Wild guesses - a glance into the future

[gespenst, FIN (admin)]

Yes, I did ask this from Finns already. Others, tell me too

What are you expecting from the sim world after 10years? Make your wildest guesses about the future of simming, it's interesting to know what do you think will happen! How are stables developing, simming generally developing... Fears and wishes about the future.

I think things will be more and more automatic, coding gets more and more complicated and advanced. I really hope SHI is still here then, but nobody knows for sure..,

[Nessa (GER)]

well, I have been part of the whole thing since 1999 and it is incredible how many changes there have been through all the years. We started with the smallest sites, horses were just one picture and a name and nothing more. Today, the horses have a story, a written charakter, they go to competitions and so many other things. People know much more about breeding as they did 10 years ago. When I started, it was totally ok to breed a pony with a hanoverian to get a new hanoverian lol and so on. Also nobody was laughing if you put a paint horse on your page saying it was just a tobiano Trakehner or something, lol. When I started many things were much much easier. It was well enought to have a nice website with a few funny horses. Today a stable looks realistic enough to confuse visitors lol (I had a letter once with a sample of horse-feed for "my horses").
I guess if it goes on and on like it was the last few years, we will have flash animated horses, realistic competitions with balancing the skills of our horses as if they were real. Maybe we will have a banking system, so that no one can afford to buy more than one new horse per month or maybe we will have information on our horse profiles with a overview of their base stats like strengh, health, jump power etc like "he has 157/200 jump power" or something...Maybe competitions will not be like today, mayxbe its all about stats later... whatever. Im excited when thinking about the future, but I am also a bit frightened. Sometimes I think, the whole thing is getting too realistic sometimes (well in Germany it sometimes seriously is...) and it sometimes is not as funny as it was years ago. But I still like sim-gaming and the horses, so I will be here for the next years too, I think

[gespenst, FIN (admin)]

lol I have been simming from only since 2009, so I have much less experience of the "old times" Well, it's interesting to hear how have things been different in the change of the millennium. Because of what I've heard, the developement has been amazing, probably it will still be - you can never have it perfect...

[Maria (FIN)]

I´ve been around since 2007 and all I can say is that I just hope that it won´t get too serious or too realistic...

[nanni (AT)]

I'm in SIM world since 2006 I guess... it got connected more and more and thats what frighten me, because I don't want to have stupid rules, made up be someone without any real life experience and irrealistic ideas of horses becomming 30 and there are no illnesses except while a mare is pregnant.... and all stallions get a Diploma for breeding (we had that in germany for a time - nearly ), and of course no thoughts about costs for food and the vet.
But maybe it's the other way round (with realistic I mean)

[Amanda [USA]]

I've been simming since I'd say 2001 or 2002, and progress has been different in every game. I'd say in All Sim things move slower, are less automatic, and less strict, than in most smaller or private games. Some games already have large automatic (to a degree) horse registries and automatic banking systems. I'd expect to see more and more of this creep into the bigger games. (Personally I'd love an automatic records tracker and database).

I was a partial administrator in a very complex game once, where horses had "skill points systems" or SPS. A foal was given points upon its birth based on the total points of its parents, as it won shows it earned more points, and the more points it had, the better its chance of winning shows again, because we used a randomizer that gave horses with more points a greater chance of winning. This was as realistic as I've seen them, but also very complicated. People were super up to date with their horses' show records, and horses moved up levels as their points accumulated not just because they were older, and were only bred when it would produce a "well-pointed" foal. But certain disciplines or classes could be dominated by a few horses, and breeding was fiercely competitive. It was great fun if you owned a few top horses and could sell their offspring for huge amounts of money or make great trades, but part of the game's realism was that new members had to buy in, they couldn't just create horses in most cases, so it was hard to start out. The game fell apart because people didn't trust the show hosts, and the system required a lot of time and upkeep.

I would not be surprised to see games start to implement a point system like this at some point, especially if there was a way to combine entering shows with a well kept database and a smart randomizer, so when a horse was entered in a show, it automatically connected with the database to know how many points that horse had and the randomizer accounted for that. The key to how the game changes though will be members' desire to go more automated, realistic, and strict or stay easy-going and relaxed about things like banking. I'd say the current all sim world has a decent balance, because breeds and disciplines are realistic, where as record keeping, aging, banking, and selling/buying are left up to the individual to decide on.

This post got super long...

[Nymphy (GER)]

When I started simming in 2005 everything was quiet easy and the different stables were similar to each other. But when time changed they looked for automatically entries, banking systems and other special things a young child can't do. So I've learnd a lot of PHP and HTML to built up my stable... and it took years ... and I'm not ready yet.
Sometime I miss the real horse charakter of the sim game... 'cause there is only breeding and competing..
I think in a few years we'll be back to the roots but in a high-performing way. In a more realistic way. I can say I will be here then.