HGG Community Forums

First thank you to everyone who gave feedback on the last thread. Particular thank you to those who read the entire thing and gave feedback on limiting newer eras only, and those who gave detailed insightful feedback with considerations to how changes would impact both their stable and the game as a whole.

Here is the need to know about the issue. The newer eras are designed to be a level playing field for stables winning a few leaderboard awards a month to compete with barns winning hundreds of awards a month. There was some confusion of people thinking the new eras are for brand new players and that really is not the case. You need a decent show barn to compete on any leaderboard but the newer eras are the most level playing field because they are pretty much pure strategy to top them.

Maxing Out foals is effectively a requirement to keep up in those new-era races. That is fine as long as everyone has a fair chance at that. The problem is not everyone does have a fair chance at it. Barns with lots of GMT wins each season get maxing for free and some can max enough foals to be hyper-competitive on every single newer era board. I want to give space on those new eras for more mid-size players to have a shot, and force people competing in the new eras to focus on a single era. Once an era has reached cap quality maxing really loses its punch and has basically no impact on the leaderboard.

The solution I found that allows later eras to max freely (where it is used mostly for fun, not for competition) while still protecting the competitiveness of new eras is just to limit maxing for primary and newer eras.

Each stable will be allowed to max out 4 horses a season in the impacted eras. No other restrictions or changes are being implemented.

You only need 1 max-out token a season for the most efficient strategies to stay at the top of an era so I reserve the right to tighten that down if needed in the future.


What eras are impacted?
Bluegrass
Era 12-16

Forest
Era 10-14

Mesa
Era 2 -6

Starting June 1st
Bluegrass
Era 14-17

Forest
Era 12-15

Mesa
Era 4 -7

What about boosting?
I did some investigation yesterday and found there was very little correlation between boosting and GMT wins. The number one indication of how many GMTs an account will win a season is how large it is. The accounts winning the most GMTs are winning them from the points categories, and being smart about how they enter clubs and how they show. Even if I limited boosts almost no one on any server does more than 2 or 3 5% boosts a season. It's already self-limited and is not the key factor here. Smart playing and laws of large numbers are the deciders here and I think that is completely fair. Accounts that are very large win because they are very large. They boost because they can afford to because they are very large. Both are a result of being large but boosting is not a prerequisite to making lots of GMTs.

Why not switch to IVs?
Switching to IVs would help limit maxing but it does not address the core issue as elegantly as just limiting maxing for newer eras. While it would be better than nothing, many members gave elegant arguments about why limiting was superior to IVs.