Curious about "Create a Horse"

[Anna Nowak]

Has anyone ever created any really good horses using the Create a Horse function? Cause so far it seems like a fairly expensive (considering it uses Gp) but not really useful thing

[Carole Hanson]

Create a Mare can produce some nice broodmares, but Create a Horse is unfortunately like you say, pretty useless at the moment. I think there were talks of an overhaul to the system a while back, but that may have been put on the back burner.

[Anna Nowak]

Create a Mare can produce some nice broodmares, but Create a Horse is unfortunately like you say, pretty useless at the moment. I think there were talks of an overhaul to the system a while back, but that may have been put on the back burner.

An overhaul to Create a Horse would be a pretty good idea in my opinion. I remember the Steward some time ago talked about wanting a way to encourage players to use (and in turn, buy) more GP, so if Create a Horse was made to be more worth it, then that would probably be a good way to solve that issue.

[Carolyn Eaton]

Many years ago, when CAH first came out, there were complaints that some were "too good" (this was back when an 80SF was common in stakes winners and 70's in allowance). I doubt the slide ever got reset.

[Nena Olson]

Way back in the day some of the AW CAHs were pretty talented and then went on to be decent breeding stock. That was years ago though.

[Leigh Ann Anderson]

I created 2 fillies way back in year 19 that were decent listed stakes race types, nothing special and neither were decent producers. That was it as far as useful CAH racers in my barn

[Kelly Haggerty]

I got a couple decent foals out of Equistristud mares, but agree it is usually not the best use of GP.

[Gwen Morse]

An overhaul to Create a Horse would be a pretty good idea in my opinion. I remember the Steward some time ago talked about wanting a way to encourage players to use (and in turn, buy) more GP, so if Create a Horse was made to be more worth it, then that would probably be a good way to solve that issue.

Updating CAH (and CAM) isn't the most demanded feature or anything, but it's very consistently requested and the Steward just nopes each time. My guess is that she wants us to be limited to sim lines and the GP 'real' studs. Her game and her rules, but I wish it was different.

She does know that people would like the feature to be updated and she'd make money off it.

[Kelly Haggerty]

An overhaul to Create a Horse would be a pretty good idea in my opinion. I remember the Steward some time ago talked about wanting a way to encourage players to use (and in turn, buy) more GP, so if Create a Horse was made to be more worth it, then that would probably be a good way to solve that issue.

Updating CAH (and CAM) isn't the most demanded feature or anything, but it's very consistently requested and the Steward just nopes each time. My guess is that she wants us to be limited to sim lines and the GP 'real' studs. Her game and her rules, but I wish it was different.

She does know that people would like the feature to be updated and she'd make money off it.

All of this is true, but there were a couple horse racing games that got broken this way with nutjobs buying tons of CAH until they dominated. It never seemed to matter that they were spending a fortune and ending the site in the process. So IMO if they are too good, then we might have another problem.

Is there something specific we would gain? I am not against the idea in theory, but I also don't feel like I have trouble accessing any bloodlines in the divisions I run in, so not really any unmet need.

[Andrew Chillin]

An overhaul to Create a Horse would be a pretty good idea in my opinion. I remember the Steward some time ago talked about wanting a way to encourage players to use (and in turn, buy) more GP, so if Create a Horse was made to be more worth it, then that would probably be a good way to solve that issue.

Updating CAH (and CAM) isn't the most demanded feature or anything, but it's very consistently requested and the Steward just nopes each time. My guess is that she wants us to be limited to sim lines and the GP 'real' studs. Her game and her rules, but I wish it was different.

She does know that people would like the feature to be updated and she'd make money off it.

All of this is true, but there were a couple horse racing games that got broken this way with nutjobs buying tons of CAH until they dominated. It never seemed to matter that they were spending a fortune and ending the site in the process. So IMO if they are too good, then we might have another problem.

Is there something specific we would gain? I am not against the idea in theory, but I also don't feel like I have trouble accessing any bloodlines in the divisions I run in, so not really any unmet need.

Em’s bank account salivates…

[Nicole Marie]

My first horse was a formidable broodmare, but it's hard to say about her actual broodmare talent since I was stupid and didn't know she'd come with a set surface/distance affinity and kept breeding her to DR when it turns out she hypo'd well to TR.

[Sara Julin]

I myself created 2 mares about 1 week ago (just for fun). Got 2 formidables. One of the mares has only given me B+ hypos. The other has managed to give me a couple of A- hypos. Sooo... there's hopes for A- hypos... but maybe too much to expect a blue hen with straight A's out of the CAH.

[Nena Olson]

I myself created 2 mares about 1 week ago (just for fun). Got 2 formidables. One of the mares has only given me B+ hypos. The other has managed to give me a couple of A- hypos. Sooo... there's hopes for A- hypos... but maybe too much to expect a blue hen with straight A's out of the CAH.

The CAM mares can end up pretty decent to add fresh blood but the actual racehorses in CAH are... not worth the GPs IMO I wish we could create a racehorse using the CAM parents

[Gwen Morse]

All of this is true, but there were a couple horse racing games that got broken this way with nutjobs buying tons of CAH until they dominated. It never seemed to matter that they were spending a fortune and ending the site in the process. So IMO if they are too good, then we might have another problem.

Is there something specific we would gain? I am not against the idea in theory, but I also don't feel like I have trouble accessing any bloodlines in the divisions I run in, so not really any unmet need.

Any abuse that can be done with CAH or CAM could be done with sim-bloodline horses. We don't even really have filly limits anymore because you can pay GP for extra fillies now. I put a butt-load of cash into fillies last season. I'm not exactly a breeding threat to anyone (heh), but if I understood bloodlines just a little more I could do some damage with just that feature.

The same sort of thing could happen by making a quiet deal with one of the mass breeders.

However many $$$ a person has available to spend on CAH or CAM, they can spend on "abusing" sim-line horses. The Creators also have limits (I think it's 5 horses a season), which we don't have with sim lines.

No one's asking for super horses to come out of the Creator. I also wouldn't expect Emily to hand-adjust each creator stud/mare - there are ways to update the code so that she wouldn't have to do that. As part of doing those adjustments she could also adjust the weighting of what comes out of the Creators => so you wouldn't be able to get the best horses but you also wouldn't get literal trash. Maybe allowance/productive/solid for racing and the equivalents for broodmares (but having the potential to actually be statted well for those categories). I don't think anyone paying real money for a horse should get a DC or no potential but you also shouldn't be able to get freaks.

As far as what you get out of the Creator, I would say there's three things. The first is you get 'real' horse names. If you know about horse racing and care, you can get the babies and grand-babies of race royalty.

Another thing you get out of the Creator is a sort of sense that you've really built your own lines of horses. There's a different feeling about a horse that gets newly created by the computer instead of being bred from sim lines. When most of the pedigree is blank there's more of a feeling that whatever the horse does is a result of *your* choices.

Finally, people have all sorts of funky breeding projects in the sim. Having Creator mares be contenders for breeding just makes it a little easier to do weird stuff like breed dirt sprinters who can chase, or whatever it is the cool kids are doing now. The sim lines are highly specialized and if you want to go against that trend you either have to find some sim horses who are a little versatile in the right way already, or see if you can find enough GP stallions to breed back and forth without also getting so inbred it causes problems.

[Tammy Stawicki]

An overhaul to Create a Horse would be a pretty good idea in my opinion. I remember the Steward some time ago talked about wanting a way to encourage players to use (and in turn, buy) more GP, so if Create a Horse was made to be more worth it, then that would probably be a good way to solve that issue.

Updating CAH (and CAM) isn't the most demanded feature or anything, but it's very consistently requested and the Steward just nopes each time. My guess is that she wants us to be limited to sim lines and the GP 'real' studs. Her game and her rules, but I wish it was different.

She does know that people would like the feature to be updated and she'd make money off it.

I don't think she has any issues with seeing some fresh lines in the game, she actually has many times over the years introduced fresh blood, my guess is it is primarily an issue of:

1) It would take a lot of time and effort at this point to completely rehaul CAH/CAM and time is something the Steward does not exactly have buckets of.

2) There has often been pushback from players (full disclosure myself included) over the introduction of game-created bloodlines as people get prickly when they put in time and effort over the years to develop bloodlines and all of a sudden their horses can't compete with something that was just magically created. To the point others had made over the fear of someone becomming good just by buying a bunch of CAH. I think there would need to be a fine line walked in making horses good enough that people were interested in them, but not so good that they were dominating traditional horses and it's a hard line to walk and I'm guessing the Steward is in no rush to open the can of worms it would create if she tried walking it. I'm sure Stewardbreds more than fill her desired drama from this game quota.