Are Horse Sales Dead?

i'm one of those players who likes to school until about halfway through a grade and then show, sometimes earlier or later depending on the horse's NSS. i don't have a lot of trouble though sometimes a horse just can't place for days and i can't figure out why. it could just be a string of bad luck though. the only other thing i can think of about not being able to place is over the years i've kind of noticed "patterns" with showing, like in some disciplines people prefer higher fees and those shows have more entries/competition than low fee shows or vice versa. so i have my horses near the end of their grade tackle shows with more competition while my others try for the lower entry shows. it doesn't guarantee wins of course but i always study shows and their entries a little bit before entering each horse and i think it's worth it for how small my herds tend to be.

@Saditome: from what i remember of the tutorial i think it does explain treating appropriately for each discipline but you might be right in that i don't think it ever specifies that the wrong stats actually make a horse perform worse. it's strange that the (currently) most core part of showing isn't brought up that much, i can imagine it could confuse people who are doing as the tutorial says but with already high NSS horses and end up struggling as a result.

i think shows bringing in a loss with too few horses might've been a thing to keep people who can make their own shows profiting off of it, like otherwise you could just make shows in disciplines you know wouldn't get as much entries and put your own horses in it to earn back more than the fees you spent i guess? but that in turn kind of drives people even more away from less popular disciplines, showing high level endurance often ends up a loss in my experience even when i factor in the ribbons.

I’ve made a suggestion topic to address some of these issues: https://equiverse.com/topic.php?id=260319
It doesn’t fix the showing system, which I still think discourages players from entering in more unpopular showing disciplines and grades, but it’s a start!