Competition Update is Live!

[Tom]

I have some thoughts about this update.

First, I agree with it in principle that you shouldn't be able to just enter as many competitions in one day like you could in the past. The issue I have with it though, is because of the way the feeding / temperament system works, if you want your horse to be in top form, you have to do multiple turns before you can enter him/her again.

For example: The sweet spot for a race horse is one turn before it becomes high strung. This is only true if you are feeding 30 hay / 70 performance mix which is the smallest amount of sugar you can feed a horse without having his temperament go down. There is no feeding scenario in which the horse's temperament stays the same. It either goes up or down. It's never static.

Therefore, after I've entered my max races, I then have to sleep which means my horse either becomes high strung if he's on 30/70, or it goes down if he's on 35/65. (Pasture feeding is even worse because of weight issues). In order to get him back to his ideal temperament, it will require at least two turns. For me, in order to get to the sweet spot, I have to go down in temperament for two turns, then back up for two turns, which puts the horse back in to one turn before high strung. (IE the sweet spot for racing). That means 3 turns before I can race him again, not just 1.

This .. is not ideal because it ages the horse much much faster (and not just him, but any other horses in the stable).

I do not think the competition system as it now stands needs reworking at all. I am quite happy with it. What needs reworking (and this is something I said a few years ago) the feeding /temperament system does.

The feeding system is just kind of broken. A possibly fairly simple change might make it work. (I say possibly because obviously I don't know how your code works) Instead of a drop down where we have to choose a value, allow us to enter a value instead. So instead of having to feed either 30% hay or 35% hay, I could enter 32% instead, thus enabling me to find a feeding ratio that keeps my horse at an even keel temperament wise..

This would be totally awesome. I spend so much time going up and down and up and down in temperament when I'm testing my young horses that by the time I actually know how well they can perform, they are years older than they would be if I could just find that sweet spot/feed and test from there. It's so much more work than it needs to be that I get tired and burnt out and stop playing for months at a time. (Which means I'm not buying any pony tokens!) If this issue was eliminated, I would be so much more willing to play. Please take the tedium out of my world!

We do have plans to address the feeding system. Much of the game has to be adjusted as we try to make it as good as it can be!

[Jewels Training]

Yay! That's awesome news!

[BlackOak2]

May be LOADS easier and much more simple if we could choose a temperament to maintain and the feeding system maintains it for us, instead of using the feeding system and battling with temperament. I would assume to pay extra for this though. For competition stables, paying a set PT would be fine with me. But I don't know if I'd like that for each horse (like one PT a turn, per horse that sits on the temperament management system) or for every horse (like a one-time purchase, or limited-time purchase before having to upgrade to it again).

And I also agree, battling with temperament can be heartbreaking from time to time, especially when you want to eck out that last little bit to break those records.

[Tom]

May be LOADS easier and much more simple if we could choose a temperament to maintain and the feeding system maintains it for us, instead of using the feeding system and battling with temperament. I would assume to pay extra for this though. For competition stables, paying a set PT would be fine with me. But I don't know if I'd like that for each horse (like one PT a turn, per horse that sits on the temperament management system) or for every horse (like a one-time purchase, or limited-time purchase before having to upgrade to it again).

And I also agree, battling with temperament can be heartbreaking from time to time, especially when you want to eck out that last little bit to break those records.

We can't make the game too easy! There has to be some challenge to it to keep things interesting. We will try to strike a better balance to make it less tedious if we can.
I don't think you will see features where you can pay to circumvent aspects of the game though. We would like to avoid pay-to-win as much as possible.

[BlackOak2]

May be LOADS easier and much more simple if we could choose a temperament to maintain and the feeding system maintains it for us, instead of using the feeding system and battling with temperament. I would assume to pay extra for this though. For competition stables, paying a set PT would be fine with me. But I don't know if I'd like that for each horse (like one PT a turn, per horse that sits on the temperament management system) or for every horse (like a one-time purchase, or limited-time purchase before having to upgrade to it again).

And I also agree, battling with temperament can be heartbreaking from time to time, especially when you want to eck out that last little bit to break those records.

We can't make the game too easy! There has to be some challenge to it to keep things interesting. We will try to strike a better balance to make it less tedious if we can.
I don't think you will see features where you can pay to circumvent aspects of the game though. We would like to avoid pay-to-win as much as possible.

Didn't think of it as a PTW, but I can see where it might be.

It may be easiest to help us strike a better balance as Jewels Training mentioned. Being able to choose percentages between the 5 spots. We can breed for temperament adjustments. I still remember one horse I had that would move between temperaments only after almost a year on the food (straight corn or grass). But many of our horses are the single-turn types.

Perhaps just knowing what turn-type temperament could make a big difference.

Hmmm.... the options ... ?

[Tom]

We can't make the game too easy! There has to be some challenge to it to keep things interesting. We will try to strike a better balance to make it less tedious if we can.
I don't think you will see features where you can pay to circumvent aspects of the game though. We would like to avoid pay-to-win as much as possible.

Didn't think of it as a PTW, but I can see where it might be.

It may be easiest to help us strike a better balance as Jewels Training mentioned. Being able to choose percentages between the 5 spots. We can breed for temperament adjustments. I still remember one horse I had that would move between temperaments only after almost a year on the food (straight corn or grass). But many of our horses are the single-turn types.

Perhaps just knowing what turn-type temperament could make a big difference.

Hmmm.... the options ... ?

Larissa and I were discussing this early this morning. The short term plan is to make it so the drop down lets you pick 1% increments and see how that works out. There will be more changes in the future but this should hopefully help for now.

[BlackOak2]

Didn't think of it as a PTW, but I can see where it might be.

It may be easiest to help us strike a better balance as Jewels Training mentioned. Being able to choose percentages between the 5 spots. We can breed for temperament adjustments. I still remember one horse I had that would move between temperaments only after almost a year on the food (straight corn or grass). But many of our horses are the single-turn types.

Perhaps just knowing what turn-type temperament could make a big difference.

Hmmm.... the options ... ?

Larissa and I were discussing this early this morning. The short term plan is to make it so the drop down lets you pick 1% increments and see how that works out. There will be more changes in the future but this should hopefully help for now.

I'm sure I and Jewels Training aren't the only ones thankful for this and that we won't be the only ones that'll be giving this a solid attempt.

...

[Jewels Training]

I noticed that you have implemented the 1% dropdown for feeding. Yay!

However, it doesn't seem to be working at all now as I have not been able to change any of my horses' temperaments even if I give them 100% yellow corn. They seem to be frozen wherever they were when the change in the drop down went live.

[Tom]

I noticed that you have implemented the 1% dropdown for feeding. Yay!

However, it doesn't seem to be working at all now as I have not been able to change any of my horses' temperaments even if I give them 100% yellow corn. They seem to be frozen wherever they were when the change in the drop down went live.

The full list of changes is here: viewtopic.php?p=373885&sid=9dfdb34b735b ... da3#373885
Can you link an example of a stuck horse so we can investigate please?

[Silverine]

I noticed that you have implemented the 1% dropdown for feeding. Yay!

However, it doesn't seem to be working at all now as I have not been able to change any of my horses' temperaments even if I give them 100% yellow corn. They seem to be frozen wherever they were when the change in the drop down went live.

Following on from Tom's reply to you - if your horses were born at Calm or Bombproof they will no longer be able to reach High Strung. They need to be born at Even-Tempered or higher to reach High Strung now.