HGG Community Forums

One season is one month.

We 100% want that feedback so thank you for sharing. Breeding foals just for auctioning them is a big strain on the game and honestly not ideal for our financials. We would greatly prefer to end that practice to be perfectly honest.

ETA: Another option might be to limit primary pastures to just once a season and leave the paid-for pastures free to be used as much as desired.

Limiting primary pastures but not paid pastures definitely sounds like a good potential compromise, especially since for many of us the primary is the largest pasture so that would help cut numbers.
I know some people use pastures for auction profits and also because it's cheaper than hand breeding, but for me the primary reason to use a pasture is for the breeding bonus, so I generally only use them once a season anyway.

Might just need to put in a way to hard stop that auction profits exploit as that is a big issue. I am not going to judge anyone for doing it, this is a game, not the real world, but it is very much "puppy milling" and not really something we want to be a normal income stream in the game.

I could put in a system that blocked pasture-bred foals from being auctioned for 14 days after they are born. If you have stalls to store them in that means you have paid for it and contributed to the server costs of that breeding. If you need more space now you can sell them back to the game by hand. That way no one is punished for using an expensive large pasture to do small breeding lots but it drastically slows down "foal churn." You can breed any other way and auction the foals back instantly but if you are using the pastures forby pumping and dumping foals this should effectively kill that

I know some people might hate my idea but.. to be honest, I wouldn't mind if you tacked on a few extra bucks to the the premium membership price. It's cheaper than most of the genes in the RGS, and I wouldn't mind if it was in 10 bucks or so. It's already a super reasonable price.

Edit: also on the topic of pastures.. i generally pull all pasture foals to test them SBA. Those that don't pass generally get auctioned after i take a certain percentage of altered foals for showing. I personally wouldn't have enough room to keep all foals to year 2. Because i test all my foals I would probably end up hemorrhaging money, but if lowering the price of the auction price is needed, I'd say that's the best option currently. I can always change my habits and be more selective on how i test foals. That being said, if we raise the price of the premium membership, maybe add a premium incentive regarding testing? Maybe add a mass testing button inside the pasture? Lower testing price?

I second Cherobird. I do pretty much the same thing- breed a pasture, pull the foals into my primary barn, then mass test and sort them into breeders, showers, and auction from there. If I could put the 'auction' foals back into the pasture to be deleted at the end of the month (or for the proposed 14-day period), that would be ideal, assuming immediately auctioning them will no longer be an option.

I also second that I wouldn't mind the monthly price of the premium accounts to be raised to $10 in order to keep things more or less the same as they are now.

Boo.. i had no idea it would be such a hassle to change it, I'm so sorry :-S Perhaps a more plausible way to do it is "add ons"? For example, keep the premium the same, and add an option to add on certain features. That might be more accessible for basic upgrade users as well .

Edit: the bottom line is you guys do SO MUCH for us and are constantly adding to the game. I wouldn't mind giving you more to keep things rolling :)

"I might be willing to compromise and allow bulk testing of pasture foals if we partnered that with forcing people to hang on to those foals for a few weeks to prevent breed and dumping."

I can't speak for others, but I could definitely work with this system.

I don't go into auctions much unless I'm looking for something very specific, so i never realized how bad it got. I can definitely understand how taxing that can be on the servers. Perhaps make a limit of how many pastures you can breed in a day, and start a timer from the day that horse was bred? I rarely breed all of pastures at once, but i can see mills may mass breed on the 5th. I'm not sure what would discourage dumping foals for profit other than the prices changing (pasture prices and sell price), so i agree with that method. I fear making people hold on to them longer will just result in people dumping the foals at their next possible chance, but can be recouped by the pasture price change.

Edit: bulk testing, i will sign any form you put in front of me in blood :))

@Cherobird they do it every auction cycle, so 3 times per week, and they can do this a nearly unlimited number of times per pasture and cycle through thousands of foals per week. If they have to hold the foals they can't make space to breed more. You could still do it a few times per month but not to the insane levels pasture breeding right now allows.

Is it that people are mass creating 4 year old mares along with the mass breeding foals? Because if it's every auction that truly is an insane amount of horses. Perhaps capping the auctions is also an idea. You're limited on how many you can auction each cycle?

Aggressively caping the auctions might be a viable way to address the issue. I think it is a less ideal solution because allowing people to buy their way to the ability to breed more foals (via hbs and USD) is good for the game economy but it could be used as a solid way to nurture those undesirable breeding practices. Again it is a game, I don't blame anyone for playing the game, I just need to do a bit of rebalencing.

I kind of do the same thing that @StarsetRoyale does. I breed my pasture, load images, put them in a barn and do genetic and performance testing. All of the plain foals, low PT or stallions I dont want to keep go straight to auction to save space. I dont think mass creating foundation horses and putting them into auction is right.

A suggestion on Forest was to limit pastures not by how many times you hit the button but by how many foals you have bred from the pasture this year. So instead of being able to use the pasture only 3 rounds, you can use it for 3 X the number of acres. A 100-acre pasture could produce 300 foals per season max.

If we properly solve the excess foal issues we can hold off changing the pasture price for now and see if it is even needed.

@Johara the game started that way and people hated it. Caused a lot of issues for newbies.

My biggest concern is also the possible limit to pasture breeding. I do confess, I have been using pastures to breed and flip horses for profit for a while, a lot more since the bulk auction became available to basic upgrade accounts (and I mostly kept my mouth shut cuz I was worried about that loophole being closed) but I completely understand that it isn't the best way to play the game (would be completely immoral if it were real life) and is considered a cheat. I have been almost exclusively using it to make hbs to pay other members to make real cash purchases for me, so I haven't felt so guilty. I also love mass creating to hunt for DP and other genes I'm after (kind of my one gambling addition thing), then I breed the lot, test them all, pick out my keepers for the next season, and send the rest to auction.

If something is implemented to prevent mass breeding and auctioning, I wouldn't worry so much about the limit to pasture breeding, except those cases where not all mares are bred just because one stallion hits 50 breedings. If that were fixed, I wouldn't mind not being able to run the pasture again. I'd also like that fixed if possible just so those last few mares' foals aren't left out of the "best in pasture" email. Or if a pasture limit is implemented, maybe every batch could send out an email? Then we could better choose which groupings of foals we'd like compared to each other. I rarely use my primary pasture anyway, so a limit on that wouldn't bother me. I like using 100-acre pastures better because 2 stallions and 100 mares works out perfectly without leftover breedings. I also only keep foals (for breeding) out of fully pasture boosted mares. If I don't have enough pasture space for extra mares, I only run them through my bulk breeding pasture just to get some foals out of them to auction if I have the time.

I guess overall, I'm fine with whatever needs to be done to make the game sustainable money and server wise. I can adapt my playing habits. The only thing that might make me cut back or leave is if it becomes impossible for me to afford to finish a new gmt project stud within three months or so without spending real money. All of my enjoyment of the game comes from setting very specific color genetics goals, excitedly pouring over my new foals each season, and seeing improved quality each generation. I've entered horses into shows maybe... twelve times in the seven years I've been playing. :P I guess I'm going to have to learn to love showing and start a show line. :)

I appreciate that, and I look forward to hearing what you decide to implement.

For me it is a "recover some loss" when I auction, I keep everything that tests "Better a Show horse than a Breeder" but when I Comp test every other horse I breed, its an 8k hit whether I keep them or not; , the ones that test aga or worse I geld / spay and toss in auction if they are 3g or 4g or 5g. 2g I keep for the show string as well as anything over 6g. I only use pastures once a season because I prefer the full breeding bonus on my mares. I dont mind "non" auto generated pictures as I ve found if I see how cute they are I am less likely to neuter them because they are "cute", even when they dont test SUP. I personally never liked the "create a ton, breed and dump them all in auction" way of earning hb's as it reminded me of puppy and kitten mills and I work very very hard in rescue to try to get these places shut down ( even though its only pixel we still need to be responsible for what we are creating )

Honestly, if I couldn’t breed babies I’d probably get bored and cancel my premium subscription. I love the roll of the dice to see what genetic package you will get and how it will present itself! The compromise that would keep me paying monthly if you did go through with this plan would be to raise the 20,000 cap on pointed creates. My favorite fun aspect of the game is breeding and creating horses. The showing is cool and I plan to do more of it after I save up a nest egg of HB for enough stalls to make it profitable, but honestly the showing aspect is about a boring as watching cement set and it won’t hold my ADD attention span. You advertise as a horse genetics game and that’s what caught my attention and drew me to it.

@BlessedByBrigid this conversation has nothing to do with not letting people breed foals. I think perhaps you have misunderstood?

I just posted this in our FB group.

So if you have not paid attention there is an active conversation going on on the forums about the strain pastures cause on the server, particularly people breeding and auctioning foals in the auction to make fast cash. This costs the game a lot of money because we have to pay for that image generation and server resources, and is causing some undesirable inflation issues in the game. We were planning on hiking the price of pastures a good deal to offset the cost pastures incur on the server but there may be a better solution. I want to bring the conversation on here as well.

After a day of dialog, I am currently leaning towards the following fix. A cap on pasture use of 3X the size of the pasture. So if you have a 10-acre pasture you could breed 30 foals in that pasture before it is tapped out for the year, if you have a 100-acre pasture you could breed 300 foals in the pasture before it is done for the year. Pastures were really always supposed to be used only once per year. If you are using them to breed more than 3 times the pasture size worth of foals per year it is fair to ask you to invest in a few more pastures.

The next thing I am considering is an auction payout cap on pasture-bred foals. Foals bred in pastures would only sell back to the game for 500 hbs or so until they hit two years old. This would completely end the "puppy mill" breeding behavior outright. I think this is a more intense option and simply capping the pasture uses per season might be enough to solve it but I am holding this as a possibility as well.

I am always happy to hear feedback on any proposed changes. Thanks so much for your insights and opinions!

@BlessedByBrigid again you are confusing normal breeding with exploit breeding for fast cash. No one is stopping anyone from auctioning a normal amount of foals. It is not needed to use an exploit for income. Most of our members never use pastures that way and have no issues with money.

After a lot of member feedback, I have reached a decision on pasture changes.

1) We won't be changing the price of pastures for the foreseeable future.
2) I won't be changing the way auctioning of foals works.
2) Pastures starting next season will be capped at 3x foals per acre. 10-acre pastures can produce 30 foals per season, 100 acre pastures 300 foals etc
3) It is VERY likely that this will be reduced to 2x the size the following season.
4) I want to make it clear that we may reduce it to 1.5 or even 1x. The original idea for pastures was always for them to be used only once per year. We will ease down and see how it goes before making things that tight.

I'm ok with this decision because I really enjoy the game and wouldn't want to have to stop playing because you couldn't afford to keep it going. That said I do hope you don't limit it down to less than 3x. I have spent a decent amount of money on the game but I don't really care about the pasture bonus so I've put it into gene sales instead of pastures. I did do the mass breeding for profit thing when I was newer but now I have my rank special mares that I keep in barns who are both show horses and breeders. Spending the money to buy pastures instead of random gene sales would make it a lot less fun for me. I use the advanced lab a lot but it's too pricey and time consuming to do it for my entire herd. Anyhow I would be willing to buy another pasture or two in lieu of genes for a while but some people have an awful lot of pastures and that just doesn't really make sense to me as someone who isn't concerned about the bonus so I'd prefer to throw my support towards other things that I personally find more interesting.

I also didn't see much discussion on whether people would be very upset if the pasture image generation went away? It's a nice feature but I only really care what the foal looks like if it's consistent and passes SBA, which I won't know until I put them in the barn anyways. If it's that much strain, I do agree that you should make changes to limit the number of puppy mill type horses going through the game but I personally wouldn't care at all if you also just shut off the pasture image generation. Obviously I can't speak for everyone but I would have nothing negative to say about that part going back to the way it was.