July 26, 2023

Hellow everyone!

We've been impressed by the number of questions you all had for our game dev team! It took us some time to read them all, classify them, and choose the ones that sounded the most relevant to us... for this first batch of answers!

We are thrilled to get to answer your questions. Through this initiative (and the ones that are coming!), we would like to strengthen the special bond that already exists between you, our loyal players, and us, the game dev team.

For this first session of answers, we decided to focus on some hot topics that have been discussed a lot lately. Our goal is to give you some insights into our project strategy and the future of Howrse. In order to best answer you, some questions have been combined into one big topic. The following answers have been divided into five sections:

⭐ A quick update about the rewarded videos on the classic version;
⭐ Trophies & collection;
⭐ Communication with players;
⭐ Interface and user experience;
⭐ Vision of future.

If you don't see your question answered today, rest assured, it still lays safely by us, we will do our very best to answer a maximum of questions in the following months.

We enjoyed answering you, and hope you will appreciate our answers. To recognize the different teams who answered the questions, we will be using the following emojis:
📢 Producing team
🎮 Game designers
💻 Programmers
🖌 Artists
🗣 Community Developers
☎ Customer support

So now, enough talking, let's get to the point!

Happy reading!
Your Howrse Team

Rewarded videos & bug resolution process

Are some bugs going to get fixed anytime soon? I haven't been able to play the rewarded videos on my PC in months.

💻 ☎ Yes! We have a whole bug-tracking system that enables us to report bugs to the programmers and fix them as quickly as possible. We fix them all week long to optimize your gaming experience. In recent weeks, for example :

🔹 We fixed an issue that prevented players of the Italian version from cancelling cow farming in their equestrian centre.
🔹 We added a warning when a Solar System Starry Aura is replaced by a Wind Starry Aura.
🔹 We have corrected an interface issue that prevented certain actions in the equestrian centre.

We carefully study all the feedback you send us via the https://support.owlient.eu/ platform. If the issue raised cannot be solved directly by the person replying to you, it is passed on to our technical team, who will prioritize it according to the level of impact (How blocking is the issue? How many players encounter it? etc.). Depending on the level of priority, the problem will either be corrected directly on the current version of the game, or it will be dealt with by our teams in one of the next game updates.

Trophies & collections

You had a lot of questions about this precise topic. We have read them all, and instead of picking a couple of questions, we decided to answer them as a whole, to try to cover all your interrogations. We hope our answer will help you understand our intentions and the reason why we are changing these features.

🎮 Our initial goal with the Trophies & Collections redesign was to separate gameplay feats, such as winning competitions or completing contests, and the various collections one can pursue in the game. We wanted to prevent you from losing trophies you had already earned. We also wanted to make them more motivating by adding rewards for completing them.

We are still standing by this design; however, it seems like we underestimated your attachment to the visuals attached to each trophy and your ability to share that information on your player sheet.

We heard your feedback and are working to make both things come-back in the game as soon as possible.

We are also working on these topics:

🔹 Increasing the quantity of new trophies that we add to the game related to other features besides contests & divine horses.
🔹 Creating collections for Golden Apples and Helios Rays.

Communication with players

You recently sent out a survey to players to get feedback on the game and what the player base would like to see as possible changes or future features. Is there any plan in place to increase transparency regarding this feedback and how these suggestions are being evaluated or addressed?

🗣 We understand you are curious about the survey data, and we might work on a new format to share with you some insights and data we collect from them! Surveys are the best way for us to collect your feedback and have a clear view and understanding of your expectations. But this is not the only system we use to know more about your expectations; we are also constantly reading your messages on our social networks, right here on Discord, or on the remaining forums. Once collected, the communication team classifies your comments and passes them on to the appropriate person or team.

We are working way ahead of the events. To give you an example, the game designers' team already knows what they want for Winter and is working on the 2024 events! That is one of the main reasons why you don't necessarily see the changes you request appear immediately in the game. Everything you say is, however, recorded, and the game dev team always tries to implement the relevant features you might request when there is a small place for them in our timeline.

Why do you keep the Discord server in English only?

🗣 The main purpose of this official Discord server was to offer a safe discussion space for all of our Howrse players who lost the access to their forums. The decision to have an English-only policy is primarily aimed at ensuring effective communication and moderation.

We understand the frustration some players might feel, when it comes to write in a language they don't fully master, and are aware that it might sometimes be difficult to clearly express their mind. We have worked and are still working to find a solution that could suit the maximum number of players. Not only that, but we've looked into Discord translation bots, and were not fully convinced by the ones we tried.

Tl;dr: The Discord server will remain in English, but we are looking into solutions to allow you to write in your native language 😉

Will you make a holiday workbook for the 2023 summer period, like last year on Facebook?

🗣 We are so thrilled to see that you liked our previous holiday activity book, we've put a lot of effort in it. In case you hadn't seen in yet, the 2023 edition is already out and ready for you to complete! You can download it right here:

EN - https://howr.se/EN-HolidayActivityBook2023
FR - https://howr.se/FR-CahierdeVacances2023
DE - https://howr.se/DE-BuchMitFerienaktivitaten2023

Don't hesitate to share with us your progress right here on Discord, or on the other social networks with the hashtag #HowrseSummer!

Will you be more clear regarding the creation space? How does the voting process work?

🗣 First, we’d like to remind you that the selection of creations is done manually. We don’t automatically pick creations based on the votes. However, your votes are central in the system. For each category, we always start at the top of the votes, and we then filter some creations based on multiple criteria, which we are happy to detail here.

🔹 Does the creation respect the Black pearl rules (https://howr.se/BlackPearl_Rules)? We check for plagiarism, fan art, unauthorized use of art line, photos and so on.
🔹 Does the creation have unwanted traces, halos or stains that could damage its representation in-game? Kind reminder to our talented creators: please check that your creation is properly cropped and clean. If it isn’t, we won’t select it.
🔹 Does the author already have an entry in this month’s creation space? As most of you probably noticed, we select one entry per player to give a chance to everybody.
🔹 Is there a suspicion that the creation was made by AI? If there is a strong one, we won’t take any risks.

The votes are the first thing that we look out for when selecting creations. If the community placed a creation on top of the votes, we have no reason not to select it. We have a team specialized in detecting plagiarism and compliance with the Black pearl rules.

Once again, the selection process is manual, so mistakes do happen, and your tickets help greatly with fixing that. Don’t hesitate to use our customer support if you see a recent creation breaking the rules!

Lastly, we’ll take this opportunity to inform you that some categories are not as filled as we would like them to be For example, very few players are submitting unicorn donkeys, winged donkeys, winged unicorn donkeys. We also have a shortage of winged draft unicorns, draft pegasus and winged unicorn ponies. We would happily take more of these creations to keep the creation space as diverse as possible!

User interface & user experience

Again, we had quite some questions about the interface and some improvements or new features you would like to see us implement to improve your experience. It seemed a bit superfluous to get back to every questions asking if we would or not implement this feature, or this one, or this one, or... You get the idea! So we prepared again a big answer that - we hope - covers as many questions as possible.

🎮 📢 User Interface Improvements
About the questions regarding possible improvements to our website interface: each new design for one of the pages on our site requires a considerable amount of work. This is why we must balance working on interface upgrades with working on new content for the game. We have decided to focus on quick wins for the interface, while dedicating most of our dev team taskforce for new content. For example, if we ever wanted to release a "dark mode" to our site, we don’t plan to work on it in the coming months.

Black Market Items availability
You’ve asked if we could make some items available for sale in the shop: Some of these items are too advantageous for being on sale constantly. We try to make them available regularly as reward in contests, be ready 😉

Unicorn breeding
A few players expressed frustration over the chance to breed unicorns. We will work on a mechanic to improve these chances.

QoL / User experience improvements
Many questions regarding the addition of filters in searches, redirections and other "quality-of-life" improvements. We added many of these suggestions to our (already extensive) list of improvements to work on. As for the UI improvements, we have to balance working on these upgrades with working on new content for the game. We will do our best to allow as many improvements as possible to make their way into the game.

Divines & vision of the future

Are there any plans to bring back a fair and even rotation of divines? There are divines that haven't been brought back in 3+ years, while others are back yearly, or multiple times per year.

🎮 📢 We are still committed to releasing new divine horses and creating new divine series as it remains one of your favorite elements in the game, as we noticed in the results of the survey we sent a few months back. However, we are not satisfied with the fact that these horses are only interesting because of the rewards they provide and by the current limited availability of older divine horses.

We are currently working on a few things to:
👍 Make these horses more interesting and fun.
👍 Find ways to make older divines available to purchase more frequently for you to be able to complete your collections.

You will be able to see the beginning of these improvements quite soon, so stay tuned 😉

Howrse, I love your game! Are you planning on shutting it down anytime soon? That would be heartbreaking, Ngl.

📢 And we love it too, very much! For now, there is absolutely no plan to shut down Howrse. Quite the opposite, actually... We are very, very, impatient to present you the changes brought to the features we previously launched, but also the new content on which we have been working on for some months now... 😉

We know that some of you are worried about the future of Howrse, and especially the players on our smaller versions. Don't worry, we have no plan in closing any of the versions of the game!

Bonus !

Some of you were quite curious about our dev team, as individuality. We've asked a few questions to our colleagues, hoping you will appreciate their answers!

A word from...

😎 A game tester!

How long have you been working on Howrse? Are you working full time on Howrse, or do you also work on other projects?
Hellow! I've been working on Howrse for almost 17 years now! In the past, I have worked on other projects like Babydow, Aquariow or Fashiown, but I am currently only working on Howrse.

Do you have a private Howrse account, and do you play Howrse regularly in your free time?
Yes, I have a private account since October 2005, but I don't play regularly.

What part of the game did you have the most fun to work on?
I really love the testing part on the test server, looking for bugs or flaws that might be hiding there!

Is there anything you would like the players to know?
Keep in mind that this is just a game, let's relax, and have some good time while taking care of your horses 😉

Any anecdote to share with us?
I signed my contract on the back of my boss in a train station!

😎 An Associate Lead Programmer

How long have you been working on Howrse? Are you working full time on Howrse, or do you also work on other projects?
I have been working on Howrse for a bit more than 6 years. This is the only project I am working on right now.

Do you have a private Howrse account, and do you play Howrse regularly in your free time?
I actually have a personal account on Howrse, and I play regularly in my free time. I am even the proud owner of an Equestrian Centre in the Top 200 on Ouranos!

What part of the game did you have the most fun to work on?
I take the most pleasure in developing contests and events, but also useful features in the everyday life of our players, such as the detailed mode of breeding, or the automatic limitation of training times during BLUPs to avoid a loss of time in the days of my horses.

Is there anything you would like the players to know?
Thank you for your loyalty after all these years! Pro-tip: If you want the game to go faster, get rid of the horses you no longer care for! The servers will thank you 😉

Any anecdote to share with us?

I once tried to chain BLUP alone Quarter Horses in B100 and reach a genetical potential that would be high enough to sell them for 100 Passes each. I managed to keep up with the teams... 3 days before giving up on the time it took 😅

January 19, 2024

Hellow everyone!

New year, new answers!

As promised, here is the second batch of answers to the questions you asked our dev team. This second batch will also be the last one for this Q&A session. However, don't get mad if your question hasn't been answered: we will give you a new opportunity to ask us in the near future!

Once again, we divided your questions into 6 categories:
⭐ Game features & future;
⭐ Commercial offers;
⭐ Art;
⭐ Cheating;
⭐ Communication;
⭐ Howrse Team.

We would like to thank you once again for your enthusiasm and hope you will find the answers you are looking for in our Game Dev Q&A #2!

As a reminder, here are the different emojis used for you to recognize the different teams who answered the questions:
📢 Producing team
🎮 Game designers
💻 Programmers
🖌 Artists
🗣 Community Developers
☎ Customer support

Let's get started!

Happy reading
Your Howrse Team

Game features & future

Can you change the new feature of teams to set a maximum for sales and cover GP so that they can't reduce it once it's set to a number? Because right now people are getting scammed out of being able to use the horses they bought left and right because they put for sale and then the GP gets lowered, so the buyer can't use the horse.

🎮 We are aware of this issue, and we are working on a solution to prevent this problem.

Are there any plans to rework the daily genetic curve?

🎮 It would be very complex to rework the daily genetic curve and above all very risky: both on the side of the reception of the players and from a technical point of view, with many possible side effects that would be difficult to anticipate. We therefore think it is more cautious not to change this aspect of the game.

How do you determine and prioritize upcoming changes and new features?

📢 Our number one priority is obviously to keep the game functional, stable and alive the whole year long. And it’s already a pretty nice task that takes up a lot of the team’s time!

Then, for the time remaining for the team, we prioritize the new features by putting into perspective the following two elements:

🔹 The contribution of the new feature for players and/or for the game
and
🔹 The estimated cost of development.

Once this prioritization is done, we take the topics in order, and we strive to deliver them as soon as possible!

We are particularly proud of the new game mode: Ascent of Olympus, and the warm welcome you have reserved for it tells us that we are on the right road!

Only one question, will you ever add Exmoor ponies? And will they be fluffy chonkers!!? They are such sweet lil guys, we need some!!!!

🎮 We can't agree more with you: they are so fluffy and so cute! We will think about it.

Will you add a random system of marks on the coats (legs and face marks)?

🎮 We would really love to, and it has already been discussed and considered in the past years. Unfortunately, the technology we use on the game and the format used for the horse images prevent us from implementing it on Howrse. At least, not without massive development work.

Can we get back the function of sending divines to Safe Haven, or at least get a “toggle on/off” feature for certain divine perks?

🎮 We don’t have plans to implement it for the moment, but we have seen your many remarks and questions. We understand the issue some of you are having, for example with Tarpan, so we are trying to figure out a solution for this problem.

Do you consider building on a lore for Howrse, and thus creating original divine horses tied to this lore? With the freedom you could have on the concepts themselves, it could provide new interesting mechanics directly tied to the game itself, different from mini-games to earn Black Market objects.

🎮 📢 We have already made some preliminary thoughts on the subject. It would require a massive amount of work to be well done. According to our studies, this is something that would not necessarily interest many players. Considering the prioritization matrix showed above: Moderate interest + high cost = low priority feature

This being said, only fools never change their mind. 😉

Will the lootbox system in the game ever be improved or ended?

🎮 We are working on an adjustment for the number of divine fragments in our luck items to reduce the random aspect of it, and are thinking about more possible evolutions of those items.

Commercial offers

What are the plans to include items like Knight's Equipment and the Coat of Iris in the black market? They are currently the best items for the Grand Prix, yet you don't offer them.

🎮 We are aware of this, and some things are going to change a little bit. However, some items are voluntarily kept away from the Black market because their price in Passes would be too high to be sold there.

Are there any plans to bring more availability of some items that we currently can’t purchase until promos are available? For example, BP, Magic Hat etc. Also, the access to tears, wand and Apollos lyre privileges more often? A lot of people agree that all three of these are sought after and are popular. I could see it being a good hit.

🎮 Halloween customization items are sold during the Halloween period and can be won regularly during our events and from some divine horses. However, we don’t plan to increase the availability of privileges.

Why are all new Black Market items excluded from the item exchange? Will the possibility to trade them ever be added?

🎮 This feature is the source of too much traffic and cheating, so we have decided to stop adding items in it.

Will Jade be available in Titan’s Challenge this year?

🎮 There are no specific plans for Jade at the moment, except for the possibility to get this divine horse in the next Christmas packs.

Will there be ever an option for us to buy Hestia’s gift?

🎮 We cannot add the option to buy Hestia’s gift, it isn’t our intention because it would force unicorn breeders to buy it to keep up with the rankings. We want it to remain a rare item in the game.

When does Howrse plan to bring back Bucephale's/divine tack?

📢 No spoil... But we heard you, and it's coming soon!

Hello, are you going to change some dress of horses because many races this look like is it hard to differentiate them, thank you.

🎮 No, we are not planning to do that.

Are there plans to change the default horse graphics again?

🎮 There are too many breeds for this, and it would take way too long. This is not something we are planning to work on right now.

Art

Do you have an art department/team or is it a one-person job?

🖌 There is an art department within the Howrse team with several people for different roles: manager, concept artist, 2D artist and UI (User Interface) designer. There are also a few freelancers working with us depending on the needs we have.

Who is the artist or artists behind the coats for horses, divines and companions? I love your style and would love to follow them on Instagram if they have a page there.

🖌 Thanks for the compliments, they have been forwarded. However, the team is quite shy, so we don’t have any Instagram page to share.

Cheating

Do you plan to do more about cheaters? I'm talking about people who are scripting, to automate the work of their horse, and particularly people who are using several accounts.

☎ Ensuring a fair game environment for all players is one of our top priorities. Last year alone, a new code of conduct has been released, massive amounts of bots have been banned, and thousands of players who engage in scripting and/or pass trafficking have been sanctioned.

While cheating management is a non-ending battle, we plan on perpetuating our efforts to fight it without impacting the experience of players who respect the game’s rules. You can therefore expect us to continuously improve cheat management actions, tools, processes, and communication for the years to come.

Why were warnings before karma docks/bans removed?

☎ While we continue to use warnings for minor offences or very specific situations, we have decided to stop using them for major offences.

When a player decides to go against the game’s code of conduct to gain unfair advantages over other players, a warning is generally not enough to stop them from continuing to do so.

Also, do you even consider lowering sanctions for already banned players (perm bans to temporary ones)?

☎ It really depends on the situation. If a player feels like their sanction is undeserved, they are free to send a ban appeal ticket to our customer support. Upon receiving the request, the sanction will be reviewed by a different person than the one who applied it. Once the review is done, the player will be informed of our decision.

To be perfectly transparent, it is rare for us to lower or remove sanctions, as each one is applied after a thorough investigation. We do not give preferential treatment to anyone, no matter their seniority, financial investment, or closeness with the team.

Last but not least, I would like to add that sanctions are always applied for a reason. Except for ensuring a fair game environment on Howrse, we have absolutely nothing to gain by sanctioning players.

Why do the docks and sanctions differ across servers? Aren't the rules for trafficking, multi-accounting, scripting detection systems and sanctions supposed to be the same across all servers? Aren't the punishments supposed to be done automatically through your detection systems, and not manually?

☎ It is true that for numerous years, sanctions were server dependent. This was done to give us the flexibility to adapt to server specific cheating trends.

This has changed recently, and most sanctions are now the same for all servers. Some exceptions might remain on servers that still have forums. Sanctions can also vary depending on the number of misdeeds done by a user, but this has always been the case.

While detection is automated, our team always reviews and sanctions such cases manually. This is why we could – and still can if necessary – apply custom sanctions.

Communication

I know recently that you have been moving more towards the times. Like interacting more with the community and bringing the community to discord. I wondered if there are any plans to be more interactive? For example, live streams, specific channels/hang out on certain days. Much like the Friday Fun Topic that used to occur on the site in the forums? Also wondered if there are any other plans on allowing the community to interact more? For example, topics like other games or voice chats people can interact in? I am not sure about anyone else, but I am a gamer and play other games. It would be super cool to connect with others among other games too. Maybe ways that there can be partnerships made between Howrse and other companies?

🗣 Thanks for noticing that we are moving in the right direction. We do have plans to keep this going for even more interaction, such as doing more Q&As. There are no plans yet for live streams, but regarding the fun topic/channels to hang out in, we have recently opened the language forums, opened by moderators, where players of a specific language can hang out together, this depends on the moderators’ availability, but it happens regularly. Voice chats are not something we want to implement, as they are difficult to moderate and don’t really fit the community’s way of playing.

What happened to the ambassador program? We haven’t heard from them in years…

🗣 The Ambassador program was quietly discontinued.

We launched it in 2018 when we were working on the new monetization on Howrse and have asked the Ambassadors for other feedback a few more times after that. However, due to time constraints and a lack of subjects we could consult the Ambassadors on, we stopped using it.

If we ever were to use a similar program again, we would start from scratch with new elections or a new system.

Howrse Team

How many of you manage the game on all versions?

📢 There are over 40 people working on the game in total, if you count all the teams (production, game design, development, art, testing, support and community management, marketing).

Are you hiring devs that could work remote from NA? (haha... unless? 😉 )

📢 We are not hiring at the moment and if we were, it would be in France, not North America. Feel free to try your luck at any of the Ubisoft studios we have there!

Bonus!

Some of you were quite curious about our dev team, as individuality. We've asked our colleagues questions, hoping you will appreciate their answers!

A word from...

🎠 A Lead Community Developer

How long have you been working on Howrse? Are you working full time on Howrse, or do you also work on other projects?
I've been working on Howrse for 11 years now, starting as a community manager. I'm only working on Howrse right now (as a Lead Community Developer), but I spent some time on other projects developed by the studio in the past years.

Do you have a private Howrse account, and do you play Howrse regularly in your free time?
I do have a personal account on Howrse, that I created before my job interview to be prepared, and I'm still using it after all this time. I don't always play regularly: it depends on the free time I have and the contest that is on (the Cards and the Mazes are my favorite). I must say that I became addicted to the Olympus Ascent in the past months, so I've been playing more again.

What part of the game did you have the most fun to work on?

Most recently, I'd say it was the Olympus Ascent. It was really exciting for the whole team to work on a new game mode, testing it internally and then with testers and players, and seeing it improve over the months from the paper prototype to what we have now in the game. I'm so happy with the finished version and really proud of what the team delivered.

Is there anything you would like the players to know?

Thank you all for making this game keep going for so long. I'm really grateful for that. The Howrse community is really unique and keeps surprising me, even after all these years.

Please note that while we don't answer everything you say, we do read what you say on the different communication channels. Keep that in mind when you express criticism in a not so nice way.

Any anecdote to share with us?

When I started, I was the community manager of the German server, which means that I was using the Ow account to talk to players on the forums.

I took this monkey thing to heart, because that's when I started eating a banana every day, thanks to the fruit at the office. And I never really stopped. 😅

🤠 An Economic Game Designer

How long have you been working on Howrse? Are you working full time on Howrse, or do you also work on other projects?
I've been working on Howrse since 2011, that's a little bit more than 12 years entirely spent on Howrse ^^

Do you have a private Howrse account, and do you play Howrse regularly in your free time?

I do have a personal Howrse account. I keep playing every day without exception, even if I am less active than I was a few years ago.

What part of the game did you have the most fun to work on?
I love working on the creation of new events. But also on a less noticeable aspect: everything about rebalancing on the main game or in events.

Is there anything you would like the players to know?
We can give the impression of not being generous when it comes to rewards. But we always strive to keep the best possible balance between pleasing you so that you keep wanting to play, and not jeopardize the game economy and thus allow you to play for years to come.

Any anecdote to share with us?

I was a very well ranked Howrse player before becoming a Game Designer. It was through an ad posted directly on the game that I decided to apply. My strong knowledge of the game allowed me to be hired!

🏇 A Senior Concept Artist

How long have you been working on Howrse? Are you working full time on Howrse, or do you also work on other projects?
I've been working at Owlient for 15 years now. I have worked on many project like Aquariow, Babydow, Mojow locow and Dragow. Today, I am fully dedicated to Howrse, just like the old days ^^

Do you have a private Howrse account, and do you play Howrse regularly in your free time?
Arf, that's a trick question! Yes, I have an old private account, but I am not very active any more.

My personal life gives me less time to play, and to be honest: I was too bad. Because I don't like to hurt animals, I kinda stopped playing.

Yet, I remain very involved, since I draw every day our dear quadruped friends.

What part of the game did you have the most fun to work on?
All challenges are good to take on Howrse.

Not only to make each horse unique, regardless of the theme, but also to make sure that the community is always excited by our creations.

Is there anything you would like the players to know?
First, I'd like to thank them for their loyalty and investment at all levels on the game. This game would not exist without its community.

And I'd like to thank them when they let us know in the comments that they like our illustrations, it is always a great satisfaction to see that your work is appreciated.

Any anecdote to share with us?
Oulaaaaa an anecdote... There are so many when you've been working for 15 years in a company!

A memorable one among many others: the Celestial Eye horse. I had scribbled a horse with a goldfish head (as a joke); I was really convinced that it would not be validated, considering the poor thing's head... But it was eventually integrated in the game! 😄

Probably not the classiest horse in the game, but for me, it was very cool to make such an atypical horse from a crazy idea.