Official Showing Discussion Topic

I think introducing alternative types of shows could really benefit the game. The current NSS-centric system is very limiting and counter-intuitive in my opinion, but of course it should stay in some form, considering how much effort has been put by players into the process of NSS-lowering. By now I've also invested in it, so I understand the frustration that could be if it was to suddenly lose its purpose. Still, I'd prefer not to be stuck with it. So perhaps we could have different types based on factors in the calculation: the NSS one (like now, but maybe with even more NSS weight added), the stats one (where only the discipline-specific stats are taken into account, and where horses with many stats in many skills can cross-discipline), and the conformation one (self-explanatory :)). I believe such an addition could bring great variety to the gameplay and revitalize the market, as previously separated breeding goals (NSS vs. stats total vs. confo vs. color) would have more connection points and mix-and-match prospects.

Like the idea of removing/capping tack tiers. Right now there's virtually no point in owning anything other than 5/5 tack, and I imagine this can deter new players who can't afford it yet from showing. 

Also support the suggestion of making show levels wider and adding levels above I5.

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Last edited on 2022-12-26 at 09:29:55 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

Wanted to share some of my thoughts...

I am a "private breeder" who buys a bunch of Foundation Horses, and then trains, treats, and shows them their whole lives. Each breeding pair has four foals, and I repeat the process with the two "best" offspring for the next generation.

In my experience, you can take a Foundation horse from Novice 1 up to National 1 in their lifetime fairly consistently, with daily showing and optimized NSS, tack, treats. This is a super fun experience, and I love to see the horse rising in the ranks throughout its life!

Generation 2 kind of stalls out progress-wise. They start off with stats in the neighborhood of Regional 1 and still end up in the National 1 and National 2 area at the end of their lives. A few will hit National 3. It makes showing a slog because I have so many horses clustered up across so few show levels.

Foundation/Generation 1 goes up a total of 15+ levels, while Generation 2 only goes up about 6 levels. I haven't ever made it to Generation 3 because it's more fun for me to start over with Foundation horses.

I don't know that I have any suggestions for "fixing" this. And I'm still having a lot of fun with the game!!

random thought i had based on what Zanthia said above and many other people have mentioned before as well: what if we did the Olympic level idea but the other way around? like Olympic 5 is at 5000 stats instead of International 5 and the other grades are "squished" accordingly? shorter stat ranges + efforts to keep stats down could be a good thing together, we probably wouldn't even need 5000 to be our cap? as a rough example:

N1 = 100-149
N2 = 150-199
N3 = 200-249
N4 = 250-299
N5 = 300-349
L1 = 350-399
L2 = 400-449
L3 = 450-499
L4 = 500-549
L5 = 550-599
R1 = 600-699
R2 = 700-799
R3 = 800-899
R4 = 900-999
R5 = 1000-1099
Na1 = 1100-1199 (original 1100-1299)
Na2 = 1200-1299 (original 1300-1499)
Na3 = 1300-1399 (original 1500-1699)
Na4 = 1400-1499 (original 1700-1899)
Na5 = 1500-1599 (original 1900-2099)
I1 = 1600-1699 (original 2100-2499)
I2 = 1700-1799 (original 2500-2999)
I3 = 1800-1899 (original 3000-3999)
I4 = 1900-1999 (original 4000-4999)
I5 = 2000-2099 (original 5000)
O1 = 2100-2299
O2 = 2300-2499
O3 = 2500-2699
O4 = 2700-2899
O5 = 2900-3099
(+ some sort of "max" grade for 3100 and beyond?)

or no Olympic levels and just lower what current grades are.

it's not a concrete idea, and with the way i did Olympic it could still be too much even though it's way smaller than current International. the 100 stat range is probably the biggest distance people would feel comfy with...? maybe the highest distance between grades could be 100 or 150.
i'm not sure it would solve things but maybe a reduction is something to consider alongside other changes? my reasoning is because after thinking about it, showing in National and beyond does feel boring a lot of the time, so maybe faster grade gain without faster stat gain could help people feel progression better without creating more stat monsters? and horses will spend more time showing instead of schooling.
i think preserving some of the challenge to reach the max grade is needed or it will feel too easy and go back to being boring, but the challenge doesn't have to just be the numbers themselves.

Last edited on 2022-11-23 at 01:13:52 by forgottenland/bubbles

Actually I'd love to hear sort of an official statement on the topic of showing system sometime soon. Discussions between players are sure great for brainstorming and figuring out the optimal solution, but without any kind of indication whether our ideas will be implemented it just seems to create more and more confusion. Take me for example -- right now I'm unsure how do I want to keep playing the game, because it depends on whether certain gameplay updates will be introduced. If I knew for sure that no such updates are coming in the next year -- I could just keep focusing on NSS as before, without worrying that I could miss an opportunity. And if I knew for sure that updates are indeed coming soon -- I could happily switch to my preferred playstyle and focus on stats&pretty coats, without worrying that my horses are never going to be "showable".
I don't know who's responsible for these kinds of decisions -- Abbey alone or the entire admin team -- but I hope this request reaches its destination! An official statement would be greatly appreciated, and I hope should clear some confusion among the concerned players.

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Last edited on 2022-12-26 at 09:31:17 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

Abbey is the game owner, River is the admin, who also puts suggestions together based on support and game/player benefit and mods just moderate the game/discord. We occasionally help with bouncing ideas around if something needs tweaking or needs a discussion for the best implementation and test new features for bugs before release, but we generally don't know too much about what is next or timescales for updates (we see them the same day as everyone else).

It sounds like you may be talking about a development roadmap, which EV does have pinned to the top of this forum. The document is kept more up to date than the thread itself. 

I imagine the reason they don't make a lot of statements, especially time sensitive ones, is to not over-promise for EV as updates are largely dependent on coder availability, artists etc, especially given the current world crises. There will be occasional to-do lists in newsposts on what's to come for EV, thought the most accurate for players is the roadmap. 

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Last edited on 2022-12-26 at 09:31:21 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

I'm not sure how I feel about personalities being added for horses, I feel like that might be making things a little too complicated for showing, if that makes sense? 

I do like the idea of having certain conformation categories weigh in for certain disciplines. Like 2 or 3 conformation stats, so like, for racing...head, legs, hooves. Or whatever. 

i do agree with much of what Lucia said about the roadmap, it's definitely different from when i last checked it (maybe... 3-4 months ago...?) but i can't remember what changed besides grade horses? i just wonder where can we discuss things about the roadmap itself? it's not really a game suggestion so it wouldn't belong in that forum category i guess. unless we can't really suggest things about it in the first place?

i'm not sure about personalities having impact on shows but either way i'd love to see them anyway! little things like that may not fix the game but it gives a bit of life to our ponies. maybe after some changes are made, personalities could be tried out in shows? it could just be a simple thing, not too complex like dozens of personalities, maybe just a tiny extra bit of luck if your horse is well-disciplined and focused.

The road map is previous suggestions from the game that were widely supported so that would be where you would have your discussion. I don’t think it’s possible to provide exact dates as EV relies a very small team for said updates, again affected by the world crises. I understand it’s frustrating that updates are slow compared to other sims that are in constant/beta development but they do tend to have more than one person working on the site. Comments like this don’t have any benefit to the progression of the game. 

that does make sense, thank you. i would love to know what's going on but having good, helpful changes to the game is more important to me.

Last edited on 2022-11-23 at 20:38:18 by forgottenland/bubbles

Just a slight addition to the roadmap: If I remember well, years ago there was much more transparency about next updates with deadlines as well, but most of the time they were delayed of months, if not years (it can be understood as Abbey is the sole coder), but I remember it made a lot of frustration on the side of the players. But my memory may cheat me.
After River became the admin, updates became more "blunt" or "secret", but it's always communicated that they're working on things in the background, and I think updates always were great when they were finally implemented - at least for me.
But I think, a little more transparency or more regular updates on roadmap would be great - even without deadlines (although I must say, I'm the patient one and even happy with the updates remaining secret till implementation).

Back to the main topic: I still think that primarily stat gain should be much slower and more grades should be implemented (I even played with the thought of having 1-10 levels in each grades, which would end in having 50 levels instead of 25, but I don't know) with the possiblity of conformation weight in disciplines. But others have great ideas, so I just silently follow now the topics and the discussions and liking like crazy the ones I agree with.

Last edited on 2022-11-24 at 07:55:20 by Olivia

I wish to clarify and hopefully answer some of the concerns voiced here. 

Firstly, we will not be throwing out any features that exist in-game. EV is built out as a fully released game as-is, so nothing revolutionary like deleting whole features or wiping out information and starting from the beginning will happen. What we will do is fix things that aren't working and bring in more new features.

This topic was created to have a fruitful discussion to receive feedback from players, and is not going to be thrown away or be seen as not useful because it is player contributed. Quite the opposite. The purpose was to understand how players feel about showing and what the difficulties are, and what can be fixed. All of your contributions are very appreciated, and the ideas here will be taken into real consideration. There will be changes to showing following this discussion. I cannot give you a direct answer on what those changes will be right now, as that decision has not been made at this moment, and doing so simply in order to be specific would be misguided and short sighted.

Part of the difficulty with communication is that the coding and administrative guidance are no longer coming from the same person. I manage the administrative part of the site and the news and holding these discussions, while Abbey is behind the scenes as owner and is not directly involved in communication. Communication will not feel the same as in the past, because I am not the coder and do not know the details of the coding and cannot give the kind of feedback Abbey could when she handled communications. I simply don't have the insight of being involved in coding, so I don't know how it works or how long exactly a change might take or what roadblocks might come up along the way, and don't manage the implementation. 

I want to give you guys something better to work off of than what you've been seeing though. The development roadmap was established originally to communicate what is happening and planned, as Maple stated earlier, and is the best way to continue to do so, so all the information is in one place. The roadmap has been entirely reworked with a different format to make what is being worked on now, what is being discussed, and what will come up in the future clearer than before. This should hopefully help, and it will be updated more regularly. We are considering moving to a schedule for updates as well, rather than a flexible model, depending on how that looks from a coding perspective. Any date related information for updates should come from the news, as that should be your primary source for update completion, but any further details that become available will be placed on the roadmap.

To summarize, I hope this helps clarify that a) no game features will be removed b) this topic was created with a purpose, which it will fulfill c) communication will not be the same as before because the situation has changed, but we are working towards making it better.

Last edited on 2022-11-25 at 13:17:59 by River

River, thank you for such a comprehensive answer! It indeed helped a lot. I understand not being able to provide the details yet, the fact that incoming practical changes have been confirmed is a relief in itself.

On the general topic -- I liked the idea of stretching the show level gaps before, but actually the later suggestion of shrinking them instead sounds even more appealing. Lucia brought up a good point that wider gaps would have a major downside -- having to wait longer for horses to reach the competitive window while stuck with schooling (yawn-a-rama :D). And the universal 50-100 gap between levels indeed sounds comfy and gives consistent progress feeling either if you're working with a foundie or a 10th gen horse with them big ol' stats. And to avoid hitting the point where stats don't matter anymore with this faster progression -- what if we had huge gaps between the Olympic levels, but only their respective "entry" stats (say 3000/3500/5000/7000/10000) would be calculated in the competitions? That way, for example all horses in O2 would be considered to have 3500 stats (though one could have 3550, and another one 4567), so no sitting out the bottom of the grade, but there's still a reason to earn stats so you can reach more prestigious, higher-winnings levels? This design also could be implemented outside of the smaller levels concept, so there's that :)