Would it help HP any getting rid of some of the inactive breeds? Perhaps encourage competition between active breeds. There seem to be just so many different breeds that people dont really sell and swap lines or compete much within breeds like they used to... Or is that my imagination? Please dont bite my head off over this. Just thinking out loud...

I would support this! I brought this up in a way in this thread https://horsephenomena.com/viewpost.php?id=73571

I agree with you!

This is actually something we used to do! It's a solid idea, but it didn't work in practice (we think for a couple of reasons).

Unfortunately, it didn't actually help activity in the breeds we did have, because the reason a lot of people don't share lines isn't because they don't breed the same breeds. There are lots of people who do the same breeds and aren't interested in sharing for one reason or another.

Another unintended side effect was that it upset people who left the game, and then later returned to lines that they couldn't revive. Especially those on short-term hiatuses, which were just barely longer than the cut off.

Instead, we now require 5 breeders to add new breeds - which I know is an imperfect system, but at least it fosters some interest in the breed, and we do breed spotlights of rare-on-HP breeds. This is also part of the reason we added breed embassies. None of those have particularly helped either, though. I think people on HP are just generally not in favor of sharing lines and breeds :(.

But I would like to change that!

Also, sorry if that reply sounds snippy. Re-reading it, it kind of sounds that way, but it's not meant to be, haha. It IS a good idea, that's why we tried it :P.

A lot of people are cautious selling lines on HP, and personally I know I am for a few reasons.

1. Sometimes people sell off private lines in the hopes that the buyers will treat them as specially as the breeder did, and it doesn't always happen. . 

2. When people buy your lines they in turn can just stell off those lines to anyone they please. Which isn't something most people are comfortable with.

While you would hope that people would agree to those types of things and respect your wishes, it doesn't always happen like that. 

3. Sometimes people like me buy your lines. While they WILL get trained (or deleted if they didn't hit 1mil by retirement) I happen to get swamped by life and have had to take numerous breaks during my time here on HP. I think a lot of Paint breeders are okay selling basic lines to me because they know that if it doesn't hit the right point requirements I'm going to delete it so their lines don't have that when you're going through looking at everything. But not everyone is like that and until I come back to clean things up, those just sit th and age (at least I've already hired a trainer this time around). 

I DO try to sell off back-up foals. I will likely never sell from my private lines agian though. Not that the breeders who have them are bad breeders (they're both great) but those lines are meant to be more private than anything else, especially the closer I get to my special project with them. But I do like to do back-ups from my regular lines to those who can afford them, although it does make me sad to see when someone just hasn't trained them, which has happened.

I think to foster more breeders being willing to share their lines, we need to first prove collectively that we can respect one another well enough to take care of those lines and respect breeders wishes. If they sell you a foal as a favor, you don't turn around and sell it/or the lines to anyone else sort of deal. 

This is also a mentality left over from when a lot of us played HL and selling lines could have serious conseqnces (like entire sections being deleted) and old habits die hard. 

I don't really think that removing the inactive breeds would help, and as Sam said it really didn't in the past. In fact I think that having those breeds open is sort of nice. A lot of people get reaked out by the competition in the more popular breeds and just want to have that one thing that they're really well known for. Having unpopular breeds is a good way to encourage those players to interact more, to train, breed, etc. Plus if one person has good lines and they're willing to help get another player off the ground (hitting back to the, gotta prove we can respect people's hard work if they sell you lines) then you've got 2 dedicated breeders and so on. 

Players sharing with other players starts and ends with us, no matter how many breeds are on the game.

Sorry for the ramble. < 3 < 3 < 3