I was brain-storming a bit today, and started wondering how to make HP more competitive within breeds. It's so rare with sims to see a desire for a great stud or have a certain mare have really sought after foals. What could we implement or do differently to make things more competitive? There's competiton for points but everyone just trains their own horses, there's not really any desire for stud services or selling of horses. I feel like it woud make the game more fun and put more of an interest in it, for me at least. 

What if we gave a points bonus to horses bred outside of a player's lines? A bonus to a horse who's a successful stud (ie more than one foal to continue a line, actually sought after by more than one player)? Could we somehow penalize buying store horses after a certain player point level so you have more of an incentive to buy and sell horses?

What are your ideas? Does anyone else feel this way?

I kind of like this idea, but at the same time I see flaws in it. One such flaw is - if I was penalized for coming back from hiatus (463,399,118 player points) and starting my lines fresh, there is a good chance I wouldn't have came back at all.

I would like to see (unless this has been done and I have just missed it) rankings per breed and maybe even achievements per breed. I think the breed embassies were started to help with the 'successful' studs and such.

Like Concourse, I see too many major flaws with this idea and I do not see a way that could be integrated into this game without causing a "I'm better than you" attitude, opening windows to cheating or making people quit more but these are just my two cents below:

"What could we implement or do differently to make things more competitive? There's competiton for points but everyone just trains their own horses, there's not really any desire for stud services or selling of horses. I feel like it woud make the game more fun and put more of an interest in it, for me at least."

HP is already quite competitive with breeds in its own intricate system, as we have recently added the Breed Ambassador {i.e HP Studbook} along with a Trophy Case on every animal of their milestone achievement; these achievements in turn do exactly what real life awards do, which is increase the value of the horse and its offspring by having a good pedigree or a case full of awards throughout its life. In addition to having that many awards or a generation with such, it makes their desire/market much more tempting than say a 5-year-old store gelding with 50 points.

Furthermore, in the sense of services or selling, I am quite confused since this is already an implemented thing; if you are talking about breeding to a certain point-marker, we typically breed our horses at the "youngest" age of 16-years and sometimes do a retirement breeding at 22-years, which gives them roughly around 1.1 - 1.7 million points if not higher. Now, if you are suggesting that we breed a horse throughout its lifetime {such as some breeds in real life} this is something we highly frown upon. HP players look towards not only the quality of a horse, but also the market of said breed in general. Many of us prefer to follow the "quality over quanity" saying by using the two by two rule of thumb, but this can vary depending on each players style on the true ideal number.

"What if we gave a points bonus to horses bred outside of a player's lines? A bonus to a horse who's a successful stud (ie more than one foal to continue a line, actually sought after by more than one player)?"

This is technically already implemented by what we have recently been calling generation badges. Everytime you get a new generation { the highest you can go at the moment is I believe Generation 20 - G22 }, you and your animal are awarded bonus points; as for a stallion or mare getting bonuses, this is a major flaw simply due to the fact that it can integrate "cheating the system" so to speak making people want to breed a horse many times to get fast points along with a high probability of flooding the market {which I'll go in-depth with momentarily}.

"Could we somehow penalize buying store horses after a certain player point level so you have more of an incentive to buy and sell horses?"

Like Concourse said this is a major flaw on multiple standpoints; first of all, many players on this game - including myself - are returners from a hiatus or quit, so many of the lines we built up beforehand are either deleted or too old to revive once again. Our overall goal is to attract older players and new players, so to penalize that - like she was saying - would shun many people away from the game or make current players quit the game, which only counteracts our goal.

Second of all and this goes back to several things you have posted here, the market is one of the biggest things we have in the game; one of the key breeding systems we do - if possible - is to integrate fresh bloodlines either from store lines or another player, but sometimes that is not possible. There are certain breeds on here that are rare breeds, which have either one breeder or none at all and then there are some that are so popular you have limited lines. Allowing a large crop to be born {such as 5 or more} makes the problem of brother-sister lineages. To penalize the store at a certain level or generation, you have basically made it too stagnant to go on breeding, meaning that technically you are forced to be at an "end" of a line before you want to quit it, which would drive many players away even more.

Again, this is my two cents on this thought and not trying to sound rude, but in my personal opinion, I feel it would hurt HP more and the breeders on here with that new system than just leaving what is already in place.

Obviously there are flaws with what I threw out there, just looking to start a discussion about it. There isn't really competition between breeds because everyone just does their own, which is totally fine, I just feel like it woud be neat to somehow make it more competitive or rewarding to compete against one another within certain breeds. With the breeding and selling aspect, there isn't really much incentive to buy and sell or stud out horses to other players because of it all coming back to most people choosing their own breed and being known for just that breed. I'm not sure if it's just because HP is a smaller community, albiet active(!), but I think it would be cool to somehow make it more competitive within breeds.

Most players compete within breeds by point gain and lines...

I personally would never do an outside breeding to my lines for the sole fact i want to keep my complete line as in theyll always be safe and wont be retired...

Yes i know lines dont actually break, but to me its still considered broken.

I actually like HP because it isn't so cutthroat and competitive (... though I'm sure you're not not talking cutthroat level here, aha). Everyone can kind of just do their thing: keeping lines to themselves, sharing only certain lines of theirs, having all of their lines public, not even training animals at all and just here for the graphics portion, etc. etc.

I agree with Azalie on this subject.  While it would be fun to see more inter-linear breeding, chances are I would actually breed my mares with someone else's stallions.  Even when I'm buying horses from other players, I try to only buy their store-bought horses, particularly because it keeps my lines safe.  And if I keep things to myself, I don't have to worry about quitting this game and breaking someone else's lines if my horses get retired/deleted.  I enjoy doing my own thing within a community of people doing the same things on their own =)

I personally have discussed in the past that other like breeders can breed a choice mare(or stallion) to my line as the result of the back of foal or pup. Which still leaves me with the final foal/pup. Fee and prices are also discussed. This allows lineage to be more public but also allows me to continue my set line forward. Just making notes of who has my lines for future references. 

And equ hit it on the head.

Even tho is does not seem competitive, it is. Everyone tries to be the top of their breed. Everyone has that goal of 1mil. Easily doable. But I feel HP has that welcome feeling many sims don't have. And I feel like creating more of a "pit against" each other game, we would lose that. We help each other out. This place is meant to be a welcoming fun place. Not a rivalry, clickish community. That's what I don't like. Because you have new players trying to come in and try to compete well established players and it's rather discouraging. 

The thropy showcase case is an incentive to create a better animal. And in turn create a healthy rivalry within a breed. Not everyone is capable or financially stable or secure on HP as others. So many of up can't compete with tickets, show prices. Many of us have things to do outside of the game. If HP took that turn I feel as if we lose the grasp of the game and what it was intended for and inturn lose many of the players. 

So it sounds like people wouldn't be interested in any sort of gameplay aspect involving more incentive to buy and sell horses or breed outside of lines because of the fear of breaking lines or having horses in lines retired. That's totally fine, I was just curious and not really understanding the aversion ro branching outside of your own lines. I dont necessarily agree that competition makes things less friendly or welcoming, it just depends on if you're a cutthroat person or not I suppose, it doesn't seem as though people here would fall into that category :)

It is not so much that we do not have an incentive or hate competing, but as you stated yourself, HP is a very small community. We are not as big as say Star Stables, Howrse, Horse Eden or any other popular sim game like that, which makes competition much harder without it being cutthroat like FWF and Azalie were saying. Many players on this game are what I have heard as Horseland veterans who sauntered here from the older HL or from another older sim entirely.

The breeds also play a big role too in competiveness on here. I know I have already stated this in my prior post, but I emphasize it simply because this is one of our biggest problems right now; popular breeds on this game such as Paints, Hanos, Trakes, TB's or AQH's are a much bigger community and therefore do have competitions amongst their breeds. I see many times of people owning a line's sister from a back-up and competing to get them more awards or on a rankings list in a friendly way, but again, this is not always the case, when you have a rare breed - such as myself - this is not as easy. I am currently breeding Holsteiners, making me one of the few active breeders of said breed. Due to this, if I were to even attempt to compete in some way with another player, it would add aggression or an incentive to possibly cheat to get a "one-up" on the other player.

Peike also made an excellent point here on pointing out competition through training, as many of us do project horses/lines when we get a certain generation. These type of horses raises the demand for private shows and tickets extensively, so many "fight" for first come, first serve abilities. I have personally noticed that since the Breed Ambassador and animal trophies were integrated, it raised the desire to breed/train/compete much much more. There has also been more of a competition to become a BA of your preferred breed since it is is a first come, first serve policy, so many of us try to get to G2 to become it. She also makes a great point on fiances and just our lives as well; many of us are college students plus a lot of them have a job or family to take care ontop of school so that makes time very limited for us to compete at all as well. There are times we are so busy or exhausted, that we simply just have enough energy to pop into chat, greet our friends and throw our animals into our shows before going to bed or just hiring a trainer so this also limits the capability of competing. I understand that making time may be easy, but making HPD - at least to get a decent amount of tickets or privates for your animals - is not. We have been having a major fluxuation, almost a market crash, when it comes to the money side; if you are a new or returning player, you have to start from scratch to build up your earnings {unless you left a small fortune in your account when you quit/hiatused, but this is a rare thing}, which is no longer as easy due to such a drop in graphic demands lately. Money, along with just small amounts of breeders and a small community, have been one of the biggest issues as to why we cannot turn much more competitive.

I think competition could eventually be added to the game, but there would have to be a much more stable economy, a bigger community and more breeders out there first in order to raise the demand for studs or foals for this to properly work.

It makes sense when it's explained more fully, thank you Equ and everyone who commented! :)

I know a lot of people have already responded in detail here, so I'm just kind of adding my thoughts and responding to a few specific ideas:

I think it would be a good idea, and good for the game, for there to be more emphasis placed on breeding and combining lines and selling horses/dogs. Over the years it's something that has been brought up a lot, and I think it WOULD add to the game. It would be another thing to strive for, without really changing any major parts of the gameplay, but it would also be a bigger stream of income for people who mainly focus on training.

I am open to ideas on getting people to buy/sell horses and dogs and offer public breedings. Unfortunately though, I think it's largely up to players to start offering those things. If more people offered breedings to high pointed animals and sold foals from their lines, there would be more of an emphasis on it naturally.

We have added in the breed embassies to help people promote their breeds and get more breeders of each breed. Because one major issue is that if you're the only breeder, then who are you going to sell to? So that's one hope with the breed ambassadors - to make bigger breed communities.

The other thing we did awhile back to help this is make it so that lines cannot be broken. If an animal is retired or deleted, the pedigree of their offspring will remain in tact, so broken lines aren't really much of an issue on HP. Animals are also never deleted from "starving", so if they end up on an inactive account, they won't disappear from not being fed. Although, I know some people still consider retired or deleted horses to be an incomplete line.

@Concourse "I would like to see (unless this has been done and I have just missed it) rankings per breed and maybe even achievements per breed."

Because of the sheer volume of breeds on the game, this would be very difficult to actually do. Not only just the planning involved and the bug fixing, but also where it would go, and the organization involved to make it make sense.

I actually really like the idea of breed-specific achievements! But I'm not sure how possible that would be to implement. I am going to make a note of that and find out if it's actually reasonable to do at some point! Even if it's just "Highest pointed of breed!" and then the date would show that it was earned.

@Peike "And I feel like creating more of a "pit against" each other game, we would lose that. We help each other out. This place is meant to be a welcoming fun place. Not a rivalry, clickish community. That's what I don't like. Because you have new players trying to come in and try to compete well established players and it's rather discouraging."

I think healthy competition is a good thing, it keeps people interested. Within reason, of course. No one likes total cutthroat competition, but I think the "HP culture" doesn't really promote elitism, and I don't think adding more ways to be competitive would change that. The HP community is just friendly, and in my opinion, adding more layers to the game wouldn't change that.

@Equ "I think competition could eventually be added to the game, but there would have to be a much more stable economy, a bigger community and more breeders out there first in order to raise the demand for studs or foals for this to properly work."

I know you're not the only one to point out the size of the game, Equ, I just picked your comment to quote at random :P.

That is part of the reason that competition for those things is low on HP. We're not a huge game and we have A LOT of breeds. The more players we have, the more breeders there will be, and the higher the demand for outside lines will potentially be.

So, tl;dr, I think more breeding and buying of outside lines would be a good thing, but I think that it largely needs to come naturally from people being willing to branch out on their own lines, as well as HP growing in size and increasing breeders and demand.

I personally am always looking for pups/foals out of outside lines that I can buy to add to my hers. I do keep them seperate from my own private lines, but thats personal preference. 

As far as selling pups/foals, I always offer backups of my breeds and hardly EVER sell any and end up just having them deleted.  I think HP is great because there are so many breeds to choose from to train/breed.  I dont much care for games when you only have a few options.

Only way I could see to make HP more competitive would be to add stats to the horses. So you get points for showing and say once a week or month stat shows are run that add more points or bonuses/awards whatever to animals with higher stats. This would increase the demand of breeding and selling. People are going to want to breed to a higher stat stud or lease higher stat mares etc. Only problem is stats add a whole new dynamic to the game and would likely be hard to implement, then you'll have the abundance of low stat horses floating around or being deleted because they're not good enough. Lets face it if we work on a 5 stat basis and the rating is from 1-10 on each and you breed a foal that's stats range in the 5-6 area are you really going to want to keep that and try to breed up and spend the time training it?

So then it adds stat training. If stats are rated 1-10 do regular shows randomly give out stat bonuses to horses so you could possibly improve a stat like stamina, agility but your horse's personality is still a 3 because he's just a rank snot? I like stats but they can be hard to play!

NOW if we wanted to add color genentics as a fun side!! I'm all on board with that and would be glad to assist in any way to that as I've done a lot of genetics research!

i was half awake when i first posted. 

HP does have competition, but its friendly or all in good fun. Not a cut throat type. I would love to see breeds and lines expand, but i also feel we need more people. Many of us hoard animals(like me LMAO) and have multiple breeds. I also buy foals and sell foals willingly and offer stores to people who would like to start. 

I feel with the tiitle of breed ambassador we should expand and push for public lines. I have sold quite a few already to players, My 4 mil trake foal is in the hand of a player, alond with my 2 miller. Some foals are also raffled off or a major give away. And i feel maybe some of the ambassadors would like private liines, which i do too. But we are able to have special lines and maybe ones we can offer to the public. I am picking up a hano filly from Roux, Finnhorses from Tanaris, Altais from Tanaris, Binny and Blitz. 

And to avoid line crossings i either place other player lines with stores, make notes of who has my lines and keep dividers seperate for outside lines. Like I have Blitz trake lines and keep that one in an outside line divider and continue their line with stores. That way the line doesnt abrutly end or doesnt get crossed with another and have the mishab of crossing. 

with that being said, I am also willing to give the orignal line owner first dibs on foals(backups) specialy if they were on hiatus or something happened. That way players wont need to restart totally with their lines, have access to generational animals. Or if they decided to quit that breed and restart them, totally willing to give them foals. Like say if blitz wanted to do trakes again, she is more than welcome to have a foal from the line i bought from her. Like when i gave my 4mil AQH to maha, i just asked if i could have a foal from his line if i ever decided to start them again.

I think the main issue with public foals and lines is fear of animals being neglected, abandoned or deleted. But like even when i was on hiatus I kept my retirement going simply because i knew players had foals or pups from the HUNDREDS(yes hundreds LMAO) animals on that account. 

I would love to see more competetition overall, like clubs and stuff. But in a healthy fun way! No one here seems to have that "I am better than everyone" personality, which I love! But im sure with HP being smaller in comparison to Star Stable or any of the other ones, it would be harder to implement this system, though i do miss having voting competitions like back in HL days! haha!

Thats why i love bingo nights, we used to have a NonOfficial CAH night also. I would offer free privates, graphics or tickets. And other players would throw in prizes, HPD all sorts of things. It just gets hard to play community games due to time zones and real life. 

As I said, would love to see it. But it also comes down to individuals, can always make it one way, but everyone has their own style and agendas. 

PS: Not saying anything bad against the game or any players, of course. HP is amazing, us old folks love the old HL style. I just dont think many of us are ready to get more assertive with bidding on services(tickets) or shows. Which in turn would help create better animals. 

(This is off topic to the main idea here, but....)

Blair, actually I have had a game in development for years which would be similar in many ways to HP but more complex. Color genetics, disciplines, stat training, etc. would all be included. It's been cursed with getting it finished though, unfortunately. Several programmers have come and gone on the project, so I'm not sure when, or if, it will ever actually be finished. All of my other projects are on hold right now, and HP is the only game I'm actively working on. It's called Equicana, although most people know it as HP2 :P.

Oh that's cool Sam I had heard some about it but didn't know it was that in depth! I like those games as well!