Stat-Based Competition System

The addition of a stats-based competition system represents an exciting evolution for our traditional text-based sim game. By assigning and developing stats to reflect the unique abilities of each animal, this system enriches gameplay, introduces strategic depth, and fosters long-term engagement.

This approach allows players to train, compete, and breed their animals in meaningful ways that enhance immersion and offer new opportunities for creativity and personalization. Whether focusing on excelling in specific events or creating balanced, versatile animals, players are empowered to shape their experience like never before.

The system not only elevates the competitive aspect of the game but also integrates seamlessly with existing mechanics, ensuring flexibility for both new and seasoned players. By combining stat-driven competitions, dynamic events, and a rewarding progression system, this update breathes fresh life into the game, keeping it engaging and relevant for the community. For players who enjoy the current system, it will still be fully available, so you won't need to learn the new one unless you want to explore it.

The Stats

Introduce a stats-based competition system where horses and dogs gain stats reflecting their key abilities:

• • Horse Stats: Speed, Agility, Stamina, Grace, Strength.

• • Dog Stats: Speed, Agility, Stamina, Focus, Strength.

Events are judged using tailored formulas emphasizing relevant stats for each competition. To keep results dynamic and exciting, a Random Adjustment element introduces unpredictability, simulating real-life factors like mistakes or penalties. Over time, additional events can be added to sustain player interest and enhance gameplay.

Increasing Stats

The stats system integrates seamlessly with the existing points-based mechanic:

• • Animals gain stats based on their accumulated show points (e.g., 1 stat point for every 100,000 regular points).

• • Players can allocate earned stats to specific skills, customizing their animals’ strengths.

• • Flexibility is key: players can engage with this new system or stick to traditional showing methods.

This adds complexity to breeding, showing, and training, creating fresh opportunities for strategic decision-making.

Breeding Mechanics

Introduce depth to breeding with a formula for passing stats from parents to offspring:

1. Parent Contribution: Average the stats of both parents.
2. Random Adjustment: Add variance (e.g., -2 to 3) for unpredictability.
3. Generation Modifier: Subtract a small amount (1-2 points) from inherited stats to encourage training and growth over the animal's lifetime.

Event Examples and Scoring Formulas

Tailor events to highlight specific stats for both horses and dogs. For example:

Horse Events

• • Show Jumping: (Agility × 2) (Speed × 1.5) − (Random Penalty: 1-6 for knocked rails).

• • Race: (Speed × 3) − (Stamina ÷ 2) (Dice Roll: 1-6).

• • Dressage: (Grace × 2) (Agility × 1) (Random Judge Bonus: 0-10).

• • Cross-Country: (Stamina × 2) (Speed × 1.5) (Agility × 1) − (Obstacle Faults × 3).

Dog Events

• • Agility Trials: (Agility x 2) + (Speed x 1.5) (Focus x 1) - (Mistakes x 3)

• • Flyball: (Speed × 2.5) (Focus × 1.5) − (Errors × 5)

• • Weight Pulling: (Strength × 3) (Stamina ÷ 2) − (Mistakes × 5)

Competition Levels and Stat Ranges

Competition levels based on total stats:

• • Beginner: 10-25 stats.

• • Intermediate: 26-50 stats.

• • Advanced: 51-75 stats.

• • Elite: 76 stats.

Reward System

Animals who place well in events earn HPD winnings for the owner, offering a fair and engaging way for new players to generate income. This system emphasizes in-game engagement over real-world financial investments, making the game more accessible.

Benefits to the Game

1. 1.  
2. Enhanced Player Engagement Players work toward meaningful goals by improving their animals' stats. Players become more invested in their animals' development, keeping them engaged longer.

3. Strategic Depth By introducing stats players can strategize how to train or prepare their animals for specific events. For example, a player might focus on agility to excel in jumping competitions or endurance for long-distance races. This adds an extra layer of thought and planning to the game.

4. Dynamic Competition Stats allow for detailed comparisons between animals in competitions, making outcomes feel more dynamic and fair. Players can compete to have the "best" animal in a specific category, adding to the rankings/achievement system.

5. Replayability With a stats system, players may want to replay the game to explore different training strategies, improve their lines further, or try to win competitions with new stat combinations. This can greatly increase the longevity of the game.

6. Personalization Stats customization empowers players to shape their animals’ development, creating a more personalized and immersive experience.

7. Revenue Opportunities A stats-based system could unlock additional revenue for the game. This feature enhances the game's depth and appeal while avoiding the pay-to-win scenarios that might alienate players.

Thank you for making it to the end. Please share your thoughts on a feature like this—your input is invaluable and I want to hear it! ♥ trig

Just on a quick reading, it seems like lined animals would have a huge advantage over stores. That's going to make it hard for new players coming in, wouldn't it? Or would even stores start with some amount of stat points?

Great question! The competition levels will keep the playing field more even as an animal with a significantly higher set of stats won't be competing at the same level as a store animal. In this example, store animals will come with randomly assigned stats to start with and then you build the skills from there.

ah, okay. Gotcha! That makes sense.

I think what makes me nervous about it is HP is just... simple to play. Easy. And this is a whole different aspect for it. So I definitely like that you can use it if you want, or just keep playing as is. If something like this and maybe prism could actually be added into HP, stuff that were option but opened up a whole level of complexity for the game, it'd be really interesting!

As much as I love Prism, I would much rather have resources poured into a feature like this. We don't have existing artwork to support Prism with how many breeds there are on HP and our art community is just geared differently. IMO, color genetics would be a bigger lift than stats as it's not designed to mimic realistic breed abilities. I specifically didn't focus on breeds playing a factor in stats and who am I to say that your mini isn't the world's best show jumper xD

lol! Love it.

Do you foresee any differences in the system from a basic player to an upgraded player?

Not currently, this was derived as an opportunity to increase player engagement no matter the status of their bank account.

Sounds complicated! I don't know about other players, but I like the simplicity of HP. It's a "down time" for me where I can just play and not have to think about anything because the rest of life is so busy and fast-paced and stressful.

Is a stat based game kind of how Howrse is run? 

not sure how I feel about this tbh... I really enjoy the simplicity of HP and how it is now! I feel like it might over complicate things. 

I'm honestly not familiar with Howrse so I can't say how they compare.

@binx - That's the beauty of it, you can choose to work on stats or just continue using the current show system. It works with the existing points framework and adds a layer of complexity for those that want something more personalized.

I love being able to have  the option to work on stats or just being able to continue on with my existing point system. However, I think that having both of these options are wonderful ideas! :)

But how would something like this be able to be incorporated into HP as it would have to do with coding would it not? 

It sounds familiar to the old horse game I used to play, Equus Nation (Formerly DUHS). The game sadly no longer exists and hasn't for a while, so I'm gonna try my best to remember it from memory. XD

Each horse had around 12 different stats, and the game had around 16 different disciplines. Each discipline focused on 3 stats, and once your horse became trainable at three years old you set it for a discipline you wanted. There were also I want to say 12-14 training levels from Beginner to Champion.

When you entered in competition your horse would earn points just like standard point gains you get in current HP. Once it hit a certain point level though, you could "Level Up" your horse, and each training level had 5 levels within it. With each level up, the game automatically assigned stat points to your horse, but always made sure the 3 stats for it's discipline always got 2 or more points.

Also each competition level had 5 "sub levels" So if you have a fresh store horse, you start at Beginner 1. Then say when it hit 5000 points, it leveled up to Beginner 2. And let's just say the horse is at Beginner 5 and then it hits 50,000 points, it moves onto Novice 1. And so on.

I do love your idea that players get to choose where their stats go, and unlike EN I don't think we would need a ton of different levels. XD

But I wanted to list that game as an example that it is do-able for a game, especially since EN was also originally coded by the same person who did HP (Paradigm Programming).

I personally did not like Howrse. I tried it a long time ago.

The only game I ever really loved was the old Horseland, hence why I like HP (since it's basically the old Horseland just with a new name). If HP turns into Howrse, I honestly probably will just up and leave all together.

@binx - TThis would require some investment in programming, but I believe it to be well worth it. Since it’s been at least 6 years since any major new features were introduced, this could be a great opportunity to revitalize the game and keep our community engaged for the long term.

@Kiyoko - There are a ton of possibilities with a setup like this. I have it currently layed out with less layers and restrictions since HP is "a simple game" but future development is there. New disciplines could be added as time goes on (great way to keep engagement up).

@Naima - I'd love to hear specifics that turned you away from Howrse. Like I said, I've never played that game so it's hard to see the similarities especially since this isn't a replacement for the current system. You can continue to play the way you always have.

Unfortunately, people are leaving the game as it is now and doing nothing is not a sustainable business model. This proposal introduces fresh, engaging gameplay to revitalize a system that, while functional, has grown stagnant over time.

I honestly like it! I think there is a massive gap in the game where new ideas can be implemented and they're just not for one reason or another. I mean once you train or request/enter shows that doesn't leave much...to do. And that's coming from someone with 40 accounts and 20 breeds to take care of weekly. Thankfully I can code and sometimes make graphics otherwise there would be even less to do.

I love HP as it is, but I am open-minded to some additional challenges. I'm kind of surprised at the push back here. Thanks for your idea, Trig, and putting it together so thoroughly. I am in the camp there needs to be new improvements and additions to the game, given coding/financially permitting to do so.

So yeah, HP is easy, it's fun. Some of us would like to see some fresh options too, though. 

I honestly don't remember specifics. It was so long ago that I tried it. I just remember getting bored with it and not liking it and just stopped loging in. There was another one that I learned about here too and tried was it maybe beginning of last year? cause I think blitz plays it? Equiverse, I think it was? I got bored with that one too and just stopped logging in after only maybe 2 weeks. The community aspect wasn't there for one thing. I had like no money and couldn't earn enough money to do anything with so I could keep a massive Hoard and have a bunch of multiple breeds like I do here (i can't just choose one). And since the community aspect wasn't there, once you're done training for the day, there wasn't really anything to do. Didn't have the personalized graphics on my animals like I do here. Can't make money by training for others like I do here.

I'm sure others will like this. I'm just having trouble visualizing it. Like for those of us that want to continue with the simple gameplay, are we going to have to have a bunch of extra clutter on our animal pages that possibly makes no sense to us? Or it is going to have like an on/off switch on the edit profile page if you want to use the new feature or not like using dividers or not does on the edit profile page?

Besides the complexity that it sounds like goes with this. I'm also not a competitive person. EVER. PERIOD. So are people going to just be trying to "beat" everyone with a similar breed and a similar stat specialty, etc and judging even ones who arent even in the competition of this new feature?

Honestly, the concerns you listed could easily be said about the player experience on HP. I understand change is scary but we would all be learning this together. As far as people just trying to beat everyone else, that's the exact system we currently have in place. The competition is very linear and uses a very visible metric that people aim to beat, points. Even if someone wanted to be competitive, the rankings are completely unattainable for the new to average player. My hope is that this would allow more opportunities for players to "be the best" due to the diversity it offers. For example, you aim to have Paints that excel in Trail Riding while another Paint breeder focuses on Reining because that's their preferred sport. You're free to make those choices or free to choose to just continue to train the old fashioned way and track points.

This sounds like a great idea from an existing stats based game player 😁 (HEE) and I think it might be interesting to try here and yet keep the simplicity of the game as it is because it is awesome how easy the showing system is here!

It sounds awesome....however it intimidates me. I play HP because its easy and simple and not complicated. If I wanted stats I would be on Howrse or the other sites that have my complex aspects. I have enough things that confuse me in my life, I don't want HP to be one of them. xD

I'm feeling exactly like Ris. And I am very easily confused.