HGG Community Forums

I think these LB changes sound fair. It will allow boards to run that previously couldn't because of lack of horses and also opens them up for more players.

Thumbs up from me, like the look of these changes so far

I really like this change!

Comparing the changes in the LBs, I don’t think I’m going to be a fan. It seems like it’s been harder to get on the boards the last eight months or so (I mostly place on color boards), and the new changes show even less appearances on the boards and all of them much lower.

This has been up for a week now, and I think I can make a call at this point. The overwhelming feedback across all servers has been to implement it. So you can expect this change to happen for June and the start of the new era.

I understand that it is not the best change for some players. Making anything more inclusive means those that benefited because something was exclusive will see less. I understand this change sucks for those players, but on a whole this change will allow many more categories to consistently run, remove the pay to win aspects of some boards, allow more members to participate, and allow much more variation in the types of breeding projects that can see wins on the boards.

I think over all this change is a net positive for the game. Thank you so much everyone that provided feedback both for and against. I appreciate your time and thoughts, and weighed what everyone had to say carefully.

I will be honest. I am frustrated with how many changes and how rapid they are coming. It doesn’t make sense to do this for color boards. The entire game is being shifted and I know I’m not the only playing feeling like the rug is constantly being pulled out from under us. I don’t understand why we can’t have separate leagues- which I have previously suggested, multiple times- to give smaller barn and medium barn players more changes instead of doing so much complicated, confusing things to the regular boards. I can not make sense of all the changes anymore. I am all for giving other players more changes for winning ribbons etc, but these changes are happening so rapidly that none of us are able to shift breeding programs or adjust. I understand the desire to make it more even, I want that too, but these rapid changes and confusing is making the game not fun to play. And that’s saying something because I’m always online and always playing. Maybe all of this is being discussed on the discord? But that means those of us that aren’t in it aren’t getting any of the info, line myself, so maybe that’s why it’s confusing. Bottom line is I really don’t agree with these changes, I think you will end up losing a lot of players because of it and not gain them. I think a separate league where you can implement this stuff would be much more accepted and make it better for a wide range of players. Discussing things only via discord and then just putting a vaguer post here is not fair to other players, in my opinion

If I understand this correctly, G1, G2, and approximately G3ish horses will all compete directly against each other for the 6 GMTs awarded in the new Silver Circuit?

How are newly created era foundation horses expected to be in any way competitive against the higher gen/training number horses?

Will there be any future Herd Helpers in the works which might make keeping any foundations more appealing for small/medium stables despite that they will no longer be competitive for GMTs?
As it looks, unless they’re pointed creates, the only other reason to keep a foundation horse in your stable at all will be for expensive color breeding projects, which will probably also need to be boosted at least a little bit if you want the offspring to be compete on the color leaderboards.

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I’ve been playing this game since 2018 and have very happily been a monthly Premium subscriber since August 2019! I have loved being able to keep mostly to myself if I wanted, and to be able to win some GMTs on the color leaderboards with foundation horses since I have a lot of difficulty tracking the progress of more than few (usually more than 4) items or traits over long periods of time even if I take detailed notes because of a TBI that happened years ago. G1s and G2s are easy to acquire, easy to show, easy to keep track of, and that has been my favorite thing about playing this game. It was a very good aspect of the game that allowed for a “simple” difficulty mode/play style if you’re like me and find endless pedigrees and trying to keep track of hidden numbers over real life months/years daunting or impossible (HGG is not the first showing/breeding sim game I’ve played where genetic hidden values played a huge part in improving your lines, but it’s been the only one that never made me feel like I was Sisyphus or an outright loser because I was so far behind older accounts).
I’ve found having a stable full of G1 foundation horses and breeding them for G2s has been fulfilling to me as a player. I’ve enjoyed having mostly G1 foundations because sometimes they’ll place top 3 on the color boards and earn GMTs. I got to use my HBs for buying straws, eggs, lined horses from other players, and more barns instead of using HBs to buy the GMTs.
Even though some of the recent changes have thrown a bit of a wrench in the plans I had for a few of the GMT heavy (to me) foundation horses I have spiffed up since December, but I had no real complaints because there were other pretty foundations I have that I spent only 1-8 GMTs each on who have been placing on the color leader boards and sometimes even placing in the top 3– even if my more GMT edit intensive creates ended up changing more with the coming changes, I knew I have a reserve of 20, maybe 30 GMTs saved up by the next December GMT Lab Sale to make a new pretty G1 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m not a mega stable, my stable is so far removed from being optimized for growth or profit of any kind that I’m sure it looks ridiculous! I have an insane amount of open stall space that should be filled with something, and have around 350 intact G1s that I know I should just alter and toss in a show stable because I’ll never actually breed them. I make approximately 150k hbs/day because even though I have a lot of horses, they’re almost all G1s and G2s, which don’t earn a ton of points quickly or over their lifetimes compared to horses with competitive PTs. But I’ve been more than okay with that, I’ve been thrilled by it! More than happy to pay a monthly subscription to this game for the past 5.5 years in large part because the placements and top 3 awards on the Leader Boards my suboptimal G1 cuties and (very very rarely) my G2s earn is so exciting that it doesn’t make me feel like I’m failing at this game.


To say that when this change goes into effect that my entire stable and experience playing the game will be negatively affected may be an understatement? I am disappointed that I was not around in the Discord so I would have able to bring up how strongly this change would affect my enjoyment of the game, and to hear the reasons and opinions other players had towards the removal of the Foundation Horses LB category.
I’m not gonna lie, this change is even more frustrating now that that I’ve spent so much of my HBs (I’m sure it’s not a lot when compared to other players, but it’s a lot to me) on GMTs the past few months adding and removing genes from ~40ish? of my G1s, when apparently I should have been saving those HBs as IVs for double boosting my one or two really special GMTed G1 creates.

It sounds like this LB change will for sure be implemented, and since I would have to completely rebuild my entire account from the ground up, I don’t know where to go from here.
I’ll be cancelling my Premium subscription before next month and quitting the game altogether just after that. It’s been fun while it lasted. I learned a good deal about basic real life horse genetic inheritance by playing, so that’s pretty cool. This was the best online horse breeding and genetics game I’ve ever played and it would have been awesome to keep playing this game as a Premium subscriber for another 5.5 years.

I’ll pop in from time to time this month, but I guess it’s goodbye after that? :( I hope everyone else will enjoy the change and continue to have fun playing HGG!
Whitesun aka Sasha

I had to step away from the conversation because honestly it was so frustrating that for the first time I started looking for other work and have dreams of shutting down the game. People on this server have really twisted some things up into a nasty narrative and it's broken me.

I am a person doing my best under difficult circumstances trying to keep as many people as possible engaged and happy as possible. My focus always has to be on the long term health of the game while everyone else gets to only care about there personal accounts. Everyone else gets to rage and I have to sit here and take it. It's frustrating, demoralizing and miserable. I am a person not some sales clerk for you to abuse. Please just talk to me like a person instead of raging at me based on false assumptions.



@Poppidoll discord is where things can be hashed out ahead of time so that the good ideas can filter to the top. The forum has final say. I can't run those loose idea conversations on the forum people because people don't read forum threads, and I need ideas that serve ALL servers. The forum has always had and will always have final say. The majority of players across all servers voiced approval for these changes.

@Whitesun Each category gets it's own prize pool. I also looked over your gmt earnings and you would be very minimal impacted by this, if at all. While you would lose some GMTs from the foundation category you would gain them with the new gold category. Most of your GMT earnings come from other categories and would not be impacted at all.

The best producer boards and pt boards are not being touched at all.

The lined board will have no impact at all because the same horses who could dominate it before can now as well.

The 2nd gen board will change a bit because horses who are identical in showing ability to the 2nd gens, but not 2nd gens will get an equal chance. Yes it says 3rd gen in the initial post but that is normal unboosted third gens. The 2nd gen boards are dominated by expro lines and those are the equivalent of third gen. So this board is not changing a ton.

The only board that is "going away" is the foundation board because 1) on many clubs the foundation category can not run because there are no horses to run it and 2) on the license genes those categories require someone to send me cash for them to run. And it feels like a really shitty move on my part to force people to pay me USD so their club can run. Remember you don't have to own a gene to buy altered horses with it so this change means everyone can compete in every club.

Foundation category is being replaced by a middle weight category which opens up the boards for accounts like yours. I am making these changes because they help accounts like yours do better. They are flat out designed to help accounts like yours. I am sorry the information was not presented to you in a way that was clear for you to understand.

@VenemousGiant like I said above many of the color boards are pay to win. That goes against my core morals. The leaderboards and the license systems developed independently. It was not my intention to make them work that way but I am fixing a mistake. Yes the leaderboard has been seeing a number of changes over the past real life years. That is because was suffering with major debilitating chronic illness for MANY years that made it impossible for me to work properly on the game.

The past few years I have finally been more stable and actually able to work so I have taken the time to identify all the loopholes and problems with our leaderboards that made them unfair or exploitable in different ways. I have been closing those things one by one. I have one last issue to solve with leaderboards and that is the ever expanding era list.


"Discussing things only via discord and then just putting a vaguer post here is not fair to other players, in my opinion" If you have questions just ASK me. I don't understand why forest server has become so hostile, and so unwilling to just ask for clarification. Perhaps because people are talking it over in their private discord and jumping to conclusions. I would like to think I have proven that I care about people and try to work out common ground. I have a 20 year track record of working with players. What the hell more do I have to do to earn the benefit of the doubt?

I don't have to ask for anyone's opinion. I don't have to give people all the help and second chances I do. I don't have to give out 600,000 USD worth of free GMTs every year. But I do because I actually care about my players and want to work with them, but you all have to treat me with the same basic respect. I can't work out a compromise with people screaming to the heavens how I am destroying everything.

I've played this game for over ten years (with a few short hiatuses) but never really been active on the forums (or discord). I do keep up with all the news/changes however and I must say that even if I haven't immediately been the biggest fan of all changes over the years, in the end I feel they've always turned out to be positive.
Personally I've never cared about the leaderboards and whenever I've placed on them it's been coincidental. Because of this I don't really care whether or not any changes are made to them, but these new changes do sound good to me. Whenever the leaderboards are discussed I'm shocked to learn how much some people care about them, but we all play the game differently.
After reading through this thread I just wanted to let Ammit know that not all players are opposed to these new changes. Like with other things I trust that they're made with the longevity of the game in mind and to make it more fair for everyone, and if they do turn out to not work out, I trust the reason for this will be looked into and new changes made. :)