[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: April 2025

I'm not from the horse world, but I like the idea. I think color genetics would be so cool as well. But I get that that would be very hard to implement, coding wise?

Or, another thing that would be cool: (randomized) face markings! Like the little markings lots of horses have on their faces (blaze, star, etc) or legs (stocking), and with random I mean they would be 'independent' from their coat color, meaning every combination is possible. (I know this is not a suggestion forum... but this idea just sprung to mind and I got excited! I hope it's okay to post here. I will delete if it's not allowed)

They would be very cool additions and they have been proposed many times in the past. However, as our original Ow explained (we're on Ow 3.0 now), aside from the massive coding headache that would arise from color genetics, the markings would mean having to draw hundreds more base coats: very costly to do, and it would take up a lot more server space.

Ah yes, very understandable. It would not be easy, that's true!

I was thinking though, what if the markings would just be 'layered' right on top of the already existing horse picture? I believe that is how the pegasus wings work too (not entirely sure about it). Because when my computer is slow, it is loading the horse picture and sometimes the wings or mane pop in 1 sec later, suggesting the pictures could exist of multiple individual pictures/layers?

I don’t think people should be too worried about people spending passes to increase their reindeer’ skills. If it’s anything like normal comps, it’d actually be a disadvantage since they wouldn’t be able to see the races with “regular” reindeer and might not even have enough reindeer to run.

What I’d like to know is when the rankings update, because I often see some of my reindeer that have earned less, being placed higher in the rankings.

I don't have times, but it seems to be several times a day. So if an update happens while you are working your deer you can end up with some updated and some not.

Anyone else notice that changing a horse's specialty (who has the colour bonus) no longer validates the "Receive the color bonus on a horse that never had it before" objective?

Yes, I noticed that too. At first I thought I might've been doing something wrong myself but then when it happened again I realised Howrse must've made the change

Hay great let play

good y we aren't we playing yet

I have an idea for the devs:

Why don't you put up a survey to determine which BMIs and store items players actually value as diamond, gold, silver and bronze so that you can stop overvalueing items that nobody cares for. Like, you can give the players a list and ask them to order it according to what they value most to what they value least. Or ask them to sort it into the different categories (diamond, gold, etc). Maybe after that we can get some decent promo prizes in their proper categories, not like 10 APs being considered precious for example. Also, don't forget to add a "this does not belong in a promo" category for prizes like 2 APs that we can easily get from catching a UFO. I don't think anyone would be desperate enough to go out of their way to get 2 APs or spend passes on a randomized chest to get 5 APs.

I'd also suggest that you only send it out to players with (for example) more than 500 days of seniority so that you can get a better reflection of what players actually value rather than sending it to new players who will likely consider everything to be precious because they have no or little resources and/or no idea of what items they really value. Of course that might prevent returning players who do know what they value from participating in the survey so there might be a bit of a problem with that though. So maybe just send it to everyone who has access to daily objectives then instead of adding a seniority minimum?