*New disciplines [discussion]

Every now and then we get suggestions for various different new disciplines to be added to Equiverse. These generally all get voted down for the same reason: the horse economy can't handle horse populations being split like this, as that would greatly reduce the amount of similar horses available for a horse in any particular discipline, be it for breeding or competition.

I would like to see how people feel about an alternative solution: that a new discipline that's added would use stats that are also being used for an existing discipline. For example, say we added the discipline 'English', and assigned this the stats Agility and Intelligence, which is the same stats as Dressage. This would mean breeding populations wouldn't be split any more than they currently are, but disciplines aren't quite as 'unique'.


There are several implications to consider with this: breeding, showing, tack, maybe others?

For breeding: you don't have to limit yourself to breeding to horses in your horse's discipline, as any of those with the right discipline-specific stats will also produce quality foals, which should expand the horse market. You currently get a small stat bonus when breeding horses of the same discipline, but the difference is very small (1-5% in most cases), so this would be a small encouragement to breed within your discipline, without offering any real penalty if you decided to look outside of it.

For showing: you would have less competition in some disciplines. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. Riding schools would still offer viable alternatives, where necessary. You could also enter your horse in competitions that require the same discipline-specific stats, but you'd just lose the discipline bonus you get when your horse is in the right shows for its discipline. E.g. an English horse could compete in Dressage and vice versa. I'm not sure how much of a penalty would exist for this though, or if they'd still do reasonably well.

For tack: new disciplines would need their own tack set, which would mean more art, items, etc. However, since it would have the same stat bonus as tack for some other disciplines, then you could theoretically use the tack from those without any penalty. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Doesn't matter?

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So what are your thoughts on this?
- What are the pros and cons?
- What are some problems that may arise, and how could they be solved?
- Would this be enough to resolve the horse economy issues that could come with new disciplines?
- Would you rather not lose the uniqueness of disciplines as they are now?
- Would this offer more variety, or just unnecessary complexity?
- What new disciplines could be added if we went with this structure?

As a side note, a list of all our current disciplines and their required stats can be found here.

Last edited on 2018-02-13 at 16:53:24 by River

I quite like your take on this, regarding how the stats would be handled. I'd love to be able to have more uniqueness in my herd, and this seems like a nice compromise so that the economy doesn't get even worse (hopefully). I'm interested to see others' thoughts on this.

I don't support adding more "vague" and unspecific disciplines.

I would like to see some more disciplines, but agree with what Olympia said, I

I would like to see more western disciplines

Last edited on 2018-02-12 at 08:51:41 by ?????

I like this idea a lot. New specialties would add more variety.

I think it'd be really neat if we had a western counterpart for each english discipline (that would require the same stats).

Last edited on 2018-02-17 at 06:24:51 by insomniaglet

^ I personally love that idea, Aglet!

I like aglets idea a lot, especially if it means horses could compete in either (although I believe endurance can be ridden in whatever so it's technically neither? I'm not too sure about that)

I'm personally against adding more disciplines that could make showing even less competitive. I get that for dressage, but my horses are all endurance, which is the 2nd least popular discipline on the game. I can't show my national 5 and sometimes 4 horses because there aren't enough other horses/I play at a different time and don't want to enter shows with 0 other entries.

To be honest, I like this idea a lot. I think Cross country could be SPD/AGI because they really have to work for it. Or, it could be SPD/END. I'm not to sure :)

Cross country isn't a discipline, it's part of eventing. Unless you are considering xc racing (which is national hunt/point to point)

I'd like to propose polo instead of xc, as I feel like polo required speed and intelligence, if we're following Aglet's rough guide

True, cross country isn't a discipline.

I love polo, and I would definitely agree with you. Or speed and agility?

Will different disciplines have separate shows? If so, I would propose being able to make more than 200 shows at a time to accommodate all the extra disciplines.

Ah, i didn't think of that Oops. I could be entering a lot of shows...

I was just thinking that they should add like Reining, sorting, roping, penning, Competitive trail, maybe even Halter. Give a little more variety, especially in the Western.