I'm pretty sure Maki is right in that HoFa's issues are exponentially worse for users who have thousands of horses, rather than the couple of dozen I have. But I'm also pretty sure that those power users are the ones who fund, promote, and generally keep this place going. I don't think 'doctor, it hurts when I do this' 'don't do that then' is the answer here.

edited to add: I just checked and the background image is still 16.3MB lmao, no wonder first pageload on my phone takes aeons

....With the greatest possible respect to the developers, that is a large image considering we can't see most of it....

I honestly find the horses being the issue hard to believe as the lag has gotten worse with new features being added and more players being active on the site. Myself and many other longtime players have had lots of horses for a long time and its never been an issue.

I am disheartened to see how many of you agree with me on these issues, I spent a lot of time being frustrated and believing I was alone in my issues. I am disappointed that there hasn't been any official response to this thread from any avenue, I was hoping with the last news update it would at least be addressed but sadly it was not.

I don't have issues with lag at all with a few horses, and neither do some others I know with a few horses. It seems those complaining of lag has thousands of horses. It's hard to believe that isn't a factor. Not to say people shouldn't have thousands of horses, but if the game is more optimized for thousands of players with hundreds of horses and not thousands of players with thousands of horses, it will cause problems. It may not have before but as more players join and have thousands upon thousands of horses, the server gets overloaded. 

Frankly, to be fair, I don't experience much in bugs either and have few problems with the game in general. I am on multiple times a day usually as well and enter careers multiple times a day, halter shows, and regular shows a few times a week. All takes a matter of minutes. 

As Curly mentioned in a comment on the news, however, Bed is one person and isn't paid for the work she does on the game, so she is doing it all in her free time. It's a process. She also explained why new art comes, as the funds go to the artist. Obviously, bugs need to be fixed but new content is also needed to keep the game interesting and going, and players playing, as not everyone experiences debilitating bugs. When you have one person, there has to be a balance between content and bug fixes, which there seems to be respectively. It's just not always the bugs you want. They aren't on the same level of fixing and some take more time to pinpoint the error in the code and fix it than others. 

As I mentioned in a comment in the news, what's the point of adding new content when the base game has issues? Sure, the game looks shiny on the surface but that's not going to retain the playerbase. I am much more willing to believe the players that have been having issues rather than ones who aren't having issues because its going to just become a matter of "when" when it comes to bugs overwhelming the game if the big ones are just going to be seemingly ignored. I, for one, after reading the news post as well would rather see money go into fixing the base game at the moment over getting new art or features.

I've been refraining from commenting until now but I think the lag issue is the result of additional features + massive amount of horses. Like Geeoharee and Maki, I don't experience the lag issue (at most, the game feels slow for a few minutes once in a while) with my 300ish horses. My in-game experience is largely unaffected as well by the different bugs.

I think it was necessary to bring up the issue with the bugs accumulating and sure would prefer to see money going to bug fixing/getting a better server rather than art. I just believe that in order to figure things like the cause of the lag issue, players who also don't have problems should comment. Honestly, maybe there should be an official poll/form for players to fill about their game experience and have a more accurate picture of what's going on for the players.

And as Curly explained and I gave my interpretation of it, art and bugs are two totally separate things done by two different people. New art does not mean no bug fixes. An artist is getting paid because they are hired staff. The owner of the game is not paid and by that it is safe to assume they have a full time job to support themselves and the game comes second. There are bug fixes pretty much every update. All bugs are different and some take more time than others. Doesn't mean they arent being fixed. And again, not everyone experiences the same bugs either and its not fair to not provide new content to leave players bored with the same stuff. New content also does not mean no bug fixes. You dont see into the live of this one person and how they manage to fix bugs and what gets fixed and how long it takes. You dont even see the code period. If they can easily add stuff while working on broken stuff then why shouldnt they? Bugs absolutely need fixed. But I dont think its fair to what the admins are doing or not without actually knowing. We havent a clue. Its just not the bugs you want fixed when you want them. Just try to remember Bed is one person, fixing a lot but we dont know what, or how it works, or even how hard it is and they shouldnt be shamed for adding new content and art from an artist who is specifically paid for that. Art funding is probably not gonna go to Bed because I am going to guess it wont pay the bills and fix bugs faster. The bugs will be fixed as fast and as well as they can and if that isnt good enough for some... Well 🤷🏽‍♀️ 

I would also like to add there were 24 bugs fixed in the last update.  

Nevermind Bed stating this in a news post:

"

When I first built this version of the code, I was just learning the framework the game is built on. There are a lot of areas that could be optimized to make things faster based on knowledge I've gained in the 2 years since starting this code base. Please be patient with the lag - I'm trying to tackle this by addressing the root problems before moving on to other strategies to speed up the game."

I suppose I will go ahead and post here as it's taken me a while even to begin to think of how best to answer everyone's concerns. In short, we're tired. 

Maki is correct in the fact art and bugs are separate. Bedouin works the code and I wrangle artists, send all the needed info, plan next steps etc.. Basically, my job is everything but code (minutes the wiki) and making art (minus grade images and tack edits). We both end up wearing a lot of hats and often times these hats have become troublesome for one person.

To put it bluntly and very much honestly, we pay out of pocket for almost everything. HoFa brings in some money monthly but in order to move anything forward at any pace, other than a snail's pace, we have debt and continue to personally put in money to ensure we get new art for content. Why not invest in a coder? Well, even with hiring someone else the time it'd take to teach them what to do, incorporate my limited time into ensuring they do what we need correctly, and have enough to pay someone enough to code just 1 feature, is not possible. The only reason HoFa is even possible as of now is that both Bed and I do not take payment and pay into what we believe to one day be a very great investment. 

Any money someone invests into HoFa goes towards art because we believe art is an excellent asset to have and that honoring contracts and expectations of future work for our artists is a priority. Not to say bug fixing isn't a priority, it's just that bug fixing will cost us way more than Bed or I can personally invest at any given time. 

"Why not save for someone to code?" That would be great if Bed or I could contribute enough monthly to afford enough hours to someone to make much difference, but I will grandly gesture at the state of the world right now, our possible investment dwindles as we try to survive the state of things in our personal lives.

"Why not put in more time?" There honestly is no more time in the world for us to do more while keeping our heads on our shoulders. We both work full-time jobs, Bed works a part-time job as well, I'm in graduate school, and we try to spend time with our families. Previously updates have happened because we have given up full weekends and evenings to dedicate to HoFa because we are passionate about making it the best it can be. Now as we have had to take on more personally to keep ourselves afloat, less time is given to HoFa.

"How have you done so much recently if you're so busy?" Honestly, it's because we've been motivated but recently in the state of what we have seen some express, we are less so. We do a lot of compromising in our lives to get work done on HoFa so much so it's caused personal struggles. We always have told ourselves we would overlook any negativity but even after years of being open about how things work around here, we are in all honesty, a bit more than bummed. HoFa is my escape from reality as I deal with real life, for Bed it is the same. I use to work 40+ hours a week on HoFa because it helped me cope, now as I transition into a new reality it's hard to open the files, research, or fix things with my limited free time. For Bed, it is the same. We love HoFa and love working on it, and continue to do so much more frequently than some seem to believe.

"Why haven't you fixed xyz thing?" The short answer, it's not high up on our fix list or it's taking a long time to do. The long answer is we also consider: Can Curly fix it quickly? Can Bed fix it quickly? Do we have time to sit down together and work a full day on a fix? Do we need to request help from one of our IT friends? Fixes greatly depend on dev time Bed can set aside which tends to range from 8 hours a week to multiple days. To put it in perspective, it would take upwards of 30 hours to fix lag (multiple weeks/days), but maybe 30 minutes to fix a forever loading page or any number of what can be viewed as a "small bug". We try to work on getting lots of "small bugs" squashed while fixing larger ones in chunks.

None of this is to say we are quitting, we are actually chugging along at maximum capacity and often it's never seen until months later what we've been doing. We work daily in several capacities to keep coding and art going. If you are disappointed by any of it, that is fine, just know we are working on our bug problem and we are truly doing the best we can, with what we have, and what life has handed us.

It seems the game is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can see both sides - the lag and bugginess is annoying and can remove incentive to play, especially for long-time players who've invested so much time and effort into their herds. On the other hand, the reality of a 2-man, unpaid team trying to keep up with a game as complex as HoFa is understandably exhausting and one can't reasonably assume that issues will be resolved immediately. Art is a fantastic asset (as Curly stated) and no one should fault following through with artistic contracts.

That being said, it seems to me that HoFa is at a state where its bitten off more than it can chew. I don't think Raine is wrong in stating their frustrations, and I don't think Curly is wrong for being disheartened and tired. Perhaps more transparency in communication is the key? The Premium Corner in the Forum has been almost entirely neglected - can that be utilized to further talks between leadership and paying players? I would be willing to contribute to a crowdfund for additional technical help (and I'm certain I'm not the only one) but I realize bringing a stranger into the game code can bring its own issues.

All in all, the rebranding into HoFa was/is gorgeous and exciting, but it's not surprising that veteran players have become frustrated. New players might not understand that the game is a work-in-progress and be disheartened into spending more time here. Is there anything the player base can do to help? Or is it just a sit-back-and-wait sort of deal?