Bye Bye Steward Bred's

[Laura Smith]

The reason for this, in my opinion at least, is also part of what makes the discussion interesting. Is it your job, as a player & breeder, to perpetuate any bloodlines or generally expand the gene pool by how you breed? I get that using 8 different Sires with this amazing Mare might look good on paper and I'll also agree that it's cool to do that and come up with 8 possible extensions of lineage through your mare. But at the end of the day it would probably be more in the interest of forwarding your own broodmare band to just send her to the very best. By the time those Foals that are (Horse A x One Amazing Mare) are ready to retire, there will be another couple of Next Big Things to send them to.

Now, contrast the above paragraph with both the mission of Stewardbreds and also the perspective of the Steward herself. Her broodmare band is full of impeccable female options. Her Foals are designed to extract money from the game via Auctions. Meanwhile, her Colts that she breeds are uniquely able to hop right in (not always, but lots of the time) as Stallions after they race, precisely because of the aforementioned impeccable female sides. Or if not impeccable, certainly very, very well built relatively speaking. So it's in the interest of that set of reasons for breeding to keep expanding outwards into new crosses, which the Steward has done and done well. The outcrosses are interesting, they're marketable, and with that kind of broodmare firepower, they're significantly less risky.

My point is this..........Stewardbreds have been very diverse over the Years, but you can see why and also how they differ from playerbreds. If we as players create or keep creating diverse lines, then there won't be any problem. If we start to pigeonhole and only use Horse A or Horse B, then I would honestly turn to the owner(s) of those horses and see if they're valuing them correctly, i.e. charging a high enough fee, or maybe even limiting their usage -- see Dave Matthews Band in Year 54.

This is kinda the discussion I was having with myself in my head.
We need to take chances with our good mares, not on garbage, but on stallions other than the obvious best two or three options. Not something that's going to be a negative factor in the pedigrees of its descendants, but just something that's maybe not an A+ hypo but still has a stellar pedigree and race record. Lots of those out there, and the reason they continue to be commercially unpopular is because they're not supported with the best mares, because of a silly hypo grade, and then the cycle perpetuates itself.

With foal limits going away (that was mentioned, right?) stud fees are going to become even more important -- but you can't make someone raise a fee if it's artificially low. This is why I'm in favour of limits, but that's another conversation, and we've all had it before.

[Laura Smith]

We can get rid of hypos? Keep mare comments so we can determine if the mare is worth breeding to.
It would force us players to experiment find the successful crosses.

Hypomates are the one thing killing many of the lower end studs. Once we see the hypos and the word gets out, those studs tend to simply disappear and the better hypoing studs are abused.

I pitched a modified hypo system a few years ago. I STILL think this is more what we need:

I have a spectacular and probably spectacularly unpopular idea.

Let's ditch hypo letter grades and specific gallop comments in favour of more general statements.

Condense the letter grades and just give a general idea. Instead of the A to high B+ hypo range, how about "This mating has the potential to produce a top quality horse." Low B+ to B, "this mating should produce at least a useful performer." and then one for "This mating is unlikely to produce a quality runner."

For the gallops, shift it away from quality slightly and towards the horse's potential to improve as it matures, as has been suggested plenty of times. Maybe one of three quality levels and a suggestion of whether the horse will peak early or late.


The game has shifted too far towards quantifying everything. A high hypo trumps everything else and convinces people to breed tons of mares to stallions they wouldn't have otherwise mass bred to. It's no coincidence that the affected horses here are all some of the best hypoers in their divisions. Do you think See You Monday would have seen 200+ mares in a week if he hypoed average? No way. But word gets around and suddenly the hypo grade is the only thing that matters. He would have been worth his $43k just based on race record alone, he would have still seen plenty of nice mares, and in a few years, after the foals hit the track, his fee would ideally go up to reflect their quality- or, more than likely, the next big thing would come along, which it always does, and the problem would regulate itself.
Stats hardly even matter. Reckoner's stats aren't great because he's seen hundreds of mares that wouldn't have gone to him had he been ten times the price. Same thing will happen to Composer in a few years. But that won't deter people from sending everything but the kitchen sink to him as long as he hypos high.
Gallops, the same. There might be no discernible difference in talent between a low end freak and a high end stakes galloping yearling, but most people would pay a hell of a lot more for the freak just based on that one single sentence the trainer utters W1D1.

Not 100% on topic here but I think it's very relevant and a discussion that needs to be had. We're all way too hung up on letter grades and gallop comments. Let's take it back a notch.

[Laura Smith]

Hmmm I’m still rambling, but turn the bsa comment from 10k sim cash to instead 1000 gp.

Remove hypo and place a 10k gp to bsa your stud.


The exchange exists so players can convert sim cash to gps if they don’t want to open their wallets.

Keeps the exchange economy active.

Not a bad idea, this. Make it so other players can also BSA a stallion, because not everyone would do it or make that info public.
But it would have to be a fairly generalized rating or we'd just have the same problem...

Something else that many of us use hypos for is to determine the surface/distance suitability when dealing with some kind of unknown or multi-distance thing. I'd miss that if it went away but there's probably another way to incorporate it somewhere.

[Glenn Escobar]

The idea of converting BSA fee into a GP-driven Fee is a good one.

While we are at it, make the Ask a Jockey hint (gives you the EQ after 6 races) 500 GP instead of 5K SIM. Heck, add that one to the Ask the Trainer thing you can also do for 500 GP. Add 500 to make it 1,500 and let people EQ the horse right out of the shoot. And before anyone complains, people would pay for that and it would keep the SIM economy churning.

Basically just make every perk like that GP instead of SIM cash. If you want to add a few more, that’s fine.

But I bet 1,000 GP Bloodstocking all by itself would be big.

[Glenn Escobar]

Might as well just do a bundle at this point. For 2,000 GP per Horse you can get EQ, a companion, and a catalog page.

Make insurance prices slightly cheaper in GP than in SIM cash.

All of it will keep the economy moving.

[Rebecca Rose Hepburn]

We can get rid of hypos? Keep mare comments so we can determine if the mare is worth breeding to.
It would force us players to experiment find the successful crosses.

Hypomates are the one thing killing many of the lower end studs. Once we see the hypos and the word gets out, those studs tend to simply disappear and the better hypoing studs are abused.

This please. Something that'll push us to not use the same studs over and over while good ones get overlooked because they don't hypo well. Hypos aren't a perfect indication of how a foal will do anyways, we rely on them too much

[Gigi Gofaster]

Not that I want to limit the gps Em gets big isn’t the point of steward breds partly to take money out of the game? If bloodstocking went to gps I wonder how much so cash would no longer leave? The exchange doesn’t help because it just moves simbux around players.

[Glenn Escobar]

Not that I want to limit the gps Em gets big isn’t the point of steward breds partly to take money out of the game? If bloodstocking went to gps I wonder how much so cash would no longer leave? The exchange doesn’t help because it just moves simbux around players.

Exchange helps because someone has to buy the GP with real money. And then if those get spent back out on a Hypo or whatever, they’re gone.

You’re right the SIM cash doesn’t disappear, unless spent on something else directly (like a vet visit under the current setup), but stimulating the exchange however possible adds to the longevity of the SIM.

[Dylan Christensen]

Not that I want to limit the gps Em gets big isn’t the point of steward breds partly to take money out of the game? If bloodstocking went to gps I wonder how much so cash would no longer leave? The exchange doesn’t help because it just moves simbux around players.

Exchange helps because someone has to buy the GP with real money. And then if those get spent back out on a Hypo or whatever, they’re gone.

You’re right the SIM cash doesn’t disappear, unless spent on something else directly (like a vet visit under the current setup), but stimulating the exchange however possible adds to the longevity of the SIM.

actually it does bring SIM money out, there's a 5% tax on each exchange so while its small it does remove money.

[Glenn Escobar]

Not that I want to limit the gps Em gets big isn’t the point of steward breds partly to take money out of the game? If bloodstocking went to gps I wonder how much so cash would no longer leave? The exchange doesn’t help because it just moves simbux around players.

Exchange helps because someone has to buy the GP with real money. And then if those get spent back out on a Hypo or whatever, they’re gone.

You’re right the SIM cash doesn’t disappear, unless spent on something else directly (like a vet visit under the current setup), but stimulating the exchange however possible adds to the longevity of the SIM.

actually it does bring SIM money out, there's a 5% tax on each exchange so while its small it does remove money.

Yeah, actually that’s true.

[Joe Bengston]

I didn't read a lot of the last few pages so i'm not exactly sure there isn't going to be foal limits anymore? that's something I think should be in place. they have them in real life so one it's realistic and two it prevents a top stable from just breeding and breeding and breeding till they get the top level horse while a smaller breeder is already limited to much less breeding. but either way I'm not really bothered by whatever happens.

I was going to suggest getting rid of gallop comments all together but I thought many people would be against that.
I just feel without knowing we have to actually use work times and racing/training more so racing to determine how good our horse is or how bad i guess haha.

the other benefit at least to not having gallop comments it'll be easier to sell horses at higher prices. now of course the ones that end up duds people will complain that the seller priced their horse too high. That is however like real life sometimes you pay a ton for a dud and sometimes you claim or buy cheap and get a top level stakes horse.

I don't think it's a bad idea to make a bunch of the things cost gp's instead of sim cash. gp's become more valuable. Then you have people buying more gp's with real money which helps the sim but then also more people would have a reason to buy gp's off the exchange and if they are more valuable that means they will cost more sim cash which takes out more money.

one other suggestion would be possibly raising the tax on the exchange to maybe 10%? maybe even higher but i don't want it to be something crazy like 50%.

[Joe Bengston]

oh but since new players aren't allowed to use the exchange i would suggest allowing new players to still be able to use sim cash to purchase those things at the current prices they already are.

[Nena Olson]

Making everything gp based is the worst idea yet. Not all of us are making bank in RL and I’m not making bank in SIM life either to make up for being poor in RL.

The idea isn’t to punish the poor people. The idea is to come up with ideas that will benefit all players and still drain money from the sim. Not make this pay to play.

Add stallion bloodstock agent remarks. This would help weed out stallions that have poor stallion numbers.

[Joe Bengston]

I really don't think it would be pay to play. and I'm not making bank in real life or the sim either. I have 200,000 sim cash i bet you have a lot more than that. but i often am able to use the exchange and get a 250 gp's for 1,000 or sometimes a little more sim cash. but generally when i've wanted gp's to check something I've been able to use the exchange and I have 200,000 in sim cash I usually had a lot less. and yes maybe if everything was gp then I'd have to pay a little more but i think you could still find ways to make it work.

so i don't think it would be as big of an issue as you are making it out to be. I really don't think that would punish people. but idk maybe it would. hence why i don't run the show

one could make the argument it already is pay to play because i don't make bank either I've often never used gp's to check equipment and had to try to figure it out the old way through work times/racing. because I couldn't afford buying any and I had a lot less than 200,000 sim cash. so I use the exchange when i need some gp's. especially if it's only 250 or something small compared to 1,000 or more gp's.

[Nena Olson]

If everything was game points chances are prices for game points would go up cus it would be more in demand. People that can afford to buy gp eventually will hit a limit on how much they can buy as I'm sure they would not want to fund thousands of dollars a week in real life money to fulfill the demand of everything needing it but things would still need game points to use.