HGG Community Forums

This is probably something that was part of an update, but since I'm back after a few months off, I noticed something interesting with a pointed foundation foal I purchased. Her "family" tab listed all her ancestors as "showable only," which is a designation I hadn't heard of before. I haven't scoured the forums for anything related to that cause work has been busy, but she seems to have passed breeding advice.

I do love the months with all the exciting Herd Helpers though, and I'm stoked on the new ones.

Okay, OscarWildin here on a new puppet account for the updates, and I have to say, I love them already. Besides the fact that my main account on Bluegrass was happy for the cash infusion, it's fantastic as a new account to not have to budget super carefully to create every new horse. I love the message that tells you how many points you have left to create.

A small thing I noticed is that when you use the name generator and you type in @* several times, more often than not, it tells me that name has already been used.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense, thank you!

I think it would be helpful to clarify if pointed creates that get auctioned are considered deleted from the game or if they still contribute to your total points created. I don't want to keep my low-pointed horses if there's a chance I can create more >1000 pointed ones that make more money and are more space-efficient.

That's what I thought, so that means the only way to be *sure* it gets deleted from the game is selling it back to the game, which only gives you 1000 hbs, which is way easier to manage now with the higher bonuses and better starting cash.

The only achievements I have left now are the high level point achievements (40k and over). My account makes ~3500 hb per day, which is awesome, and I'm sitting with about 100k in hb because I just spent a bunch on a create spree. Being able to do that without selling all my pointed creates less than ten days into this account's existence is amazing.

If new people understand the value of these pointed horses, they won't flood the market either. I want to reiterate that I *really* like that all your living horses original points count towards your total. Obviously that's the only way it could work, but it really increases the perceived value of them. It may also raise the going rate for them when they ARE sold, since it's a limited supply now.

So I don't have a ton of new thoughts other than I think the achievements are actually in an okay place on the page, but maybe you could get a pop-up when you first login, similar to the newsletter pop-up. I'm not sure if the coding allows for it, but maybe up until you reach the 20,000 points held achievement or something, or it only pops up when you achieve something? So you don't miss it for ages and then scroll down and go "oh, well shoot."

Also this month really is the perfect month for new players. The piñata game is going to introduce a lot of new people to GMTs, which definitely gave the game way more breadth for me when I started. When I figured out how to use one, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

I think the gene mod lab could benefit from having an option to show you what the changes you're making look like without having to commit to it, because sometimes you can make really expensive mistakes because you're not familiar with genetics and how certain things play together yet (adding DP to a black horse, or a varnish regulator to a horse without LP or something). I know the horse search function is helpful for learning how things work together, but it can be cumbersome sometimes just because of loading times.

Just being able to essentially reroll an image without committing to a change might be nice.

I commented on another post in here about this, but I figured I could add more to my thoughts here.
This is what I said on the other post

I think part of what makes H&J such a great game is that you're focused more on the long game rather than instant gratification. All those horses with ~500 points have that many points now, but if you've been using Exceptionally Perfect herd helpers to create them, and then altering them, that 10.4 pt will build up to a bunch of points within a few months. Investing in IVs when you have the spare cash instead of buying every pretty lined horse you find will let you eventually get some GMTs and create your dream foundation. I think the community does a great job at expressing this, but I think it might be helpful if the game had little reminders about that stuff. I've seen other posts where people have discussed adding more achievements, and I think "buy an IV," "buy a GMT," "use a GMT," etc would be really beneficial.

I think the idea of having a separate tab for achievements could be really helpful. It could be set up in trees (think RPG style) with different achievements getting unlocked by completing certain ones, but you could work on your "breed horses with this paper level" achievement separately from your "build a show herd" tree, or your "GMT a horse"-type achievements.

Reminders that you're working for the long haul and not a quick buck would be great. I remember as a new player, I was definitely more focused on the instant gratification side of things because I didn't quite realize how extensive the game is.


I do also think that the note that most creates should only be sold for 2500 is unhelpful to new players. I've purchased pointed horses for ~3000 hbs and told the seller to put another horse up for the rest of what they were worth, but this person would have happily sold horses with a lifetime payout of 30k for a tenth of that.

I'm always surprised when people don't use the forums as new players, because it has improved my experience on this game IMMENSELY, but apparently there are plenty of new people who don't touch the forums after posting in their peer groups.

Some final thoughts.

I already said I think it's kind of shocking that there are players who don't get on the forum beyond maybe their peer group, but I really think the forum is what's kept me coming back. The player-run economy is so interesting to me - the difference between demand on Bluegrass versus here is wild. It's engaging and fun to see what other people are working on, and seeing other people's gorgeous projects and lines inspires me to add more restricted genes to my herds.

I don't really have any complaints about the new user experience. I came back to the game early this month after a few months off because I wanted to contribute to the new user experiment, and I'm really glad I did. It did make me realize I need to stop spreading myself so thin, so I'll be shutting this account and probably both my Bluegrass alts down just because it's too much work to run THREE accounts and do everything I want to do. I'd rather just buy more barns on my main account.

I love the new points system, letting new players keep their heavy hitters instead of selling them all to established barns will have interesting (but not bad) effects on the game economy and I'm excited to see new players have more power coming into the game. I also am really glad about the average price feature on the herd helper guide! So helpful! Definitely crazy to me to see how prices fluctuate like that.

Thanks for this opportunity, Ammit!

Thank you so much!