Remember, you can always find upcoming events on the HP Calendar.

New Messaging System

We are revamping HP's messaging system! This is something that is already in motion, but hasn't been started yet, so when we have more updates on a release date, we will let you know.

In the new system, instead of each new reply coming to you as an entirely new message, it will work more like an email, where all of the messages will stay together in the same thread. So that way, everyone's inboxes will stay a bit more organized. In addition, we will be adding a way for people to search their messages so you can find what you're looking for quicker.

More Player Achievements

I want to add more achievements this year. Mostly we will be adding achievements that stack onto the ones we already have.

For example, some achievements we may add:

We can potentially add brand new ones as well, and I am always open to suggestions for new achievements (for players or animals). But expanding on what we already have achievement-wise is something I hope to do in the coming months.

Layout Generator

Another quick thing is that I have plans to add more options to the layout generator this year. If you would like to donate a base code to the layout generator, please get ahold of me on account #1!

Also, in case you haven't seen it, I did put out a Coding Help guide this year to help everyone with HTML in the forums and on their pages, and I hope to do the same thing for CSS in the coming year.

Bringing New People to HP

This is something I want to focus on heavily this year. Not only bringing back old players, but also bringing in brand new ones. We have a fair amount of sign-ups every day, but one thing we're NOT good at is getting people to stick around and play.

Soo, one of the things I think we can do to help this is to have a new player tutorial/walk-through. Games like this can be seriously intimidating if you don't already have an idea of what you're supposed to do, so I think having a step-by-step walk-through right when people sign up would be good.

It would prompt people to buy a horse or dog, take it to the vet/farrier, take it to shows, etc. But you would be able to dismiss the notifications for it if you don't need it.

We already have the Getting Started Guide, but if you don't know where it is, then you might not find it. Plus you'd have to keep referring back to it instead of having the information you need right at the top of your page. However, the things in the Getting Started Guide would also be the general flow of a tutorial.

If you have any suggestions on things we could do to help new players stick around, I would love to hear them! I've never been a new player on HP, and most of the staff has been around for so long that we don't necessarily remember what it's like to be a new player. So, for that reason, we rely heavily on what you all tell us!

What can you do to help?

The best form of advertising and getting people to stick around is word of mouth. So, if you are able and willing, use it!

Some of the things we've been doing are trying to catch new players when they are online to welcome them to the game and give them some resources to get started, and emailing "come back to us!" emails to players who have become inactive. These have been effective, but with your help we can do better!

We have had mixed success with advertising for HP in the past on other websites, but this is something we may look at again this year.

Training/Riding Feature

This is something I am sort of excited about and I definitely want the community to discuss this year! It's a feature that the staff team has tossed back and fourth as a possibility for HP, which we came up with based on the results of our last survey. One of the things that people requested was more to do, and more ways to earn points, but without majorly changing the gameplay of HP.

So, we came up with an idea for an optional questing type of feature, which would be a way for you to train or interact with your animals and earn points!

I don't want to derail this topic too much since it's already so long, but you can click here to read more about it and discuss it further. Give us your thoughts!

I will say that this would be a massive undertaking, so we will definitely be doing a lot of planning and discussing in the future, and I definitely can't say that this is something that would be released this year if it's something we move forward with, but I wanted to include this in the State of the Union, so everyone could get an idea of where we are going based on player feedback!

DISCLAIMER: I know as soon as some people saw the header of this section, they started to get the jitters! So this disclaimer is for you. We definitely will not be getting any sort of animated interactive feature, if we do something like this it will be text-based. We don't have the interest, resources, or anything for animated stuff, nor do we even remotely believe that's something that anyone here wants. So not to worry!

Misc. Notes

Other than what has been mentioned above, some of the other things we will be working on this year are:

In Conclusion

Overall, 2017 was a good year on HP, and we want that to continue into 2018. We will do our best to keep bringing you new things at a regular pace, but this year the focus will be more on polishing what we already have in place, and improving our overall game. Things like improving the messaging system, fixing bugs, adding more achievements, etc. are all part of that.

I know that's not super exciting, but it's what keeps the HP world on it's axis! It's always a balance between bringing in new and fresh ideas, and making sure that what we already have is up to snuff.

Also as I already mentioned, we will be making a big push to grow the HP player base this year. Bringing in new players keeps HP moving forward, and the bigger our player base is the more shows there will be, the more shared lines and breedings there will be, and the more resources we will have to continue to improve HP.

I want 2018 to be the best year yet for us!

Soo, in conclusion, thank you for reading this massive news post! I will be posting more in depth discussions for things as they come up, but this is just the rundown of what we have in mind for the year. I will let you all get back to your regularly scheduled programming now!

Have a great week! Remember to enter the mascot contest ;).

-Sam

P.S. Have you joined our Facebook group? Click here to join the Horse Phenomena Player Connection! Make sure you answer the questions when you join with your HP name and ID or you won't be accepted into the group.