Official Showing Discussion Topic

the new roadmap looks great! i do like that for the bigger/multi-step ones we can see what's going on at the moment. (yay for sabino clydesdales! ♥)

i actually considered bigger ranges for the Olympic levels i typed out before, i was thinking instead of Olympic just being another regular tier it could be a sort of "exclusive" tier that's intentionally harder in some way. what Ria Sinclair said above could add that difficulty too, like an elite tier of sorts once you "beat" International c:
but if people don't want to deal with an elite tier there could be options to opt out, like just capping your horse at I5?

another thought i had was instead of the current Novice to International ranks, grades could just go up into infinity? so it's just Grade 1, Grade 2, and so on (or cap at a certain number if stats are changed to have a cap). and it would also have the same range for all grades, maybe 100 for each. but that might be too much of a change lol. (edit: also it could get monotonous after a while lol)

Last edited on 2022-11-25 at 16:43:34 by forgottenland/bubbles

I can see some people mentioning that conformation should weight in shows and while I agree with the idea, I would like to point out inconsistencies in conformation between Foundation-based lines and pre-recode based lines and between pre-recode based lines in different breeds. For example in morgans the highest alive morgan has conformation 89.5, but owner hasn't logged in in 4 years. The highest actually functioning is 70 something, while in f.eg. andalusians it's 99 something.
Conformation is awfully difficult to raise and using the total conformation to weight shows will only put some breeds and foundation-based lines on disadvantage.

That being said, I like the idea of using only discipline-related part of conformation, like f.e.g. only legs and back. To make it work well with conformation discrepancy I was thinking about capping the bonus the conformation could give.
For traits below "good", they should give negative points and these could decrease depending on how bad the trait is. "Good" could be neutral ground giving no negative and no positive points and anything above it could add small amount bonus points. Bonus points shouldn't be increasing with increasing conformation or increase only slightly, so it won't put foundation lines on further disadvantage. If you decide to use the latter, I would go with sigmoid function with limit a bit above zero. Example below is actually a Michaelis-Menten function for enzyme activity, but is shows the idea. Consider 0.004 as 0 - "good", anything above is bonus for confo up to "perfect", anything below is negative points for confo down to "awful".
Foundation horses usually have multiple "good"s in their conformation and few "poor"s, so this won't affect them too much, and stat monsters with their 90-something conformations won't get major boost as a side effect. Pre-recode horses with conformation in 70-90 range might have some issues because I recall some of them have like 2-3 "perfect"s and just as many "awful"s, but there aren't too many of them and this usually flattens out in breeding.

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Last edited on 2022-12-26 at 09:31:27 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

I've been gone for about a month and a half, and have read through the comments and suggestions...it's wonderful to see our small community come together and try to solve this issue. In terms of the actual topic at hand, I agree with everything that is being said and suggested so far and just want to put my two cents worth into the conversation. Sorry in advance for the long post.

I agree with the idea of giving a small boost for geldings/spayed mares, as this allows people to actually want to sell their horses without the added stress of someone ruining their bloodlines, but still giving the horse top market value. Especially if it comes from a long line of showing descendants in its pedigree, and from a well-known breeder. 

Another thing I agree with is that conformation should play a small role in shows, however only a certain percentage (less than 5%) and only maybe three or four discipline-related parts of the conformation. I say this because I have been breeding Racing Shetlands since I started the game and now that I'm around the 5th generation depending on the individual pony, I haven't managed to raise their conformation all that much. I think the highest I have managed is all good with the highest conformation score being in the low 60s (thanks to custom horses). There must be a way to increase the conformation in a steady and reliable way before the idea of adding conformation into shows can even be considered. I say this due to my own experiences I'm the only active breeder for racing shetlands and therefore cannot rely on other players. It is almost impossible for me to consider buying horses in the market therefore I am fully reliant on horses from the rescue and the Equine Center, for new stock. 

I don't believe that foundations should necessarily have all "goods" in their conformation scores, but it should be easier to increase it, without too much trouble and make it a lot easier than it is at the moment. I am fully supportive of the idea...only as long as conformation gets tweaked beforehand. I believe I wouldn't be the only player in this situation. 

In terms of the actual showing levels, I agree there needs to be some fundamental changes to the levels such as adding an Olympic, and/or Grand Prix level and shrinking the show-level gap. This will not only stop the same horses from competing with each other and also allows fairer competition, therefore a horse that has just increased its grade from regional to national isn't competing against another horse that isn't too far off from increasing its grade from Na1 to Na2. As some have said they are doing the riding school for all horses until they are close to improving their grade, just to ensure they win. 

I agree with Lucia and others, that the breeding formula, has to be tweaked (but not reworked entirely). One way of doing this would be by decreasing the stat increases that foals get. I know after foal training some foals will gain 80 to 100 stats (I could be wrong) just by completing all the foal training when they turn three. Therefore a foal that may have been a novice or local, is now suddenly in regional by the time they are three and they haven't even started competing yet. 

I think the whole idea of increasing show winnings is a good idea in a whole. As long as there is a suitable way to combat inflation in the game, otherwise, the increase in show winnings isn't going to mean much to the rich players and the newer players will still think they are being forgotten. It won't be a popular opinion, but significantly decreasing the amount of interest that players earn is a good way to start. Therefore instead of relying on bank interest as a main source of income showing and competing will take its place. This will start encouraging people to actually play and not just log in to collect their bank interest and buy art without the need to actually show/compete or even take part in the horse side of EV. 

I do like the idea of adding flavor text as a way to help add personalities to horses, however, I don't think they should have any effect on showing. I believe that if a horse behaves in a particular way, such as being aloof or focused, then its foals will also be more like one parent or another. Just like in real life personalities should be inherited, more so for the sake of realism. Rather than being randomly generated, however, this creates problems for someone like myself, who is the only active breeder for racing shetlands by adding personalities that are inherited (rather than randomly generated) I will very quickly be stuck with a genetic bottleneck. Basically, I'll have one or two personalities that will be dominant in my little herd, and if it's a negative personality then I'm stuck with almost unshowable ponies. 

I just wanted to put some ideas, and possible problems that may result. I'm sorry if it's negative, but it's just to give players something to think about. 

Last edited on 2022-11-30 at 17:29:25 by Laureal

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

Personally, I would love to see stats restart at 100 with every generation. 

That would level the field, and help showing and I believe the market too.
On page 2, Zanthia said that they buy foundations, train and show them their whole lives, and then just repeat that because their gen 2 foal stats already start so high that showing becomes kind of pointless. This is exactly what I ran into as well. I felt more accomplished with my foundations than I did with my next gen. The incentive for breeding would be to raise conformation and lower NSS, though a horse with 60+ NSS can still have a decent showing career. 

I think a lot of focus is placed on NSS because conformation does nothing at this point. Adding some value to raising conformation and having stats start at 100 every gen would keep people around for more generations instead of just a couple. But NSS and breeding would have to be tweaked so I doubt this will be a popular option. 

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Last edited on 2022-12-26 at 09:31:36 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

Another reason I am stalling out on my 2nd generation horses which are almost all Regional level...


https://imgur.com/a/KyKbtyy


A little over 400 classes total across 5 levels of 6 disciplines, for an average of 14 classes available per level, but many with 0. It's really hard to earn stats, points, and ribbons this way!

A lot of the stat gap issues I’m reading about on page 3 (at least in the lower levels) can be fixed by mixing showing and schooling your horses. In order to have a fighting chance, a horse needs to have a decent amount of stats earned within a showing bracket. While they are earning 1-6 (sometimes even 7) stats per day from schooling, I wait for them to reach the half way point in their bracket, then move them to a “showing” division. 

That being said, I do like the idea of making foals inherit waaaay less stats than they currently do. If we could figure out some math to make it so foals are born in such a way that a maximum stat gain throughout a horse’s life doesn’t go past a max showing stat level, then this would fix some of our showing problems. This would also potentially shrink the massive brackets (like international level with 1,000+ stats in some brackets). These smaller brackets would allow for more horses per bracket and more opportunity for stats and money.
The only issue I can see coming from this is foundations being put at a disadvantage if all foals are born with the same stats, That’s why I’m thinking 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and long-gen foals should all be born with a slightly higher set-point for *maximum* birth stats. This set point for maximum birth stats could be a game changer, and the current stat monsters above any achievable set point in a new system (above birth stats + stats earned in one lifetime for newly born horses with lower birth stats) would be entered in a final, higher class of shows that only they can get in to.

The stat cap that I’m proposing above would be a range of possible inherited stats per generation based on the amount of stats for each parent AND a set maximum for the amount of stats that a foal could be born with. 
I.e. let’s say I have 2 gen 1 horses with 150 stats, but the birth stat cap for a gen2 foal is 200 stats. The foal would be born with less than 200 stats and would be calculated based off of the parents’ stats. Same for gen 3 foals (stat cap of let’s say 300) and so on and one final cap of 500 for longer generation foals. 
If the whole showing system is capped out at lets say 2,000 stats (which is birth stats + gained stats), no foal born in the new system could surpass this new showing cap because they could not earn enough stats in one lifetime to surpass 2,000 stats. This means we could also shrink existing showing brackets! 

For example: (I5 as a maximum class for stat monsters over 2,000 stats to encourage breeding down to show well)
N1 100-149 
N2 150-199
N3 200-249
N4 250-…
N5 300-…
L1 350-…
L2 400-…
L3 450-…
L4 500-…
L5 550-599
R1 600-…
R2 700-…
R3 800-…
R4 900-999
R5 1,000-…
Na1 1,100-…
Na2 1,200-…
Na3 1,300-…
Na4 1,400-…
Na5 1,500-1,599
I1 1,600-…
I2 1,700-…
I3 1,800-…
I4 1,900-1,999
I5 2,000+

I remember there was such a thing as horse potential thrown around in the early days of this recode as a replacement for stats but I don't know the exact specifics of it. 

I'm kind of behind a max potential/show level but at the same time I feel like it just circles back into limiting progression, it was a bit of a problem in the precode version since you just hit a stat cap and couldn't really get any higher with how it was designed. I do still agree with cutbacks in stat gain since I found that in my original report too. 

On the issue of continued progress… What if in the new stat cap system that I proposed above, there was a conformation boost in showing (as mentioned by others above) and this boost was scaled by each higher showing bracket? So for example, a horse with higher a conformation average would do slightly better at lower showing levels, and this boost would get relatively better and better as they gained stats into higher grades. This way, it would encourage progress in conformation gain through breeding (a long term goal) AND lifetime stat gain (a short term goal). Here, conformation through many generations and stat gain through a single lifetime work together to increase a horse’s performance in showing.
Thoughts?

I think something like the confo thing would be in better practice if we didn't already have 90%+ conformation horses, there would still be no real competition between them and probably just luck/nss based wins. If anything conformation were to be added and have an impact on showing then it needs to be less punishing and not take years just to get to 70% if you're lucky. 

I’m randomly chiming in, normally pretty quiet around here. But I wish that showing points were passed down to offspring. Maybe they have zero affect on showing but it rewards people that do show and gives more incentive to actually enter classes. 

I’m not sure if this has already been mentioned as there’s many comments already, but I would really appreciate if there was a better reward for stats given through show placings. I learned today that it was random in how horses earn stats through show placings, to me it seems silly that one of my horses who primarily placed third out of most of their 10 shows earned 25 stats while a horse that placed primary first of 10 shows earned 8 stats, only 1 being from the first places. I think there should definitely be a system to that. Third places could allow 1-2 stats per placing, second could allow 1-3 stats, and first could allow 2-3 stats, or something of that sort. I’m not good at specifics, but I don’t think random is good. I show my horses because I want them to earn stats from placing, money second, and then points, because to me there’s no use showing a horse that places first all the time but barely gets any stats from it when I could just put it in a riding school and earn more stats as well as get some money. I also don’t know if this makes any difference but I do think horses should earn stats from shows no matter how many entries were in the show as well, especially seeing as there is a big struggle with not many horses being shown.

All great ideas thus far.  I would love to see some Equiverse official show events, or other official events where horses can earn special rewards, etc.  I think that having special titles, awards, etc would all help with re-sale or stud/brood value of a horse and in turn increase the market as well.