I sure hope these new "horse missions" that are replacing the lessons aren't complicated. If they are, that's going to slow down BLUPing and skilling quite a bit! Hopefully it'll just be a one-click procedure like we have now.

The edit on the original events topic on the equestrian center's future changes says that they should be simple and not interfere with blupping, so I'm hoping they stay true to that!

"2/ The lessons / Missions
You won’t have any actions to perform other than a click. By mission we don’t mean that you’ll have to perform a series of actions to complete the mission. It is more like a new name for the lessons, allowing us to introduce various types of missions that each give different rewards. They will give skills and another little reward that will vary according to the mission you decide to do.
There will be a mission “Take part in a Lesson”, which will be the default one. Blupping therefore won’t take longer than it currently does.
If you want a different reward than the one given by the lesson mission, then you will have to choose another type of mission. In that case blupping may be a little longer as you’ll have to select the type of mission you want to do."

As long as this is the case I have no problem with these new missions. They actually should make it a little more interesting, I've always wished there was a little variety in the lessons somehow to spice things up a bit.

I like the new update. It's more realistic. =)

Correct: The going to happen update. XD

What I am interested in knowing is that according to OW the boarders will be askied to do missions.

So what if you have a deadbeat boarder, can you evict them for non compliance.

Also if the EC owner is assigning the "missions" and they have a boarder they dislike, will they be given difficult missions?

Also EC owners that are private can pretty much control skkill points given to their own horses by giving missions that get the most points.

Now I am basing this solely on what has been posted and no one has even mentioned the thoughts above.

There is no such thing as a 'difficult' mission, they are just replacing lessons. It still will likely only take one click to complete. Perhaps we should be saying 'tasks' over 'mission' but from the sound of it the structure will not be changing at all.

As for skill points being offered, a person in an EC will have a few missions to choose from, tasks that given skill points similar to what we have now in lesson gains, extra equus, extra treats, energy, moral and things like that. There are not going to be tasks that give /more/ points to some members than others, it will just end up likely depending on Prestige and top skills like it already does.

I also doubt they will allow boarders to be ejected.

The testing server has just opened to us so I will be able to see what is up.

Nothing about missions have been listed so any info regarding my concerns will have to wait. I will when it comes up advise them that the wording may cause concern.

It looks like we are going to be in a huge dilemma regarding the foal games. Working on seeing what will work.

As it stands now you can get all 60 points only if you are in an EC with showers and have the Grand Prix shower as a perk.

All other attemps have failed.

I don't believe that the EC owner will assign missions because that would be a lot of work in the day for the owner. I just believe that the missions will come from the EC, and, like the lessons, will just be chosen by the boarder.

That's also one reason for testing though. So they can tweak the numbers to get a good balance. With so many children playing the game I can't imagine they'll keep it like that.

Cyber- the carrot has 2% more energy and the mash that replaces the turnip goes down to 10% from the 12%, correct? And the time value just switched between the two, right?

Nope.

NO mashes are avalable to any horse under 2 years old so that leaves a huge loss of energy.

Thry doing any foal now without using the turnip option. That is what we are left with.

Okay, I know ive done foal games without turnips, shower or fountain at least once before. ...I'll help tinker in a few minutes when I get home.

Cyber, I did it, but it left the foal with 8% energy and 23:45 on the last day. Wasn't able to do much better than that right now.

Reviewing the equestrian centers
Posted on August 18, 2014 by Maïté

Several months ago, we told you about our project to review the Equestrian Centers. Since, things have progressed and it’s about time for us to give you some news about this –huge- project.

Why review the Equestrian Centers?

To start off with, we noticed that equestrian centers (EC) hadn’t evolved in the almost 9 years of Howrse’s existence, while the rest of the game regularly underwent evolutions, small or rather large.

And what could have seemed nice nine years ago doesn’t necessarily today. Online games progress fast, very fast and to be perfectly honest, the ECs are a bit obsolete. The ECs needed to be modernised!

Next, the question was: what can we do with the ECs? How can we make them more attractive, more fun and more challenging? The two master words were: strategy and player interactions.

We want the ECs take a bigger role in the game’s game play, not just be a feature superimposed on the rest and whose impact on the game stays on the fringe. We want strategy to be the hearth of it and player interactions a tool to get to the top.

How are we going to do that?

The main axis of this project is the production cycle. Basically, your EC could manufacture or harvest almost all the resources it needs for its development (as boxes, showers, …) and your horse’s needs (as food, treats, equipment).

The basic principle is:
-> harvest a primary resource
-> transform it to make it into an end product
-> use the end product to improve your EC, keep it for your personal use or sell it to earn equus.

To add some challenge, every EC has to specialize itself by choosing a location (forest, beach or mountain). To get wood if your EC is near the beach, you will have to buy some in the market place.

The other players’ actions could have some influence on yours. For example: your EC is in the forest. You can ask the horses boarded into your EC to perform missions for you (missions will replace lessons): for example, harvesting wood in the forest. In return, the horse’s owner will get money and the horse will receive skills. With the wood, you could make something useful in your workshop, for example make a new box. You also could sell the overflow in the market and this way influence the wood price because all the products will be priced depending on supply and demand (the rarer and more desirable a resource is, the more expensive it’ll be).

How are we planning to introduce the features?

You can imagine that such a huge change on an already existing feature isn’t a piece of cake.

So everything will not be going online at the same time. On one side, we do not want you to flee into the opposite direction. On the other side, we think that it can be useful our developers and game designers’ sleep sometimes.

Basically, everything that will be set online before the arrival of the production cycle is aimed at preparing this same arrival (for example: changes about agriculture, the horses food) and everything that will come out after the production cycle will be to refine and complete it. For example: rethinking the secret market or the draft horses introduction.

It is quite difficult to tell you precisely how much time it will take but we can already give you estimate: it will take more than six months and we are going to need several months before the production cycle’s arrival.

How are we going to communicate?

The first step will go online on the beginning of September and will mark the start of all the future stages. We will propose a special page that will be available on the game until almost all the EC’s new features are done. This page will show you:
- the features coming in the next update
- an overview of the features coming later on.

It will be possible to discuss them on a dedicated topic on the forum.

In the meantime, we will propose you some blog articles, treating about more sensitive subjects (as the fusion of the breeder and EC reserve of equus) to give you detailed explanations and to reassure you.

We hope that we could give you some keys to prepare yourself to this and welcome the new features with excitement and pleasure when they will come.

See you soon on the game for the first step.

found it on the blog and sorry i didn't use the spoiler banner

Spoiler not needed as it is an official article that all can see however here is a bit more from the test server.

Sorry if this has been posted before, but I have not been loyal to following this topic.

Is it known when these EC changes will take place?

the estimated time that I heard was September

I have posted the new foal games on my page to be used after the EC changes.

With the loss of the turnip function all current foal games posted now will not work.

the changes will take place over a long time.

Uni teams! Cool! Only thing is, I'm not a uni breeder. I don't have the patience. LOL.

When and where can you get a treasure chest? Are they discontinued?

They appeared in a promotion I believe it was the lottery

I don't think I said that... I don't have any Wilds; just five Divines...