Firstly, the game has come leaps and bounds since ive started playing over 3 years ago. Major forsight has continued, many players come and go, some for simple reasons but my major concern here for my fellow members is how to keep the old players interested while attracting new players?
In order to move forward, some ideas, constructive criticism and even "bug fixing" needs to be resolved to do the above mentioned......
Heres some questions / thoughts for you HRF and community to digest;
1. When i "Update / Add New Trainer Game Races", only the Breeders Cup Finals are delivered to the old game? Ive tried 3 days now with the only Finals and Instas being sent.
2. The site is extremely slow, I wanted to enter tournaments but lost initiative when it didn't load. I see Puddles saying that this will be resolved which is positive. My question is, has all the cute graphics had an affect on the sites speed?
3. The Web Viewer is good, but the viwer graphics arent as great as i'd hoped for. I guess the viewer angles get annoying and the ability to isolate a horse viewing stamina, fast forwarding etc is compromised. The old version is smooth, you actually see your horse progress through the field nicely without the "quirky" movements and with more clarity. The build up and winners circle is a good addition. If im on an IPhone or the like, is it possible to view your races on the web viewer more easily? Maybe a shortcut under "My Stable", or am I missing something having the old version?
4. Breeding is a imperitive part to all players and HRF. There needs to be a faster way or a way to breed more efficiently. For example, if there is a new sire or dam that you want to breed constantly / or a hot pair that you want to try 6 or 7 times consecutively, the checkout needs tweaking. At the moment once you breed "AP Indy" with a dam, thats it.....You need to go through the whole process again. Having the ability to breed 1 horse with another more than once would be a great addition (In the same transaction). A hot pair can be bred as many times as possible more efficiently in one transaction?
5. Jockey AI has improved, but there is room for improvement. Has the new update changed Jockey AI or is it proposed for the future?
6. Trainer / Jockey instructions. Can a default trainer setting be used generically? If a stable is large, instructions can be tedious. Nobody wants there horse to run wide and be beaten by a horse overtaking on the inside as easily as you like. Maybe a default setting that can be used at the discretion of the trainer
7. 3yo and up Instas....This is someting i think that will increase participation.
Just some questions that may receive mixed emotions, i have no intention of upsetting anyone. Has my 3 years here made me somewhat senile????
Anyhow, great game. Thank you HRF for all the hard work and look forward to playing further into the future.
I thought it was me , the game is slow , watching the races seems slower. Might just be my computer or my horses have gotten slower.
I agree with micmac. For somebody with a large stable, whew! It's impossible right now. I watched the entire Tigers/Indians game tonight and didn't even remotely finish what took about an hour before. I'm still behind and I can't stomach it anymore. I even had to fish through all my entered horses to try to find who was racing tonight so I could send those races to the desktop client. Messages and e-mail are not coming for anything right now. Game points are not crediting from Finals. If I only had 10, maybe 20 horses, this would all be cool I suppose. But with 120 horses, it's all I can do not to hit myself in the head with a hammer. I think we just need to let things play out. Adjustments need to be made and I trust they will be. Another thing I noticed is tournaments that started tonight, there was no notification on the stable page that the horses needed to be entered in races. That's a huge time saver. I can't imagine having to look through that long list to look at dates like I did tonight.
Hi, micmac –Fabfarms
Honest feedback and constructive criticism is important, especially from a quality individuals like yourself. Let me try to answer some of your questions and at the same time some of the community’s concerns. My response numbers are coordinated to your questions.
1. If you have the desktop client (and you do), all races should be automatically delivered to the game. This is a technical issue that is being fixed.
2. Slow isn’t the word. When we moved the site, we had to transform the data type – complex, and even I don’t understand it all. With that said, the site speed has nothing to do with the graphics. The site speed has everything to do with a theming layer associated with Drupal. We have hired the most reputable Drupal firm in the country to resolve this issue. You will start to see improvements over a week or two and major improvements within 30 days.
3. The web viewer isn’t for players like you. You’re too hard core. That’s why the desktop client is still there. The web viewer is for smaller stable operators who don’t want to download the client or who want to try the game first before they do. It is also a convenience for you and other players when you don’t have access to a PC. You will be able to view it on an iPad and soon other mobile devices.
4. We have already begun making the breeding process easier. We have simplified it quite a bit, but we are adding the ability to breed multiple sires and dams in the same order without placing multiple orders. This is on our list and definitely necessary. Believe me, we want to promote breeding.
5. We have already started analyzing the jockey AI for further updates, but in all honesty this is an end-of-the-year/first-of-next-year reality. That will happen simultaneously when we do our next update of the client (desktop client extension – as you call it, ‘old game’), which is well on the way.
6. A good idea, but not something that is on our list in the near future. Sorry.
7. 3-year-old & up instas are not on the table right now, but new types of tournaments are. You will start to see those by the end of the summer.
I want to thank you for your loyalty to the game and the community. I promise you that your words do not go unheard.
________________________
fabfarms
Your point is well made and one of the first things we’re doing is making adjustments to accommodate big stables like yours. Those adjustments will occur once we clean up some of the bugs, but they will occur sooner than later – that I promise.
I agree Fab. It is looking nearly impossible to be able to manage a large stable. I need to cut this stable down big time or I will be lost. According to the client I had no races tonight which is impossible. I look up the recently ended trainer tournaments for today and nothing shows up. I guess I'm going to have to go to the additional stable info page and click on the individual tourneys and try to block the results. The problem with that too is I'm not even sure which tourneys ran tonight. All this work just to see a race?
Thanks for taking time to answer all the questions, much appreciated.
I noticed over the last few hours that speed of the site has increased quite a lot. Im hoping that the community share ideas for the future that can help the game grow even further.
Cheers
i can't even see the horses in my stable, i need to get rid of a few so i can breed a few more but all it said on the stable page is at the bottom "loading" the viewer i have done all i can even Stevic gave me a few ideas but sill nothing.
Thanks for answering our concerns. Looking forward to the coming tweaks. Hardcore? hahahahaha. That's an understatement.
BTW, is anybody else having problem with tournament winnings from today?
I like the colourful graghics.Was using Firefox for the game but found it was freezing up.When I used Internet Explorer it was much better.I am glad that I reduced my stable because it would have been time consuming to look at the horses in the stable.I preferred the list of horses.It is easier to see the status of all horses in the stable at a glance.Overall I am pleased with the new look to the game.Congratulations to the HRF team on their effort.
@Micmac:
Regarding your points on the web race viewer:
You can manually switch to any camera perspective you want using the number keys or clicking the left mouse button, so you´re not stuck with the automatically switching camera angles.
Many of the things you noted like an option to change the camera perspective to one you want or focus on a specific horse are already possible.
Have a look at this thread:
http://www.horseracegame.com/community/forum/topic/709911/getting-know-n...
I tried to summarize the core web race viewer functionality there.
In general this is just the first public launch of the new web race viewer and we're noting all constructive feedback so we can improve it as we go.
The request to show the stamina during the race is noted, too =)
Regarding the iPhone and iPad: The iOS devices don´t have support for plugins in the browser so they can´t run the web race viewer by default.
So for those devices we are working on a different solution, but yeah, to that more once the launch kinks of the new community launch are ironed out =)
@21Burns:
Thanks, i´m glad you like the graphics =) And yes, there will be a way to have the horses in a quicker to browse overview asap =)
Also @all: 21Burns is right: Firefox right now sadly has the worst performance of all modern browsers regarding playing back plugin content.
If you´re on mac we suggest you use a recent version of chrome or safari, if you're on windows pc we suggest you use a recent version of chrome or Internet Explorer.
With those performance for the 3d content is better than with firefox on all platforms and machines we tested.
| Player's Name: | scorpion56 |
| Race Name: | Virtual Championship Derby Winners from past two decades. (90) |
| Prize amount: | $5000 Gift Card |
The game has continued to improve and the rewards prizes continue to grow bigger. It is great fun playing here.