How can we improve Equiverse?

Nobody likes change. I didn't like it when food no longer gave stats but I stayed. The game needs to change because of how buying/selling horses just doesn't happen right and to the degree it needs to.
This could be implemented in the far future of EV, like I said, when there are more than enough horses to go around. It's the mentality here of being possessive over their lines, not selling them to outside players, and needing to have them. I understand because I'm like that to some degree too! But honestly, when was the last time you bought a mass amount of foundation horses? I started looking to the sales when I want to expand my herd because I really want to see the economy flourish. I really do. I don't want to see EV go the way of some sims where artists rule all. I haven't sold art here in months and I'm suffering already.

Maybe a compromise, foundations could be available like normal for limited periods of time, like a couple times a year for a week/month/whatever to bring new blood to EV as an event. Of course you could still get customs any time of year.

I think any sort of limitation on foundation horses will boost the economy. it will force players to buy from others if they want to expand.

limiting the number of stores a player can buy in a week, increasing the cost of stores, and having a limited number of days that they can be purchased would all serve the same goal. there are probably other methods too, but from what I've read those seem be the only ones proposed.

"Limiting the number of stores a player can buy in a week, increasing the cost of stores, and having a limited number of days that they can be purchased"

I agree with that way of limiting stores/foundations c: Not paying credits though - EV is supposed to be pretty much free to play, but I think having to pay real cash to buy foundies would put a lot of people off, especially as most people like starting their own lines :3

I don't know if this has been said already -- but I think there should be a cap on how many foals a horse can have. It should be a little higher for stallions as they are offered for stud. Like, maybe 10 or so.
Also there should be a minimum age for breeding, like you can't breed a horse before the age of 5-10... to encourage better statted horses for breeding and less noob foals.

'Also there should be a minimum age for breeding, like you can't breed a horse before the age of 5-10... to encourage better statted horses for breeding and less noob foals.'

I disagree with this suggestion as some players just breed for colour/conformation so this would just interrupt their breeding plans. Also no horse is a 'noob', one player may love them and another hate.

Last edited on 2016-05-25 at 09:54:13 by Rulebreaker

I'm gonna point out first, and foremost that "noob" is a derogatory term in online gaming. It basically means someone who's annoying and purposely makes newbie mistakes for the sole reason of annoying others.

Secondly, no to limiting foundation horses. The bloodlines for many breeds are too small already. Most of my lines were heavily inbred pre-recode because my horses were originally show jumping. I'm currently still fighting this by means of slowly amassing a large number of foundations.

I know from reading the forums that there's other players in the same boat. It would essentially cause the salvaging of herds to be close to impossible without using lower stated horses.

As I pointed out in a prior comment, the economic stagnation is due to people not wanting to sell good stated horses. Why?

TIME AND MONEY.

For a horse to reach the common breeding age of 20, it's on average five months. Feeding a horse isn't that expensive, but the costs start adding up when you factor in showing. Not all horses are going to make a profit.

That's a long time to invest in a horse just to turn around and sell it, even more so if the horse has 600-700+ stats. Add into that, when you reach high stat levels, the number of breeders available for that breed diminishes rapidly. Many will already have each other's stock in their lines which reduces the desire to buy horses because of the inbreeding block.

EV is going to keep having this issue simply because of the nature of how the game has been set up. The game encourages breeding at the last possible minute to get the best horse. As seen in the comments above, players have also helped to encourage things by setting arbitrary limits on how many foals a horse should have. Inbreeding block hasn't helped things, either.

About the only ting that might alleviate some of the issues is some sort of system where players can take "turns" and speed up the aging of their horses. Unfortunately, I don't know how this would work with the current showing system.

The game I've been referring to for the majority of this does have a rather large difference when it comes to horses. Stats aren't gained, a horse' performance is shown by a highest jump, and many of these horses hit their prime when they get close to 10 years of age and it slowly deceases, like a parabola. The higher a horse jumps, the more it's worth, and typically when bred to another high jumping horse the foals will be just as good if not better (although there are duds). I do not know of the specific algorithm for this. This is along with the addition of performance enhancing items you can purchase separately, but that creates a whole new breeding goal. Natural horses v itemed horses. I don't want Equiverse to go this route. At all. I like the system we have in place currently but with some tweaking, we could make something that would encourage selling and buying horses.
Personally, I don't agree with the inbreeding block. I don't know how far it goes, but linebreeding is common in very well known horses and animals don't have a sense of family when it comes to reproduction the same way we do. Breeders don't normally breed sons to mothers, full brothers to full sisters, etc. Half siblings, cousins, etc, imho are all free game.
I don't know if anyone else noticed, but sticking to the old way of waiting until the last minute to breed isn't as necessary anymore. Foals are born with higher stats than they used to be. You could easily get a few decent foals out of one horse.

To stimulate the economy, there needs to be revisions to how horses work and how stats are passed down. I don't want to suggest anything because I'm not sure how algorithms I'm thinking of could be implemented into the game. But along with that the inbreeding block should be lifted and foundations should also be limited. 2k for a brand new foal is dirt cheap, even if it only starts with 100 stats. Prices like that negatively affect how well horses sell. If the price will not raise then foundations should be in limited quantities. But I still don't see an issue with charging EVC. On the other game, foundations cost $5 USD per horse. Like I keep saying, nobody forces you to purchase foundations and that doesn't eliminate the fact that it is a free sim game. I played as a kid and was still moderately successful without spending a single cent. $.50 to $1 is reasonable for a foundation horse in the future when there are more lines to choose from on Equiverse. Custom horses cost 15 EVC. They are a luxury. Literally the only thing differing from a 15EVC or 750k foundation over a 2k foundation is the fact that you choose the genotype but no one bats an eye at that.
Everyone is obsessed with having their own lines, and cant bare to part with them because of the time and effort they poured into them. Eliminate easy to get foundies and have players buy and sell.
Players that have elite horses and need new blood in their lines are wealthy enough to afford it. Like I keep saying, foundation horses really shouldn't be as common as they are once Equiverse gets more populated. And keep in mind, that could take years to achieve. Your current herds will not be affected.

We could change it so that horses age 1 year every day, rather than a week. Yes, horses would have many, many fewer stats as a result, but stats are relative. Everyone would be in the same boat, so the stat decrease wouldn't really matter. It'd be easy to remember and would only cause confusion in the short term, when everyone is getting used to it. Or maybe they could age every 2-3 days. I don't think that would be too confusing, either, once everyone got used to it. The way stats are inherited would likely have to be changed, though, so that future generations wouldn't end up with fewer stats than their parents. The biggest problem I see with this is already existing horses with high stats. It may be difficult to balance the struggle with new players catching up to old, established players with high-statted horses. I'm sure it could be worked out, though.

This change would speed everything up a lot, obviously. Maybe too much. But players would spend much less on their feed, and so would be able to sell their horses for less money while still making a similar profit, and also allowing others to be able to afford the horses. The necessity of breeding much more often would encourage people to buy horses from other players, as keeping out inbreeding would be much more difficult. Combined with a limit placed on buying foundations, this should encourage much more buying and selling.

How strict is the inbreeding block? If it's only immediate family (going up to the grandparent generation), I think it's fine to stay. If it's more restrictive than that, I'd suggest making it less strict, to what I just suggested.

I feel like I was going to say something else but I've forgotten it. xD

I am a horse hoarder.... just getting that out there. This should not change how I play the game though, if anything it should help everyone else out because before I locked all my horses I was trading my lines with other people.

I would really like to see the old system of caring for horses where, when you went on the horses page you could just click "Care for horse" or whatever it said. This way I don't have to go to each horses page and click on 4 buttons (on top of going to another page to treat) I would only have to click one (but I would still have to go through each horse individually).... I have about 200 horses... most of them locked because it just takes too much time to go through them all and with a job, school and a life it just isn't feasible to sit there for that much time to care for my pixel horses...

Also, I would love to see the old system of treating horses, where you could change the type of treat the horse was being fed from it's page. This ensured that the horse was getting what it needed and I could see it's stats at the same time. If there are 50 horses on my page that need to have their treat changed it is impossible to remember them all while I am on a completely separate page (I should not have to put a reminder in the horses name so I know what to feed him, that looks stupid for one and is not what the name box was meant for). Maybe we should just have a universal treat, just like the universal feed that gave random stats in that horses discipline?

I think we need some sort of generated shows that are not generated by the players (Even if it's only 20 per level). There are not enough people who create shows and out of those few who do, they do not have enough arenas for all of the show types there are now since we split each level into 4 more... This would be a good way to get some of the spare money out of the game (or create a lottery with it, which would push people to enter more shows) and ensure that there are enough shows for everyone to enter without having to push 3+ horses into each one. I could go and buy enough arenas for each one, but that is very costly and could take a long time to get the money back from the initial output. That being said, I can create 130 shows per day right now and find that I still have a hard time evening out the show rings (I try guys D:).

If I think of anything else I will edit this... but that's my opinion for now. I love the new site/art, it's just a little more time consuming than it used to be and I find myself coming on just to comb the forums rather than play the game.

Last edited on 2016-05-25 at 11:13:30 by Amarathine

Without auto care even in the old EV you had to click things individually. Do you have the auto care tool? It's even easier than old EV. All you have to do is click the care button under the division.

I didn't see that until now. XD Thank you. It used to have an icon no? Now its justa little box.
But is still doesn't treat the horse as well, like in old EV. You still have to go to the other screen to treat, which irks the heck out of me. I can't remember all my pons stuff....

Last edited on 2016-05-25 at 11:14:07 by Amarathine

Go to your inventory and use the item that way. I don't remember there ever being an icon.

yeah, that's the point I'm making, we shouldn't have to go into the inventory to use treats... it should be on the horse page, like it used to be. That way you can see what the horse needs. Not accidentally give it something it doesn't need.

Oh I see. If you have horses in different disciplines. All of mine are western so I don't have that problem. What most people are doing is using divisions for the disciplines and just being careful when treating.

That seems like a waste of EVD and space but I guess if it works use it... lol Thanks Shinku ♥