Forum rules
Do not to post anything abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, or sexually-orientated.
Do not post anything negative about any player.
No advertising other games.
The management reserves the right to delete or lock threads and messages at any time.
Read the complete SIM rules and legal information.
So I guess I’m just dreaming when every time there is a change I see thread after thread of complaints?
Most of the changes start from complaints which when something changes leads to more complaints. The steward can never win.
Find a way to adapt. Change something in your gameplay.
[/quote]
By that logic, nobody should ever complain about anything. Complaints are not automatically invalid and swept aside by the notion of "just adapt". When you have breeds and divisions where you can barely manage to make a profit even when you have a barn full of multiple stakes winners with a ridiculous percentage of winners from your foals, and then the purses get slashed further, you don't have a lot of options. I have no problems with purses being slashed in the big breeds/divisions, I can adapt around those, but there's little ability to adapt to change that leaves almost no wiggle room in a divison.
A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.- Pam Brown
I made a suggestion. You can choose to do what you want. You can play your own way. No one is forcing you otherwise. Just adapt to the changes. Changes are placed for the good of the game.
If you feel the changes are effecting you negatively, work find a solution turning it into a positive.
Millionaires are not made overnight. It takes lots of hard work and time. Eventually everyone can achieve the the same level of success if they try hard enough.
Everyone has a different idea of success. Not everyone can achieve the same level. There are only a fixed number of G1 races for players to win. Not everyone can win one no matter how much time and hard work they put in. But this thread isn't about becoming a millionaire. Its about Purse cuts and how they are affecting mixers more than TB's.
Dave Trainer wrote: ↑4 years ago
Everyone has a different idea of success. Not everyone can achieve the same level. There are only a fixed number of G1 races for players to win. Not everyone can win one no matter how much time and hard work they put in. But this thread isn't about becoming a millionaire. Its about Purse cuts and how they are affecting mixers more than TB's.
The Steward wrote: ↑4 years ago
All stakes across all divisions/breeds were cut exactly the same, and all maidens were made the same, whether TB or not.
But agree that more Mixer/Harness graded stakes are definitely needed.
So i guess 4 weeks ago the Steward made the above comment so what are we still talking about?
Nice to see the GP stakes got a boost back up. Thank you. I'm not fond of any cuts to the mixer stakes. It's not like thoroughbreds. There just isn't an abundance of stakes. Graded stakes are almost non-existent in some mixer divisions.
Tom Lin wrote: ↑4 years ago
Nice to see the GP stakes got a boost back up. Thank you. I'm not fond of any cuts to the mixer stakes. It's not like thoroughbreds. There just isn't an abundance of stakes. Graded stakes are almost non-existent in some mixer divisions.
I think we have seen some progress made. The biggest of course being the correction of the overslashing of game point sire stakes so we have some extra purse money back there. There has also been an acknowledgment that the stallion threshold for mixers may need to be adjusted (it does seem odd that it is the same for mixers/thoroughbred given the very different earning potentials there) and talk of changes to limits (when limits came about we were told they would affect 1-2 horses in a given division. They consistently take out 10% of quarter horses and also have all but eliminated lower stud fees for paint/appy breeders when using quarter horses)
Here is what would happen in my dream world and this is coming from someone who races exclusively with paint sprinters and middle distance horses so I can't speak for other divisions. Though I realize I am speaking in the harness racing forum.
1. A complete purse overhall of mixers. Yea its sad that almost all our stakes are now just 50k but that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of purse abnormalities. You have claimers running for 15k purses and allowance horses running for 10-12k purses. I know I have ran a horse that belonged in an allowance in a claiming race because the only open allowance that day was one of the 12k ones. Now I think it is great that lower level horses have some significant earning potential with those high value claiming races but I would love to see allowance types horses have comparable earning potentials. Most of my claimer geldings are out earning my fillies that I don't want to lose so have to stick to allowance races even when said fillies are consistently picking up checks.
Also there are some significant differences in the stakes races available between different divisions of the same breeds. 3yo paint sprinters have a $100,000 and $500,000 race. Whereas the middle distance horses have nothing above $50,000.
2. A complete breeding overhall for mixers. There has been angst can mixers make $350,000 with these cuts and will this make our already tight stallion situation worse. Certainly lowering the limit will get at some of that but not all. When the holiday stallions came out there was a big bruhaha that they were so much better than player horses they were going to take over everything and player horses couldn't compete. At the time I was trying to be the voice of reason and telling people they were overreacting. I was wrong. Looking at last year's paint sprint steward's cup races the top 3 finishers in all 4 races were sired by game created horses. Things were a bit better in paint mid land with only 8 out of 12 being sired by game created horses but of those other 4, one was by a since pensioned sire and the other 3 were all by the same player bred sire. When I breed turf milers I feel like yea Distant Dream is the man but there are a lot of really nice stallions behind him that I can choose from and would be happy to use. When I am breeding paint sprinters I would love to have variety in my choices but I feel using the playerbred horses (with the exception of Hey Brother) is putting me at a disadvantage. So I'm torn between my desire to breed the best possible foal and my desire to get some diversity. I never feel that way with thoroughbreds.
Then there is the whole limit thing. And listen I get it given that we have a very small subset of dominant stallions we don't want every horse sired by them but it makes it hard to breed mixers. Particularly if one wants to use quarter horses to increase that diversity. Again with my turf milers I try to breed Distant Dream early but outside of that the limits have made zero difference. Whereas my paints I have a list of stallions I try to get in right at the beginning of the season (which makes it hard to take the time to really do my research and make informed breeding decisions). And even then there are some I get shut out of each year either because I didn't have a mare ready to breed to them in the small window that they were available to be bred (if they were available to be bred). This is particularly an issue for quarter horses where they are being used for 3 different breeds with only a small number of extra breeding slots to accommodate that. When you start talking about the distance quarter horses it becomes an even bigger issue. And of course since all your top quarter horses are now booking full very few offer reduced stud fees for crossbreeding which was pretty commonplace before the limits. I have enough money to pay the $50k stud fees, but for someone just starting out in paints or appys I imagine that is more money than you can justify spending. It has been frustrating to see this continue to be an issue year after year with only one small change (the slight limit increase) which seemed to make little to no difference.
One last thing while it doesn't bother me as much the lower limits on stud fees also really don't make sense given the current state of things in mixers. Colored Spotlights is one of the top paint sprint sires. He's produced 33 stakes winners. I could stand him for $500. Meanwhile O Hi O who has produced only 1 stakes winner but was very successful on the racetrack needs to stand for at least $8,000.
So yes lowering the 350k limits for mixers will help some, maybe. But if we continue to have a situation where playerbred stallions are continually unable to compete with a small number of game created stallions that are a challenge to breed to because of limits we are going to continue to have mixer breeding angst.
The GP sired stakes I'd love to see come back up, the GP sires are pretty inconsistent with how their foals race so it's nice to have an incentive to breed to them, especially if your brave enough to try a colt, instead of just breeding to them for diversity in a future broodmare. I feel those especially should've had a warning those were coming down 2 years in advance, but I'd rather they just go back to where they were.
A complete overhaul on mixer purses would be AMAZING. These purses are so out of wack, you've got 25k Maidens, 15k claimers, 10-12k Allowances and 50k stakes. I'd still love to see low end claimers, like $500-3k tags. I don't really understand why there's 80k claimers in paints, no one will ever claim that horse unless it's a very well bred filly or a real stakes horse, 80k is a LOT to spend on a paint. But before we discuss new races lets try to fix these purses
Definitely agree with the breeding overhaul. These holiday stallions were great at first, but they are WAY too good, I'm all for 1 or 2 game created studs for diversity, but they can't be better than player bred stallions, it just makes things worse. Other than Hey Brother and Stetson if you want the best, it's holiday studs, sprinters definitely have it the worst the holiday studs are so much better than all the other sprint studs. Now the next generation of studs will be mostly holiday sired
The limits just make a bad stallion situation that much worse. It's like a rubik's cube, that's mixer breeding for you.
The minimum stud fees still don't make sense to me that it's based off of earnings and why it's there. A midder example is Drizzt, highest earning paint ever, produced only 4 stakes winners but had to stand over 10k. Meanwhile holiday sires can stand for $500 and I could stand Hey Bro who's produced 50 stakes winners for just over 3k. It'd be nice to have a flat rate for the breed, everyone knows a great racer doesn't mean a great stallion.
Arabian: Money Run Low - 7.5k Cass Ole - 5k Mugello - 5k All I'll Praise - 5k Zandvoort - 10k
Paint: Toby Flenderson - 15k One In The Woods - 5k We Can Be Heros - 5k FLD Eclipse - 3.5k Scooter - 3.5k
I know there is a lot of talk about the 350k threshold and the worry of horses not having the ability to make it, but the negative effect of the studs potential once retired is very minimal. The steward mention it one time, I wish I could find her post.
Not saying that the 50k purses can’t be increased, because yea racing a 6 year old well bred colt still trying to break 300k is not fun, I’m just saying don’t get so caught up and assume the stud won’t be worth using it they don’t make 350k.
If a colt has awesome stud numbers and retired at 349k it will still be a good stud.
