The Breeder's Manual states the GP criteria to be "which have no skills with a genetic potential over 2030 (this is for INT)."

I checked it with some horses to be sure.

This horse can see rookie comps even though his overall GP is greater than 2030.. He has less than 20 wins, all his skills are less than INT's 1470 cap, and each GP is less than 2030.



This horse can *not* see rookie comps. He has less than 20 wins, each skill is under 1470, but he has at least one GP over 2030

So, looking at some individual GPs, I see this new change will definitely remove all the top teams from rookie comps and even several of the top unicorn teams.

I am definitely a little bit sad about this. I hope I will still be able to get my wins for my unicorn team. I think it's going to be a lot harder now that I am going to be competing against all the really topmost teams with GPs nearly 2000 higher then my unicorns and lets not forget the people training skillers. It looks to me like the top 8 or so unicorn teams will all be knocked out of rookie comps.

Honestly, I think this change is going to hurt the people who are striving for the top the most. The teams already on top will be able to get wins anyways. The lower teams and those blupping lower GP horses will be able to use rookie comp. But the folks blupping horses about 1000GP behind the top teams are going to be forced out of rookie comps and easily stomped (or at least beaten if we want to reserve that term) in the non-rookie comps. Because of the skill limitations on the rookie comps it helped to equalize the chance for wins between the topmost team of a particular breed and those blupping horses just behind the top team

As I understand it your initial buy will result in your sale goes to the team pot. If you now chose to sell that horse the sale result will go to you. If however you are buying and selling within the team ( meaning you are on that team) everything would normally go to the team pot. However I remember there being an option on whether it would be a team sale or an individual sale.

the 1120 gp limit that came from the US prepod is from a slightly older version of our server and that version has the skill limit at 810 (it is currently 820) so I think the gp limit will be slightly higher as well when this stuff finally goes live.

I was looking at your original post about the new changes, and I saw this little chunk:
"Sales cancellation

All sales have been cancelled with the update."


Do you know if this include auctions where the horse has already been bid on?

I agree with ladyhauwke that basing rookie comps on GP will absolutely cripple the efforts of most of the second-tier teams (and independent breeders with second-tier horses). For the majority of breeds, there is a huge GP gap between 1st and 2nd pace teams, which will probably never change. There's no way my 5500 GP TBs can reasonably compete with the top 6400 GP horses on this server. Comp placings aren't determined based on GP, only current skills, so why make even GP a factor in comp availability? As of now, a horse with 5000 GP and 1000 skill points has an equal chance of winning a comp as one with 1500 GP and 1000 skill points. A better solution would have been to lower the rookie skill limit. This would still balance comps a bit but excluding skillers with extremely high IBS (who will easily pick up wins in open comps anyways), but not make it impossible for the majority of players to BLUP horses. Of all the changes recently, I feel this one will be most detrimental to your average player who has anything invested in breeding mid-range horses. This is honestly one of the WORST ways they devs could have gone about balancing the comps.

I've checked some of the teams -- some of them are not that far between each other -
I am on prepod now testing it out -- so far so good on just being me on there -- as an independent with no team ..... let's see this thing through before we judge it ....

Because all the prices will be so different, ALL sales in the market will be cancelled. I am assuming the Howrse team will give us a heads up but do expect this.

However, I would personally still see this as a step in the right direction. At the very least they are acknowledging that comps do need addressed. Is it the perfect solution?No, but I would caution people and remind that no solution is ever going to be perfect.

Yes, there are teams on the threshold that are going to have to re-strategize how they obtain their comp wins. . . but when we consider top GP on the server today anyway is 6,400gp. . . does 4,100gp which is about 30% less than top GP. . . realistically does that fit the general definition of 'rookie'? 4kgp is still on the upper end of the percentile in the game

Personally when I think 'rookie' I am thinking the bottom 50% or even the bottom 35-40% on the spectrum. My personal wish is that we'll eventually see 'tiers' as an option or at the very least the skill gap able to be entered in comps to be decreased instead of a 4-500 skill range for a single comp. But we'll see what the future will bring. I still would say this is an improvement to what we have since there are plenty of 1k and below /overall/ GP horses that just can't easily obtain wins without some serious work. Doable, but it gets to be struggle at 500gp and under.

I agree, the comps do need reworking, and no, 4100 GP horses are not really rookies (at least in terms of GP), but I just feel this will have a disproportionately large negative effect on middle tier horses while benefiting those with low skill and having no effect on top tier horses. If this was going to be a simple question of "strategy", then I wouldn't be upset about it. I have no problem adapting my strategy to get wins. As of now however, even if I were to skill out all my horses in their secondary and tertiary skills completely, there is absolutely no way they could compete with horses from the top teams who are also typically skilled out. Rookie comps now at least give me an opportunity to compete against those horses before their skills are much higher. Now I will just have to search for and hope for comps that are not full of top team skillers (difficult, since it seems there are always a few horses blanketing the open comps in most disciplines.)

I do like the idea of tiers though. Let the elite horses be in a class of their own, then gradually decrease the GP levels while keeping "rookie" comps at a very low level

I suppose we'll just have to see how this plays out and I'll *hope* it won't be as bad as it sounds

have less than 20 wins
have no skills over 1470
have no skills with a genetic potential over 2030

I am pleased they are going to add comps from Emma's stables to address lack of competitions, I had suggested in my own extra comments that to combat the lack of comps they consider dropping 4th and 5th place and make the comps run faster, especially since we don't track 4th and 5th place on the horses' page anyway.

I can't imagine that the number currently on the US preprod is far from the number we will see upon release of the new feature unless we change admin's mind about how the formula should be calculated. I am definitely not going to start having a tantrum and I am relaxed and I am glad that they are looking at comps but to be honest, I don't generally have too much trouble getting wins. I used to fill my comps completely so done and out quickly, now I just blanket comps and it takes time but I generally do get the wins in less than a day. However, I don't work with 350 foundies or horses close to that GP very often and when I do I either fill or I figure the wins aren't that important. Also, I know how to train to give my horses the best chance of winning (which is why I thought it was better if I used and filled empty comps so I didn't take wins from other folks who didn't have this knowledge but co-manage changes made that a thing of the past for me).

So anyways, I just want to point out what I see as flaws in the logic. I am ready to test this on the open server but I really worry that it won't bring the change hoped for and it will be very difficult to get changed later. And of course the worst-case scenario of simply making things harder for a goodly number of people. With a limit of about 1120 for a single skill's GP, I honestly don't think this is going to help those horses with total GPs of less then 1000. I really think it is going to make it harder for people who are just behind those with top GP horses to catch up to the top teams. I worry for my GV unicorn team but I imagine it will make things easier for my other unicorn teams who are several thousand GP behind the GVs. Although, perhaps with fewer horses eligible to enter the rookie races, perhaps it will actually just make the getting of wins take even longer and thus could be harder. We will certainly have to see when it actually hits the live server.

In the end, the competitions have 5 places which means (if we ignore the use of fillers) that only 1 of 5 people will get a win in each competition. So does that mean that 80% of the people entering comps are going to have trouble getting wins no matter what changes are made? If we look at it that way then the best solution would be Bree's suggestion. Reduce comps to only 3 horses and make sure there are a lot more of them which gives more chances to get the wins. Your tiers idea sounds pretty good too Hallaloth but it does also sound a bit complicated.

But anyways, what I really want to talk about is "rookies" because I love to talk about semantics. When I think of "rookie" I think of someone who is new, just starting out, untried and untested. I do not think it includes any information as to the quality or ability to win. Look up the definition of "rookie" and you will see what I mean. It has absolutely nothing to do with the horse's ability to win at all. In horse racing a "rookie" horse would be in a "maiden" race for horses who have never won before. The problem of course is that in the real world, a horse can only enter one competition at a time but here in howrse we have the unrealistic ability to have our horses running in an unlimited number of competitions simultaneously. In real life a very good horse would quickly place itself out of rookie competitions but here a great horse can enter a huge number and then win them all. Yeah, so just some fun food for thought there. Maybe howrse should switch to a more realistic competition system. Perhaps every horse can enter only 1 competition per day and they run at the end of the day no matter how many horses are entered. And we can have those different categories. Maiden races for those who have won none. Races based on the amount of money a horse has earned throughout it's career to group together similar horses. The best horses will after winning be forced to move forward to tougher competitions if they want to continue to win. Suddenly, the "most wins" ranking for horses would have ever so much more meaning I think! Of course, this would have to be accompanied with some sort of change to blupping. Either blupping would have to slow way down or the competition requirements would have to go. Honestly, I'd love a huge overhaul of the whole blupping/comping/AP farming system and a move to something that is less likely to cause carpal tunnel syndrome. I know one great lady who had to quit playing howrse just because it was ruining her health in this way, I'm sure there's more.

So, due to the upcoming changes in currency, especially passes, is the rumor of pass horses being removed going to actually happen?

The rumor is false. In fact your pass horse will now give you 100 passes. While it is/was being tested on 3 other servers, no final decision has been made to go any further or remove from those three. Everything is at a standstill.

So just enjoy the game and don't worry about something that may never happen.

On preprod I was able to get multiples of the chimera. Prior to this promo we never got duplicate cards relating to that first diamond card in the gift section. We lately have been getting multiples on the upper portion of the cards but the first card in the gift section which usually has a wild or Greyfel has always been limited.

So looks like we not only can get multiple of the main divine, but multiples of the chimera as well.

does anyone have any clue as to when the Divine Dust will be implemented?