HGG Community Forums

A big theme over the last few months has been figuring out how to help new members get their barns off the ground. It was found that there was really three core issues. 1) They did not understand that show horses had value and why they needed to be accumulating points. 2) Even if they did understand this it was nearly impossible to get access to worthwhile show horses. 3) They had no way to earn money other then wait out daily pay, and nothing to offer older players. Waiting is lame.

So here is my solution, and it is going to fundamentally change new member experience and older/new member interaction.

Now if you have less than 20,000 total held points in your account (that's just over a 2k a day bonus) any foundation you create starts with a few hundred points (average of 250, and can rarely get up to 1k points). It also tells you as you create how many points and what they daily pay out for those points will be.

Here is how this addresses the above issues.
1) Both the horse page and the create a horse page is in your face about what a show horse is worth. It is easy to see your barn grow in daily income and that drives home the point that you NEED those show horses.
2) These show horses are earning at MOST 100 hbs a day. Most closer to 25 a day. That isn't a ton but you don't need a ton as a small barn. That extra 60k a month is enough to grow your barn off of and give you a solid footing in the game.
3) It took me 90 horses when creating to hit 20k points. A starting barn has only 55 stalls (with welcome pack). That means the smart thing to do is toss your lower pointed foundations in the auction house. Get your money back on them, and then try for higher pointed creates. It's a good system to keep new players busy AND the side effect is that while a small barn might only want 300+ point horses because they only have room for that, the big barns are gonna be snatching up 200 point yearlings because they know the long run value of them.

Other side effects:
-Makes more sense to create yearlings now if you are under 20k.
-Now small players have something to offer big barns (pointed young horses) and the big barns can offer the rare genes, and high PT pedigreed horses that they have. It levels the playing field between old timers and new when it comes to trade.
-This isn't going to lower the sales price on pointed horses. They already were ignored in the auction. If anything this will drive up attention on them. Going to take some time for the economy to rebalance but I think we will see much more circulation of hbs and that is what you want in a strong economy.
-I am sure the rare 1k yearling will go up for sale and make big money. Awesome! It's like getting an RS. It's a nice cash bonus for a new barn.