Barn Dispersals

[Randall Allen]

Is anyone else alarmed by the number of barn dispersals as of late. I know I am. As of this moment there are four dispersal auctions that are active.

[Gwayne's World]

Never a good thing, of course. But it would be 'alarming' if they were 'Top Barns' exiting.

[LA Pepper]

I many times believe the word 'dispersal' is not used correctly, ie they are just cleaning out sometimes and not actually leaving.

[Laura Ferguson]

While that's sometimes the case, with respect to these four (and a fifth) in the coming soon, these are all dispersals (ie, 100% of their non-pensioned horses are in the auction). I believe it is a change from when stables disbursed to the AJ page.

[Tom Lin]

I believe Laura is correct. The horses are being offered for sale to the SIM population rather than going to AJ, as in years previous.

[Ronnie Dee]

Is anyone else alarmed by the number of barn dispersals as of late. I know I am. As of this moment there are four dispersal auctions that are active.

I am not surprised by this. The recent rule changes significantly impacted the newer barns and had minimal impact on the well-established barns.

In the past, newer players could acquire colts for $1K or less. After gelding, the player would get back $1K. The newer player would get the satisfaction of using the gelding angle to get free horses -- or even better, if the colt cost less than $1K, Sim subsidized horses. While the financial advantage of employing the gelding angle may have been slight, the psychological benefit for newer players to "discover" the gelding angle and then exploit it was considerable.

For newer players who needed to do a "reset" by GP-ing many of their horses, this option is considerably more costly now. So rather than trying with a revamped barn, quitting is now a much more attractive option.

When I was a newer player, after looking at the high stud fees, I dreamed of having my own stallion. If the $50K stud fee was in existence back then, I doubt if I would have even considered this dream.

But I am not advocating that these 3 rules changes be rolled back. A number of newer, as well as some more established, players have "discovered" a couple of much better angles to building up their stables. To be honest, it is highly doubtful that I would have even appreciated one of the more nuanced angles when I was a newer player. But I suspect that I would have discovered the more obvious angle.

In reflecting upon the new rule changes, I think the trade-off was quality over quantity. There will be a much greater attrition rate of newer players but the ones that survive will be much better players and will, hopefully, play for many years to come.

[Brad Fabman]

The new rules are killer for newer or poorer barns. Do you think for one minute that the barns with 20-30-40 million in the bank will be affected by the changes? These new changes have missed by a mile the intended targets. I needed those castration fees. They mean nothing to a wealthy barn. And now I have to hold on to horses till they are 5 years old because there is no way in the world I'm paying $5,000 to get rid of a horse. Can't afford that gas. So I have to continue to pay already wealthy players to house those horses till they are 5 at their farms. It is only hurting new or poorer players. Not the established wealthy barns. I believe it is a big swing and a miss and was not really well thought out.

[Dylan Christensen]

The new rules are killer for newer or poorer barns. Do you think for one minute that the barns with 20-30-40 million in the bank will be affected by the changes? These new changes have missed by a mile the intended targets. I needed those castration fees. They mean nothing to a wealthy barn. And now I have to hold on to horses till they are 5 years old because there is no way in the world I'm paying $5,000 to get rid of a horse. Can't afford that gas. So I have to continue to pay already wealthy players to house those horses till they are 5 at their farms. It is only hurting new or poorer players. Not the established wealthy barns. I believe it is a big swing and a miss and was not really well thought out.

This so much, I picked up way to many horses that can't make money and bred a bunch of crap and now I'm stuck with them until they're 5. It doesn't help me at all and in fact hurts my bank roll. It would be nice if it was easy to get rid of these mistakes

[Gwayne's World]

Maybe the lesson to be learned is, be much more selective in buying and breeding?
She (the Steward) had a reason for these changes and Ron's explanation is sound.
Not to mention all the gallop change horses who get trashed before they fully blossom.

[Laura Smith]

I don't think the changes were targeting "wealth," rather, volume. Let's say you bred 2000 yearlings by your own stallions (thereby costing you no stud fees) and 1000 of them were colts. Even if you only gelded, say, 75% of those, you'd still make three-quarters of a mil profit right away, and you might still be in the black after $1k AJing everything you didn't care about. I could be wrong, but I think that kind of playstyle was the target of the rule changes.

Also, is it possible that there aren't really that many more player dispersals lately -- but since they've recently all been going to auction vs. being dispersed on the sales page, they're just more noticeable now?

[The Admin]

is it possible that there aren't really that many more player dispersals lately -- but since they've recently all been going to auction vs. being dispersed on the sales page, they're just more noticeable now?

Yes. We have new players sign up every day and we have players who abandon their stable every day. The old system put all of the abandoned horses for sale. The new system creates a dispersal auction if they had 25 or more horses. Fewer than 25, works the same as before. Horses that are not won in the dispersal auction also go up for sale. The auctions are relatively new, and noticeable.

[Louise Bayou]

Maybe the lesson to be learned is, be much more selective in buying and breeding?
She (the Steward) had a reason for these changes and Ron's explanation is sound.
Not to mention all the gallop change horses who get trashed before they fully blossom.

I agree with this to a point. And I know that dealing with the ends and outs of the Sim while trying to make the majority happy is NOT something I would want to deal with. But I also see how it does hurt smaller barns. I do not agree with the "lesson learned, be more selective in buying breeding" though. If you were great at learning the game right off the bat that is wonderful. I know I for one made a lot of mistakes early on (uh and even now.lol) and spent years(10 real years) trying to build a barn that has had a modest amount of success. I feel like some of these changes do make it harder for new/smaller barns.

[Laura Smith]

Maybe a sliding scale for AJ fee based on how many horses you send? Not sure if it's possible to code, but, say, the first 10 horses a year to AJ are $1k, 10-25 are 3k, and above 25 it goes to 5k?

I still agree with the gelding thing. Even the worst horse can make $1000 on the track, especially at Trial Park. It's not that hard. I think the ability boost is a more useful incentive.
It WOULD be interesting, though, if there was a random slide associated with the gelding boost. Like when you geld, you have an 80% chance of getting a .2 boost or whatever it currently is, but maybe there's a 18% chance of getting a .3 and a 2% chance of getting a .5 or some such big gain. THAT would be a real incentive for people to geld and then actually race the things. Mirroring real life, where a few geldings improve ridiculously after they get the snips... and right now with the flat-rate improvement, if you have a field of claimer geldings that are all racing against each other, they all received the exact same boost for being gelded so you don't see any real difference in performance than if they were all entire horses.

[Lisa Bennert]

Not to mention all the gallop change horses who get trashed before they fully blossom.

I generally agree with what you're saying, but I don't think it's wise to tell/force especially newer players who mostly own horses with..not so great pedigrees to hold onto their horses because they could make a significant change (like from claimer/solid/productive to allowance/stakes) at some point.
I would say I have a"middle class" barn, not great like the well known veterans, but with some good potential here and there and no "trash". I keep my horses (except for those I realized I really just shouldn't have bred) until they are 4 (now I guess 5) years old. All horses that didn't gallop that well but I see potential with I race twice. Not once have I had a claimer/solid jump up to allowance/stakes in 5 real life years. And even "insignificant changes" are very very rare.

What I want to say with this is that I feel like there has to be a decision made- either we want a gallop system were you (pretty much) know what you get when you first gallop and can discard the bad ones easily or you want to stop mass breeding and encourage waiting and taking responsibility for the horses you breed. I feel like we're headed for the latter- which I don't really mind- I'm just saying that if you're taking away one thing (easily discarding bad horses) there should be an incentive (like an actual chance for lesser barns to get a significant gallop improvement) too. Because right now it just feels like a punishment and I can understand if smaller/ poorer barns aren't happy with it.

But with Sim 8.0 coming up soon this post is probably going to be meaningless but I don't want to delete it now after writing it so... sorry for stealing your time?
Lisa

[Gwayne's World]

Getting too big too fast was the point I was trying to make.
I like a small stable because of time constraints.
As far as my many mistakes are concerned, they are dealt with via the exchange.
I am able to do this and it helps support the game.
My goal is to breed grade I dirt router's.
No one said it would be easy!
This is a great game, with many great people. Long live the SIM!