Suggestion/Feedback Summary, November 2023

Every month, by request, I will be making a post summarizing that month's anonymous suggestions/feedback, and my response to them. Each submission will have also been shared with the other admins for their feedback as well (especially if the submission specifically pertains to their job), and their views are also expressed here in my summary, as indicated. Feedback from other admins is in their words...I just copy and paste it into the post. 

All suggestions/feedback was anonymous, into the Google Form pinned to the top of this Suggestions section of the forum. The only two questions on the form ask what the suggestion/feedback is, and what today's date is, in order to help sort out when something was submitted. No player information is exchanged.

Suggestion #1: When receiving a club presidency message on the 1st of the new month, could the message tell you which club you have won presidency in? When running in multiple clubs, it can get a little confusing, and I have to click through all the clubs to figure out which ones I've won.

Koni thinks it did at one point do this. I (Blitz) don't remember, but I've definitely wished it did before. I will make a note to look into how/if I can make this happen the next time I have a free moment (which...December is busy for everyone including myself, so I can't say when that'll be...but I will make a note to look at it!).

Suggestion #2: - “Next” button for animals, keeps you going instead of having to go back to your profile or open multiple tabs.
- Disable custom HTML/CSS on player page/animal page personal toggle. Some layouts or animal pages are impossible to read or navigate, or straight up don’t fit inside the screen. - View your threads/replies on the forums. - Some sort of automated private show & ticket sale? Like the auctions.

(note: I added the - to the above to make it slightly easier to read on here and make it easier for me to address each point in my response!)

- This has been suggested before, way back when Sam was still in charge. At this point I have no idea how it would be programmed in to do it right now, but I can add it to my list to see if I can find something online to teach me how to do it.
- If the layout, css, etc. is covering something it shouldn't be with the way it's coded, please report it for us! Otherwise, at this point, that would take away the personalization aspect of HP, so we are not looking to add this suggestion.
- You can search by your player ID (or anyone else's!) to see all posts and replies from the Forum Search!
- Not looking to add this at this point...that's what the forums' Marketplace Sales section and Ad chat is for! As well, I'm honestly not sure how an automated system for tickets and shows would work with requesting, the number of accounts people have, etc.

Suggestion #3: Expanded pedigrees, see more than 3 generations. Or maybe make the default 5 like All Breed Pedigree? Optional inbreeding highlights, again similar to All Breed Pedigree. I don’t know how hard that would be to code, sorry!

For the inbreeding thing, HP is supposed to block inbreeding from happening with an error message when you go to breed 2 animals that are related. For the 5 generations, giving the coding for that page a quick look right now I could probably figure out how to make that happen with a bit of tinkering with the code...will add it to my "when I have time in the next month or two" list!

Suggestion #4: From the page that you register an animal in a club would it be possible to have clickable links to the animal? A lot of the clubs have point requirements and I can never remember how many points each animal has.

I did at one point earlier this year, after it was requested, try to turn that register page into one that looked like the one for presidents to accept/reject the registry, and it broke the page lmao. As for making them clickable links, that might work better and I hadn't thought of trying that back them. Will add it to the list!

Suggestion #5: a ways back you combined a lot of clubs and got rid of some.... why are rare horse and rare dog still seperete? why not just a rare breeds club? wouldnt that help consolidate more?

Koni says: "We originally did not want to take away too many clubs. We can combine them if that's what players would like. For the month of December, we will have the Rare Breeds club in the "Other Clubs" area and players can run for the president for the January term. The players chosen as presidents of the 2 Rare Breeds clubs for the December term will finish out their term for December, then the clubs will be deleted."

Suggestion #6: Have the horses boarded at admin stable (No. 1) obey Humane Alliance (No. 666) rules - be sent to the HA after 7 days unpaid board. There are tons of animals boarded there and not kicked (thus not ending up at the HA which is largely empty) that I would love to buy whose owners have not logged in for over a decade.

This may seem like a surface suggestion, but there are a few different levels to this that I'm going to address. Believe me, I've been tempted to start culling that stable/kennel and just start sending them all to the HA!

The whole idea of Admin Stable #1 has been that it's the default place your animal gets boarded, and that it's "safe" there if your account's upgrade expires, you go on a hiatus, etc. This does mean, though, that a LOT of animals have accumulated there over the years.

I do periodically go through and delete long-inactive accounts...think ones that none of the linked accounts have been logged into in 6 years. When I eat the accounts, any animals on them automatically go to the HA and go "for sale" as of the next day. That's sometimes what you've seen over the years when there's suddenly a whole whack of super old animals with -thousands of days of feed. Note on this, though, that there are a handful of accounts I've chosen to leave even though they fit the 6 years parameters, such as legendary players from back in the day, players who we know have passed away, etc. When I do this, I do a search with specific login parameters in the database then sort it by player #, and check each account before I delete it, so it's also slow going lol.

Lastly, there are certain ways in order to acquire an animal of someone else's who's long been off HP. Which stated that way makes it sound sketchy, but I'm talking certain requirements that need to be met for me to transfer you someone else's animal. They are:
- you must have a direct link to the animal/its lines (ie. your dog is a descendant of the dog you want)
- animal doesn't have over 1,999,999 points (you can't just request someone's 10 miller so you can do a retirement breeding!)
- animal isn't the parent of someone else's project animal
- current owner of the animal hasn't logged into any of their linked accounts in over 2 years
- my discretion (eg: you meet the above parameters, but I know you and this player never got along and I suspect shenanigans are afoot)

Suggestion #7: Two things! one, can you let BV know that the events feedback form it says you can only fill out once? This should go there, but it wouldn't let me do it again... two.. This is probably coming a little late for this year but is there absolutely any way that DoC activities can be released a week at a time instead of daily? Since they get posted randomly it's really hard. My schedule only gives me a specific time when I can get it done, so if it's not up by that time each morning I get off. Then the following morning I have to try and squeeze in two (if the next day's is even up yet) and it gets really tricky. Time zones are annoying AF, but I love DoC and I really want to get them all done this year!!

Thing one: I've let BV know! Thanks for the heads up!

Thing two: BV will reply to this once she is online next! I want to get this posted tonight before I go to bed, so stay tuned for a reply to this forum post with her response!

-bump-

*cries being 3hrs behind HP time & Thursdays for kicking my butt*
So apologies if my response is a bit of a jumble, but wanted to get it out as close to the posting of the above as I could. I've been gone since 7am this morning and only got home about a half hour ago and badly needed food and a shower before computer time haha. Ugh. *waves white flag* xD

"Your event feedback form only lets people submit an answer once!"
- I believe I fixed this issue and now players are allowed to submit multiple responses! Thank you to whoever caught that! If it's still being a pill I'll re-work the form so it'll be much easier for 2024.

"This is probably coming a little late for this year but is there absolutely any way that DoC activities can be released a week at a time instead of daily? Since they get posted randomly it's really hard. My schedule only gives me a specific time when I can get it done, so if it's not up by that time each morning I get off. Then the following morning I have to try and squeeze in two (if the next day's is even up yet) and it gets really tricky. Time zones are annoying AF, but I love DoC and I really want to get them all done this year!!"
- You're right on the late front for this year as we are about to begin the festive chaos of it all, but I 100% agree timezones are super annoying and such a challenge to plan anything on a large scale. In years past each day activity had no less than 24 hours for a player to complete that day, some even chose to extend past the 24 hours. However for at least this year I'll be asking each staff member hosting to have their day stay open to entrants for a full 3 days (72 hours) from the time they post their activity. Hopefully this will allow for more wiggle room to work on activities amidst a busy outside HP schedule. Each day will get posted to keep staff on schedule and so we don't over extend the event since there's quite a bit of time for marking participation and awarding of the daily prizes plus awarding the larger ones at the end of the event.

Speaking of humane alliance animals... what about the animals of banned players? I was looking at various Arabians for sale, for example this account has several crabbets that are up for private bid, but the account is banned, therefore no way to purchase, retire or send to the HA.

https://horsephenomena.com/horses.php?id=260689

Hey Mirabelle, great question! 

Usually, banned accounts are linked via email to a currently active player who just was over the basic account limit, or linked to an account where the most recent log-in is less than the allotted time for a wipe. We try to do a sweep every year to see if there are any accounts we can wipe to help the animals on those accounts get sent to the HA and become available for players to Retirement breed from if they want to purchase them. 

As for this exact account, I'll look into it and see when the other accounts were last logged into and maybe we can get those Ponies up for bid in the HA for you soon! If we do, I'll make sure to let you know. ^-^

Thank you for the swift responses! 😊

Update on Suggestion #1: I just took a look at the code and have tried to add it to the subject for the messages people get. 

Unfortunately, there's no way for me to determine if it works or not until the change over into February. 

So if everything breaks and/or no one gets a message, we'll have our answer lol

Suggestion #4 update:

This is now done...animal names are now clickable links on the "register your animal" page!

(I'm on a roll!!)

Suggestion #3: I won't tell you how long it took me to figure this out, nor how many times my eyes crossed doing it...

but it's now live for horses and dogs!

loving these! Thank you, Blitz!

Update to Suggestion #1: It worked!!! It didn't break the cron!!

:D