Some changes to shows

30 placings in a row: novice, local and national with 0 stats gaining. No horses entering those level shows. Not counting the placings that are not shown in a row in my activity page... there are more.

Not a fix, because the issues you all are having will need more behind the scenes than what I can offer as advice.

Yes, there is an issue with showing, but more so than not gaining enough stats - it is the incentive to show that leads to these unfilled shows that therefore don't give stats.  I don't have too much of an issue with it for the reasons brought up - the idea behind it was to prevent flooding the shows with a bunch of one type, just so you could have easy wins/stat boosts for your horse.  I don't know if it should change, because the under 5 entries/no stats does what it's supposed to and prevents that.  

I just went back for my showing over the last day, or at least most of it.  Whatever was run on 4-10 up until now.  50 show wins per page, almost a full 7 pages.  So a total of 350 placements.  Of those, 200 produced stat gains (annoying to count tbh).  57%.  I wouldn't call that bad. What's great, is I can actually count up the horses I have in the riding school based on the amount of bank payments I picked up, and therefore how many horses I show.

I schooled 237 horses.  I have a total of 470 horses, subtracting foals and locked horses not being schooled or shown and I get 372.  

372 - 237 = 135 horses in shows.  1350 shows total over that day (give or take), 350 of those shows being placements.  

So 26% of my showed horses place in the top three, and of that 26% of placings, 57% gain stats.  All of these I use auto-show for now, set to random, so it's not like I'm trying to fill up shows to force stats, I just let the game decide where they go.

I can see consistent stat gains in my horses day to day, and this is where I get into the advice portion of all this:

1. Check the number of shows.  If there are 60 shows, and you're only showing 1-2 horses of that grade/spec that day, do it by hand.  You can put your horses into the shows you choose, try to buff out the numbers.  I do mainly (all tbh) western shows with my paints/qhs.  From N1-N4 I check, and from Na4+ I check.  I don't have many horses falling within these two that I show, so it's just better to do the few I have by hand.

2.  Show at the top of the grade.  Have a lot of horses but you don't want to crowd a show with 10 of them competing?  Don't make 100 shows to combat it.  Pick the horses within 25/50/100 (for N, R, Na respectively) stats of the top of the grade and show them.  Make the 15-25 shows you need for those to fill, and leave it at that.  This also combats horses not placing because they aren't at high enough stats.

3.  Hand show.  I've done it.  A lot.  Before I came back and just wanted it to go by quick and stopped caring about the few horses of the 100-150 a day I show slipping through the cracks and being in unfilled shows with autoshow, I hand showed every horse I wanted to put through.  If you think your horses are getting put in shows by autoshow that aren't filled, do it by hand to double check.  Or at least look at the grade/spec of show you're putting horses in, and check to see how you should be autoshowing.

4. Doing all of this and still not filling your shows?  Then fill them with your own horses.  Yeah, you might lose out on some stats, but it does even out over a horses lifetime.  I do it when I need to.  Better one horse short on stats than three of them.  A filled show gets stats, so force it to fill if you have to, or ask someone else on the forums or in discord to do it, I'm sure there are people wanting them filled as well.

This isn't a full fix, it's advice.  But I don't have a problem with showing, I don't think I ever have.  Now, I'm in Western so I'm a bit biased because it's a popular discipline with some consistent showing, but I still have grades and shows that go off without enough entries, it's just not often.  There are a few things the user can do in order to limit the amount it happens to them though.

I don't show all of my horses.

OMG I had to zoom the page to be able to read that tiny font.

Yeah I sometimes do it by hand... or do autoshowing with "highest entries", but I still find it difficult to fill the shows.

I´ll combine school and shows until something is fixed... For some of my horses, schooling is the only way to gain stats (choosing between shows and schools - I feed, treat and train them everday). Thank you for all your comments, suggestions and ideas! I really hope a way to improve shows will be find soon!

So I have a slightly different problem than posted -- I have no problem getting stats or money via showing. I will say that I have large showing/breeding herds of sometimes 20-60 horses within the same discipline and level, so my problem is partly my own doing. I try not to put more than 4 of my own horses per show so I can have a higher chance that more of my horses will get stats...which means I simply don't have enough shows to enter. Even if I hit my show creation cap on my accounts, I'll end up with having to either ask nicely in the Forums for shows or I resign myself to splitting the horses at the top 50% of their level to showing and the ones on the bottom 50% to the Riding School. Which is fine, I suppose. I much prefer the excitement of showing.

I'd like to increase the show creation cap per account. I understand why it was done in the first place - I was around during that time it was implemented (and mind you, also didn't have a problem with showing, I merely hand-showed more than I do now to hit that sweet spot of 5 entries within minutes of the show running). However, EV has changed since then in a number of ways. We as showers know which disciplines and levels have more horses in that level showing, and which of them need more and less shows. We should be able to create the shows as we need them, given that the number of people and horses showing at any given time is always changing, it's hard to predict until you're actively in the moment trying to show. 

A higher cap and perhaps some more incentive to show as discussed previously by others to showing would probably do a lot of good for us.

Hey Ducky, Your issue is definitely a different one and should be it's own suggestion. In fact it already is a suggestion, though slightly older!

I would support something to change. Most days I show at a major loss. When I am running my entire stable, it costs me approx 100k to enter all shows and train. I am lucky to make 20k back. So majority of the time, I run a quarter of my horses, and then probably in a week or two, I will just not progress for a few days to a few weeks, so I can get money from the bank. 

Not sure which horses you are showing Black Raven, but had a quick skim through your horses and there's a lot of them that have higher than average non-speciality stats which are contributing to not placing in shows. For a decent chance of winning you need them to be below 70 (unless you're in a grade like International 3 which has a lot of high ns horses in it anyway). Your problem with earnings is more to do with how you are showing than the system itself. 

I show all my horses, as I wasn't sure and still not sure how NSS works. 

The lower the NSS, the better the horse does in shows.