Changes to Horse Grade-Up

I don't think this will actually fix the the issue being reported as a bug. I think people are reporting as a bug because they see their horses do poorly and then check the results, look at the horses that placed better than theirs and then see that the top horses have stats above the level of the show. This won't change that.

Is there any reason that the level script CRON has to run at the same time as the other CRONs? It's not dependent on anything that is "EV-day" based, so couldn't the leveling script run at a different time so there's not so much on the server at that one time.

I agree with Almare that I don't think it will solve the bug reports - let's say a horse is entered into N2 at 199 - by the time a person may check the results, that horse very likely will have stats over grade from wins in that round of 10 shows. (I hope that reasoning makes sense - I am not well lately and my brain is a little foggy.)

If it were purely to lessen server strain at cron, I would be all for it. I just don't think it solves the problem it is being proposed to solve.

I do recall at least one report of that, very true Almárë - the issue of how horses perform isn't precisely what this is intended to address but I do know what you're talking about.

That's sorta what you're mentioning too North in part, I think. If someone is looking over show results from previously and thinking about them in terms of current stats, and that may be the root of supposed bugs with show results. Comparing current stats with show results may be a little fickle regardless because of stat gains, even if we ignore grades. I think the issue we're looking at is primarily grades being equivalent to current stats for current show entries, rather than looking at results.

As for the grading-up running with cron, I don't suppose it would necessarily need to. I imagine it could possibly be run along with progression for each user, but I'm not certain if there would be any other negative effects accompanying that. It's just another thought to throw out there.

I like Almare's idea of having a second cron run later in the day to distribute the server load better, and this can be used for things which aren't quite as time dependant, like the horse levelling.

I think it's also plausible that a lot of the bug reports of horses having stats too high for the show grade they entered are actually false positives, and their stats were fine when they entered, they've just since gone up due to show results. Nothing will change this and we will always get these false positive bug reports. This also suggests the impact of this bug is quite a bit smaller than it appears.

I am opposed to the addition of a manual level increase button for every horse, but would consider other options if this bug is deemed significant enough to be worth addressing.

I know I'm not on much lately, nor do I have a ton of horses, but as it is I already spend easily more than 2 hours any time I do play, and that entire time is spent just on clicking. Clicking to do daily care, to train, to do the stat boost on horses who have leveled up in training, entering shows... I am very opposed to adding another button to click. I play games to have fun, not to spend all my time clicking.

I don't know much about servers or anything like that, but why can't something be implemented that automatically ranks a horse up when it's stats increase to the next rank? Like if you have a horse with 199 stats, give it a treat, and its stats are now 201, and it's gone up to the corresponding rank. I really think that would be a much better solution than adding another button to click that may cause players with busier lives to not want to play. (Obviously that a little dramatic, I don't think anyone would seriously quit a game over just the addition of having to click a new button on however many horses they have)

Ulysseys's second paragraph there is exactly what I had been trying, through my brain fog, to say. Totally agree.

Last edited on 2017-11-03 at 21:46:55 by North

That's why it's good to have this discussion - to bring up some of those points or concerns and try to get a well-rounded take on the situation. There are definitely some things to consider on this topic. It could be most intuitive for grading-up to be automatic based on reaching the next stat level, but I don't have perspective on what that would be like from an implementation perspective. It's good to get all these thoughts out there.

^{I'd prefer not to spend more time clicking to upgrade showing levels, I would rather it updated when you hit the thresholds or remain as it is. If you want to reduce the amount of 'bug' reports on it, you need to add an informational notice somewhere to notify people that it's not a bug, the showing section of help for example. I've never seen it as a huge issue personally since it's only a couple shows.} 

For me, I don't really see the point in changing anything.
The only real problem I get from this is number of people reporting it as a bug. I like the way it is now, and I don't want another thing to click on if it can just be avoided.

I don't think this change is really necessary. If the main issue is too many bug reports, just add an explanation of why this is not a bug to the shows page or the bug reporting page.