Official Friesian Club thread

Hello, all!

This is the forum thread for the Friesian Breed Club.

I'm looking for input on what any of our members might want to see in terms of our club going forward!

I currently have the registration requirements set quite low; any Friesian with 100 stats can be registered. I want all Friesian breeders to feel welcome in the club, regardless of their goals or how long they've been playing. That said, would people prefer the requirements be raised slightly?

Costs associated with the club are also currently quite low; it costs 1000EVD to join as a one-time fee, and 100EVD to register a horse. This may change, but for now I would like to encourage members to register their Friesians! The registration process now is MUCH easier than it used to be, so if you put it off before, it's much faster now! The registry will also automatically accept your registration of any horse that meets our requirements, so no waiting for them to be accepted!

For our club, I have currently unlocked the Registry and the Newsletter features. I haven't yet unlocked the Credit Vault or the Item Vault, but if players think they would be useful features, I can do so!

I have Rising Dawn listed as an admin. I'm not currently looking for any additional admins, but if that changes I will let you all know. If you have any issues with or within the club, please let one of us know.

Contests!

The official contest features of the clubs aren't yet completed, but for now I'd like to run a couple of contests the old fashioned way.

First: we need a club badge! Rather than the cards we used to have, the clubs now have badges to identify them. These images need to be 100x50 pixels. I'd like something that has "Friesian Club" text and hopefully an image of a Friesian, if possible for the small space. I am not at all gifted when it comes to image making, but I'm sure we have some members with the skills for it! (If not, I may look to commissioning one elsewhere, but I'd much rather have one of our club members make it!)

The winner is Sabriel! So sorry for the late announcement; this last week has been real-life hectic.

Second: mascot contest! If you would like to nominate one of your horses, please post a link to the horse here, maybe along with a blurb about why you think they'd be a good mascot! Maximum of two nominations per member. You must be a member of the Friesian club, and the horses must be registered with the club to be eligible.

The winner is Wiki with her lovely horse Kim Possible!

I think for future mascot contests, I will select winners on the 15th of each month, or as near to it as I can manage.

Future Plans!

I may do some kind of a "raise a _____" contest. Raise-a-foundations are the most popular, but now that a single contest can run for as long as there's interest, rather than being limited to one-month terms, we could do something longer-term. I was thinking perhaps a two-stage contest; one to raise a foundation mare and stallion, and to see who can get the best stats and/or most successful showers by retirement, and a second stage to see which pair produces the best foal. That could also be continued on to which of those second-gen foals grows up into the best adult.

I'd like to introduce the club's own kind of "achievement" system. I know that we as breeders have various goals, so there could be at least two achievement tracks; one for stats, and one for conformation. I'd like to have a list somewhere on the club page of the breeders who have met each of these goals. The lowest stat goals could be something like 500 stats, and the lowest conformation could be 60 or so, and go up from there. There'd also be prizes for reaching said goals, starting fairly low, but more exciting at the more difficult levels.

I'd also like to put together a breeder directory for active Friesian breeders, split up by discipline and other breeding goals. This could help our members find other players with similar goals.

What else would you like to see?

Any suggestions on what you'd like to see from the club? Please share.

Also, please feel free to introduce yourself on this thread, if you'd like. I don't know that we all know each other!

Last edited on 2017-08-24 at 21:01:02 by «» Only the Wind

Sounds like fun :D 

I would like to nominate Kim Possible for club mascot. I am terrible at blurbs, but she is one of my highest stated Fries right now with 1347 stats and thats all I got XD told you, I am terrible at blurbs XD 

I would also be interested in the raising contests of any kinds :D

Suggestion:
If you want, I think it would be cool to see something like the sticker sheets/bingo card things I want to implement for the Teke club here.

The sticker sheet thing could be fun, if I could get someone to do the graphics for it. :P Sadly, my graphic design skills are less than zero, haha. That would likely in part replace the achievement system that I was considering, though a lot of the same goals would be in place, and players who had met the specific goals could still be displayed on the club page. The sticker sheet would just give them something more personal to display. I like it!

And she is lovely! :D I'll probably close the mascot contest in a few more days.

Yeah I got to find someone to do the graphics for me too XD I like the achievement idea that you have too, if it ends up not being a possibility for the sticker sheet :D

The achievement thing might be my first goal; if later on down the line the sticker sheet thing seems doable (finding an artist, getting enough interest in the club, etc.) then it could always be added. I like it as a more personal display of having done well, where the achievement levels are more for the club to display.

I don't entirely know what's being planned, but I saw stickers mentioned and I'm into that idea. :D

I would need someone with the skills to create the stickers/sticker sheets, but I do think it would be a fun thing to do!

Hello Fellow club-lovers, 
I LOVE the idea of achievements/sticker sheets. I actually have some of a plan out for the SPC with achievements and badges with prizes for people that pass certain goals, some categories being color, stats, conformation, earnings, points and pedigree. Are there any other interesting areas that might be something fun for people to track that you can think of? maybe foal's birth stats, or inborn stats? 
I don't actually have Friesians on this account, they're the old Haflinger line on my Spare, but I love them just the same and they're some of my best lined animals. But I do adhere to the ONE COLOR ONLY philosophy, those Chestnuts are better off somewhere else ;]

And because I finally got my computer back, I played with PS a bit last night and made a tiny Friesian banner, that matches somewhat the current layout if you want it. It looks more Araby than Friesian-y unfortunately because apparently Arab is my default setting, but you can keep your contest open and still have a banner if you want xD 

http://i.imgur.com/6Am7wJT.png

Birth stats could be a nice category to include. That's always something I get excited over, when I have foals born at certain levels.
Maybe a subcategory in the stats achievements for dominant stats vs. non-specialty stats? (Something like "horse has x total stats, with all non-discipline stats in the single digits" or the like?)
Having a horse with a certain number of generations from your own lines?
I'm glad the achievement idea is a well-liked one! I will start trying to formalize at least a beginning list of achievements. :) Then it can be morphed into the sticker sheet idea when I figure out a way for that to be implemented. The achievement idea is also nice, in my opinion, because more can always be added, whether in new categories, or higher levels of current categories.

I love my pretty chestnut Friesians, but it's fair to prefer the classic black. ;) I love 'em all!

And I LOVE the club badge, and that it matches the layout. I don't think it looks too Arab-y. I'll keep the contest open for a little while longer in case there are any other entrants, but it'll likely close soon.

Depending on what the stickers need to be, I would be willing to volunteer to help make them.

Thank you, River! I don't think that the stickers would be *too* complicated. Basically I think they'd just be little badge/icons (fairly small and simple, maybe 100x100 in size? or 75x75?) that would be awarded for reaching specific goals. I haven't formally defined what those goals will be, or how many "levels" of each will be considered achievements; I'll try and get that done in the next week or so.

While I think it would be fun if these could be displayed on a "sticker sheet" of sorts, so you could fill in the spot on the sheet with each sticker as you earn it, I'm afraid that would be too complicated. It would require coding it to display properly, which I am also not especially good at, and may or may not work well with various players' layouts, so the "stickers" might just be awarded individually, with it up to the players how they would like to display them.

At least my initial thought - though subject to alterations based on input - is that each category (for example, stats), will have multiple levels to it (have a horse reach 500 stats, 1000 stats, 1500 stats, etc), and there would be a sticker for each of those levels. I'd like the stickers for each category to go together (not necessarily the same image, but maybe thematically related, with higher levels being slightly more complex?).

Also just depends on what you think is doable.

And of course I would pay you for the work. :)

That sounds pretty doable, I like the sound of the sets (and I think I could do something to give them a sticker-like look too, like with shine or texture or something). It could be possible to code something to display them in as a set, but that would only work for deluxe members like you said. I suppose it could be all image-based to make it more fair all around, like have a sticker sheet image and add the individual stickers on top. It could be a bit trickier in a way, but it would also make for fewer image files.

Awesome! I like the idea of a sticker "look" to them - that's perfect!

I thought of the image-based approach (full "sheet" images with the stickers added on top), but I was afraid there'd be too many possible combinations, since each player could be at different levels for each category, which makes for exponential combinations.
Although, maybe each individual category would be doable as its own image - a "sheet" or "strip" for each type of achievement, and then the sticker image overlaying that to show the highest level they've reached. It's kind of a blend of the two, but would simplify the number of images while not having the range of possible combinations that the full sheet image would. [Also, the category sheets could be theoretically easily displayed next to each other to create the look of a full sheet.] I actually really like this idea, I think, if it sounds doable.

My tentative thought was to decide on five categories and have each category have five levels, so 25 total 'stickers'. Does that sound reasonable to you, or should I pare it down a bit?

That could very well work, doing strips instead, cause that allows it to stay image based (and friendly to both deluxe and basic accounts) but prevents us from needing tens of images. That should do nicely.

I think 25 sounds good, since they will be in categories where the design will be roughly the same within each category.

Fantastic!

Later this week I'll try to nail down exactly what those categories and their respective levels will be. Definitely total stats and conformation will be two of the categories, but I haven't decided firmly on the other three. (Show earnings? Birth stats? Number of show placings? Number of generations? I'll see if I can get any further input from club members.)

Have any ideas for what types of images you'd like to use for the stickers? I haven't thought of much... I would kind of like at least one of the categories of images to have a Friesian-type horse as the image/theme if possible, but most of the designs could be far simpler. Maybe something like crowns for conformation? I'm very open to suggestions. They don't have to be super directly related to the literal category, so if you wanted to do... like, a celestial theme for one of the categories, I'd be happy with that. Whatever strikes your fancy, really.