*Create show levels higher than I5

At the moment Andalusians are being born with 8000+ stats, Quarters are at the 5300+ stats level and Trakehners and TBs are probably not too far behind.
We need higher show levels being created to prevent 5000+ stat horses having to compete against 8000+ stat horses because it's obvious that they stand no chance and the stat disparity is only going to get greater with time. Soon horses levelling up to 5000 stats will be only schooled while shows will be occupied only by the highest level horses: first 8000 then 9000 then 10000....

Last edited on 2020-12-15 at 11:33:49 by River

Totally agree. The 400 stat brackets are a total slog. I think minis are encroaching the 5-6k stat mark as well in driving.

While I agree with having more levels- what would you call them? Or extend 5 levels to 10 maybe?

Also I don’t think there’s supposed to be such high stats right now, I recently reported a bug where foals were being born with higher stats than the parents- which shouldn’t be happening. So seems people have been taking advantage of that currently. 

I would call them International 6,7,8 and so on.

Horses are gaining stats according to the game plan, meaning that every next generation at retiring age, ends up with horses having higher stats that their parents at this age. 

I haven't experienced the bug, which you had mentioned.

The only issue with making more in that fashion (linear) is that it will spread everyone out. I mean if you're one of the two people showing, is there really a point to it?

I would be partial to either showing being rescaled (what is weighted for scores) vs prizes earned (stats) so you could stay in the brackets longer and keep them more full.

Well, at the moment it is spread a bit to much for my liking because a 5000 stat horse has no chance against 6k, 7k or 8k stat horses and only three first places give you a chance of gaining points. If somebody breeds at 7k level then this player is going to have more than 1 horse at this level so it only takes one player to show their horses and make it impossible for other players.
Something should be done about this and while it may take time to figure out the re-scaling idea, I think it may be easiest to introduce I6, I7 and I8 levels for the time being.

Right, easiest in getting them out of I5, but you'd really only be making those additional (presumably 3-4 ranks up to I9) for 1-2 horses each, since when you break it down by [400], they'll just spread out. It would be easier introducing a soft cap on weighted stats for showing (IE: only 5.5k stats will go towards the total score) than coding whole new ranks for like 5 people to use.

* to make showing I5 less "unbalanced" until there is a better solution that can be decided upon.

It seems the biggest clump of horses that your "regular" I5 horse would run into falls between 6-7k stats (mostly andies) which a quick search netted me about 180 horses that are apparently "active" (idk if they are necessarily showing however). There are only like 7 that are over 8k stats. I think soft capping stats** would probably work the best as a quick fix without making I5 a barren wasteland lol.


or maybe expanding the rewards to a top 5 for international since its kind of the "endgame" of showing?

* because if you make more classes its not really fixing the problem, its just moving it around and spreading it out.

** soft capping stats as in: only counting 5'499 stats (which would be the "next" rank up if there was an I6) towards their show score.

[edited for clarity]

Last edited on 2020-11-14 at 14:46:37 by ᵍ ᵒ ᵃ ᵀ☀

I’m aware horses gain stats to be higher than their parents at the end of their lifetime. What I’m saying is past a certain stat point -around 5-6k- foals are being born with higher stats than both parents, which is what shouldn’t be happening  Hence my point that there shouldn’t actually be such high stats in the game right now, but it seems to be a bug people have failed to report/taken advantage of. 

I guess it all depends on how many are actually active in the international grades. I frequently have trouble filling shows with my international minis on another account, so there’s no particular reason for those ones. I’ve never actually seen anything above 5k shown tbh. 

I have only noticed the showing problem when I recently purchased and attempted to show 5k+ dressage Andy. There were I think 40 shows available, all filled up between 5 and 9 horses each, most of which were 6k+ entrants and I thought that my poor horsie would never ever be able to gain anything from entering shows because as his stats go up, so will the stats of other horses...quite depressing really...

Last edited on 2020-11-14 at 15:40:55 by ℒ🍓Lenka

You'd really have to clarify the "born with", like base stats? birth stats? is it something that can be replicated in the foal stat calculator?

I just took the only 0yo I could find (that would be closest to the original stats) and ran it through the calculator and everything is adding up within reason:



the foals actual base stats:


* forgot birth stats:


Last edited on 2020-11-14 at 15:50:14 by ᵍ ᵒ ᵃ ᵀ☀

I think Novice and Local shows have the same scale (50 stats?) so maybe a simple restructure of making sure every grade moves up a chunk would have a minor help in evening out. Granted, it means every L2+ may end up going down in grade. Maybe more, can't be bothered with math atm.

And maybe rather than adding I6+, introduce another tier in the middle (cause I like the 5 system) which would adjust based on name alone. This would be a rather American-ish addition but between Local and Regional, add State (or District, but I think State makes a bit more sense [And granted, other countries do use State as a subdivision]). When I think of "region" I think of a multi-state area. For instance, in the northeast, there's the Delmarva Penninsula, which makes (in my mind) Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia a "region." And when I was in IHSA, "regionals" often included other states as well. I went to school in Pennsylvania and our regionals included New Jersey and Maryland schools. (IHSA also put Zone between Regionals and Nationals but I don't think that'd make sense in our context)

I also realize that they're basically synonyms but we could include "World" as a new top tier, to boost it even higher. Some of the bigger competitions use the term "World" instead of "International." Or call it "Olympic." Or add "World" and "Olympic." This is essentially the same suggestion others have so I'm just throwing out name suggestions here.

In the end, we could end up adding 3 new grades and that would really push it so those 8k Andies aren't competing against 5k QHs after all. If this was seriously mulled over, I'd suggest to add them incrementally. Shove in State first so people get used to the new order. Then tack on World if the problem stays a problem. And Olympic if we really need it. Plus of course and other restructuring to stats to even out the late-game playing field a smidge.

My personal preferred suggestion (through all this hullabaloo) is to make sure every grade moves a "chunk" and to add "State" inbetween Local and Regional. I personally think those two combined would help more than enough. 

I may do some math later as a procrastination technique if I feel so inclined lol. Also, this somehow took me 30 minutes to write e.e How slow was I typing?

EDIT: Just a small comment I forgot to put in: my suggestion up yonder is not the end-all be-all of the showing fix. In my mind, it's the first step, a simple and temporary solution to a much larger problem.

Last edited on 2020-11-15 at 11:01:31 by box

I don't disagree with the restructuring, but the effort vs benefit of recoding this just to spread out horses doesn't seem worth it. Because stats will always increase ... I guess in a linear fashion, it's just going to keep requiring recodes to add more classes, and it doesn't solve the issue with horses stagnating at upper levels.

If you resort the brackets per level, you'd just be spreading horses out, and while I don't mind the 50-100 splits, that international [400] bracket is absurd.

It would be a lot of work *to add extra ranks* to basically saciate the need of the upper like 1% of the showing horses (and most of it is just dressage andalusians). *The rest of the disciplines would get strung out and it would really hurt the lower populated ones that can barely fill some of their shows with 5 horses. If there were more people on EV maybe that route would be more realistic? But as it currently stands it would really only kind of benefit dressage/western and maybe showjumping since that's pretty populated on the top end (stat wise).*

Maybe making a scoring curve for stats would help keep it balanced in the upper ranks? So you wouldn't have to code in new grades every so often?

[Edited for clarity because I apparently forgot to write the other half of what I was thinking]

[More edits]
Like making more classes just means that 1 horse in I5 gets dumped to go compete in another class with another horse, but why would they compete if they can't fill the 5 req. They'd stop gaining stats and they would be forced into schooling for however long. If we go by current international stat brackets (400) points to rank up would IRL take months to hit, just to rank up so realistically it would kill the top level of competition. Showing is supposed to be competitive, and removing their competition, even if it's unbalanced in it's current state,  does not solve the issue.

It's just sweeping it under the rug.

The root of the issue is how shows are currently scored. And that would still be an issue if you make new ranks with the same scoring metric.

Last edited on 2020-11-15 at 08:40:34 by ᵍ ᵒ ᵃ ᵀ☀