Background

I've been doing loads and loads of conformation research lately. It's so interesting to me! ^^

I'd kindly like to ask that you read my entire schpeel before commenting or posting your thoughts, just to avoid confusion or possible drama.

I would like to know everyone's thoughts on this. It will be a bit long and maybe a little bit fleshed out, but here goes!

The Gist

Maybe we can introduce correct conformation and faults into the game. Certain faults or conformations will become popular for certain showing disciplines and what not.

Take long backed horses for example (or long necked). They'd be preferable for the Jumping classes. This conformation would make them stronger or even strongest in the Jumping traits.

I don't know much about Dressage, but maybe a steep shoulder angle will give a pretty, upright gait (hypothetically) and make them stronger or strongest in the Dressage traits.

Certain conformations (shoulder, hip, back, neck, balance, etc) will make them stronger in certain traits. Certain faults (coon-foot, cow-hock, pigeon-toe, base wide, etc) might affect how long they train up? Or you might expect them to be a low-level eventer?

The horse's conformation should be visibly accessible, meaning player's should be able to take a glance at the horse and determine what it's strong in or what it might be best at and what not. (Yes, this would mean art work tweaks and what not.) They should also be easily discernible from each other.

Maybe in the Vet's Office like with the Color Gene Testing, we could have a Conformation Assessment. You'd pay however many Ebs, say 5k to get your assessment and it'll tell you your horse's faults and conformation, tell you the should and hip angle and whether or not it's ideal.

Example:

Shoulder: 45 Degrees - Ideal

Long-Back - Jumping

Forelegs:

Lateral - Camped-In

Knee: Ideal

Caudal - Base: Ideal

Knee: Knocked

Etc., etc.

I think this kind of conformation would also help breeders (and hopefully those who have a harder time understanding the ratings) pick and choose their horses more carefully, particularly for breeding. The conformation should definitely be genetic of some sort. Or say if your horse is knock-kneed it has like a 10-20% chance of passing it on to its offspring, etc.

The Work

I also understand it'd take time to code in all of the variations and possibly having a whole other "pedigree" style tab on our horse's page among the coding of passing it down. It would definitely take a while.

The Benefit

- It would motivate those looking to profit to really look through the horses and selectively breed to best suit their eventing and showing needs.

- It would help the newer players visually learn to know what a horse is best in.

- It will provide motivation to learn what traits apply to each Class.

- It would motivate breeders to produce, nice strong, clean looking and productive lines that other players would seek out.

- It would be an extra and fun challenge.

- It may motivate breeders to profit in showing.

- It may also help newer players to understand the concept of ratings and matchmaking.

- It would help provide those who learn visually with breeding for ratings.

- It may also help motivate the color breeding community to be more selective in their breeding and to produce horses that would be appealing to other players for showing.

Your Thoughts

I 100% want your guys' thoughts on this. The good, the bad, and the ugliest that you have, your added suggestions and help with possibly completely fleshing this out and presenting it in the Suggestion Polls.

This would pretty much cause havoc for anyone with an established breeding program and quite possibly destroy literal years of work.

On top of that, the vast majority of people aren't going to know what any of the information for conformation even means. "Lateral - Camped-In" means absolutely nothing to me, and I assume that for most people, they would feel the same.

I feel that this would kill the interest in the game for a lot of people.

Saltea Stables said:

I think that there could be a way to implement this to explain, say, bad ratings.

"X is low in (stat) because of (reason)"

Which could maybe be used to diagnose weaknesses, but not the degree of weakness. Which might impact the need to track training, but shouldn't really impact the game in any significant way. (and wouldn't show up on a horse with a high rating that's moderately well rounded in all traits)

This would not interfere with actual gameplay, and would be more of a cosmetic thing, because it wouldn't affect breeding at all (besides maybe making untracked/untrained horses- probably EEP or lower combos- easier to match).