Has private breeding slowed down the game?

Here's a thing. I am not afraid of the backlash. That's why I am willing to speak the harsh truth even if nobody likes it. EV needs to go through some drastic change in order to be revived and that will upset a lot of people. Sometimes, the boss needs to make a hard but necessary decision that may upset people in the beginning. EV is in that situation and it's clear that there's a hard decision that needs to be made but had been put off for years because of community backlash.

I already acknowledge that private breeding is a part of the problem. I am willing to repeat that, I am a private breeder and I already tried to be a public breeder in the beginning but it didn't work out for several reasons. The roots of the problems are the oversaturated market; the showing, training, and breeding system; and EV's economy is so messed up that it's beyond repair, IMO. Personally, I honestly can't see how the Admins can fix EV without the full recode and wiping out the database.

However, private breeders are not the only problem. The art community has a role in the EV's downfall due to its role in the economy. We need to start to acknowledge all problems instead of placing the blame solely on private breeders when they aren't the only group. It's not just Art community and private breeders as well. There's one more group that played a huge role in EV's downfall as well.

Dang, a girl gets influenza and misses a lot! Not at all what this post was supposed to be. 

Also, I will say, the amount of credits another player has shouldn't really affect anyone else. Not going to lie I had almost 700 credits in October that I spent...and don't feel like I should feel guilty or bad about having that many credits, I mean, I don't have them now....so yea, lol. 

I hope you're feeling better Olympea!

@Olympea: apologizes for commenting off topic last night... i hope you're feeling better right now ♥

Aw! I hope you're feeling better!

Nah, you shouldn't be feeling guilty. I mean, you're using and spending those credits. That's what credits are supposed to do lol 

Still right in the middle of it but can't lay down and be doing nothing anymore. My youngest son(whose birthday is today) has it too and I got it caring for him, but yea. Definitely changes our plans for the Holiday! Thank you all though, hoping it won't be around much longer!

I hope you get well soon Olympea!

Back to the main topic of this thread, because the art plot got way too offtopic. I don't think I will add anything new to the discussion, but getting as much feedbach about it as possible is important.

From my point private breeding sort of became the necessity for many players. If there aren't many horses in the breed and the discipline, there isn't really a market for these horses + there aren't many horses to buy to incude into our lines either. Adding cross breeding partially helps with that, but only when we don't mind having a grade horses instead of f.eg. minis.

Another thing is the overbreeding. In case of unpopular breeds like above, when a decent stallion is put for eternal stud, suddenly nearly all horses on the market have him as their ancestor. If it comes from our line, suddenly getting an unrelated horse becomes mission impossible.

Third thing is our requirements - just the requirement of low nss can cut out the majority of horses on the market. Some people also want some specific genes, no/specific markings, high confo, etc. Usually horses that meet our requirements are scarce, so the only place to turn to is the Equine Center.

I also think for some people it's hard to see their former horse or the line they worked so hard on to get a branch which doesn't follow a single rule they used to. We shouldn't interfere with the way other people play this game, so the only way to prevent having heart broken by our beautiful horse being overbred or something is to never let it out of the account. It may sound silly, but I know people have such problems in other games.

I think that's it.

i think that sums up our issues pretty well. private breeding is both the result of other things while also further affecting the game. and it's hard to say whether it's fair to just ban some kinds of play styles...

I have my stallions up for stud once they reach 10 years old. If people breed to them, yay.

I do sometimes look for outside lines when I need a mate for a horse, should I not have one suitable. I have nothing against buying in horses too from others if they meet my requirements but I don't often find new horses to bring in this way. My requirements aren't that fussy: just no more than 65nss, and treated correctly. You'd think I would find more!

So I rely on the Equine Center to help suppliment my lines and keep them from stagnating for too long. 

I had thought to breed like real life with my THoroughbreds, but I realised a few things:
1 - stats would be low at breeding age since i would be breeding from 8 years onwards
2 - people don't like breeding to horses with more than 5 foals.
3 - the horses I deemed not worthy likely wouldn't sell. 

Last edited on 2022-11-23 at 16:18:47 by нєямєѕ ѕтυ∂

I didn’t finish reading about half of the third and fourth page before I got too irritated to not comment, but I don’t find it appropriate at all to judge anyone for the amount of money they have. Would you make comments like that about some of the players who have hundreds of millions from ONLY playing the horse part of the game? I don’t care where anyones money came from, it’s nobody’s place and it’s extremely rude to criticize someone because they have more money than you. Also, just to add something else to the credit discussion, I always have credits because I buy them with REAL money, not from art. I don’t make credits off art and I am a somewhat popular artist who does not currently participate in the horse part of the game. Art is not the reason why people have credits, you are not required to sell art to have credits, the whole point of credits is it being a currency that is purchased with real money, so you can’t not afford credits because the artists are hoarding them all, you can buy an unlimited amount of credits might I remind you, but the reason you can’t afford them is mostly because you can’t buy them with real life money. That has nothing to do with an artist having a bunch of credits.  

Edit 1 - I like what Ria Sinclair said about making credits a little more accessible. Their suggestion would not only not defeat the purpose of credits being a more valuable currency, but I do think it would balance out the price of credits in private sales plus make them easier to access.

Edit 2 - While I am not really a part of the horse community right NOW, I still don’t think private breeders are to blame. I think there’s a lot of aspects of game play that need help and feel like only major changes can revive EV at this time. I WANT to play the horse side of the game really badly, I very much miss the success and accomplishment that comes with raising great horses, but one thing that this game really requires to be successful with horses in an accomplishing matter is time, and I don’t have a lot of that right now. It currently is undesirable for me to play the horse part of the game because it takes too long to see any reward for your work, which can certainly be a good and rewarding thing for those who have done amazing work breeding and raising generations of horses, but it’s hard to make an impact on the horse part of the game without consistently and constantly working on it, and I don’t think I’m the only person who doesn’t have all the time to devote to their game horses. Another reason why I don’t find it desirable to play the horse side of EV is because the breeds we have now are too few for my personal liking. I understand why so many breeds were taken out but it bummed me out a lot to see a lot of those breeds go, and none of the current breeds interest me much. I feel like now that there are such a limited amount of breeds, none of them are very special, and it takes a lot of TIME and dedication to be recognized in any of the current breeds now because of this. I love EV and have been here off and on for a very long time, but I don’t think it dying can be blamed on just any one part of the game. I think there are LOTS of things that need to be fixed for it to be better. 

Last edited on 2022-11-23 at 16:54:11 by wey

just mentioning again that we're trying to move the artist/credits discussion over here

Hermes brings up a good point, it's kind of interesting that a lot of real life practices don't translate well into EV. no one bats an eye at famous TBs having 100s of foals but it doesn't work that well here where there's a limited about of active breeders, causing inbreeding to occur more frequently.

I played another Sim game where a game year was 1 RL month, and mares could only be bred once per year, but the game was supposed to be too realistic to have stuff like breedagain solution. A mare could be bred for 15 years of her life and if anyone didn't breed her every year, they just wasted a brood year. In EV, everyone is so concerned with overbreeding that a mare is usually bred only 1-2 times ever. I don't care about overbreeding; it's a pixel pony and it helps the horse market. I will overbreed my horses if it means more horses to be bred to/sold. I'm not saying everyone should do this, as it may cause a huge population explosion and overcrowded market, but take it into consideration c: I will probably not be debating here anymore, although I enjoyed it and learned a lot, I'm tired :) I shall not speak of this outside of this thread and Bubbles' other thread, I just want to enjoy my time on EV ♥

I'll add my few thoughts.
I follow some practices which fall under the 'private breeding' category - which means that I usually don't set up my horses for public stud or brood, and I don't buy many horses from other players.
However I'm open for inquiry in case if someone wants a private stud. I also sell surplus foals, but they usually sell very slowly, if they sell at all.

Why I'm so particular about overbreeding, and why I don't set up my horses for open stud/brood?
My favourite breed-spec combination is riddled with overbred stallions (anywhere from 20 to even 50+ foals), which in turn makes it very difficult to avoid inbreeding and line breeding in higher gens. Because of that I limit the contribution of particular horses to have as much genetic variety in my herd as possible and to prevent flooding the market with many foals of the same father. I find this perhaps the only way to really make things better long-term. Unfortunately, this also makes me extremely picky when I'm buying horses, because I'd like to prevent adding any overbred horses to my lines.

@Horse Community, Out of curiosity, how would you guys recommend bridging the gap between the art and horse community? Are there anyways you’d like to see the Art Community support the Horse Community? 

I’m primarily a participant of the Art Community, however I’m more than happy to help the horse community whenever possible. Currently, I host shows and offer my stables for boarding. I also enjoy the farmstead portion so I’ll gladly grow crops. Unfortunately, I’m far too busy in RL to actively breed or show horses. 

My current ideas for helping the horse side are to host EVD or crop giveaways. 

Second, buying horses from players; however, I can’t guarantee that they wouldn’t end up locked shortly after.