Remove the ebony/molten speed boost from horses

[Pukaria 201]

The speed boost from the color of horses should be removed or just applied to all colors.

 

It is one of the most unfortunate circumstances of AH that in a game claiming to be a sandbox, players are not able to choose the color that they like if they want to have the fastest animals.

 

Further, unlike most other skills in the game, optimization isn't a choice or at all related to skill. It's strictly RNG.

When a blacksmith, or a weaponsmith, or a carpenter decides to make a tool or a weapon or a container, they have a choice. What metal? What wood? There are different pros and cons to the different options, and this makes the game and the skill more interesting and therefore more fun.

 

But with AH, there is no interesting choice to be made. There is just one goal, across now both draft and speed animals, to have the offspring come out molten or ebony to be most optimal or to sell for the highest price.

In addition to there being no choice is that the color code was broken with the (mostly otherwise fantastic) AH update last year.

Colors like appaloosa and ebony are no long "rare" like they used to be, and even with the highest skill breeding, for example, two ebony horses only gives just under a 50% chance at the offspring being ebony. One ebony and one of another color again gives just under a 50% chance at the offspring being ebony.

This is a bit of irony given the other changes included in today's patch, where higher archaeology skill gives a higher chance at the more "useful" metal types:

  

1 hour ago, DevBlog said:

• When combining a basic metal item the chance of iron is now improved at higher levels.
• When combining an alloy metal item the chance of steel is now improved at higher levels.

 

Finally, with the fabulous introduction of rare traits, us breeders have been set up for huge disappointments when our otherwise perfectly traited animal comes out as anything except the one best color.

 

While I think that ideally it would be really cool if the different color horses had different benefits just like the metal/wood types, I don't think this is realistic for myriad reasons.

So for simplicity's sake, please just give all horses the 2.5% speed boost irrespective of color so that players can choose what they like instead of being told by the game code which is best.

[Rockmodd 103]

+1 Stop forcing us into some end game meta in this "sandbox" game.

[MordosKull 822]

good argument

 

and not sure why dark color would affect horse performance in anyway aside from hiding in the dark

 

i mean, look what this brown horse can do

 

[Lovelie 419]

Hi, is this a good place to also ask about this: Is the Ebony Speed Bonus even working in the first place?

 

I know this is an old thread... so perhaps it is different nowadays. But I scoured the patch notes since 2017 and didn't find any mentions of "Ebony" "Speed" etc. horse fix.

 

 

Notably, this copy-pasted from WU code (which I assume is also in WO code)

 

 }
      if ((!this.status.isTraitBitSet(15)) && (!this.status.isTraitBitSet(16)) && 
        (!this.status.isTraitBitSet(17)) && (!this.status.isTraitBitSet(18)) && 
        (!this.status.isTraitBitSet(24)) && (!this.status.isTraitBitSet(25)) && 
        (this.status.isTraitBitSet(23))) {
        if (isHorse())
        {
          if (sstrength.skillCheck(20.0D, 0.0D, !moving, 1.0F) <= 0.0D) {}
        }
        else {
          traitMod += 0.025F;
        }
      }

So anyone good at coding care to chime in. I'm not good at it.

 

TraitBitSet(23) is the Ebony color. So it looks like it checks

1. If it's NOT other colors and if it IS Ebony color

2. If it is a Horse, and if it passes a strengthcheck, do nothing (normal stuff?)

3. Else, if its NOT a horse, add 2.5% speed bonus. 

 

So it really looks like the code is trying to only giving any ebony horse speed bonus if it's NOT a horse? xD Huh??

Well, if what I said is true and the code is all fudged up in the first place, that explains why the OP Sidereal did a lot of testing and didn't get any results supporting any speed bonus.

 

Anywayyy, back to your suggestion, in addition to me wondering if this speed bonus was working for Horses at all, I also think it's weird to have a bonus for only 1 color, and it's basically just a random color anyway. So even if it's broken, don't even fix it. Just take it out. Lol!

Edited August 16, 2022 by Lovelie

[Finnn 3,301]

32 minutes ago, MordosKull said:

good argument

 

and not sure why dark color would affect horse performance in anyway aside from hiding in the dark

 

i mean, look what this brown horse can do

 

why are the dumb donkeys the ultimate final boss mount

#disgusted-from-them

[Pukaria 201]

1 hour ago, Lovelie said:

Hi, is this a good place to also ask about this: Is the Ebony Speed Bonus even working in the first place?

 

I've done some testing on this myself because many moons ago, I really wanted to believe that ebony horses didn't get a speed boost. But unfortunately, I was able to get a higher top speed out of an ebony horse than I was with a nonebony.

It's much more obvious on molten, since hell horses activate their traits more often, that they also get the speed boost.

 

Big sad 😭

 

1 hour ago, Lovelie said:

I know this is an old thread... so perhaps it is different nowadays. But I scoured the patch notes since 2017 and didn't find any mentions of "Ebony" "Speed" etc. horse fix.

 

Notably, this copy-pasted from WU code (which I assume is also in WO code)

 

Since AH was completely overhauled with the May 2021 update, I would assume the WU code we can see is no longer valid for WO.

 

1 hour ago, Finnn said:

why are the dumb donkeys the ultimate final boss mount

 

I assume you mean mules but yes, I agree. There's almost no point to the great work they did on new draft horse models, and the previous work they did implementing new horse colors, because if you're not going all out with hell horses, draft mules blow horses out of the water, regardless of the 2.5% boost ebony horses get.

 

I don't want to sidetrack my own thread here haha, but I do have some ideas for making a more rewarding hybrid animal that I may also post to suggestions some day.

[Aleck 316]

I squinted at the code Lovelie pasted above and it looks to me, also, like it is saying:

 

If an animal is ebony color, check to see if it's a horse.

   If it's a horse, perform a strength check.

      If the strength check result is less than or equal to 0, then do nothing.

      end if

   else <<<If it's not a horse!>>> give it a speed bonus of 2.5%

   end if

end if

 

It really looks like someone got too deep into their nested if statement and slapped the end bracket and the else statements in the wrong places.

 

But with all that said, +1 to the original post. I hate the whole "Only ebonies are good enough because they're the fastest." approach so many people take.

 

It adds nothing, it helps nothing, it furthers nothing, all it does is encourage everyone to use identical horses... Which is boring and sad.

[Sidereal 1,118]

2 hours ago, Lovelie said:

I know this is an old thread... so perhaps it is different nowadays. But I scoured the patch notes since 2017 and didn't find any mentions of "Ebony" "Speed" etc. horse fix.

 

Now that brings back some memories of doing science to it... 👩‍🔬

 

 

25 minutes ago, Pukaria said:

I've done some testing on this myself because many moons ago, I really wanted to believe that ebony horses didn't get a speed boost. But unfortunately, I was able to get a higher top speed out of an ebony horse than I was with a nonebony.

It's much more obvious on molten, since hell horses activate their traits more often, that they also get the speed boost.

 

I'd love to know more about this!  I went a little further with experimenting - spent about 20 hours riding back and forth on a long, perfectly flat road and never once saw an ebony horse exceed the maximum of a non-ebony horse with all speed traits.  I had a theory for a while that only three of the 'old' speed traits could be active at one time - so if the 'ebony' trait kicked in, one of the other speed traits would be locked out and explain the same maximum speed.  And granted, all this was before the speed/draft changes so things might have been a little different after the speed/draft update.

Because speed traits appear to turn on and off in complex ways, I spent a few months breeding a zero-trait ebony horse to confirm this - and sure enough, a zero trait ebony horse does have a single speed boost that kicks in from time to time when compared to a zero-trait non-ebony horse.  This was back before I was breeding hell horses - and testing just now with a molten vs a non-molten, I do see a small (0.75 km/h) but noticeable difference in top speed between the two.

All that having been said, I still stand by my conclusion that the ultimate difference in travel time over long distances is more strongly affected by the whims of the RNG toggling the speed boosts on and off and by taking an optimal route far more than the ebony boost could ever compensate for.  They might be 'faster' on paper, but not in a way that matters with practical use - so ride whatever color horse appeals to you the most!

[Eleraan 351]

Hmm does this make draft Bison even worse for draft animals than before? Weren't they already beat out by basic draft horses with gear even on wagons?

[HawkHawk 299]

I think Horses having unique elements and traits related to their breed/colour is not a bad thing. In fact I'd like to see it go further but with the caveat that traits specific to Horse Colour are highly likely rather than garentueed, those trait could still be accessible by other Horse types but far less common. For example

 

Ebony/Molten - 95% chance these will have the current speed boost, 5% chance other colour Horses may inherit this trait creating a much rarer combination of Horse.

 

They could also add other traits that are more likely to appear on certain colours such as some Horses having a bonus draft trait, more hardiness in combat etc.

[Grumpled 138]

+1

I've always resented that my favourite horses in game are seen as inferior, and that I get left behind when riding across the server with friends (absolutely in no way related to my trash level horse gear, I swear)

I shouldn't have to chose between looks and speed. I should be able to pick horse colours that match my wagon/cart without being penalised because I have a different favourite colour than other players.

 

If nothing else, I'm already whining daily about myriad aspects of current AH, don't add another.

[Burdok 163]

I fully agree with HawkHawk on this one, Instead of removing stuff from the game, add balance across the board.

[Ecrir 887]

Removing this sounds like a no brainer, since right now there's no advantage to any color except for ebony, thus there's no reason to have a horse with any color other than ebony. That's not exactly balanced, now is it? It also discourages people from going with a specific color because they like the way it looks, which is a real shame.

[Archaed 2,280]

It's such a tiny speed boost that I've never bothered with it,  is everyone else feeling that forced to minmax? 

[Pukaria 201]

7 minutes ago, Archaed said:

It's such a tiny speed boost that I've never bothered with it,  is everyone else feeling that forced to minmax? 

Regardless of whether we personally feel forced to optimize, there's no denying that there are concrete impacts from this mechanic. For example, ebony 5 speeds consistently go for 1g+ over an equivalent 5 speed nonebony on NFI.

 

Ironically, with regard to Lovelie's and Sidereal's comments, I haven't actually been able to get a 4 or 5 speed ebony to go faster than an equivalent nonebony since we started this discussion.

Sometime I intend to spend more time testing and put up more detailed results, but at least preliminarily, this may already not be working for riding horses.

 

But even still, the perception is there, the newest patch notes reinforce it, and it's not fair or practical to ask, again for example, the breeder of a nonebony rare horse to try to convince the player base that their horse is in fact just as valuable as an ebony.

[Archaed 2,280]

3 hours ago, Pukaria said:

Regardless of whether we personally feel forced to optimize, there's no denying that there are concrete impacts from this mechanic. For example, ebony 5 speeds consistently go for 1g+ over an equivalent 5 speed nonebony on NFI.

 

Wait, are you saying that an ebony horse is worth ONE GOLD MORE than a non ebony? 

 

People do realise it's like a bonus .14 km/h right? 

[Sidereal 1,118]

11 hours ago, Archaed said:

It's such a tiny speed boost that I've never bothered with it,  is everyone else feeling that forced to minmax? 

 
Given that you've met many a wurmian in your time, I going to suspect this question is entirely rhetorical. 

 

7 hours ago, Pukaria said:

But even still, the perception is there, the newest patch notes reinforce it, and it's not fair or practical to ask, again for example, the breeder of a nonebony rare horse to try to convince the player base that their horse is in fact just as valuable as an ebony.

 

And this has been an eternal dilemma across many trade goods in Wurm.  We've seen it with enchantment strength, with weapon or tool ql, and (on a personal note) with dyes - some wurmians absolutely want to pay a premium cost for that little extra edge.  Whether or not the additional cost is worth it is left as an exercise to the buyer.

 

  

On 8/16/2022 at 4:06 PM, Eleraan said:

Hmm does this make draft Bison even worse for draft animals than before? Weren't they already beat out by basic draft horses with gear even on wagons?

I believe this has been documented elsewhere, but I'd still choose four-draft bison for my wagon team over four-draft horses.

Four-draft bison, empty wagon:  max speed 20.88 km/h

Four-draft bison, 12 crates full of stone:  max speed 18.00 km/h

 

Four-draft horses, 90ql shoes with 90+ WoA, empty wagon:  20.88 km/h

Four-draft horses, 90ql shoes with 90+ WoA, 12 crates full of stone: 17.30 km/h

 

And that's even before getting into bison having more consistent speed boosts when pulling a wagon.  And even though I love love love the draft horse model and have the luxury of providing 16 top quality shoes with 16 top quality enchantments, a four-draft bison team will be better wagon team.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Sidereal
ETA: Bison notes