I haven’t been playing the game that long so I have a question. Does the number of horses for sale ebb and flow? When I started there were not that many horses for sale. Now its seems like there are a whole lot. Most of which kind of just hangout on the sale page. Are people being more
Has this happened before? Or is a new phenomenon? Are people being more selective? Are there now more horses than there are players who want them?
Just curious for those of you that have been playing for a long time. Also, it seemed like a good conversation starter.
We saw the opposite happen (very few ponies are the market) when there was a huge influx of newbies. Shanthi had raised the number of stables from 100 to 150. I haven’t seen this many ponies on the market before, but I’m not really surprised. It seems like most of the active stables are big, established stables. This means they’ll have more broodmares, more foals, and are generally bigger. Thus, these stables are more inclined to want to sell to keep their herds manageable than they are to buy. They’re also less likely to be looking for a quick sale and are therefore more willing to wait until someone buys their horse at what they think is a good price rather than the depressed market value.
I think auto-auctions may be another factor. You used to be able to auction ponies off on the forum and then put them up for sale to the eventual winner. This method, now banned, did not entail any consignment fees so horses could go for less than $5k and the owner wouldn’t be losing any money. This also allowed the horses to go at market price.
I do think if we had a good mix of established stables (too many horses) and newer stables (need horses) this would be less of a problem. Unfortunately, there’s a huge learning curve when you’re starting out that can be pretty discouraging and frustrating to new players. I know Shanthi is working on this for the beta version.
What can we do to help? We can retire horses that aren’t running for us rather than trying to find a new owner. If no one’s interested in a mare, we can retire her too. She doesn’t have to become a broodmare/continue being a broodmare.
That is a good explanation. Makes sense that a lot of the larger, more established stables are breeding and selling their own. Not many people stick with it long enough and earn enough to buy horses. There is a steep learning curve, but its worth it! Everyone has a shorter attention span now. Makes games that run in real time unappealing to most. Lucky for us!
Not just shorter extension span. The game has become incredibly complex and a lot of the changes are documented in the forum but not in the FAQ or newbie guide.
Jockeys, equipment, natural energy, running styles, shipping costs, taxes, and so forth. These are all new improvements. And it’s one thing to already be playing the game and having to adjust to one minor change; it’s quite another to have to learn all the features all at once without a lot of leeway to make mistakes since you many not have decent runners as starter horses.
I agree with this, however, I think that there are two other factors that affect the number of horses remainign for sale for extended periods of time.
Stables are less likely to buy a horses which is a gelding, as they have no breeding potential - We sold all of ours a few years ago, apart from two that we couldn’t sell even though we had reduced their price to almost rock bottom and ended up retiring them.
CREATED horses - I seem to recall that shortly after Shanthi changed “one-time horses” in pedigrees to CREATED, there was a major increase in horses for sale/auction/claim with one or both parents being CREATED. We sold practically every horse we had with either one or both parents being CREATED and now only have four broodmares with at least one CREATED parent, three because we have a number of their progeny and one for sentimental reasons.
When we look to buy horses for sale, in Auctions, or in Claiming races, we immediately eliminate horses that:-
Are geldings
Have at least one CREATED parent
Are five years old or upwards
Then we look for horses that are by a broodmare that:-
We already own
We already own some of her progeny
Once we have identified any horses that fell into any of the above groups, we look at all remaining horses pedigrees and racing records to see if anything piques our interest.
I’d agree that some of the horses for sale at the moment are overpriced although I guess each seller knows the minimum price they’ll accept for each individual horse and are happy to leave horses on the board until they sell. I tend to keep my sale prices quite low as most of the horses I do put up for sale can’t really justify a high price tag. Having said that I’ve offered a few in foal mares recently in the $10-15k range and some haven’t sold so it’s either a case of taking them off the sale board and perhaps re-offering them at a later date or lowering the price until they sell. I’ve done a bit of both so far this year.
Like Lewis I’m not that keen on buying geldings, certainly not for high prices. However, I’m not fussy about created horses particularly if they have a good race record. I have several created mares that have form at stakes level in my broodmare barn. I also have certain mares that I look out for their family members as well.
I have too many horses really so will be looking to cut back this year, probably after foaling season ends.
In the beta, I’m going to set some sort “expiration date” for sales. After that date passes (maybe 2 weeks from the initial listing?) you’ll need to adjust the price (down ) in order to re-list it for sale. This should keep the sales board a bit less crazy, since people won’t be able to just slap $X sales price on a horse and then keep it for sale indefinitely.
I’m also in favour of retiring geldings and broodmares you don’t want (and can’t sell). FF has more than enough mares/foals for every member to have quite a large stable, so it’s not like we desperately need more foals (right now each barn could have over 30 foals if all the broodmares were bred and the foals were distributed evenly among the stables). Retired horses don’t count against you as far as taxes or upkeep, so if you’re done with a horse and can’t sell it, why not retire it?
As far as your questions, I think we have a lot of mid-range stables. They’re not brand new, so not desperate to buy horses (and can be a bit selective, like Starfish and Generous Bloodstock), but they’ve also gotten to the point where they’re big enough to sell their own (not necessarily at an overpriced level, but usually they’re selling the same sort of horse). Thus the sales board ends up being a ton of the same thing - older geldings (who probably should be retired instead), younger racehorses who have yet to perform brilliantly, mares who either aren’t proven with only a couple of foals or are proven to be basic level producers (low Bronze), etc. There is a market for those horses (except the geldings, probably), but the market tends to be the stables that are a step down (so, newbies). And as Cat said, a lot of new stables join, buy a couple of horses, and then get lost with the rest of the game and disappear (which I’d like to fix in the rewrite).
I did buy a couple of horses off the sales page this year, but usually I never look at it because I already have way too many horses, and the horses up for public sale usually don’t meet my criteria for the horses I’m looking to add to my barn.
I NEED to be more selective, but I’m definitely that person who thinks, “They’ve failed to do better than 4th in 20 starts…I’m sure an equipment change can help!” I’m absolutely terrible with broodmares, but unless their produce record is nice, I tend to kick out mares who didn’t hit the board in 50% of their races. If it’s close to 50%, then it’s a weighing case but I tend to let them go.
I definitely have nothing against geldings, for they tend to be my main money earners. On one hand, I don’t go out looking for them on the sales board but I typically don’t buy from the sales board, period. But I also know in the 2yo and youngstock auctions they’ll be the cheapest and I have picked up a few there. I typically restrict my buying to fillies and mares because they have breeding potential both for myself or if I decide to sell them.
I keep telling myself I need to set up a very strict guideline for horses I keep and purge the rest, but then I have sentimental reasons or the above problem of having huge hopes they’ll improve later, haha.
I totally get the sentimental thing, especially with the girls, although I did make a list of potential sales earlier today However, I’ve already got my eye on one in the 2yo auction I have bought some reasonably nice horses from the sales board for ok prices including some unproven MSP mares last year and they were specifically bought to help support Blue Smoke in his 2nd year at stud. I definitely need to learn to think before I buy though as I have, with hindsight, paid too much for some of our inmates. We’ll see at the end of the year if I succeed!
Shanthi, would it be possible to have a ‘sell to FF’ option? Something like $1,000 or something, this would allow FF to take some of the glut of ponies out of the game while giving the player a small compensation.
Or may be you could have a monthly ‘dispersal auction’ set up where anyone could enter a horse or broodie with no reserve and if not sold goes to FF for $1,000.
It’s nice to get SOME manner of profit from the horse, though at the same time it might help the market to cut down on broodmares in particular (there seems to be very little demand for broodmares unless they have stellar lines and/or produce records already).
FF could take a horse off your hands for free, but FF won’t pay you for your horse that you can’t sell. If you can’t sell it to another stable for $1,000, why would FF pay you that much for it? As Mintano said, you can just retire it and it doesn’t count against you.
That could be an option, though I wouldn’t want that many auctions going on.
Except, to “mirror real life” as above, most racehorses never make a profit. It’s a rich man’s game, as they say. There are hundreds of TBs every day being sold for hundreds of dollars, or given away for free, regardless of their past careers on the track.
Shanthi, I guess I was being politically correct, everywhere you go you will see dispersal sales and even if another owner / trainer doesn’t want your horse you will still get a bid from the abattoirs.
I understand you can just retire them but then I try and reserve my back paddock for all my former good horses, I don’t want to let any old hack that I couldn’t get going rub shoulders with the champs
Funny enough in real life I have two dogs (greyhounds) one was the fastest dog I ever bred, he won 15, held track records, won in town … the other is the slowest she struts around like she’s the boss but they are both good mates
Yes, but they’d only pay $100-200, not $1,000. And you can always find trainers willing to get rid of a horse for $0 (to abattoirs or others) just to get rid of the monthly feed/upkeep bill for the horse.
I think I’ll put the cat among the pigeons…
It boils down to too many horses in the game or not enough stables or both. When i first joined horses for sale were like gold dust and broodmares were even rarer. There were almost no claiming races and as a newbie auction prices were quite out of my reach. there were posts on the forum telling newbies to try requesting help from the established stables which I did, and my first foals were all from mares that were temporarily sold to me by generous other players. There were too few horses to go round and not many people had large stables. survival was quite hard.
Shanthi improved this by making more claiming races and more horses at auction. at the same time more homebreds began to appear as the game matured. lots of new stables who did not remain in the game meant there was a lot of starter horses returned to FF and hence into the auctions and claiming races.
I think we have gone too far this way now simply because the game is much more mature and obviously more horses are born/created than die or retire.
perhaps it would be worth having no claiming races filled by FF. if there are not enough runners so be it. pehaps there could be earlier automatic retirement for racehorses say at the start of their 7th year (not applying to breeding stock only racers) and less horses available at auction. newbies might be given FF horses already in existence that are unraced rather than creating new ones (if that is still the case) or retitring all FF owned horses that are created or unraced by the end of their third year.
I do think taking horses off the general sale page after one month is a good idea, I have to admit I never even glance at the sale and lease pages but am still tempted by the auctions.
Are there enough horses in the game so that FF horses don’t need to be used to fill up the auctions? leaving more space for the stables to offer their surplus?
i have to admit i also have too many horses but am reluctant to retire them too soon as so many good horses only get going in their 4 and 5YO years. I am breeding them faster than I am retiring them and can’t sell them as most other players have as many as they need. This is probably true of all established stables.
I don’t think there is an easy answer and have just posted for the sake of stirring up debate on the subject
I definitely agree with Wolfhound on the subject of there being tons of horses and there’s a big unbalance of born vs. retired/died horses. I joined about 4 years ago, took a 1 year break, and have been back since, and those 4 years ago it was easier to sell and you either haunted the claimers or asked members in order to buy horses under 10k. The sales board had maybe 40-50 horses at any one time and it was often a dash to scoop up cheaper horses.
I like Wolfhound’s suggestion of giving new members unraced FF horses. I think there was a mention at some point (in a totally different discussion) that creating horses via activity points would be gone in the new version? If not, this might help control numbers a little (I know it’s fun to customize a horse, but FF has over 21,000 horses between 143 stables, and not all of those 143 farms are active; there’s plenty of horses to go around without making more). Heck, there’s 1700+ weanlings expected this year!
I think if some of my own broodmares don’t sell after x-amount of time, I’ll retire them rather than try and shuffle them off and just add to the population.
) in order to re-list it for sale. This should keep the sales board a bit less crazy, since people won’t be able to just slap $X sales price on a horse and then keep it for sale indefinitely.
However, I’ve already got my eye on one in the 2yo auction 
I have bought some reasonably nice horses from the sales board for ok prices including some unproven MSP mares last year and they were specifically bought to help support Blue Smoke in his 2nd year at stud. I definitely need to learn to think before I buy though as I have, with hindsight, paid too much for some of our inmates. We’ll see at the end of the year if I succeed!
There are hundreds of TBs every day being sold for hundreds of dollars, or given away for free, regardless of their past careers on the track.
she struts around like she’s the boss but they are both good mates 
I can’t wait for my first whippet! “The poor man’s racehorse”, as someone nicknamed them…