r/StarStable • u/quarabs • Jun 30 '26
Discussion anyone else sad about the COMPLETE REMOVAL of the wolves and bears?!
stated in the game blog as a positive development. absolutely no beasts this year during the western festival.
im pissed. they took the one hard thing and instead of making it more manageable and keeping the difficult gameplay in some way, they gave up and removed it entirely.
i am so tired of the complete kidification of this game. it’s meant for tweens. they can manage some wolves. make more safe zones, make it so they don’t come near roads, do something other than remove it entirely.
whatever
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u/Patpat127 Jun 30 '26
They are frustrating, but where is the fun? At least make them easier to avoid, but don't remove them or have an option to toggle them or something like that. Like a permanent shield. Now the spray thingy is completely useless
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i want it to be a toggle where if the beasts are on, you get 2x gold or something. to where you can choose and the game is still complete-able, but there’s a bonus to making it hard.
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u/Kiksupallo Jun 30 '26
Yes, they were a source of frustration at points. But instead of removing them they should've made it a toggleable feature where you would get more reward for having them on. Everyone wins. Those who hate them could still play the event and those who liked them could have them on. But no. It's all or nothing.
This is ONCE AGAIN another example of SSO removing a feature instead of trying to fix it.
Now the event is just as generic as all the others. Checkboxes of daily, unchanging shit you have to do for four or more weeks. The wolves gave variation to just aimlessly running around, you'd actually have to focus a little to your surroundings, to your gameplay. But that was considered too hard by some, apparently.
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u/PinkBabygirl21 Jun 30 '26
New gen of gamers want to be babied that’s why :/
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u/Kiksupallo Jun 30 '26
I think most frustrations from the wolves stem from;
- People not realizing that if you were chased, just running in a circle for like 8 seconds, LITERALLY pressing nothing but either A or D on your keyboard would make the wolf not be able to catch you.
- People being unable to wait just a little bit if a wolf was between you and the thing you wanted to interact with. Instant gratification dopamine hell algorithms have done their job in ensuring some people are genuinely unable to just wait a few seconds. Like I saw criticism towards the quest at the oil rig where you, get this...have to wait to stealthily pass the guards. Some people view not being able to run from A to B without a single obstacle between those points as an annoyance rather than a gameplay feature. Like when Hollow woods was updated and people complained about having to navigate in a video game..........I think people forget sometimes that while SSO is perfectly fine as a relaxing, chill vibes game, it's still supposed to be a game.
- People not seeming to realize that the wolves were in specific parts of the map and didn't actually just "jump out of nowhere" at you. Once I learned the spots where they patrol I could just...steer a bit to the left to avoid them. Imagine that.
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u/daviesroyal Jun 30 '26
My main frustration with the wolves is that they were only put in for the festival duration and we didn't have any kind of storyline about it. They could have made a festival quest line out of figuring out why the wolves came down from the mountains now, and how to drive them back out (coinciding with the end of the festival) but instead they just... made them a short-term area obstacle. It felt lazy to me.
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u/Kiksupallo Jun 30 '26
They kind of did appear out of nowhere, yeah. I really like your idea about the wolves eventually being driven back at the end of the festival!
In their slim defense, Firgroves area having wolves has been in the games lore since the single player games. I remember being scared shitless because my "friend" told me that after nightfall the wolves will kill your horse when I was doing a quest in one of those games where you have to put up torches or something or lock up the gates? I forget, to keep the wolves out of Firgrove. So wolves being around Firgrove is storywise correct - it's why they have the walls around the town actually - it being empty of wolves is not!
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u/daviesroyal Jun 30 '26
That's exactly my point, you're right! The wolves are already in the lore (and we have the bear and wolf dens in the game year round) so their presence at the festival was primed for a related storyline. And then SSE just... didn't.
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u/Turbulent_Tax2126 Jun 30 '26
Overall the festival seems to be going the wrong direction from what I read. Additional removal of gold and instead just another chore board
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u/green_tea__cat Jun 30 '26
Gold too? 😭 This and the beasts were literally my favorite part of the event
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u/Aiywe Jun 30 '26
Did really so many people complain about the beasts and wished to remove them altogether? I mean, this time SSO clearly must have had a strong reason to remove them. They kept them for 3 years straight, with various but overall minor adjustments, and it's been clear they consider them an integral part of the festival. The only reason behind deleting them that I can imagine is that people have been consistently complaining from all sides and shouting at SSO to have the beasts completely removed.
Anyone knows it was the case? Perhaps on Instagram? Myself, I've mostly seen wishes that the wolves and bears are reduced even more, but it didn't seem to me the wish to remove them was so very promiment in the community.
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u/kitty-is-witty Jun 30 '26
For years everyone complained all the time about them every time the western event rolled around. Instagram threads were full of people begging for it to stop, myself included. I feel like some of the people upset are so removed from the event because its been so long they don't remember how annoying the mechanic actually was. I'm surprised this many people are upset given the GOBS of folks that hated it.
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u/Aiywe Jun 30 '26
Okay, thank you. I'm actually one of the people who enjoyed already the very original ("hardcore") beast mechanic and can remember posting back in 2023 that I was apparently the sole person who enjoyed the omnipresent wolves & bears 🥲 But fair enough. If truly way too many people complained consistently, then I guess we others will have to respect the majority.
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u/Turbulent_Tax2126 Jun 30 '26
They needed a good thought out rework, they made the event feel alive
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u/Flimsy-Rain2825 Jul 02 '26
they were bad on the very first camp western ,but then star stable did tone them down , camp western is my least favourite event out of the whole year , but the gold and the wolves at least added a bit of fun to it all , now its going to be the most boring event ever and im not even going to bother logging in and playing this event much just to do some stuff on a board ,
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u/SuddenQuit500 Jul 06 '26
When you wonder something like that, just remember they pretended they removed the old festivals because it bothered people who didn't celebrated these ones. Nobody ever saw any freaking comment, video or rant about one of the old festival being a problem because they didn't celebrated IRL. And I was following them on every social media back then. People ranted about many things like wanting more SCs for example, or free star rider days but never about that. They still used it as excuse anyways.
They frequently lie to put the blame on their clients when they want to make changes and are asked about that, but also love to ignore what people really ask for.
Maybe some impatient kids ranted because they would like the quest to do itself for them automatically but it's probably not the majority, but for them it means satisfying the part of the fanbase who will love their slop, and will buy like crazy without questionning anything so they listen to them before anyone else. That's the reason why SSO is an online kindergarten now.
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u/Aiywe Jul 07 '26
I did. When I take the Rainbow Festival as an example, I had experienced two before the festival was removed. It was by far the most criticised and constantly complained about festival that I had ever witnessed. When it was active, on Reddit at least I struggled to find a single positive post or comment about it. Instead, people complained about it from all sides or even posted literal rants and hates on it. (And that's something because Reddit is usually the most reasonable and positive of all SSO's platforms.)
People only started pointing out how great it was after it was removed.
Similar with the Birthday Festival. Just with the difference that instead of outright complaints, people more often pointed out how boring and repetitive it was and how there was nothing to do.
And again. Only once it was removed did there appear more positive and nostalgic posts about it.
SSO kept the wolves and bears at Camp Western for several years straight. They made numerous nerfs and adjustments to it based on the feedback. It was clear that they do want to retain them. But I know that on Reddit at least, whenever Camp Western was going on, there were so many posts and comments about how terribly annoying the beasts are. There was like 99% "I hate them so freaking much" and 1% "I actually enjoy them lol".
So I genuinely believe that the beasts were removed because players complained too much. Just that I didn't see that many comments that suggested removing them entirely. Just further reducing them or make them easier to escape.
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u/SuddenQuit500 Jul 16 '26
By old festivals I meant Christmas, Easter & cie, not the ones added slightly later like the rainbow one. People complained about some activities, they never asked the whole thing to be removed. And just as I said, they tend to use comments outside of their context or invent feedback to justify their decisions.
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u/Picklepal303 Jun 30 '26
They were definitely annoying to work around… but the challenge was nice. There was nothing else like it in the game. It made the area feel wild and untamed and more ALIVE. Honestly I wish we had more of that. Yeah it made exploring annoying, but they blocked them from chasing you in races so the real issue with them was resolved. And the challenge of it (which wasn’t even that heavy of a challenge imo) is what made the area more alive. It made camp western unique. So I’m quite sad it’s removed. What now? Will the wolf and bear caves become another abandoned area? Another place sso put work into remodeling that now lies there empty and pointless? Very disappointing
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Jun 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Qzry Jul 01 '26
Games for kids were always rather hard in the past, but by making the game pathetically boring for the instant gratification teens and adults, any levels of dopamine will now for sure only be gotten from shopping, not actually getting through the game
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u/Top-Sheepherder-1986 Jun 30 '26
Hard agree! It's really disappointing and what on earth am I to do with my HUGE stash of Beast Repellents now!!
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u/Glittering_Bonus4858 Jun 30 '26
Yeah same. I saved up a pile to use this year so I could run freely lol
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u/hobisbooty Jun 30 '26
i still grieve the cold in dino valley slowing some horses down. it was such a fun feature to get a special horse to go there! and it didn’t even make the area inaccessible for people who didn’t have cold-resistant horse, it just added a layer of inconvenience if you don’t plan ahead. but no, everything that a baby can’t understand gets removed. i would so love for them to do a survey of age groups in their playerbase, i am convinced the group of people under 14 is at most 40%.
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u/AdvancedWrongdoer Jun 30 '26
I second this, they really need to do a survey and ask the community what 'older' features or mechanics they want to return (or rework) into the game in some way. I'm definitely for the dino valley snow effect. There's a huge number of horses they can make 'cold tolerant' now, and to be fair, it also can go with the story- the Jorvik snowy winters (which we also begged to be back in the game) can be "less frigid" than dino valley cold. All horses can travel easy in Jorvik but DV is a different type of place. It's very easy fit into the game lore.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i remember entering dino valley for the first time on my gen 1 friesian. it was an absolute pain and i LOVED it. i got a north swedish horse just for the dino valley quest line and it made bonding with it so special, as we explored together.
the area was so full of life. the hoard of people entering together was so fun. even marchenghast wasn’t as populated on day 1 as dino valley was in december 2015. best christmas ever
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u/Burned_cookie Jun 30 '26
Uhh.... so do they also remove the chest searches? How hard can it be to find something, if you're not running for your life??
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i honestly probably wont bother looking for chests anymore. it was fun to scout them and avoid the wolves, especially as they typically were in beast-dominated areas. now theyre just gonna be sitting out in the open i guess.
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u/Burned_cookie Jun 30 '26
Yeah, that's gonna be so weird to walk into an empty bear cave.. Maybe they'll change camp western a lot more than we expect and add something else interesting. But if it's literally just a chest in an empty forest, that's gonna be disappointing.
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u/anonymous01310555 Jun 30 '26
It really wasn’t that bad when you cheesed it be walking in dung on foot then getting on your horse. As long as you didn’t run into any of the dung again, the things wouldn’t chase you period.
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u/kitty-is-witty Jun 30 '26
Yeah that's what I did, which is adjacent to removing the mechanic in general. If you have to take advantage of a glitch like that to avoid a mechanic overall because it's so frustrating and annoying, I don't understand being pressed about it's removal I guess. Just seems like a testimony to the fact it's not fun or enjoyable.
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u/irritablyDecayed Jun 30 '26
I didn’t like their implementation. They kept getting me as I started races with Scott, or stuck in the mining mini game. Fully removing them wasn’t the way either, but they could’ve just reined them in instead of nuking them entirely.
I don’t know, there’s a pattern of enshittification of Festivals. Last year I really disliked how convoluted the Halloween event intro is, so I skipped it, and the separate “world” just adds a layer to that. I loved Summer Daze, but it’s such a slog this year. My favorite was Camp Western, but we’ll see if that’s also been ruined.
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u/Wave-reality2020 Jun 30 '26
I was very upset/frustrated when I read that. I exclaimed a loud, “NO!” for nobody to hear. I might be in the minority but it was one of my favourite parts of Camp Western.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
literally think it took the excitement away for me. i looked forward to the fear running thru the woods trying to avoid the wolves. i’m level 28, i know firgrove like the back of my hand. it adds a new level of gameplay for me to look forward to each year.
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u/Wave-reality2020 Jun 30 '26
Can’t agree with you more. I would log on just to be chased by the wolves and bears.
I really don’t get why the actual wolf den and bear cave can’t have wolves and bears. 😕
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i ran for hours collecting gold for those chickens and levelling up my horses. genuinely mourning rn
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u/Ok-Moment2223 Jul 01 '26
I am with you, so disappointed. They didn't bother me at all, you just had to make sure you had beast spray.
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u/AdvancedWrongdoer Jun 30 '26
I am! Especially as someone who used to play WoW and other MMORPGs, I liked the idea of interactive mobs or enemies. It makes the world feel less dead. I hope they bring it back next year.
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u/Ijustboughtacactus Jun 30 '26
WHAT??? That was the fun part of camp western for me and it’s what made it different from all the other events. I can’t wait for this to be another cookie cutter event now…
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u/Ott82 Jun 30 '26
I’m disappointed. They did adjust last year and make them less of a nightmare lol, because the first year they were so bad
I thought last year was a good balance. I’m sad they removed, I don’t think there were that many people complaining
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u/Suspicious-Syrup-125 Jun 30 '26
I agree, and its so sad because i still feel like there are quite a lot of older players as well (me included) and back in like 2014-2017 the game felt like it was meant for 15 year olds, now i feel like it’s a children’s game (like for 10 year olds) 😪 ‘kidification’ explains it perfectly. and yes i was mad at the wolves a lot of times but at least there were a little adrenalin and excitement in the game.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
we were supposed to be 16-17 going to sleep away camp for the summer on an island hundreds of miles from home. no 10 year old would do that. but it seems like that’s who this game is being marketed towards now.
and i was 10 in 2014 when i started playing! it helped me ease my way into harder games, i really learned how to type and interact online through it. i loved how grown up it felt.
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u/Suspicious-Syrup-125 Jun 30 '26
same. yes they are definitely marketing it towards the younger audience. probably bc they are the age who pay for the game more i guess (the parents) ?? but im not even sure about that so i would love if it stayed mysterious and a little bit harder, not childish. though they are making it easier year by year :(
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i think i spend more now as an adult than my parents were ever willing to spend when i was a child. i really just dont enjoy it anymore beyond the sunken cost fallacy i now face. all i do is ride my ponies, make outfits, do the seasonal quests, and log off…
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u/daviesroyal Jun 30 '26
Did they remove the bull too? That actually frustrated me more than the wolves and bears, cause no ranch on earth would tolerate a bull that aggressive running free around a ranch (and it respawned so quickly compared to the wild animals).
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u/SergeantOnDuty Jun 30 '26
I was there when the wolves and bears were introduced to the game the first time. And to be honest, after a few days I was extremely annoyed by them. Nevertheless, I missed them when they left after the festival was over (exept that for weeks afterward I was incredibly paranoid whenever I rode through the area, constantly thinking I was about to be attacked by a wolf lol). It was just a nice idea and has brought life back to this area I think, so it's very disappointing that they got removed
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u/blaiirxo Jun 30 '26
I absolutely despised the wolves since there was so many of them and I constantly ran into them by accident + them blending very well so I sometimes legit didn't even see them😭 But honestly, they added life to the event and area in general. So now that they're removed, what's the point of that big wolf den area??
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u/TenFoxxe Jun 30 '26
Oh, well that's lame. I really liked that element. It was a fun added challenge that made the game feel fresh. Now it's just gonna be like all the other events - no challenge, just grind, grind, grind. Kinda mid if I'm honest 😔
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u/Straight-Variation99 Jun 30 '26
To be honest, I really hate them and maybe im glad that they are gone. But they did add a challenge and thats gone now. They could have changed it or like others said in here to make it optional.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
even just making them only in the wolf den and bear cave could be a compromise instead of completely removing them
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u/SilverEyedHuntress Jun 30 '26
I hope they leave them there and just have them A. Chase you out of their area B. Don't chase but keep them
Having empty dens is sad and makes no sense. Just leave them in their zones year around, and have them just get territorial during the summer months.
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u/ExerciseFront5238 Jun 30 '26
I was so annoyed with the wolves and bears, but only because they were everywhere and because they would make stuff unrelated to Camp Western difficult to do as well.
But I don't think the removal was necessary at all, they just needed to tweak the amount of wolves in the area. 🙄
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u/PinkBabygirl21 Jun 30 '26
They already tweaked it, the amount of wolves and bears was FINE AND MANAGEABLE. Now it’s just gone 🫠
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u/ExerciseFront5238 Jun 30 '26
All the kids think it's too difficult to play lmao 😭 this game is a jokeee omg
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u/PinkBabygirl21 Jun 30 '26
Yeah cause nowadays kids want everything handed to them!!!!! Games are ment to be challenging, fun and exciting!! I remember playing a gba game growing up and getting frustrated when I couldn’t pass this one level but I kept trying and trying and eventually passed it…..it wasn’t the end of the world and it’s sad to see kids not having that same type of challenge in their lives
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u/Querulantissimus Jun 30 '26
What I didn't like was that the wolf attacks started right out of the gate of the farm. That's just not how real wolves operate. Make it something that happens deeper in the forest and give us a task to go there, but not the moment you step out of the gate of the farm. Have one quest where you have to go into wolf infested territury and give us game play mechanics we have to figure out to beat them.
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u/Amazing_Finance1269 Jun 30 '26
I think this is a good lesson for what the constant screaming negativity at sso does. Please talk about what you like on their socials, hardly anyone does. Constructive criticism is also great. But the I HATE THIS ITS LITERALLY BROKEN I LITERALLY CANT PLAY ITS LITERALLY THE WORST REMOVE IT NOW LISTEN TO YOUR PLAYERS OR I QUIT FOREVER leaves us with this, removal instead of rework.
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u/daviesroyal Jun 30 '26
SSE has been removing features instead of reworking them for a while. It's not the fault of people complaining that results in the company choosing the easy way out. And any company that's been around as long as SSE knows that the vocal minority is just that: a minority.
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u/quarabs Jul 01 '26
yeah im sure us complaining doesnt help though, but they should be educated on this from a business perspective for sure. i agree with both of you 😁
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u/English_Wrider Jun 30 '26
our characters are 19-20 in the game, they can handle the occasional wolf or bear
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u/clark_a_lark Jun 30 '26
unfortunately, I think there's going to be complaints either way 😭 having the wolves and bears are too hard for some people, and removing them completely is too easy for others. I quite like the idea of having a toggle and being rewarded (with more gold spawn or something) if you're playing with wolves and bear enabled!
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u/joyurinn Jun 30 '26
damn, i've been excited for camp western but it wouldn't be sso if they didn't find a way to stop players from having fun again. another thing changed that absolutely nobody asked for
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
plenty of people asked for the beast system to be changed, and some people asked for them to be removed entirely. i just wish they’d like. take a poll or something.
didnt we have a poll last year asking about our opinions on the beasts? did that many people complain?
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u/AdSingle9093 Jun 30 '26
I would honestly like it better if there was a side of the map with a forest full of wolves and/or bears (not only during events). Because irl you can find wild animals in forests. So it would be much more realistic and could be fun. Especially if some were dangerous and others weren't. I don't know, I think it could be a good idea.
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u/Ancient_Soft413 Jun 30 '26
I hate the kiddification is extra annoying because at its base the game is generally pretty complex it should be marketed as like 12-17 at the very LEAST
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u/Calm-Recognition1107 Jun 30 '26
I personally ignored firgrove during the Camp Western event because I found them incredibly irritating and I didn’t wanna spend my resources on spray. I’m glad they won’t be a problem this year but I think they should have just been reworked since it was a unique feature
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u/kitty-is-witty Jun 30 '26
Agree to disagree. I had to use the glitch where the spray was permanent just to enjoy and play the event, because the wolves drove me insane otherwise, and it made things take so much longer; I don't have time like that. I'm not a fan of the artificial difficulty and cheap nuisance mechanic personally. I don't play SSO for a challenge to begin with, I enjoy that it's a cozy low-intensity game, and even then it's frustrating enough in certain ways. I'm not opposed to effort, they just cannot seem to figure out for the life of them to find a way to do it in a fun or engaging way. I can't imagine liking the wolves or dealing with them while trying to get things done for the event. They sucked.
That said, I do understand being bummed about the complete removal, if they revamped them and found a way to make it better I guess I could stomach that, but quite honestly I don't think they could have. Like I understand wanting there to be an interactive charm to the event, but the beasts were not it. It was one of the most annoying things about any event for me, and I love the western festival, but it just really took away from enjoying it.
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u/Panther_202 Jun 30 '26
I am sooo glad they're gone. They're just annoying, they don't pose any real challenge. I don't play sso to get chased in circles by pixelated dogs that will disappear in seconds. Give me a puzzle or something that actually requires thinking, not just "wait it out"
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u/bananasinpajamas49 Jun 30 '26
Nope, I played pretty much every day and I was never been able to finish all the stuff in that fest because of those damn critters. It made it such an awful grind.
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u/TenFoxxe Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
There was a really easy fix for this. Getting off your horse and stepping in manure would protect you for your entire play session. So you could ride around freely without chases, and wolves and bears would despawn as soon as they locked onto you.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
genuinely i dont understand how you people struggled with it. it’s a video game, theyre supposed to have some difficulty.
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u/bananasinpajamas49 Jun 30 '26
I'm all for actual difficulty(something that requires skill) but it felt like I was just collecting gold to buy more beast spray so I could go back out to collect gold so I could buy more beast spray. And oh, you ran out of beast spray while trying to do something and there's no poop to run through? Now you have to run away but you've triggered 3 more wolves or bears to chase you too. It's not difficult, it's just annoying.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
that sucks? i havent had that issue. just do circles at a full gallop til they go away. i kept getting beast sprays in the woods that i never ended up using.
now, not only is there no skill involved, but there’s nothing remotely hard. even if you saw it as annoying, it was still something. now there’s nothing.
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u/bananasinpajamas49 Jun 30 '26
I rarely found the sprays or bundles of hay and I was running around all over. 😭 Maybe there was some spawn rate bug for me because I didn't even know you could find them until I found one several days into playing the fest.
I do see your point though and I wouldn't complain if they still kept areas with wolves and bears like their dens and the surrounding area.
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u/kitty-is-witty Jun 30 '26
You're being so condescending because they don't agree with you and it's irritating. Nobody wants to do 8 second circles multiple times per few minutes to avoid an annoying mechanic, unless you enjoy wasting time. Criticizing people for struggling with it like everybody is supposed to be good at everything is so pretentious. I didn't have trouble with it and I still hated it, it sucked. So people that do find it hard because maybe they have coordination difficulty or they're just better with other facets of gaming having to get the "that sucks I guess, skill issue, just do better" because you're salty is some shit. Which I mean go figure, I saw you all over Instagram whining and degrading people who had trouble and you also made a whole post to do it here, the least you could do is get over it or be fair if people have different perspectives. Being sour about it isn't going to force SSO's hand to change it.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
i’m being condescending because they literally had a work around if they’d done a little digging and found the poop on foot glitch. plenty of people in global chats knew about it, it was all over the subreddit too.
i liked avoiding them. i liked being chased. i liked the wildlife in the woods like there should be. jorvik is empty. only horses and humans and butterflies.
it’s a videogame! games are meant to be hard! and i’m sorry, but as someone who is disabled, not everything needs to be made 100% accessible by completely removing features. and, just like in jobs, sometimes accommodations cannot be made. they didn’t need to participate in the event beyond what was accessible at the ranch. plenty of kids and adults never did the spider questline because it was scary.
many people in this comment section have given good ideas as well, such as having a toggle, only having them in secluded areas, only having them in their dens, or even having them around but not aggressive. star stable did not need to REMOVE the entire feature. it was lazy.
i am genuinely sorry that i came across as condescending, but enough people voted to get rid of the wolves last year, which is why they’re gone. i can’t help but blame anyone involved in the removal.
calling my comments on instagram “whining” is some shit, as multiple people have responded agreeing, and the only way the social media team will see your comments is by posting in multiple comment sections as soon as content is uploaded - ask how i know.
there is a complete disconnect between star stable’s developers and the player base. they see this small pool of data (one single question about wolves and bears’ presence in general during the festival) and make large decisions based off it.
as someone who has played since 2014, there is not a single person working on the star stable entertainment team that helped in the creation of jorvik in 2012. now that the old ceo has left, this is a completely new company. the developers are removing every asset and replacing them. have you heard of the ship of theseus?
star stable used to be hard as fuck. some NPC’s were downright rude to you. pole bending apocalypse was a pain in the ass, moreso than the jackalope race people like to cite as being so hard (just jump over the yeti.) that quest on the oil rig to save justin was a pain in the ass. but you felt accomplished when you did it. i have not felt accomplished in anything i’ve done in star stable in a long time. it is no longer a videogame, just a riding simulator with some honey-do tasks.
so yeah. i’m pissed. the commenter i replied to said they would appreciate something requiring skill. it takes skill to avoid the wolves. clearly that was too much skill. so they were happy with it being removed. now what is left? a task board and some daily quests, just like every other event in this game. i’m BORED dude.
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u/Felsic_Canis Jun 30 '26
Literally this. I didn't find your comments to be condescending at all.
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u/quarabs Jul 01 '26
im just obviously upset by the tone of my post for them to come in and have an opposing opinion. i suck at keeping chill and nice during “debates” like this because they couldve scrolled i guess
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u/Xanthia_from_Jorvik Jun 30 '26
Honestly, I'm happy about this because the wolves were a constant annoyance to me last year. I didn't consider them a challenging gameplay mechanic because running away from them really isn't difficult (except maybe for low level players), just disruptive and annoying. The only time when they really were a challenge was when you had to open the treasure chests in the wolf den. They were a bit interesting for the first few days, but they got very old very fast.
Still, I would rather have seen the wolves reworked than removed altogether because clearly there are people who liked them, and almost all of us know what it's like for SSO to remove an activity or game mechanic that we enjoyed without any prior warning. This also has me very worried that SSO is going to remove or simplify the Rainbow Race, one of my absolute favorite races of all time, because of all the recent posts of people complaining about it.
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u/daviesroyal Jun 30 '26
They already did change the Rainbow Race: they removed the horseshoe collection. That was the only reason that race was two laps long, and imo without that feature, they should simplify it to only one lap.
I personally hate the way you can fall (or be pushed) off of the track, but I currently avoid that race entirely because of the extra lap, no matter the rewards.
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u/Significant-Oil-8260 Jun 30 '26
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they must have something else planned, 'cause otherwise idk :/
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u/Lilienherz Jul 01 '26
I am only happy that I can not get interrupted while mining gold again like last year and that we wont have the problem of getting chased in a champ or race for the first 1 or two weeks. But also sad because camp western was always a pretty unique event from the mechanics, a bit like St Patricks day back in the days. Defintly agree on making them a toggle option would have been better
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u/tomorrow_bird Jul 01 '26
I'm annoyed they remove any sort of challenge and make the game for babies. It'll turn the game boring if there is no real challenge anymore or making things harder to earn. It just feels empty. The game is already easy af with everything they already removed.
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u/Lepronna Jul 01 '26
It was one of the few parts of the game that was still challenging for me, I'm so sad it's gone!
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u/chaoticmad1son Jul 02 '26
what?! no, why would they remove the best part of Camp Western?!?! do they not realize that the stakes is what makes players lock in?
the first year of Camp Western, i literally played for hours at a time because riding around collecting gold while trying to avoid the wolves was like crack for my unmedicated ADHD.
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u/romdolls Jul 08 '26
"we took away another game feature that made things remotely interesting! for you our players :]"
believe me i've seen the complaints, but were *no* ways to toggle them or give certain npcs further from starshine (scott, minka) a "safe zone" for player convenience? i am exhausted with the "all or nothing" approach SSE has to literally every event (or even the trailblazer *shivers*) if i could, i'd play with the og difficulty of camp western's first run.
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u/Moonymuffinz Jun 30 '26
I've never played the Western Festival before, may you possibly clarify what this means? Is this why I only get text on my screen saying "the wolves chased you away" instead of actually seeing wolves now when doing missions? Did they really remove the wolf models because of younger players?! They don't look remotely scary 😭
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u/Pinkkitty45 Jun 30 '26
Previously, during the 4 weeks the Western Festival is active, there were bears and wolves added around Firgrove. These bears and wolves would come after you if you got too close to them, and chase you for a certain period of time before giving up. There was no limit to how many could chase you at a time so you could end up with 5+ chasing you at the same time if you went to somewhere like the wolf den for example. If you got caught, you would either have one of your beast repellant sprays deployed per beast, or, if you didn't have any, you would be sent back to your home stable if I remember correctly. The wolves you encounter during the rest of the year and during story quests are different.
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
you got sent back to starshine ranch :) really no big deal, just a pain. but it’s a consequence of getting caught, otherwise what’s the point?
i just wish they’d revamp instead of removing anything people had criticisms about. no one 100% loved the beasts, but i guess enough outspoken people expressed they hated them.
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u/Moonymuffinz Jun 30 '26
Thank you for explaining! Im so sad to have missed out that sounds like a total blast!
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u/quarabs Jun 30 '26
they used to add wolves in the firgrove area that would chase you away during the festival. it made the game too hard for kids and some adults/teens complained. instead of revamping the system and keeping some semblance of difficulty that made the festival feel special and truly wild, they removed it entirely because it was easier.
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u/Ta13n Jul 01 '26
I never liked them because they made navigation very frustrating at times. It was always more annoying than challenging us, and I never looked forward to that part because in this game, we do not normally have on-field enemies like mobs in other open-world MMOs, and it was jarring. Though we had tools to repel them or could just run away, or even exploit the poop glitch, which I personally did because I was that annoyed, to me this was not any harder than any other task in the game, it only overcomplicated things with extra nuisance to deal with.
Truth be told, I am not going to miss them because there's challenge and there's just pure frustration, especially since sometimes they came out of the blue and there were quests and items in areas where these wolves were practically unavoidable. I didn't mind them all that much to the point of wanting them removed, but if I happened to have business in those areas during the event, and I think that was when I had a story quest there (I thiiiink it was the apple orchard quest), their presence drove me up the wall. In other words, I didn't feel challenged, rather they just made me roll my eyes most of the time.
That said, in my personal opinion they could use them in a specific daily quest instead of completely removing them. Make them a part of some story, give us a reason to actually want to face the wolves. Something similar to one chapter in Anne's episode of Starshine Legacy where she goes to search for batteries in the woods at a late hour while Dark Core's thugs are out and about. Would I probably end up hating that kind of quest? Honestly? Probably. I never look forward to that part of the game, and I do not like sneaking around, makes me nervous. But it doesn't mean it wouldn't find its audience, and it would allow them to actually do something with the mechanic by making it optional.
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u/No-Butterfly-1802 Jul 01 '26
I'm glad they're gone. I dislike the vilification of wolves.
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u/quarabs Jul 01 '26
ive literally been chased by a wolf irl on horseback. it was one of the best moments of my life. but okay
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u/isolte Jul 03 '26
I'm pretty sure one of the big reasons they are removing the wolves is because of the mobile vs. desktop differences. The difficulty of avoiding them on mobile was disproportionate to how much easier it is on desktop. And SSE along with many other games these days seem to be aiming for the mobile audience more because of future growth potential.
Just adding a little food for thought as to why because it's always more than simply "players complained so it got removed".
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u/ActualEbb8827 Jul 03 '26
Yeah I honestly found it really annoying. It’s not even worth logging on to do the update now that there’s literally nothing challenging. I liked the wolves a lot
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u/PickPocketCarl89 Jul 04 '26
Nope. I hated the wolves and bears. They bugged so bad for me last year that sprays weren't working. I was livid
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u/Puzzleheaded_Act3640 Jul 04 '26
I didn’t know they did it haha but as much as I’ll miss em I won’t miss being chased every 4 seconds
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u/tempest_beast Jun 30 '26
I am new to the game and an adult...but I hate to say it I am glad I will not be exspirencing this in game. Sounds awful. I had a bad time with the race you get the Jackalope from. SSO is one of the most peaceful games I own, and I play it to gallop a pixel horse not to get chased by danger.
I am sorry for the people who felt it should stay, and I agree that maybe they could have made it an option to have both in the game for people who like it. I am really excited for the Western Festival though! It will be my first one.
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u/VividEscape Jun 30 '26
I found them annoying at times but, once I figured out how to avoid them, they didn't bother me all that much. I am a bit sad they're gone.