QUOTE FROM SAM (from page 1):

"It's been suggested several times before, however the money that supports HP comes exclusively from upgrades (since we don't have a cash shop or advertisements) so we need as many of them as we can get to stay open (HP by itself is expensive to run and keep up, but it's also my full time job so the money I make here keeps me from getting another job giving me FAR more time for HP while I'm in school, if I had to get another job I don't know that I'd have time for HP at all since I'd have to work full time or more).

And breed specialties are a major perk, if we offered more than one per account it could SERIOUSLY cut into our upgrade income which would be bad. Especially since you are still able to train other breeds without one, I really don't see it getting added.Sorry!As for a paid add-on that people paid USD for, I think that could work in the future. But right now we need to rest a bit in terms of new features, haha, and let everybody get used to these."

Soooo HP has come quite a long way since 2013 (when Sam posted the above quote). We now have a cash shop, and will probably soon have advertisements (I assume Sam is still working on that). I don't run a sim game, so I'm not sure how another breed speciality per account would cut into Sam's income, and therefore I don't have a counter argument for that XD Maybe, because another breed specialty would give players a reason to not buy more upgrades? I suppose so if it was a completely free addition to all accounts. 

However, I would suggest adding it to the Cash Shop. That way, it's not added as yet another perk for upgrades or just a free perk for all accounts, and those who want it could pay a bit of RLD for the perk of having another breed specialty instead of creating and upgrading a whole new account. Maybe not $15, like a 6 month upgrade. I agree, that's too much for just a second breed specialty. But maybe 5-10 Horse Bucks (about $600 mill HPD or 24-28 HPP)? And there's only one (more) allowed per account. 

Honestly, I'd probably buy one for each of my accounts. The only issue I can foresee is, should this be a lifetime perk or a temporary one? I suppose if the price is high enough (say $10-$15 RLD) maybe it should be for the lifetime of the account. If the account gets banned, you lose the perk. 

Maybe for $5-$7 RLD it could be a yearly perk. Or, if you change your breed specialty, you'd have to re-buy it.

Sam has been adding lots of awesome new features to the game recently and I really appreciate them :) I've just been thinking about all the breeds I want to do, and my past breeds that I want to resurrect but I honestly cannot keep track of 8 or 10 or 15 or 30 accounts! I think this feature in the Cash Shop would be nice to have, and hopefully will be popular enough to pay for itself and its coding/programming into the game.

So there's my novella on 2 breed specialties, what do ya'll think?

I know there are things like mass feed that expire with the upgrade so if it is kept up you kept the perk. But it was gone if you ran out.

My issue with allowing this (although Sass and Fare's ideas could work in terms of not cutting HP's revenue) is that less accounts means less private shows to go around. Less public shows, too, and if the player population continues to rise, they'll get more flooded and point gain will suffer. It's already hard to find private shows, whether whole ones or just spots. More supply could mean lower prices, making it a little more affordable to train that project horse or dog.

I don't know if it'd mean less upgraded accounts. Personally, having the breed specialty in the shop wouldn't sway me to not upgrade accounts. In fact, I would upgrade more accounts if there was the extra breed specialty option, than now, when it is isn't an option. 

I think a quite a few players also use the upgrade perks more as an extra revenue source than for the 10 extra energy from breed specialties. When I had 11 accounts upgraded I rarely used the tickets or private shows for myself. Actually, the deciding factor for me to upgrade those accounts was the enter all, lol.

I do see a point where there might be less private shows though. Since, if this was added in, I might want to start using my own private shows for my horses/dogs. However, maybe that would just mean more show spots are available instead of whole shows.

However, along with your point of supply and demand. It would possibly turn out like it does during the mascot contest. Where demand increases and supply decreases and therefore price will also increase. I feel like this (I don't know if this happens during the mascot contest though) means more people would actually buy more upgrades in order to a) feed the demand and b) make more money from the increased prices. 

Personally I would love to have two breed specialties on one account. Currently I have 6 upgrades that I use for extra income, but only breed Pintabains and Native American Dogs. I also feel like most players out there who provide private shows, especially in bulk, wouldn't stop upgrading those accounts just because they could have multiple breeds on one account. If anything I feel that this might bring in more revune for HP, as I know for me at least I would still upgrade my accounts but it would be so much easier for training purposes to have my horses and dogs on one account.

Two breed specialties per account coming with upgrades could potentially cut HP's income in half, so that's a scary thought. We do have the cash shop generating income, and I am still working on getting HP accepted into an ad network, but upgrades are the bread and butter of HP, and I don't see that changing even with ads. Some people might still have one breed per account, but the vast majority of people would not. (I understand that many people have extra accounts solely for extra income they generate, but there are also a lot of people who only have 2 or 3 accounts which all have breeds on them).

I'm hesitant to add it to the cash shop for several reasons. The first reason is that it would need to cost almost as much as upgrades currently do (and expire with the upgrade) in order to not hurt HP's income, and cash shop items are already at a disadvantage income-wise for HP because the more HPB you buy, the less it costs. When we do sales on Cyber Monday they are $0.50 USD each. So even if an item costs 15 HPB, it's not the equivalent of $15 USD, it's more like $7.50 USD. And if we were to price it high enough that it didn't affect sales, it would end up being 30 HPB for it to expire with a six month upgrade, which is way more than most people would pay for just one extra perk. The other reason is that even if it was priced appropriately so that it didn't affect income and it was for convenience more than anything else, the reason I say no to this as well is because the number of upgraded accounts would then be lower - which means fewer private shows and tickets (and public shows too) in the HP ecosystem, which I believe would have a detrimental affect on prices of those items and people doing projects.

I know for convenience's sake it kind of sucks to not be able to fully do more than one breed per account, but HP was designed around having one breed specialty per account and the breed specialty comes with A LOT of perks for players. The way the game is set up with players being able to have multiple accounts plays a role in this, too, because HP is designed for people to have more than one account making shows, selling tickets, opening boarding, etc. Plus, as Tana pointed out above, fewer shows means less points for everyone. To counteract these things and keep things ~the same~ we would need to change the point structure of shows, change the amount of tickets (or potentially give people 2 sets per month), make more auto shows, and probably have players making more shows, and that's changing a lot about the game for one feature.

I'm sorry to be a debbie downer, but I firmly believe that it would negatively affect too many things if we were to do this. It's part of my job to thoroughly think through how each new feature affects the game as a whole, and this one comes up a lot, so I've thought about it a lot!

The only way I would be willing to consider this - and even in this case, I'm not sure that I am - would be to have a higher tier of upgrade. So it would be more expensive, but come with more perks and potentially a second breed specialty. But me saying this is not a guarantee that I want to add in a second tier of upgrade, or that it would come with a second specialty if I did! I'm just spitballing.

I realize this is an extremely long answer, haha. I just like to be open/honest about why I do or do not want to do certain things so that everyone can see and understand my reasoning.

Ah, those are good points Sam. I didn't think about it disrupting the point system and having to pretty much rework the whole game. 

Well boo-hoo, lol. 

Yea that definitely makes sense Sam. Well maybe things will change it the future, but for now things work well the way they are.

I think this is a really awesome idea!

I think there's one of two ways you could do it that wouldn't hurt the revenue of the site. 1. offer staggered upgrades. Instead of having multiple accounts, just offer all the same upgrade benefits on the same account for buying multiple upgrades (so the second upgrade would give you $800,000 at the bank, 100 training tickets instead of 50, 4 private shows instead of 2, etc. but with the added perk of an extra breed specialty for each upgrade) so it's like having multiple accounts, but all under one identity. That, or add the feature into the cash shop. You could charge something like 10 or 15 dollars as a permanent addition for each breed specialty, or you could charge like 5 dollars every year to rent an extra breed specialty (obviously those numbers are just off the top of my head). Players that wanted the extra shows and all of that would of course still buy the upgrades on other accounts for the other perks. You might actually make more money, since most players if they want another breed specialty, would just add another free account to get it, but with this you give them the option to pay for convenience.