2022 Plans
Hello everyone and happy 2022! Today, we have quite a bit to share for our 2022 plans.
Updates
In 2022, we expect to follow a monthly update schedule for game features with possible bug fix updates in between. As of now, we plan to only alert everyone of our monthly updates or any large bug fix updates. Some smaller bug fix updates may be posted to the news but not to social media or our Discord server.
As of now, both Bedouin and I are stretched very thin due to personal reasons, jobs, and working on HoFa. Moving to a monthly update schedule will help us both more easily prioritize getting game features out without causing a ton of disturbance to what we need to tend to personally. We hope you all understand we are not going missing in action anytime soon and have already scheduled well in advance to do our best to ensure features move out smoothly and on time.
Also for 2022, we are moving to a once-a-month art update schedule because we are still recovering from our last quarters spending. As of now, we have a pause on art spending until revenue increases to where we can consistently pay for art. This means there will not be a breed update for January. We will, however, be focusing on marking variations and any grade image requests for January.
Quarter 1 Features
For 2022, we have decided to reveal features we will be working on per quarter rather than our yearly plan. We believe this can help us better adjust to a monthly update schedule and also more easily adjust plans as needed.
In our first quarter, we expect to release:
- Explore features with a map, items, wild horses, and more. You will be able to move around a map and explore the lands of HoFa around the town of Eqcetera. This will be our first big step into a very new type of game feature so it may roll out in several updates to ensure bugs are squished.
- Achievements will also be added as a way to earn extra currency and maybe even items! There will be several types of achievements that will help you by guiding you through several game aspects. These will also give you a bit more guidance as to possible game goals rather than wandering aimlessly as we do now. :)
- Gardening. Yes, this may be surprising to many of you but we have decided to add gardening. This has been in the works for the past year and hasn’t been added due to well, we rebuilt the game and added a bunch of other stuff before. However, gardening will offer many new items and also help benefit the economy.
All of the above listed features will all intermingle and offer many more hours of content for you all to enjoy. We believe this is a great first step toward a game that has an economy that isn’t as dependent on premium currency (ingots) nor solely on show winnings.
Rest of Year
We do have a general idea of features for the rest of 2022. Historically, we have mapped these out by month but since we may be making adjustments on the fly, we only wish to mention them as being added this year.
In no particular order we plan to add:
- Player versus player competitions. These will offer the ability to challenge others in one on one competition.
- Player jobs. Earn a bit more income through working various jobs. This way you can earn bits when finances get rough or if you just want a larger money hoard.
- Estate builder. This is an art heavy feature which will include the ability to build your own beautiful estate in the way you have always envisioned.
- Feature request. We will eventually open up a feature request for players to suggest ideas to be added to the game.
- Club shows. Club owners can make club halter shows for horses registered to a crossbreed campaign. This means those in the campaign will also have their breed changed to the campaign breed.
- Campaign activity. There will be changes to crossbreed campaigns which require activity in the campaign for it to continue. Any campaigns that are deemed “inactive” will be marked as inactive and the campaign will be available for someone else to claim.
- Halter show changes. We will be changing halter shows to run every 24 hours rather than based on entrants. This means even 1 entrant will run a show but payout will be scaled down for smaller shows.
- Discipline show changes. We plan to run discipline shows more frequently to help the cron jobs be more smooth. This will mean discipline shows will run every 6 hours and will run much faster than the 1 to 2 hours they take now. We will also be adjusting the horse point payout for higher tier shows so those horses earn more levels than now.
- Vet fees. Dr. Bea Hoofinit will offer more vet options from fixing boo boos to checking for any possible diseases. We won't go too wild on this, they’re pixel horses after all.
- Ice Pastures. We will add ice pastures for those who wish to send specific horses to be frozen while also still being able to play. This will have a cooldown time per horse when they are removed from the ice pasture. Frozen horses do have to thaw out!
- Additional town. Ideally, we will have another town added by the end of 2022. This means more NPCs, locations, exploration, and possibly much more!
Should we end up on a faster schedule than we expect, some of these features may possibly come in quarter 1. As a note, features that will be art heavy most likely won't be added until mid-year or later to give our artists time to work.
Changes Soon
It’s that time of year where we all decided to make changes. HoFa is a wonderful game as it is but there are quite a few aspects of the game we believe are weak as they are and are causing quite a problem with our game economy. These are the foundation store and tack.
Foundation Store
As of now, you can buy as many foundation horses as you like which means most of you buy foundation horses until you have enough amazing ones. Retirement pastures are filled to the brim with retired unwanted horses and Sae Vedd is quite done with the massive influx of yeeted unwanted equines. On February 5th, we plan to implement a foundation store limit of 20 horses per day. Doing so means we feel more comfortable adding in a highly requested feature, a better foundation store which offers higher quality horses for a higher cost. These horses will be pre-generated and you will be able to see everything about them prior to purchase. This will probably be added at a later date after February 5th.
Tack
Right now tack lasts forever and never breaks or needs replacing. Also on February 5th, we will be adding uses per tack piece. All types of tack such as saddles, bridles, pads, backgrounds, and even companions, will have limited uses. Items costing ingots will last longer than those costing bits. Adding in this change means we feel more confident adding in items with greater benefits and potentially adjusting item prices.
Office Hours & Staffing
Both Bedouin and I are quite bogged down and doing our best to balance all life has handed to us. To help us, we have decided to make specific office hours in which we will actively be checking the bug box, chats, and email. This ensures that you all can better expect email replies and potential bug fixes at certain times. Currently, our hours will be 10 AM to 4 PM EST/game time on weekdays. Anything outside of these hours will be addressed at the next open office hours.
We will also soon be opening up applications to join our focus group. As a member of the focus group, you will have access to special feedback forms that Bed and I will use to direct game play plans. More information will be sent on this once we get closer to a focus group time.
2022 New Breeds
In 2022, we plan to add several new breeds to our HoFa family. With well over 100 options narrowed down to just 25, we now have our top list of breeds to be added. We do not want to spoil much, but we can say a few we will be adding. In no particular order, we will welcome:
- Paso Fino. A gaited horse breed with quite a fancy step!
- Icelandic. A popular Icelandic breed with a unique gait, the tolt.
- Shire. Bigger is better! These draft horses are the largest in the world.
- Dutch Warmblood. Finally, a warmblood breed to add a bit of spice to our breed lineup.
We have no specific dates as to when new breeds will be released but maybe if enough excitement occurs for one of them..they could be first? 👀
As a note, it's possible for there to be changes to this general schedule with some features or art occurring quicker or later than expected. Anytime something may change, we will let you all know in advance.
Here’s to a great 2022!
Cheers,
Bedouin & Curly
I'm super excited for all the new features. Thank you for all you do! Please take care of yourselves and take all the time you need. Fingers crossed Shires get added first. XD
It all looks good but not so sure about the limited uses on stuff I paid for. Hoping to get a little clarification on this.
Does that mean it disappears and can't be used even as dress up or does it just mean we can still use it but it will no longer have any benifit as far as showing?
If it can still be used for "dress up" then I'm cool with that since that's really why I buy it in the first place. But if it will disappear than I probably won't be buying any more especially anything costing ingots.
Aaa this is an exciting line up for 22' !!
I'm genuinely in love with HOFA ,only been playing since public release ,but it's my favorite horse breeding sim !
can't wait to see the shire or the dutchie 👀
This is awesome I am so excited! This sounds like it is turning out to be the game I have always wanted and from the very first Eqcetera, it has come so far.
As far as the update with tack gies, I hope that means there is plans for more variety in tack in the future.
I am also interested in this social group as well. I look forward to that opportunity.
Super excited for Icelandics! As for the tack having limited uses, I'd hope to see a way to repair them (namely the ones you pay ingots for) and/or a way to craft them (maybe even as a profession?), or as someone else mentioned, they just don't give benefits once they're out of uses.
I'm excited to see another gaited breed make it into the game! My question regarding the tack however, is it going to be easier to remove/switch it out? As it stands now, there's not really any way to remove glitzed out tack from a horse unless you make two sets and dont use one. And for someone who didn't know there had to be a 'spare' set in storage just to remove a set being used, it's a little problematic.
A lot of the gems look similar enough that you can't tell which is which just by looking at the image, and there is no description for tack that a horse is already wearing. If the whole 'you can only remove tack from a horse if you have that exact same tack in your inventory' thing is by design, it's kind of a poor design imo. Especially if it stays like that after the changes are implemented.
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Whew ok! I managed to read everyone's comments and am glad everyone is excited and also a bit skeptical. So, I'll try to answer everything I have read best I can!
Q: Will LE tack come back?
A: Yes, LE tack will come back yearly around the time it was released or maybe even for special events ;)
Q: Will crossbreeds have halter shows?
A: Yep! We will work out a way for current recognized crosses to have halter shows made in the game-owned clubs.
Q: Will halter shows run at 20 entrants still?
A: Yes, they will autorun at 20 and anew show made. If the new show doesn't hit 20, it will run 24 hours after it was made.
Q: Will halter entry limit be removed?
A: I'll mull this over and consider what that would mean in terms of how halter shows would look but at the moment leaning toward keeping the 10 limits per person.
Q: Tack details? (I'm wrapping this up into one answer)
A: Tack as of now has no uses and takes up a lot of space. Several of you have thousands of tack sets and being able to keep them forever means you have no use to buy more. For tack, all pieces will have a use number with year-round bit tack having fewer uses than ingot tack. We will be considering 1 use being equipping then unequipping or if a horse retires with it. As of now in our plans, once a tack piece is fully used it will be deleted. Doing so means we are more willing to adjust prices and add more perks or even bulk up perks tack pieces have now. Note, I enjoy the repair/no benefits option for ingot tack only and will think on this while planning.
We do have plans for more tack variety for 2022 but since we are currently on an art pause we cannot specifically say how much will be added or when. We have announced that draft harnesses and halters will be added as well as flowers all of which are TBD. We are easily able to re-color current sets so more variety for those will be coming as well as amethyst minerals. A previous plan for flowers was for them to be drag and drop which meant we did a whole lot of image changes and eventually had to revert back to our old system. However, should I have extra time I will do my best to get these in as mane decorations for all breeds in a couple of colors. Those of you who joined me for our community colored tack set have actually seen these flowers!
Lastly, there was a question about removing and equipping tack being easier. Yes! We previously had this nicely on the horses page and in mass actions but due to the image issue noted above, we had to push off adding this feature back in its entirety. Right now you can equip from your inventory or mass actions but it is quite tedious. Completing this is further up our list and we hope to finish it asap.
I believe I have answered everything but will check back in case I have not!
Thanks for the answers! I read the news and had similar questions myself.
I might recommend that ingot tack allowed to be repaired at an ingot rate. It still will require spending ingots, but be much cheaper than purchasing a new set (which may or may not be available at that time). I could also recommend that limited release tack also has an ingot-repair option as well (maybe a limited repair option, like only 4 times before it's irrepairable). So that we don't loose the tack when it's not available. However, the price for repair is beyond what I can fairly offer a suggestion for.
Repairing track could be a player job? A saddler?
"We will be considering 1 use being equipping then unequipping or if a horse retires with it."
I would be totally ok with this. Once I put tack on a horse it stays for the life of the horse as I'm not one to constantly change tack out.
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