Better Pricing system.

I've noticed lately that the pricing of sale horses seems pretty screwed, and that quite a few people have been upset by this. I feel as if the idea of 10k for every hundreds stats does not take quite a few things into account, such as color and conformation. It also does not work for low 100 stat horses of common colors that you could just pick up out of the RC. I believe that before the markets can get better, a better idea of what horses are actually worth. I'm not really sure how to go about this, but I feel as if a discussion is needed.

This is something that I've felt since I joined the site. A horse with 1000 stats is worth far more than 10 times a horse with 100 stats. A horse with 200 stats is worth more than twice a 100 stat horse, just as a sound that's 40 Hertz is more than twice as loud as a sound that's 20 Hertz.

I agree, and I think the problem is that horses are way too easy to obtain and breed, so there are too many horses in the game and too few people buying horses from other players. There needs to be daily or weekly limits on breeding and foundation horse purchases.

I think part of the confusion comes from the ability that us as players have of being able to focus on 3 different breeding philosophies. Some breed for stats and don't really care about confo & color. Some breed for color & not stats or confo. Some breed for confo and not for color or stats. I focus mostly on stats and for one breed - color. Therefore if I want to sell one of my horses I'm going by stats. If I went to buy a horse, I may run across a breeder who values color more than stats. I could see one of their horses with say 150 stats for 40k and think that's over priced for their stats. I wouldn't be aware that this particular breeder was focused on the horse's color. It might be helpful if when we go to buy/sell a horse if we could list why we're pricing it as we are. Such as a 100 stat pure white mustang (white is a bit rare) might be labelled like this: "Asking 25k - 10k for stats and 15k for color rarity."

I agree. I really liked having Shifty Jim around, but I know there were a lot of problems with him mislabeling the values of horses. I feel like bringing him back and improving him/recoding him would be very beneficial. I also know a lot has changed since Shifty Jim's demise, so if we could all create one big discussion about the determining factors to a horse's value, and what exactly a horse with which factors are worth and then proceeding to recode Shifty Jim, I feel like it would be so much better for the horse buying/selling economy, especially because players would be able to hear from 'someone' who is programmed to know their horses are worth. It would also be great if before listing a horse for sale, the person was required to have their horse valued, but that's not something as important as the rest.

@Sueheck - We used to have a limit on how many foundation horses we could create a week; I believe it was 10. It has been suggested before to bring that back, but a lot of people disagreed. I do agree that its very easy to over breed horses, therefor giving us too many horses and not enough players. The rescue center deletion has somewhat helped with that, but we do need something more.

I also feel like its not AS easy to breed horses because we now have to wait a week for the mares to even give birth, let alone be eligible to breed again, but I do feel like access to studs are too easy. I see horses being put up for almost their entire lives and end with over 60 foals, which is absurd, so I do feel like something about that needs to change.

@ｗｅｙ ---> I like the idea of having horses valued, or appraised. I think it could be helpful, especially to newer players who aren't sure how to price their horses. I'm still new, and still trying to figure a way of pricing that seems fair, and I'm sure I've overpriced some of the horses I've sold without realizing. If there was a 'program' that could appraise a horse based on stats, confo, and color, I think it would be helpful to both sellers and buyers. You'd know what your horse is worth, then you could price a horse correctly. I'm sure that their will still be players who ask more than the value for one reason or another, but there may also be players who ask under what a horse is worth.

Pretty sure Abbey has already stated that she will not be adding Shifty Jim or anything similar back into the game because she wants the horse economy to fluctuate- not become stagnant with a set value.

Maybe a shifty Jim wouldn't work with the economy changing, but a forum that stays on the top what can be changed and edited with the economy could work. I myself breed for color and stats. I'm starting with colors I like of lower stat horses and am going to improve the stats through generations, so I feel like a system would have to include all of these things, and not just three. Maybe a three part system would work the best, like three equations that add together. It might take a bit of work to figure out what that would be. I also think there is one thing we left out of this equation, age. A 1 year old horse with 300 stats is worth more than an identical horse with 300 stats that is 19.

As I see it, there are four main factors that come in to play when pricing a horse
1. Stats
2. color
3. Age
4. conformation

@silverwolves - You're right! I forgot to include horse's age in the pricing factoring. Good point!