[ADDED] *early retirement

i think it would be really handy to be able to retire horses early if there are horses that you're just done with but don't want to send to the rescue center.  that way you wouldn't have to keep spending money to feed/vet/farrier/pay board on them or accidentally enter them into shows, etc.

edit 2/6/17 - this post is a year old.   keep in mind how much the game has changed since i made the original post (eg, the riding schools coming into the game)

Last edited on 2017-08-29 at 15:28:34 by River

This was be so helpful :D

I support this but have a limit because we don't want people retiring their horses at like 3 years of age. So maybe have a limit to where you can't retire your horse if they are under 10 years old?

I agree with Cheyenne! We should be able to retire our horses early (but not too early)/ choose when to retire them.

I support but only for older horses as said above. It would be cool if it was a separate division to send them out to pasture where they just need less care and they aren't options for showing etc. I also think once they are retired you shouldn't be allowed to undo it or breed them.

I'm on the fence about this, but I'm leaning towards supporting. If we make it so it's unreversable, what if someone accidentally does it? This happens all the time with gelding. Also, I see no reason why there should be an age limit tbh.

mmm

have a "Are you sure you want to retire SheeshKabob early?" window pop up

and i dont agree on the age limit.
If i wanna retire a 6 year old, why can't i?
I "retired" my actual gelding when he was 11 years old and he no longer did anything except sit in my yard. it's the owners decision.

Support. I agree with raptorfang and potato.
But maybe there could be another credit item available in case we happen to want to reverse the retirement on a horse in case peeps accidentally retire or retire and then decide later they didnt want their horse retired?

Support. I'd love the idea of early retirement, though I would prefer it at any age. On occasion I'll see a foal from one of my horses available for cheap, and I'm worried it might be sold and overbred (normally it's stats are already too low to recover, or the pedigree might be not up to my standards) and I'll buy it and either try to salvage it for later sale (not always possible), geld it and throw it in the rescue center (not possible with mares atm), let it die in a spare division (of course I accidentally feed it five days in), or simply throw it in my retirement group and school it until it dies naturally.

Being able to retire it would be much easier, I'd say. I'm not too worried if it happens accidentally - definitely should have a "Are you SURE you want to put Whippersnapper into early retirement?" popup to avoid the simple misclicks - but I don't think we'd need an EVC item to revive them.

I'd be more concerned over someone purchasing a nice horse and simply retiring it because they can, and having the original owner being upset, though they paid for it so it wouldn't be very upsetting as it would be their horse - I just see it becoming a complaint from someone at some point, haha.

Either way, support! I miss the horse deletion option we used to have.

No support. Already in the game. Put a horse in a division, ignore till it dies. No point to add something redundant.

@Nyx Except that still takes up space that a user has to pay for. Retiring a horse frees up space for more.

Last edited on 2017-02-06 at 21:13:18 by RemRem

This is effectively just the horse deletion system we had in the previous iteration of EV, except without the cap. I expect the same issues we had then would crop up with this proposed system. The main one I recall was people purposely buying horses from other people and the RC for the purposes of deleting them simply because they felt they were "inferior" horses. This generally applied to horses with relatively low stats, without regard for whether the horse had good conformation or colour. This resulted in a bit of an elitist attitude being fostered on EV, conformation and colour breeders being disadvantaged with a smaller pool of quality stock available, and players getting upset when their own horses they'd spent time on just got deleted by players who didn't really want them. I don't want to see this brought back to EV.

I honestly don't see the point. If you don't want to show a horse, put it in a "don't show" division. If you don't want the horse bred, gelding or allowing it to die is already an option. If you just plain don't want to deal with a horse anymore, sell it, or put it in the Rescue Center, or allow it to die.

Why on earth would a retired horse not fill up a horse slot? Horses that are 21 years old are retired, and they still fill up a horse slot. And they still need to be cared for. This is how it should be. If you want to look at a pretty pony without having to take care of it or have it take up a horse slot, kill it and then look at it in your Former Horses section. If you want to keep your horse alive and well, of course you should have to provide it a slot and take care of it, whether you're showing or breeding it or not.

And how on earth is it realistic to permanently retire a horse while it is still young and otherwise capable of being showed? If you want to retire it, just don't show it. If you sell it to someone else, then it is their choice to show it or not. If you had a horse in real life and you sold it, the new owner gets to choose whether to show the horse or not. The previous owner doesn't get to say "Hey, this horse is retired. Sorry, no showing allowed!" It's not like gelding a horse. Retirement isn't a permanent, irreversible thing, unless the horse is too old or too ill/lame to physically be able to show.

If you don't want your horse's offspring to be overbred, then don't sell foals or put your horse up for public stud. If the offspring is already out there and you can manage to buy them, there are already options to dispose of the horse. They may sometimes take a little more effort, but if you are going to try to control what other people do with their horses, I think it shouldn't be easy. In my opinion, this game already has too much of a culture of trying to control what other people do with their horses.

I fully support. Waiting for a horse to die off takes time, and dropping them in the RC would risk someone else acquiring a horse you may really just want gone. Since this game has a limit to the number of horses you own, and you'd have to pay to increase it, there are just times you really do need to free up some space quickly (say to breed a mare about to retire, or you found that perfect horse for sale) and waiting for a horse to die off isn't an option. As for abusing it, if someone wants to buy up all of the cheap horses and let them sit on a spare account to slowly die off because they deem them unworthy, they already could. Yes, that "elitist" player would need to have the space, but it is not impossible to do as the game is currently set up.

Also Someone mentioned that horses could be retired by mistake if you had a double confirmation for this action it would not be a problem. Ie Someone clicks on retire a second box pops up asking if they are sure and they have to click yes to complete the action.
I have mixed opinions about this one as I do not like the thought of retiring young horses.