Are Horse Sales Dead?

Remember to be civil please. If you have suggestions that you think would benefit the game or would like to see added then please make a post on the suggestions board. 

About NSS. At first I followed (and still do) this system, but then I realized that it did not work. Horses with nss 80+ collect hundreds of wins and 45- lose against 50+, how is that possible? I don't see the effect of lowering nss, I follow it because it's boring, not because it works.
I think this is the reason for the lack of low nss horses on the market. There is no demand for them. And horses are too cheap to sell months or years of work. That's why they don't sell them. It also takes time to sell, and I will get the money from school faster than I will try to sell. Meanwhile, the horse being sold takes up space, and there is not enough of it. In short, it is absolutely unprofitable to sell horses now. Perhaps an increase in prices for adopt and a decrease in evc will save the day.

I sold over 100 2nd generation Gypsy Vanner foals in maybe a week last year and maybe a month or so ago I sold 30 some 2nd gen thoroughbreds within a few days. All with non specialty stats under 60. I work hard on my horses. Foals usually come with at least 450 stats. I usually have no issue selling foals because I'm offering something that other players want. I buy from other players that work equally as hard on their horses. I'm not going to be interested in buying a foal from someone when the foal has 240 stats or a foundation that is 11 years old with 350 stats. I'd rather just put work into my own foundation lines to get foals of the quality I am looking for. 

It's all about supply and demand. Some breeds and disciplines will just sell easier than others. 

<sup>I personally have never really gotten into the horse side of EV. So not seeing all of this first hand so this is just a broad look at was is happening across EV everywhere.

Before the recode I felt like there was less "work" involved to get horses to sell because of how the stat system worked with shows. Now with the changes, breeders have to be more involved and put in more work. For a beginner, I feel like this pushes them away because essentially those who are winning these shows, or selling high priced horses, breed "the best of the best". They don't have the experience quite yet and when people don't buy or they continously lose shows, they give up. Most of the breeders here that breed what most deem "good stock" have been on EV for years, some even before the recode. Now a lot of these "experienced" people are leaving or being less involved with the sim side of it all. We are seeing the exact same thing in art sales as well (this just has been going on longer on that side). 

The gist of it is we aren't seeing any "new blood"/new members being as involved because they are giving up and previously involved players are leaving. 


I personally don't have the motivation to want to learn the sim side of it, I want too but I get discouraged quickly based on everthing that has been happening.</sup> 

I have a new player help program I am planning on implementing soon which will hopefully help new players who want to stick around be able to dive right in and get them involved so they don't give up on trying to achieve their goals. 

That's a great idea!  If there is anything I can help with at all, please just let me know.  If we can get some new players and retain them, and encourage some original players to get/stay active, it should be good all around.

Still waiting for literally any changes or additions to gameplay that give us something else to do or address the huge NSS disparity; really anything that would fix the current showing system at this point would be nice. I can't keep justifying spending my time and money on here though when the meatier issues are largely avoided and deferred to visual/aesthetic stuff, that otherwise has no impact on the core mechanics people have repeatedly suggested and asked to be changed from years ago.

I've been popping back in to read the news and see if anything interesting has been updated but :I guess I'll keep waiting.

"I can't keep justifying spending my time and money on here"

I can understand that, tbh. I usually will spend my real-life money on games. However, I can't bring myself to buy credits with my real money here. I just purchase credits from other players. No matter what, I just can't find a reason to justify spending real-life money on this game. I feel bad because I know that real-life money is necessary to keep a game afloat. If EV makes a big change and shows that EV is still alive, then I will be more willing to spend my real-life money. I've been to several games that just vanished overnight because the owner decided to abandon them suddenly. I am hesitant to spend on a dying game with inactive admins and mods (Maple is the only active one)... 

I do keep playing by myself, tho. I want admins to see that there are players who still waiting for EV to improve. 

Last edited on 2022-09-07 at 08:22:04 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

I haven't been on this game for long periods of time, but an idea I thought of like how another game does is you can buy foundations with a credit. c: Make it a little more expensive to make the foundations. Or, when you donate to ev to get credits you can pick a set of foundations to use towards your horses. Making them rarer which will then lead to people buying those lines etc. c:

@ Deadnight, I don't think it's a good idea. That will make the game too "pay to play". Those who have money will be advantageous. I can see players with lined horses jacked up the price of their horses and poor players can't afford to buy foundation and lined horses. That will leave them with zero horses and they will leave the game.

There are still more active moderators over Maple and River(admin) is active as well. They just aren't always posting on forums or in discord chatting, it may make them seem inactive, but I am assuming between playing the game and moderator duties that they don't always have time to be on the forums. 

Anyone who has ideas for the new player program I am trying to get going I am definitely open to suggestions. Things that you would have loved to have when you first started. Just please keep in mind I am funding this myself so it will be limited to what I can do on my own. 

@ Olympea, I checked all mods/admins for their last active date regularly because I was curious. Most of them haven't logged in for a month. The rest haven't logged in since the end of August. I've been checking those few mods who haven't logged in since the end of August and seem to log in every few days or weeks. They don't log in regularly like every day or every other day. That's why I considered Maple as the only active mod since Maple seems to log in regularly.

For the new player program... umm, I am not sure. All of my issues were more of the gameplay problem and that's something we can't help newbies with. Ex: NSS, I was told that low NSS is best for the show. I got a lot of low NSS horses from Rescue (less than 55 NSS) and they all lost every show. I realized quickly that riding school is the best option as a newbie since they give us a constant source of income. I switched to primarily riding school with a few show horses but I never could figure out what make those few horses successful show horses. It's not NSS in my experience since I had horses with NSS in the 40s and low 50s and they lost every show. I suppose that it would be nice to know that it's best to ride school our horses until we have decent savings to afford the risk of shows. However, I can see that turns away the players since they probably come here to compete in shows so I am not sure what to advise the new players.

Another thing I wish I knew earlier would be that the horses are most likely to lose money if the show ran with less than 5 entries. They also will not earn any stats bonuses too. I didn't realize it until later and lost money over that. It's better to ride school horses if you're not sure if the shows will be filled with 5+ entries. Also, it's better to not enter more than 3 horses in the same show. Anyone below 3rd place will gain nothing so it's better to spread out your horses to up to 3 horses per show. Ideally, your 3 horses will be placed 1st-3rd. 

Last edited on 2022-09-07 at 17:24:24 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

I'm not sure what to say about horses that are never winning in shows other than I know there are some who choose to riding school until the horse is closer to leveling up and then showing. I primarily am still working with my foundation horses, NSS 60 or below and they do pretty well in shows. Not really sure if maybe it is a tack issue(not full sets of upgraded tack) or something else that would keep horses from doing well in shows. 

I think it's more an issue with which levels you are showing in. My foundations also did very well in Novice. They often still win even if they are at bottom of the grade. Local, they started to slow down a bit and I had to wait until they are closer to the top of their grade. Regional, it's a lot harder. I had several horses who will not win even if they are at the top end of their grades. When I first started, I rescued a bunch of horses or bought them off other players since it's cheaper than buying foundation lines. A lot of them are at Regional-International levels and lost nearly every show despite being at top of their grade, having low NSS, and being fully tacked (5/5). 

However, we can't exactly tell newbies to only get foundations if they want to show their horses... it will only defeat the purpose of this whole discussion on the dead market. It will scare off the newbies from buying lined horses. But at the same time, they should be aware of the risk of lined horses (or high-leveled horses) being a money pit if they want to show. TBH, I am not sure how to approach the whole situation without scaring off new players.

Last edited on 2022-09-07 at 17:45:15 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆

One problem that I personally think could help fix the showing (and also sales problem, since good showing horses would generate better income than school horses) would be to make them more profitable. 
I think that if there are 3-5 entries (even though that’s not a lot, I know) I think the 2nd and third places should at least break even and right now if your horse wins 2nd place in novice with 3 entires it actually loses money. I’d be much more confident taking the risk of not winning every lower level show that I enter if I knew that when I win a show, I don’t lose money. (But as a more established player I realize that I have enough savings where showing isn’t essential for me financially, but for new players we need to make showing horses profitable, especially for shows that are in niche specialties and grades and don’t get 5-15 entries per show in order to generate significant earnings.

Creating profitability in good showing horses will also increase their market value and their demand. 

I do believe that NSS, training ,and tack levels are essential for good showing horses. I haven’t gone through the beginner tutorial in a while, but I think these things need to be made CRYSTAL CLEAR when the game explains showing so newbies don’t have to go searching in the forums or wonder why their horses aren’t doing well.