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Ammit · Jun 20, 2024 7:55 AM

The first thing I wanted to point out is the change to how breeder clubs are organized. I wanted to be sure we could all talk about this using a shared vocabulary. On the club page, eras are now listed in 3 categories.

Click Here

- Limited Eras are any era created in the past year. They have not reached the breeding ability cap, they have not been the primary era yet, and they are subject to restrictions to promote more equal competition.
-The primary era was created between 1 year and 18 months ago. It is right around or has reached the breeding ability cap. It earns bigger prizes than any other leaderboard. There should be only 1 primary era at a time. There are currently two but this is only temporary while we adjust the time window the primary era falls on.
- Older eras have already had their shot to be the primary era and are now mostly dominated by boosted horses.

How do you “win” an era?
In order to understand why changes are happening it’s important to understand how players dominate the limited eras. When a new era is created they create their foundation mare and stallion. 10 foals are produced from that pair via breeding, cloning, or a mix to qualify the mare and stallion for the best producer leaderboard. Of those 10, one colt and one filly are maxed so their abilities are perfect. The perfect foals from that generation are used to create 10 foals, two of which are maxed for the next generation. Rinse and repeat until you hit cap.

There is also an even more powerful discount version of this. You start with a mare and a stallion that have no fancy genes (only 1 IV to clone). They produce a single foal. You max out that foal to make it perfect and then you clone it 9 times. You only pay for one maxing (if you have to pay at all), the cloning only costs 562,500 hbs and you kick ass on the leaderboard because your stallion has 10 perfect foals.

When maxing is free
Maxing costs 5 gmt tokens. Members who win prizes on the leaderboard win GMTs. Some members win dozens or even over a hundred gmts a month from the leaderboard. They can use those GMTs for all sorts of edits to their herd. That is intentional. The reward for the leaderboard is being able to play around with colors, change genders, edit consistency etc.

The problem is that a member with 500 to 1000 or so show horses who wants to get a shot at a new limited era has to pay over 1 million hbs per generation to have a shot at the lb. Larger lb competitive stables get to do all their maxing for free. That squeezes smaller barns out of the limited board completely. That doesn’t seem very fair or very fun to me.

Limiting new eras
I had proposed making it so all maxing cost IVs instead of gmts. (No more free maxing) After a discussion, the community decided that they wanted to preserve access to free maxing for those accounts and to only limit maxing in new eras. The goal was to keep one or two players from totally taking over the primary and both limited eras. One player kicking ass in one era is fine, but you should not be able to totally squeeze smaller barns out just because you get your maxing for free.

The total number of maxes needed to be pretty small to have an impact because as you can see you only need 1 or 2 to totally take over an era. We settled on a limit of 4 max outs a season spread over all the newest eras. (The number of eras with limitations has already shrunk and continues to shrink.)

What about boosts?
Boosting has no impact on limited and primary-era competition. It’s not strong enough to beat a fully maxed-out line. It is only useful in era competition once a line hits breeding cap. At that time they become huge in the strategy but until then the era penalty is too strong to overcome with a boost. There is zero point in limiting boosts to protect the primary and limited eras. The era penalty already does a flawless job at that.

Is the change working?
I don't think we nailed this one on the first try. I think now we have a system that incentives making the plainest lines possible, and doing tons of cloning and inbreeding. I want that to be an option for members who are more cash-strapped but I want flamboyant colors and big fancy lines of hundreds of horses to be viable too.

I am not interested in banning maxing, cloning or boosting from any eras. The goal is not to make the most perfectly balanced leaderboard. I could give awards at random if I didn't want know-how and accumulated resources to have any impact. Even if I did those things, the barns with the biggest pastures and most time for testing would still just win. That’s different but I don’t think it’s nessasarily any better.

My suggestion
I think I was right originally that free maxing was the real problem with limited boards. Everyone needs to pay the same price. At the same time lots of people use maxing in ways that have nothing to do with the leaderboard and using your hard-won gmts to max a cool foal is fun and I want people to have that.

I don't think limiting the amount of maxing on the newer eras is making the leaderboards more egalitarian or the game more fun. I think we need a hybrid system. Maxing out should cost GMTs for most eras so that people can win free max outs and have fun with them. However, for limited eras I think all maxing should cost IVs. No limit on the number you can do. If you have a big old barn and can fund 500 IVs worth of maxing a season you should be able to.

The thing with paying IVs for those limited eras is the person who pays for 1 single max-out and then clones, has the same shot at winning as the person who paid for 10 max-outs, but no one is forced to do it one way or the other. And most importantly no one gets it for free.

To me that sounds straightforward, easy to understand, and most of all fair.

I want to hear from you if:
1) You want to compete on the limited-era LBs but find the competition too difficult/intimidating
2) You are already a competitive player on the limited-era boards and have insights to share
3) You don’t compete in the limited eras but have been negatively impacted by the changes.

Please let me know how the change has impacted your play and if you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can improve things.

Fiddler · Jun 20, 2024 8:45 AM

I am definitely interested in the competition and am edified by your comments about cloning and maxing and boosting because i didn't know a lot of this. (that people are breeding undistinctive horses just to win!)

I think an interesting thing to do would be is separate (in some reasonable manner) the megabarns that you talk about from the little accounts that cannot compete. Maybe make it more expensive once you hit 1million a day or something?

or 2 free maxes for everyone per month. For a big barn, that's very nice, but for a little barn, it gives them awesome unthought of power.

When i was fresh and new here i won a contest and won a boost. that boost was entirely wasted because i had no idea of its powers. Months later, when I still couldn't afford to buy a boost, i regretted that i had used it on that particular horse. So in a way, the costs of things keeps them inaccessible for the beginner, and maybe that's a good thing?

my 2 cents. Thank you for making this fun game.

Ammit · Jun 20, 2024 8:51 AM

Pretty sure I don't want to go down the road of a bunch of free maxing-out stuff. It is perfectly reasonable to have some things in the game that you have to work your way up towards. Not everything should be available to the newest of players. Getting a barn that can fund those things is a major milestone and rewarding accomplishment.

paradoxphoenix · Jun 20, 2024 1:57 PM

I am definitely interested in limited eras moving to unlimited IV maxing instead of a limited number of GMT maxing.

I was initially for the limited number of GMT maxing, but I’ve found this season it has been more limiting than it’s maybe intended to be— I have to save my Maxing for my highest gen (I think that’s 5G already?) era 16 foals to stay competitive, but that leaves me unable to max the pretty 2G or 3G foals who are otherwise alters or far below my standards.

If it switches to IVs for only the limited eras, it may give me a little more flexibility to be able to max my favorite lower generation foals too.

My other suggestion would be a hybrid system for limited eras— you can only max a limited number with GMTs (maybe lower that to 2?) then after that you have to use IVs.

Starstruck2 · Jun 20, 2024 2:11 PM

What about maxed horses being ineligible altogether for Era boards?

Victory5627 · Jun 20, 2024 2:24 PM

I like Starstrucks idea, but if I understand correctly it could be the dam/sire of maxed foals also gaining the benefits even if they weren’t maxed themselves?

Maxing seems a bit like cheating to me for the lbs, especially when big barns can afford to do it in large quantities

DarkwatchStables · Jun 20, 2024 3:22 PM

I'd be super interested in some sort of separate leaderboards for horses or even entire lines that haven't been boosted or maxed out at all. Otherwise I can't say I have much of an opinion on it at all since I very rarely max or boost any of my horses. Mostly if I use GMTs its either to gender swap a colt who I like but probably wouldn't breed to into a mare I would definitely keep, or to play around with color genes mostly in either new lines, new genes I'm trying to work into an existing breed or color genes I'm worried about losing in my existing lines/breeds.

dunno if this opinion is at all useful... I guess I should maybe start using boosts or maxing out more horses if just breeding isn't really going to be a viable way to compete?

Brandybrookes · Jun 20, 2024 4:56 PM

Ammit i feel this is a much more fair and well explained offer than the previous limit to 4 max outs.

When i first started out i had zero chances on the leaderboards for what i beleive were a couple years. Till i had built up my stables enough. Within the past year and a half is when things really started to kick off for me. I had a plan and followed through. Era 14 is my first leaderboard that ive consistently had good horses in. Now that it is one of the prime eras, the horses are at cap with the possible limit of max outs this would hurt this line and others that i have. I like to add lots of color and have multiple mares and a couple stallions to avoid over inbreeding ,which cloning is just not possible for me meaning anyone that used that method or pastures would eventually triumph while my lines dwindled in size. I felt that limiting the maxouts hit my heart hard. Finally achieving my goals and to feel it slowly dwindle. My era 15 has fallen behind and 16 is not era specific but some of the foals end up being era 16 because some of the parents are impacting my snowflake line. The limit to 4 maxouts truly discouraged me , but i wanted to see other people win and have a chance at the LB.

The leader boards are challenging for someone with as big as a stable i currently have. The competition is truly competitive which can go both ways creating excitement or disappointment. Though i want to see the new smaller stables have a chance and to be able to play with lots of genetics and to have their pretty horses be on the leaderboards instead of sacrificeing the fun gene edits for max out or a lower clone cost.

Brandybrookes · Jun 20, 2024 5:15 PM

I dont think removing max outs is the option as stated above some barns use horses with the least genes to have a cheaper clone price. 1 supirior foal could be maxed out and cloned multiple times and gender changed giving those who clone the upper hand. Breeding in pastures would give those barns the upper hand while those who put alot of genes on a few select horses pull eggs and straws are limited. Perhaps the new eras could have a 1 month advance for small or new barns giving them a head start?

Also i as im sure many other bigger barns always try to be generous with helping others out. If someone is strapped or can only max one horse or dosent have a good stallion or mare if they reached out to whoever they compete with on a leader board im sure they would help a small or newer barn out with straws or eggs from their horse on the boards. Maybe even sell one of the offspring or swap straws and eggs from eachother. :)

CheshireFarms · Jun 20, 2024 5:41 PM

Only because I know you're gonna want more member participation in this...

I have no 2 cents to add. LOL Honestly, do or don't. I never really understood the boards, specially the Eras.

I try to stay in the lead in some color boards with my primary line of horses, and I really only seem to do that by breeding, maxing, boosting, clone/boosting and retaining my foals until after the boards resolve (then sorting them and selling off what I don't want to breed later).

I don't really understand how to stay competitive on the boards, to have more horses show up under Points Earned vs Top Producing.

I think I have enough horses to be considered one of the Mega Barns, and my oldest line is going on 15 generations now.

Out of curiosity I wanted to see what the Eras looked like for my horses, and I can see I basically have taken over Era 1 and 2. While it was never my intention to do this, I'm assuming it's because of all the boosting and Bootstrapping I did.

I honestly don't know if I've been affected by any of your changes, or will by any of the proposals. I think maybe since I rarely make any new foundations, it wouldn't matter since I'm primarily focusing on my longest established line.

I do know however, from talking with other players about the frustrations of the boards. Is they would like some balancing of the colored boards.

annismyrph · Jun 20, 2024 5:58 PM

I think I am one of the "mega" barns. I do not do cloning or maxing at all and have noticed since it became available instead of my horses landing in the top 25 ( not even the top 3 ) many dont even make it ON the LB's. I ve found it very discouraging and honestly have quit even really trying, at this point I get more "GMT Rewards" from the Futurities than the leaderboards. What used to be a fun aspect to strive for in the game has now become something I dont even watch becuase quite frankly even though I earn close to 1mil HB's a day , I need the GMT to "fix" foals into what I need them to be for my own personal breeding goals, and if I had to "Boost/ clone / max " to get there well thats just not fun for me.. I d like to earn it be actually furthering my lines, then using great gobs of IVs and GMTs to "beat" everyone to get what 5 GMT's? when you ve spent twice that to get there whats the point?

Corvus · Jun 20, 2024 7:56 PM

I used to chase the Snowflake LB when it first started, but like some other players have quit chasing them. Im not sure how to explain it, but it is frustrating when your not one that does the clone max clone max thing. I actually didn't even know it was a thing until I started looking at the top horses on the LB.

Ive never really strive for the Era breeder clubs either, its hard enough to keep the colour lines separated. (thats me and my OCD) I do breed for the snowflake and big spotties and not really for the PTs. I breed for the flashy and the weird (my all splash stallion, just to see what will pass and what doesn't ...)

I did recently start a bootstrap, but that's not as fun as I thought as its just breeding it to the highest PT horse you can find and then breeding back and back and back and so on. I mainly did it, because it seemed like the only way to get the big daily pay outs.

Ive culled and tested, and tested and tested some more, kept my pastures small so I don't get to over run with horses and keep everything I breed to show. When I max its to get the 2nd gens that I want to keep through testing against benchmark and make sure they are sup to sire/dam. When I clone its to keep those foundations that I really liked. I boosted only those yellow foundations into red/A.

Im just getting into the higher gens and noticing that I am on the board now, and actually pretty proud of them and the hard work that I've done to get them up there. I am maxing all my 9th and up gens so that cap isn't affecting me, but the 2nd gens maxing is limiting me.

I was doing the Furities as well, but I was trying to use them as a way to get my stock noticed and used outside of my barns as well as I myself improve my lines with others ... but its now become a just breed breed breed, get them on the board, lock them in and forget about them. As a colour/pattern breeder this doesn't really fit in with how I play so I don't chase the Furt boards as much anymore.

Im really not sure how to explain it and Im not complaining, just stating why I don't chase the LB boards anymore. I out of habit more than anything enter everything I can into every breeds club I can and then look at them after the awards go out.

Ammit · Jun 20, 2024 7:56 PM

"My other suggestion would be a hybrid system for limited eras— you can only max a limited number with GMTs (maybe lower that to 2?) then after that you have to use IVs."
That still gives free maxing to lb competitive accounts and I think the free maxing is a problem.

__

"What about maxed horses being ineligible altogether for Era boards?"
I said in my post why I was not going to do that. :)

___
As I said above boosting is not relevant to the limited era conversation.

___
It's impossible to stagger the start time of eras.

____

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Even the off-topic posts are good insight for me for future looks at the lb. However, I don't think I have much actual feedback on changes for limited eras yet. Could use some more on that. Thanks!

Humboldt · Jun 21, 2024 4:16 AM

I haven't chased leaderboards mostly because I couldn't figure out how to get on them. The color boards are dominated by boosted lines. Occasionally I get a stud on the lower end of the list. I bred RR2 lines quickly when Inkspot and Toner came out, so I was able to get on those boards as my lines were already well established, even without boosting. I don't think anyone is out boosting their RR2 lines heavily so I can still compete there.

I think the changes to the limited eras so competition is more fair sounds like a good idea. I just recently started to try for them but didn't realize how much maxing and cloning was used to win them.

For me, I use maxing for a foal that ended up with perfect genetics or was a cross I used from outside lines, so I can guarantee a breeding quality foal. That's why I track the Best in Pasture foals - so I can keep high quality breeding lines. IVs and GMTs are the same for me, as I don't win many GMTs each year, generally 3 to 5 each year. I don't think changing maxing out to IVs would alter my game play.

Could the maxing limit be exempt from Fantasy lined horses since they are not eligible for Era boards? I always have new fantasy lines and now cannot max a few of them because of the Era limit.

annismyrph · Jun 21, 2024 4:22 AM

I hesitate to ask this but, could the LB be slpit? Into non maxed/boosted and maxed/boosted? That way the new smaller barns ( of which there are very few on this server) dont have to try to compete with the one who go all infor PT scores?

Aidendale · Jun 21, 2024 5:04 AM

Cloning never even occurred to me, I am definitely learning things here! I use maxing to save my coolest foals, mostly chimeras - for me, it's made breeding for them much more viable. I find it simpler than fussing with boosts.

I have 10k show ponies, make about 500k, breed just over 1k foals a month, and have as much barn and pasture space as I'm ever going to. I have 3-5 foundation stallions at any given time and try not to inbreed until 5th gen, sometimes 4th. I do not bootstrap, and next season I'll have my first 8th gen foals (partly taking me so long because I scrapped the RH lines I first started with). I tend to get anywhere from no to 10 GMTs a month from clubs. I spend most of my hbs on IVs to use on my foals, whether for maxing, consistency, or small tweaks to stallions. Also to change bone weights on foundations, but with the new BC out I'll stop that.

I also don't pursue futurities, because my focus is even breeding and the genes I like, so I don't have space to spend on breeding with others' stallions just to trade/hit the board. Basically, I'm just trying to breed pretty, evenly-bred, consistent, superior-to-parents ponies - any club wins at all are just happenstance.

Anyway, tl;dr aside, as far as the goal of making the boards more egalitarian but without banning anything... What about limiting not just maxing, but cloning? Or make cloning or maxing similar to boosting in that it changes the era?

Ammit · Jun 21, 2024 5:37 AM

Splitting the LB would mean rebuilding it completely from scratch and take 200+ hours of work. It is totally outside the realm of what we can take on right now.

It does seem like generally there is a large lack of understanding about how to compete on the lb and that may be the primary thing holding a lot of players back. Guides might be really useful.

___

The idea of limiting cloning came up on forest and here is my reply from there

"
I think I feel better about reducing the amount of restrictions instead of increasing it. I already have frustrated players getting caught in the crossfire who aren't even trying for the leaderboard. I have to find the balance between making space for mid-size barns in the new eras and still allowing those not competing to have a fun game. The max once and clone a bunch is also the cheapest way to compete so it's a really good strategy for smaller accounts and benefits them the most. I like that it gives multiple paths to still be competitive.

Given we have the futurities I am ok with the primary eras being midsize and up barns. I just want to make sure big barns aren't getting there wins for free while the midsize barns have to pay for it"

CheshireFarms · Jun 21, 2024 7:53 PM

"I just want to make sure big barns aren't getting there wins for free while the midsize barns have to pay for it"

Does this honestly matter? These big barns you're worried about are probably making 500k and up as passive income. That's a lot of HB to IV to GMT conversion right there. And if they are participating in the Furts, chances are they are earning more there, than in the Limited and Primary Eras.

If I understand this, the reason you are doing this is you feel like you are giving out rewards that can be easily converted into GMTs for Maxing. Which, assuming, is being used to improve the next generation of horses competing in that Era, resulting in better horses, and out pacing players that might not have as easy access to GMTs?

Rereading everything again. Your proposal of Limited and Primary Era horses costing IV's to max, seems reasonable, but I don't think you're going to get the results you're expecting. Primarily because these barns that are dominating the 4 youngest eras are all financially established with lots of passive income.

Honestly it sounds more like a design problem that isn't going to get fixed by charging IVs instead of GMTs. You've got a show system that allows and encourages maxing, clone/maxing, and boosting. Which has continued to create a greater gap between those that do and those that don't. For those that don't, to stay competitive, we (and I've been having to do this) have to max, and even clone/max. Even just cloning gives them enough of a boost to earn them a Championship.

For me, I do this because I want the Trophy on their page, GMT's are an added perk, but I can also just as easily buy my own from my passive income. Do I feel like I cheated to earn it? Yeah. Does it turn other breeders off from entering in the same Color LB, yeah. When you can only enter into 3, why put your horse in one that is going to have a harder time competing? And I do feel bad about it, these are my friends that are telling me they don't want to bother entering their horses. Or venting their frustrations to me about how they can't keep up with all these boosted horses. Or how maxing has changed the LB dynamics now. It's not like they are new, they are long time well established players that breed every month. Sometimes struggling to make time for the game just so they can breed and not miss a season, putting them further behind.

But for a game that was based around color genetics, and breeding these lines for certain colors and patterns....I don't think the same spirit of the game is reflected in how the LBs are designed. Not when, as you said, a player can just take 2 basic colored parents, breed, max the foal and clone it 10 times for a very small minimum investment.

Guess now that I understand it better, I have more than 2 cents to add lol. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Ammit · Jun 21, 2024 9:16 PM

Leader boards have to be based on something and you can't compete on color genetics.

Ammit · Jun 21, 2024 9:31 PM

Based on feedback from all 3 servers I have decided I am going to make limited eras cost IVs and everything else be GMTs with no restrictions. There was lots of interesting conversation about leaderboards in general but very little about the specific thing I cared about (maxing being free in the eras where maxing matters.)

I think what it comes down to is this is a super nuanced topic that very few players have had to engage with before. Most players simply don't understand how the LBs work, which is something as a community I would love to see us improve on. It sounds like people have broader ideas about the lb than this specific corner of it that I am looking to address. So most of the feedback I was getting was broadly about the leaderboards not really about this specific change.

Because of that I am going to go with the change that I think after over 18 months of testing, and knowing how the code works, is the best move. We can always reevaluate later.

Kintara · Jun 23, 2024 2:56 AM

I'm late to this discussion, so realise the changes are already implemented, and my opinion is moot. However I would like to address the change to IVs in limited eras. Am I right in assuming that now that maxxing is IVs, that it is unlimited? If so, I would question the fairness, obviously bigger barns have more IVs, so it's hardly a limitation?
I'm a bigger barn I think, but certainly not one of the most massive, I do ok on gmt winnings, and yes use a lot of it on maxxing. But I also convert most of my daily pay into gmts, so paying with IVs won't change that much. I liked the concept of limited individual maxxing in the new eras, so more people had chance. Kind of makes it more fun, more of a challenge, and anyone can do it. So a bit disappointed with that change. I realise you see more of the bigger picture than what I do, so interested to see how it plays out. I'm unlikely to use the clone option as I like too many pretty genes on my horses lol! Makes cloning too expensive!

Ambervalleyarabians · Jun 23, 2024 9:47 AM

Being a big stable myself, i can easily use ivs, i try not to do any boosting on the newer eras, because i want the newer players to be able to compete. the only horses i might boost are ones that got snipped that i want to keep intact.

its a fine line between using ivs versus gmts. i think it puts us on some sort of level ground. it forces the bigger barns use hbs, but the smaller barns might not be able to buy those ivs. it does force the big barns that gain alot of free gmts not to be able to use them in that manner.

is it possible to award the 10th through 25th place with hbs or ivs? that will help the newer and younger barns to set them aside to get the ivs needed to get closer to that goal to maxxing one of their horses?

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