horse. For example, say I'm a breeder looking to find Working Ranch stallion for stud (I'm using Working Ranch as an example because it's what I have experience competing in). I have no connections, and I'm not sure who breeds what. Well, I want a stallion that competes well, so I head over to the horse rankings, load up Working Ranch and take a look at who has the most points/wins/earnings, etc. This will undoubtedly lead me to some good horses. Make no mistake, many of the horses on this list are quite good. However, what if someone moves through their turns quickly? Their horses won't be on this board. Their horses don't stay around long enough to realistically acquire the points/earnings/wins the horses on these boards have. Their horses might even be better performers, maybe they can pull scores significantly higher than the horses on the leader boards. I would love to have a section that shows the currently active horses with the highest scores in addition to the other rankings. And yes, I know that one can head over to the world records section and see horses that have pulled the highest score in each discipline, but that still cuts out other horses who can get close. The horse on the top of the world record board could be long dead, so that isn't much help to breeders. This is why I think an additional section regarding score should be recorded. This parameter would not punish or reward players for keeping horses around for a long time or taking turns quickly with their ranch. It also wouldn't benefit people who move horses to a second account strictly for the purpose of climbing the boards (To each their own. If people wanna do this it's fine with me). A horse can either pull a score or it can't pull a score. There is no cooking this statistic. It also saves people the time of having to poke through all the competition results looking for the horses with the highest scores.

I do have some ideas on the levels system regarding the implementation of score into deciding the level of a horse, but I need to spend some time really thinking about how best to handle some of the issues that would arise before I go blabbering.

[Farant]

Actually, I read it all.
Bitapetrone, nice arguments, I agree.
Something like server-side competition would be perfect. But it's really complicated.

[Jessi2]

One thing for me is that I'm pretty new here and I'm really glad for any shows because they have really helped bring in the money so that I have more to spend on courses and such. It's small money compared to the players with great champions but I'm gaining and improving. I do not enter the ones that cost more than the purse. I'm going for the money right now.

[stephanie111]

I agree with what is being said, with the reliability of local shows, it seems like a smart way to judge your horse's potential. The risk of competitions are what I can't do. If small rewards are added to the competitions, it could help by making them more appealing. Right now, it's the pony tokens and extra days that keep me spamming those local shows!