I know the issue of how a horse should be priced has come up in the past but I feel the need to bring it up again (I won’t name any names either so no worries of this becoming a argument). Now I know that selling horses is a fast way to earn some cash but personally I try to be moderate when figuring out at what price to sale a horse. In the past I’ve sold nice yearlings for a fraction (or even a third) of what a bigger stable would have asked for them but really is a 2yo who hasn’t won any races, and has a created pedigree worth 75k? Or is a weanling with created lines worth 50k? Then there is the 2yo who has only won five grand but his sale tag is one hundred grand, even though his breeding is good I would advise the stable to lower it to under let’s say twenty grand as a good estimate. I don’t know about anyone else but I wouldn’t throw away that high amount of cash on any horse, unless they were super nice breeding wise or had done something stellar this far in the breeding barn. I am not suggesting to the respective stables selling the horses not to sale them but just reduce their prices a bit. With prices like those, you’re unlikely to sell the horse since most stables will buy pass the horse just by the amount you’re asking for at the current time.
Anyway Shanthi, I apologize if this is a inappropriate topic but certain horses sale prices have bothered me lately.
That’s a fair argument you make, but besides not buying the horse, there’s not much that can be done about it. Horses can be priced at whatever price the person chooses, and if someone chooses to pay that price, then it’s a valid price.
What I would consider doing is unsetting the sale price if the horse “lingers” on the sales page, for, say, a week without selling. (This is assuming no modifications have been made to the horse’s sale price.) Then at least you’d have to keep re-listing that horse for $100k (or whatever price) in order to keep it up on the sales page. May not help anything, but ideally it’d get people to think about why their $100k horse isn’t selling.
At the end of the day, if the price is too high, the horse won’t sell. Simple
But, as the saying goes, “Everything is worth what the purchaser will pay for it”
I personally tend to overprice some of my horses. Most of them I would be happy enough to keep so if they don’t go for the price I listed after about 2 weeks I remove them or lower the price depending on if I’ve decided I like them enough to hang on or let go. I have noticed the overpriced create’s, both racehorses and yearlings/weanlings and just skip over them. Eventually they either will sell or their owner will pull them or adjust the price. For whatever reason the FF economy seems to be on a downturn, a lot of horses have been going for much cheaper than I’ve seen since I started 5 years ago. Back then a horse wasn’t on the sales page for more than a few minutes usually and even the grossly overpriced were sold insanely quickly. There was a big demand for horses then and it seems like at the moment we have more supply and less demand so the sales page is clogging up.
I do like the idea of a horse being removed from the sale list after a determined amount of time without selling.
Shanthi - Is it possible for horses to be removed from the sales board after a certain period if it doesn’t sell? Say like 2 weeks?
I only suggest this as it’s a way to keep the ‘sales’ section free of clutter and refreshed, also it will force owners who are selling to reevaluate their sales price
would deeply agree with removing unsold horses after a set time, some seem to languish there for months!
I too remember how expensive and difficult to buy a new horse used to be, I had only my original 2 starter horses for ages, and eventually started writing begging letters to established stables to see if they would sell me any of their less successful horses, just so I’d have something to race! I did the same for broodmares too, as even the most ordinary broodmare would routinely sell for 100,000!
IMHO i think horses are too easy to come by now, I was glad of the redeemed horses and the claiming horses because it gave me the chance to get horses at a sensible price and leasing too, but I feel now that a reduction in the supply could be reduced a bit. Not so hard as it was but less easy than it is now. Hard to balance I know as it’s impossible to tell what any given change will lead to until it has been run for some time.
My own feeling is to allow redeemed horses for your first year in the game as that is when you need new horses the most and have the least spare money. Reduce claiming races to eg one per month and reduce the number of horses available from FF auctions to say 75 or 100 and the number allowed to buy to 3. Auctions put 600 horses a year into the game which is a lot when there are only 150 stables most of which are breeding their own foals as well!
Buying or otherwise aquiring new Horses needs to be desirable but a little bit difficult. I found it an interesting aspect of the game once I got established (very difficult as a newbie) but not interesting now as I have too many horses and not enough money!
Yes but if we only put 100 horses into each auction that doesnt even give everyone a horse, which seems unfair. Maybe we should just stop using created lines. We have a ton of horses with in game lines. Maybe there could also be a retirement code of a horse of say about age 6 or 7 who has won/placed in less than 5 races or something. That could also get some stragglers out of there. Or maybe a trainer input that starts around the time that they are at the bottom of their racing primes that says ‘This horse has really lost their spark’ or something. Could we also get rid of FF owned created yearlings, weanlings, racers (who have done nothing on the track), in order to make the market more competitive. Just a thought.
And now even though it is easy to get horses there are so many that you have to become a savvy buyer in order to get a good one. 
I set most of the horses for the foal auction… and except for maybe 10 horses of created lines… they were all bred ingame… this is showing us that there are fewer created horses being generated…
the other thing to consider is that most of the established stables that were here when I started (Storybook, Outlaws, Inc…) are no longer around… we have a large influx f newer stables… and the created horses are coming from those who are deleted from the game for inactivity…
I remember when horses in the select auction were just unatainable unless you had Millions to spend… now most are well within the reach of anybody who has budgeted for this auction…
There has always been a supply and demand for quality well bred horses… The one that are over priced do not sell…
Yes but not everyone gets one anyway. A lot of stables buy 4/5 horses from the auction so there is not enough for each stable to get one. thats why i suggested reducing the maximum number to buy to 3 per stable. at the last auction i put a small bid on 5 horses, just for the fun of it. I didn’t really want or expect to get them. to my amazement I won four of them for 1,000 each, 3 of which were of game lines, nobody wanted them! As has previously been pointed out the select auction was someting you could only watch with amazement at the prices. I believe they were all sold this year, but last year I think the purchase limit per stable was raised towards the end as so many horses did not sell. It looks to me that this shows we have too many horses available for the number of stables. Don’t suppose it matters too much in the end. If a stable can’t sell a horse they can always retire it!
Another thing to note, is that we’re not maxed out at the 150 active stables. We have 121 stables “active,” so there’s less competition than in previous years.
Some horses did go unsold at this year’s select auction. Prices will fluctuate. You’ll still pay top dollar for a top quality horse–Strider went for several million. Those less than that top-quality will fluctuate as the market sees fit. I think it’s good for people just starting out now; they can buy horses that are of better quality at a reasonable price, and not just because some established stable decides to cut them a deal.
Yes, it sucks for the owners trying to sell horses–selling is no longer a sure-fire way to make a quick buck.
While I know Shanthi doesn’t want to idiot-proof the game, I really take issue with seeing six- and seven-year-olds on the market who haven’t brought a paycheck in for the last year. These horses really shouldn’t be up for sale, but should be retired instead. I know people probably aren’t going to like this idea, but what about a small “listing/advertising fee” (e.g. $500 or 1% of the asking price or something) every time a horse is listed for sale? This would not only encourage people to retire horses that are really unsellable due to injury or age, as well as encourage people to NOT relist a horse that’s not selling at the same price.
Just a thought… Not that we need more fees, or anything.
Hm, that’s not a bad idea. Actually, it could replace the sales tax on horses (or rather, pre-tax the sale when the horse is listed, not when the horse is sold).
So rather than paying 5% at year’s end for the $3mil you took in selling horses, you pay, say, 3% of whatever sales price you select when you list the horse for sale. Once it sells, you pocket the sale money and you’re done.
That benefits “good” sellers by reducing the amount of the purchase price that gets lost to taxes (3% instead of 5%). In turn, it penalizes people who keep putting their horses up for sale (this would have to be combined with the unlisting horses after they’ve been on the sales page too long, otherwise you could just keep your $500k maiden gelding up for years).
So if you put your unraced 2yo up for sale for $100,000, you pay $3,000 to do so. He doesn’t sell for whatever time period (say, 1-2 weeks) and gets taken off the sales page. You relist him for $80,000, paying $2,400 to do so. Again, he doesn’t sell. Then you list him for $50,000 (paying $1,500) and he finally sells. You paid $6,900 to get him to sell, but owe nothing more for year-end taxes. (Which, if you hadn’t overpriced him to begin with, would’ve been $2,500. And if you’d listed him for the $50k sales price at the start, you would’ve paid the $1,500 once and not owed $2,500 at year-end.)
I guess the only issue with this is that if you’re selling in order to make cash because you’re broke, you may not be able to afford the 3% up-front fee. Perhaps waive it if the sales price is, say, $5,000 or less?
I think that sounds like a really good idea.
Although I think the period a horse should be left on the sales board should be more like 2-3 weeks. I know I don’t check the sales board that often, and other people might not log on for a week or two due to time constraints, so if we’re going to get charged just for listing the horse I think there should be a suitable amount of time to make sure people saw the listing.
Rainee - the games not designed to be ‘fair’ just like in life sometimes we miss out on things we want or can’t afford.
As for a retirement code, why would you want to take horses out of the game? A lot of races don’t fill up now, removing some would only make it worse although your trainers comment for training is a good one.
I think a better way would be to have a flat ‘listing fee’ of $1000 (could be higher for pricing a horse over $100k, say $2k?) then a 3% fee when the horse sells.
It’s hard to know what a horse is worth, only the market will tell you and to be stung 3% everytime would be a bit tough imho.
I know the game is not meant to be fair I just mean if you put less horses in the game wide auction than there are players in the game most people aren’t going to get one. I know that the bidding thing is obvious, I just mean that even if 30 players get their 5 and no one elase gets one at least people could have had one. I know that we all miss out on things we cannot afford but most of the horses in the auctions on day one and two go for $1k each. So if it is a game run auction with 150 horses in it some will get 5 some will get none but at lease there is the opportunity at the start for all to get a chance at one.
And there are horses owned by FF foaled in 2003 that are still listed as active racers. As it is FF currently runs 5200 races a year with a minimum of 6 slots in a race making a minimum of 31,200 slots open for racing. If we retired most of the older races owned by FF (183 foaled in 2005 and earlier - 420 foaled in 2006 and earlier), the younger more competitive racers (many of whom have game sires and dams, whose breeding rankings suffer due to a low number of starts earned by their FF owned offspring) would have a chance to run more often instead of a handful of times per year. Anyway if we retired the FF owned horses foaled in '05 or earlier (they will be aged 9-11 as of Jan. 1), each remaining FF horse would get 7-8 starts in the next year (and this is if we filled every SINGLE race with only FF horses). Now if we retired those born in '06 or earlier (Aged 8-11), each remaining horse would get roughly 8-9 starts. If you consider that those are without the coming FF 2yos figured in, that is quite a few starts.
If you estimate that roughly two-thirds of those slots are filled with horses owned by stables other than FF (and this could be a larger percentage than what actually are owned by game stables), that is 10,400 slots still open for FF owned horses. If you just remove the '05 and earlier horses each remaining FF horse (excluding 2yos) gets roughly 2-3 races per year while if you remove '06 and earlier it is about the same.
So there are more than enough FF horses to fill races as it is if we remove the horses aged 8 and up from JUST the FF stable, it will solve the problem of less competitive horses and will also give other horses more of a chance to run and therefore if they are game-bred it will give their dams and sires a better value because those that are good will be solidified and those that are pretty terrible breeders can be phased out. And most stables that have horses aged 6-7 and up think of retirement due to the fact that most older horses cost more in entries and taxes in the long run than they bring in when they are 6 and up, so it is more economical to retire them. I may also get back to you with more precise information by age later. I just need to gather the information.
AS THE NUMBERS GO:
- 452 horses born in 2006 and earlier ('03-'06) (making them 8yrs in 2014) are listed as active racers - 420 of those are owned by FF
- 5,200 races/yr w/Min. 6 horses per race = 31,200 entries needed per year for minimum quota
- With only FF horses in races the horses remaining w/o next year’s 8-11yos and excluding '11 2yos, each FF horse would race only about 8-9 starts
- When counting for the fact that only about 1/3 (possibly more like 1/4?) of the 31,200 min. entires are open to FF horses that cuts down the open slots for FF horses to 10,400 possible FF entries
- That gives each remaining FF horse (excluding the aforementioned ages of racers) only about 2-3 starts per year
- If only FF horses are retired when they reach age 8, it will create a more competetive environment in races that must be filled
- Also-Keep in mind that if the FF owned racehorses are getting very few chances to race, mares and stallions that have amazing breeding potential but have foals owned only by FF, may not reach the same Breed Ranking as they might if more chances were available for them to run. If we retire 7yos their chances of starting will increase.
That’s all good but you just forgot one thing, FF horses only race when the spaces are empty, so they aren’t denying any other horse a chance of racing.
btw - how many 8 year olds are still in the game 
If you read my whole post I took into account that only about 1/3 (probably a little less) of the post positions are open to FF racers. I understand how the FF horses are used to fill races to a minimum of 6 horses and my calculations are simply for 6 horse races, I was simply countering your argument that
The math clearly shows that there are plenty of FF owned horses to fill races without the horses ages 8 to 11 (note these ages are as of Jan 1 2014 due to the game being within 1 week of the new year). And owned by FF there are 406 horses of racing status aged 8 to 11. Outside of the FF stable there are an additional 32 horses of racing status aged 8 to 11.
NOTE: I was reading through my previous post and it does get hard to read due to the amount of information packed into such small letters (I went cross eyed myself.) so I will edit it and make it into bullets. And bullet the numbers so they’re easy to find.
FF horses existing or not existing is besides the issue. Yes, adding created horses dilutes the game population and potentially decreases the value of horses in general, but most of FF’s horses are in-game ones.
I could stop breeding FF’s broodmares every year (and, in fact, have barely bred ay this year due to lack of time), but then we’d have no horses available to auction.
FF horses are supposed to retie/be sold at age 7, I’ll make sure that happens this year (since it apparently didn’t happen for 2013).
Either way, that doesn’t solve the issue that was originally brought up, which is that members are pricing their own horses badly.
I agree. I’m fine with the idea of a listing fee. However, I’d prefer that you be allowed to have a horse on the page for a month before it gets taken down.