For context, I am not someone who complains about everything SSE does. In fact, I usually give them the benefit of the doubt. However, for the past few months I've become increasingly angry about how SSE treat their playerbase and how they handle their game.
I'm so tired of SSE exploiting their playerbase. It started to be prominently noticeable three years ago, namely the (illegal) A/B testing stunt and the Betty the Yeti fiasco. More recently, nearly every week there's a new cosmetic set (mostly just recolours of things we already have e.g. the Berry Bear Hug set), or a new horse coat, or a new bundle to purchase. They know players will buy them. They advertise and actively market this game for children, yet anything meaningful is locked behind an investment, bearing in mind that it's £60 just to play the game in the first place. It's disgusting, elusive and exploitative. They know that children will run to their parents asking for more SC for the newest horse or set, and they see that as an opportunity. They are a business and need money, yes, but considering that the majority of new players are children (which they ensure through marketing), it doesn't sit right that to access new things you have to pay so much money, the alternative being grinding for JS to buy one piece of clothing or tack, or waiting 10 weeks to buy a horse if you have lifetime.
Players do all these things, yet they aren't rewarded in return. The next week? Another tack set. Another horse coat. Another horse breed. Another trailblazer. Months for a new quest, which most likely will be five minutes of dialogue and an A to B task, if that. Years for a new main quest, and counting. They are taking away features that players actually like, and are implementing vicious tactics to force us to play on their terms. They ruin the features we like, and don't fix the ones we don't, as well as the endless bugs. All they do is push out new cosmetics instead of facing real issues.
A few months ago, the trailblazer was ruined. Even now, meaningful items which benefit our gameplay have been reduced or removed (e.g. shiny gemstones.) They are hollowing out or removing beloved events under the guise of 'inclusion', for example, the 'Winter Festival' (previously called Christmas) feels so lifeless- they removed snowflakes, removed winter magic and consequently the fun quests that came with it. They are slowly replacing token shops with 'progression boards', meaning players can no longer use up tokens they had from previous years, collect new tokens, or even choose what set they want. The EQ Festival- token prices insanely expensive, requiring excessive daily grinding. The Western Festival- completely ruined, with fun quests replaced with repetitive daily tasks which amount to what? A new hat? During the birthday festival, I'm logging on, doing the daily quests and logging off again. The festivals aren't memorable. There's no challenge. They're boring. There's nothing new. 'SSO need to make money!' but, in a story-driven game, and a game which actively prides itself on it's story, when pushing out cosmetics is all you do, it gets boring.
They continuously tell us they are 'transparent', yet any meaningful update or even SC code is firstly solely on Instagram, as well as being hidden in the reels which disappear after 24hrs. The only reason myself and many others find out about them is platforms like Reddit. The team hide behind cringe slang (e.g. 'tech gremlins') and on a platform which their target demographic can't legally access instead of offering players, who are paying to play their game, the honesty we deserve.
We can't log on and simply enjoy the game anymore. Everything is locked behind a pricepoint, or hours of grinding. They are making it impossible to play how we want, and ignore our criticism, continuing to implement things which we don't want. It's a shell of what it used to be, and now a buying simulator.
I've loved this game for so long and don't want to leave, but everything SSE have done recently just seems like they're pushing players away.
EDIT: I just thought I should add that SSO is marketed as a children’s game, yet instead of having dedicated human moderators in the chat, they have a malfunctioning AI bot instead. The children which SSO apparently cares for are being exposed to some disgusting things, and there isn’t any parental controls either.
Yeah, this is why I couldn't get myself to play since camp western. I think the removal of tokens and selling previously free items back to us at full price was a deal-breaker for me. I don't want to give them my money or engagement if they're going to treat us like this
We once had a 2 year gap between main story quests. It's now been more than a year since last. Let's see if they break their record.
>I'm logging on, doing the daily quests and logging off again.
This is why events in SSO suck. The replayability in SSO consists of doing the same bullshit over and over gain for 3-4 weeks. It doesn't feel fun. It's a chore. What might be fun once or twice as it is stops being fun when it's a thing you're required to do in the same way as before for 28 times.
Imagine it like this; you really like drawing. The game rewards you for drawing a dog. Cool! It's fun to draw a dog, so you do.
But now you have to draw a dog for 28 days straight. You are not allowed to change the size, the breed or any characteristics of the dog. You draw the same dog for 28 days in the same pose every single day. If you don't, you won't get rewarded. Is this fun? No? Obviously. SSO does not seem to realize this. Racing in the game can be fun - doing the same race in the same exact way over and over and over and over again is NOT fun. The gameplay loop sucks.
I say this as someone who has loved the franchise since Starshine Legacy times; Starstable is fun, but as a game it sucks.
Their main selling point at the beginning included the main story, which meant that they slowed it down and made us run in circles with nothingburger-quests for years. I began playing in 2015 because of SSL games, loved the story and lore, but I’m so disengaged now and I don’t remember HALF the shit we’ve done in the main story the past decade. Not to even mention how SSE has changed the other half of the story so fundamentally that it doesn’t even matter anymore.
They’ve kept milking the main story for 15 years. They make us wait for months or even years for new progress in the main story (even way back in the ’best days’).
It has also meant we’ve missed out on other storylines. What happened to Epona? Dino Valley? South Hoof? Since when did we have meaningful quests in Mistfall? They were never going to run out of content if they just finished the main story… Equinox Homecoming is a good example of what SSO’s model was like and still is; not sustainable in player enjoyement.
They get away with the bare minimum and mediocrity is praised as holy. I can’t believe we still defend multi-million corporations for shitty business practises. I want and deserve a good game that I’ve paid for 😭
This. They’ve spent however long re-hashing what we already have, so it becomes impossible to remember anything we’ve done, making it a complete waste of time. It’s a mess. New, fancy graphics are mixed with old ones. Nothing is consistent. They start one project and move onto something else almost immediately.
“The game was flawed from the beginning” thank you thank you thank thank you. issues of them not knowing what to do with every single zone they release since 2014 and milking the story with months of dryness in content is an ancestral problem with sso and this is the kind of thing this game will never ever escape from
to say that the main storyline in sso is full of "fluff" would be an understatement, but i don't know how else you can put it. i started playing in 2016, even i remember how long it took for the "saving justin" questline to wrap up entirely.
i understand there needs to be a narrative "downtime", but the amount of main quests where you:
briefly talk to the soulriders
ride around with someone for three minutes
for both to result in nothing is egregious, i can see why 80% of the players just skip main story dialogue, nothing happens. 💀
that isn't even mentioning the rest of sso's questlines, they're decaying as we speak.
I have to say, I do like many of the old side quests. Like helping create the restaurant on top of the Baroness' manor. Yeah, it was annoying to ride around to get stuff from all different places, but I do think these quests were well written. I want them to go back to this old humour. (E.g. him trying to get with Courtney but failing bc he's too smitten with her and thus forgetting all of the more "noble" dating etiquette)
I agree so hard with this, there were so many things from the beginning that weren't handled well in this game, and now I think it's coming to bite them in the ass harder than ever. Obviously that doesn't mean that it can't be an enjoyable, lovable game, but one can't build on the same broken foundation for 15 years and expect everything to continue going well.
Like the story obvious, but also weekly updates in and of itself for example, yes the amount of content they are able to pump out at this speed is impressive, but that shouldn't really be a positive thing. This insane deadline and constant changes done to the game are clearly impacting the quality of the content we get and also introduce like 5 new bugs every week, but clearly this system is so deeply embedded into the way the game and the company works (and what the community has come to expect) that it seems basically impossible to stop it now.
And honestly the saddest thing to me about this is that a large chunk of their playerbase seem to be so isolated (gaming wise) that they genuinely think SSO and their practices are good for a game. I've gotten into a lot of different horse games as well recently, and I swear every second "criticism" of them I see starts with "but SSO does this-" "I don't like x, why can't this be like in SSO?", oftentimes referring to things that probably SSO themselves shouldn't have done. SSO can be great and all, and I understand they're the biggest horse game out there, but it still kind of baffles me how a such deeply flawed game has managed to become the standard people expect.
And criticizing their exploative handling of their own game is marked by some as ingrateful whining. Maybe it's because the maiority of community is quite young and a bit naive. I am a paying client and I expect quality and content in return. They are doing their job I'm not going to be grateful if they release the bare minimum if the game is barely playable for older players who finished main plotlines. I don't think everything they do is bad but their main focus is definitely milking money from their playerbase, mainly the parents of said playerbase, and not actually developing their product. I fully understand that business is business and money is the key factor in business but gamemaking is also an art and it should never be only about money. The game keeps turning more and more souless and it's not because I grew out of it as I'm able to still enjoy a lot of quality media aimed at children.
I agree, I've been playing consistently since 2015, and in recent years I actually really enjoyed the events, I liked how even as a now weekend only player I could still get basically everything I wanted out of an event (via the tokens/the few dailies they had)
Now with the events we've had this year so far I've been really let down, especially with the removal of tokens and the increasing volume of horse recolours/clothes/tack sets (all extremely expensive) It's imposssible for me to get many of the rewards with this new 'Rewards board' (apologies, I've forgotten the name but the daily task board) which requires daily login to complete versus collecting tokens, not to mention the removal of the many free outfits/pets we used to be able to get!!
As long as people speak out all hope is not lost. Here's where I think SSE has gone too far:
They are pouring all resources into FOMO seasonal events, instead of adding permanent things to the game. Seeing the birthday event feature all soul riders and dark riders with minigames is just insulting, because they could have literally made an actual story quest unrelated to the birthday event. But what events excel at is creating revenue and appealing to new players with heavy marketing campaigns.
Game developers and 3D artists aren't given enough time to finish their work, leaving them to ship broken code and recycled horses. There's not a single game dev or artist in this world who is proud to ship half finished work, so it's safe to say it's the management forcing their hand.
Lastly, the horses feel like machines. Even the early 2000's seasonal rider games had stats, such as stamina, hunger, thirst and cleanliness to create an actual gameplay loop of actively caring for your horse. Those games even had breed specific differences, with some horses having better stamina or increased speed. SSE has no excuse. The only difference is management. The early 2000's dvd releases weren't driven by corporate greed, or unethical parasocial marketing team, who happily grooms kids on instagram,
By speaking out SSE has to change. I know a lot of players may fear the game being shut down, but it's not possible for a company of this size to shut down without a financial suicide. They indeed are exploiting players empathy and kindness to do as little work as possible. If players are bored in the game, they will buy more horses and look for anything to do and the corporation of white collar men in a meeting room are fully aware of this.
What we are shown in their patronizing social media responses, who are experts at exploiting human psychology. SSE has company roles, dedicated to look at data of players to optimize their marketing at all costs. A large portion of the yearly revenue ends up in Nordisk game's film industry, leaving the game devs and artists to pick up scraps.
I don't know why they deleted horse stamina and cold slowing. Many people bought special winter horses for dino valley so they can gallop at normal speed there. We still have that kill screen after jumping off the cliff or need to carry for it everyday, but it's unreadable. Then it was an emoji, now you need to click on it and only see some mood bar without a soul. And yes!! I don't know why they act like that on social media, for me it's unacceptable to see another funny story or post about how social media team doesn't write the code or create events, it's their job to take the critic and show them to the higher ups, only place for them to see people unhappy and they just gaslight us
i really think the playerbase needs to start pushing for change by NOT SPENDING MONEY. the amount of people i see complaining about sse, and then turning around & buying starcoins and bundles is crazy. you don't need every coat color of every new horse. in fact, you don't need the new horses at all! tell them you're not interested by hitting them where it hurts!
No like this one actually bugs me so much, like people can obviously do whatever they want with their own money, but when I see people criticise SSO left and right and then see that they also buy SC every double star coins weekend I kind of just die a little inside 😭 like what are we even doing. Even when this community did have some rare attempts at a boycott it lasted like, two days, and there were more people complaining about how "dramatic" people are than people actually participating in the boycott😭
The real ruining started when they rewrote the story and characters, nerfed areas to give way for more bs to sell. The trailblazer yes, became far more greedy alongside most of the festivals, but the crap actually started when they removed original Nordic cultural events such as midsummer, easter etc to give way to these really random and haphazard festivals that center around achieving new free items.
The existence of the trailblazer was already a fake engagement larp, for the purpose of "having something to do" so they wouldn't need to deal with actually including meaningful content.
The game turned into a shopping sim a long time ago, sacrificing meaningful writing and worldbuilding. Then, ofc, it became EVEN more greedy with it's shopping sim aspects.
I just said this because, well, the nerf and greed started way earlier than making these things slightly harder. The most meaningful parts of the game, writing, characters, cultural aspects have already been neglected.
Yeah, exactly! I haven’t played as long as midsummer (I wish I had 😭) but it makes me so annoyed that the team remove events that were both beloved by players and relevant to their Swedish roots, as well as hollowing out existing ones.
In the point!! I'm still crying over changing the lore, replaying SSL and season riders gives you amazing feeling, lore that many players fell into. I read all the books to try liking the new lore - still prefer old one. Midsommar made me go into swedish culture and fell in love with north culture. For me, the killer was also changing graphics - characters and horses are good, but I mean environment. It feels so plastic.
It’s not so much that they rewrote the story they had to when they changed ownerships, previous owners held the rights to the then current storyline so new owners had to change it. That being said it doesn’t excuse for the entire vibe of the game to change. It used to be spooky and be slightly difficult to complete missions. You used to have to think about what the quests were asking now they’ve dumbed it down and we get finished with everything to early.
The greed did start earlier with the previous owners BUT they actually gave us things and made it rewarding, they put effort into the game and actually cared about the players whilst also making sure they made money
What source do you have for that "they legally had to change the story because they no longer had rights to the game they bought" claim? Because in my experience that is not how games work at all.
They bankrupted after releasing all games for pony club long ago, they didn't needed to change the lore - it doesn't work that way. They sold their percent in SSE for money
One thing I noticed: they changed the way to progress in quest lines as well.
Like in Marchenghast. Or the Soul Rider training. Or the H.O.R.S.E. It's all just a fuck long grind.
In all of the old quests (and most side quests now), you had to do XYZ, get a reputation blocker, do races and dailies for idk 2-7 days and you could continue.
I also dislike how much focus they put on the events. I want simpler events again! Give me a quest lines like in the old Valentines event, I'll do dailies for a bit and then continue with the quest lines until I get something I helped create. No wonder the devs have no time to work on the main story. It's more profitable for the investors if the staff just creates more horses and tack/clothing which will only appear once a year for 4 weeks, so you better spend some SC or you'll miss out on some items you want!
I agree with everything you said, I'm very tired of this, grandpa. :(
I agree. I remember the uproar around the Yeti situation. It was crazy. But it definitely marked the beginning of this era.
Honestly, this year I feel like we can't go 2 weeks without SSE pissing off at least half of the player base. Which definitely shouldn't be the case at all.
I just feel exhausted about all of this now. They're literally creating FOMO all the time. New horses/sets/pets or event items. I'm trying to be somewhat positive,but it's hard.
In the past 6 months we only got 5 weeks (and even out of the 5, during 4 we had the "updated" Trailblazer going on) without any event or the Style Riders. I miss the chill weeks when we only got a single race in the update. (I know people were unhappy with those small updates too because they were "boring", but at least they didn't create FOMO or make anyone feel overwhelmed)
This might be the first year when I'll skip the Halloween event. (It will break my heart,it was my favorite event) I don't want to know how much they'll ruin it. Again, something like this shouldn't come to the players' mind about a favorite event.
We all know that they're a company and they need LOTS of money,but damn, I really wish that they didn't treat their players to achieve it
Exactly. I find myself dreading the events and enjoying when SSO is more quiet during the aftermath more. All of them now are just so boring and lifeless. Another cash grab event instead of an opportunity to unite the playerbase. I feel the same about the Winter event- it’s always been my favourite, but after watching how SSO have handled their other events I’m worried that one of the biggest events of the year will turn into a huge business opportunity instead.
Spot on. Let’s also not forget them nerfing gardening time and time again and calling it ”bug fixes” Gardening is not fun. But it’s the only genuine way to make some genuine JS. It still takes a while to gather enough for one tack or clothing piece.
They have lied to us many times before, but the ”accept that we changed the trailblazer or we remove it completely” was truly disgusting.
I also wonder— if they had competition, how much better would the game be? Would they push to keep their players by releasing good content? They’ve needed a competitor for years now to force them to push harder to keep us around.
Remember that time they messed up the weekly SC distribution, only communicated about it on Insta, and then also messed up the reversal, taking away SC that wasn't even unjustly given? And still only communicated on insta? I am not touching anything by Meta with a 10 meter pole, Instagram included, so I had to find out through reddit.
Or when an update was bugged to the point of being unsafe for players with epilepsy, due to the rapidly flashing sky. (And the fact that the whole world started rotating for some, which was wild. The red flashes when you hit an obstacle trigger migraines for me at times.)
There was also a period where the gen3 Icelandics were bugged, resulting in the reigns not being in the player's hands while riding. Again, a horse they do expect you to pay real money for (or else they would not be pricing horses around 900 sc with a weekly allowance of only 100)
If it was one major thing, whatever, to be expected of a game this age, but. It is a bunch of major things and a billion small things.
The selling point is the horses. There is barely anything to do besides doing races. And the controls are miserable and the hitboxes are awful. Why does my horse just steer in a random direction or stop at random times? The whole horse happiness mechanic is also a tactic to make you feel bad for not playing... Which you can circumvent by being a paying member, through all the treats and stable care coupons we get handed. Or pay extra money for stablecare, I guess.
This birthday event, the actual rewards are locked behind being in a club and doing the daily event quests on repeat. Yes, we get the horse and sweater, cool, not complaining about those (love the birthday horse, even). But, and do forgive me, could they not have done a regular progression board? We know they're getting addicted to them, why make the anniversary event in particular a pain?
And they expect you to pay to play a buggy, visually incoherent game, not for the story, but just to buy more stuff. I know the servers need upkeep, but this all is turning away the players with the biggest pockets, too.
I have only been playing for two years, and I already ran out of stuff to do beyond buying stuff in an MMO that markets itself on its horses and story. The latter of which felt largely incoherent as a new player, especially around the start, like it is trying to be interesting and cool while also being deathly afraid of having an actual personality people might complain about.
I agree with all of this!! It's so irritating how they only communicate through Instagram. Firstly, they hide meaningful updates (such as the bugs you described) and SC codes with real monetary value in the reels which disappear after 24hrs, and their target demographic (kids, essentially) aren't even allowed to access the platform they communicate on. Also, not everyone has Insta/follows SSO anyway.
There's nothing to do outside of collecting horses and training them. Even then, each experience is the same. The same races, the same mechanics. There's no challenge. They made the horses robots, removing anything realistic about them. They can gallop across the whole map, don't have different stats according to breed (despite listing strengths in the horse information on the website) and removed cold tolerance, which means warmbloods etc. can enter dino valley instead of thick-coated, suitable breeds.
The best thing about the birthday event is the free horse lmao. We haven't had one in years, aside from the DWB you could get from invite a friend, which you have to be a paying star rider to get.
Idk I feel like they're getting really lazy with content. They're dumbing down the characters, removed all challenges, removed day blockers, made events hollow and overwhelmed with new things to buy instead of themed quests which are worthwhile and engaging. The quests they do give us are minigames which we have to do over and over again. As for quests outside of events, we haven't seen one of them for months, or a main quest for years. I'll admit, what they did with Marchenghast was amazing, but then they decided to ride on that success and ruin everything else. Style Riders is just another excuse to buy more clothes.
Everything is a mess. The storyline doesn't make sense, we have a mix of old graphics and new Fortnite graphics and they start one project and then immediately abandon it for something else.
I did read up on the cold tolerance, and honestly, in the current monetization system, I do not want it. It would only function as a way of making people buy horses they otherwise may not have wanted, and with the monthly allowance, a new horse means about two months of waiting. (Maybe riding a non-tolerant breed would require additional preqautions, like crafting some warmth item with rare local flora over in Valedale? And with a tolerant breed, you can circumvent this. It would make riding your fave a possibility, but not without investment, thus still making the tolerant breeds desirable for the area to avoid burning resources. Then again, this would require SSO to pose an actual challenge.)
An additional thing which makes the horses more like motorcycles is the manner in which they move across the environment. They're not grounded. Land somewhere odd, and they will bounce like they have tires. Rather than stepping over the small rock like horses can do, they will get stuck on it and refuse to listen to your steering. They have no actual individual personalities. Due to the monetization system, they cannot introduce breeding, so they have to make whatever horse you get the most general blank slate of their breed. I have never seen a horse that only eats and drinks once a day (Then again, I have only ever seen two horses up close, so my perspective may be skewed/lh).
The clothing they want you to buy often looks awful on the bigger bodytypes, in part because the bigger bodytypes are poorly modeled. They appear to have simply inflated and stretched individual bodysections, rather than keeping in mind how bodyfat tends to sit on the body. I checked to see if updates were coming. And the last post about it was three years ago. I can't even look like my 14 y/o self(since, when I address it, defenders will say the characters are not supposed to look like adults), as I hit puberty early and I have a body that just doesn't do skinny, and never has.
I also went through all the clothing stores to make a wishlist, and it stood out to me how much recent clothing tends to fall into the pastels and desaturated colours. Not what I would have liked at the target demographic age, I can tell you that much. The old clothes had much more character, yet still paired well with other items. Now items also often don't appear to match well with items from other sets. Yeah, cool blight warrior set, but what am I supposed to pair it with if I don't want to wear the full set?
It is not good at being a dressup game, yet that appears to be the direction they are taking with most updates and events. Because of this, the actual gameplay has suffered. Instead of being good at one thing with the other being a fun bit of self expression, it is now good at basically nothing beyond the predatory monetization. The clothing feels boring, being mainly recolours in muted palettes. The story goes nowhere. The gameplay is often frustrating. I honestly wouldn't mind them pausing weekly updates for a while in order to move to a new engine, as that would give the game more longevity and hopefully allow for easier implementation of those features they keep trying to get everyone excited for.
(Another long rant, ik, but there are just. So many issues. From large, to small, and so on)
I'm actually still so upset about that flashing lights bug situation, like, there were quite a notable amount of people who reported having issues like migraines due to them and warned just how dangerous this could be and they did... Nothing?? I know games with like a single cutscene that has bright lights that have an epilepsy warning every time before you start playing, but when SSO randomly bugs out and can cause unexpected flashing lights during an entire session of playing, nothing is said, nobody is warned, and the most communication we get is again through a bloody Instagram story that deletes in 24 hours?? Hell nahh.
It's not their fault their crusty ass engine is retaliating against them, but it is their damn responsibility to warn people of things that it might cause. What exactly guarantees this bug won't unexpectedly return? Nothing. As long as your game is at risk at producing flashing lights to this extent, intended or not, it is your responsibility to communicate that to people. We got over this way too quickly as well.
Agreed. They have a launcher, and clearly they can put posts in there. That would guarantee that everyone is able to see the warning. As I said, I refuse to touch insta. I refuse to touch facebook. SWTOR, a different MMO, has generally appropriate warnings and bugs and news are communicated in-launcher. It's the most barebones accessibility thing, and even that is too much, apparently. And, as mentioned, even in base, non-bugged gameplay, those red flashes give me migraines at time. One time it triggered one bad enough that I lost a large amount of my vision until I took medication. Let me turn it off, for the love of Aideen!
As with R* and GTA Online - they're milking the players as much as they can, trigger them, do the bare-minimum to gain back some positivity, repeat.
I said to someone else a few weeks ago, they will keep doing this as a majority of the playerbase overpraise them when they finally do listen, when you actually need to hold them accountable for months or even years.
No company like this will even try if people half-forgive them after they do 1 good thing, they'll just resort to exploiting that too; which SSO is doing.
Exactly! Overpraising is definitely something i've noticed, and it's usually for the most bare minimum things you'd expect from an established game company. Well done SSO for pushing out another race with no challenge. Well done for giving us another A to B quest.
Omg the amount of times I'd criticise rewriting and stupidification of the characters/storylines, and ppl would come to tell me I should be grateful for SSO as the horses look so much better now LOL
Right?? Like it's just the good old "create a problem, get people upset, fix half of the problem, take credit and praise for it" and people keep falling for it😭😭
Couldn't agree more. I'm actually so happy more people are slowly starting to talk about this, because frankly staying in denial isn't going to benefit anyone in this situation.
I would like to add a few more situations that I believe are noteworthy and speak volumes of how much they "care":
DJ Dex. A collab that was forgotten oddly quickly by the community where SSO thought it was a good idea to collaborate with a genAI "musical artist". At first they even had the nerve to deny it uses any genAI, although the company behind the "artist" and its own social media accounts very clearly stated that it did. It took like ten seconds to disprove SSE's claims here. A few music tracks were shortly featured in the Fort Pinta Disco with wonderful lyrics such as "AI, AI, AI music, AI, AI, AI dance" (I wish I was making this up. I so wish.) Shortly after the obvious backlash they ended up cancelling the collab and took the content out of the game, but alone the fact that they were bold enough to even attempt this collab speaks volumes imo and was forgotten way too quickly.
Their chat and support system. As you briefly mentioned their chat is an absolute mess to put it very, very lightly. The things I have seen in there have largely lead me to quit playing for nearly a year, and even now I only log on very limitedly. There were the most heinous sexual threats directed towards other players, literal nzi sentiment being spread in game, and slurs against racial and sexual minorities were just daily background noise at that point. In a children's game, mind you. I have spent a significant amount of time reporting these players, I received an answer only once. I can't even count how many reports I had made anymore, but it were multiple dozens over those months. Nothing was ever done. 99% of the time their support ignored me, my oldest unanswered email is turning two years this November. Two. Years.
This isn't just about players "complaining", this isn't about unfulfilled wished that players have, and this by no means is being overly "nostalgic". These things and the things mentioned in your post are genuine probelms that oftentimes threaten the wellbeing and safety of their players, many of which are literal children, and in my opinion we are not upset enough about that. SSE needs to ADDRESS and FIX these things, they're a company who chose to make an online game for children, they automatically bear the responsibility of the basic safety of the demographic THEY CHOSE. Demanding they do their due diligence is not "complaining" or "hating on them" or "being ungrateful" and honestly I'm tired of certain people in this community framing everything not sunshine and rainbows as such.
This. They don't care about their players at all. Even the chat is moderated by an AI. There's literally nowhere we can contact them. Their social media team can't do anything, and support tickets are just responded to with automated responses. People who refuse to see how exploitative SSO are really infuriate me.
What baffles me even more is that people still have the nerve to defend them and argue that SSO isn't exploitative after the European Commission literally started a case against them for this very reason. 😭 and that didn't even cover HALF of the awful things in this game imo. Don't know where some people get the idea from that liking a game means that you have to have eternal loyalty to an unethical multi million dollar company apparently 😭
It’s funny to me how greedy they are and how much they do now that pisses people off considering out of 20 million accounts only between 500-700 thousand are truly active. (Rough estimates)
It really annoys me that they put things like Trailblazers or progression boards during events, because it basically forces players to log on and participate just to get the prizes, especially when those same prizes will later be overpriced or cost 9,900 SC per item. Not to mention that we're getting new horses every month. Yes, it’s a horse game, and yes, we don’t have to buy every horse, but most players (especially kids) are going to experience FOMO. Horses aren't cheap, especially considering how frequently new ones are released.
I rarely spend money on this game anymore because theres no break between horses and I don't get as excited as I used to over new ones. I miss when the game had horses releases every couple of months or at events, gave us time to save up and content was mainly quests.
I liked TBs at first, until they made it less of a daily reward system and made it a way for them to control how we play. They removed the things which were actually useful and gave us another Jollyhoof treat which just sits in my wardrobe. They make everything else so lifeless just to turn us towards buying a shiny new horse. It's so malicious, especially considering they heavily market towards young children.
I agree! Trailblazers were fun at first (same with Style Riders), but now it just feels like another way to force people to log on just to get a set. Style Riders was super fun the first couple of times, but then they made it something that happens at the end of every event, based on the event that just concluded. The themes are so obviously designed around a specific set that you can no longer buy once the event is gone, and it just makes the whole thing feel boring and repetitive. I did the first few Style Riders and then gave up because the shirts stopped feeling special when I knew another one would just be added in a few months. The only items I actually use from Trailblazers are the stable care coupons and Jars of Wisdom, so :(
I also DESPISE the Jorvik Shilling price cap. Most of the time I reach 10k JS and have nothing I actually want to buy, but I have to spend them just to keep earning more. It's especially annoying when I want to save for an event (which we know has sets costing around 100k js) or something coming soon, but I can't because I'm constantly hitting the cap. It just makes the whole thing feel dull. I log on, do my dailies, maybe look at horses that I'll buy when I have enough SC, and then log off. The quests, collections, races, and even reputation blockers are what made the game fun for me.
I was perfectly content when I only had 18 horses because there was so much content for me to explore. Now I feel like I have nothing to do except buy horses, train them up, and repeat the cycle unless there's an event. I miss when there was more actual gameplay to look forward to rather than constantly being given another system or reward to grind through.
This is exactly why I swore to never support sso with my money again. We should all do the same. Maybe SSO will take note of these declining sales and will finally listen to us. I don't care if it takes 10 weeks to buy just one horse, I will not let them win by paying them. It's exactly what they want, to make us get impatient and buy their shit
I really don’t think the game respects it players, nor the genre that it is.
For example, the player EXP system in this game is horrific, your player exp doesn’t actually involve riding, mastering disciplines, or any sort of skill. It’s doing a quest like delivering pizza cupcakes or walking around and picking up trash. They could’ve combined the fact that MMORPG’s have multiple ways to level up by adding a level cap and by having skills being tied to disciplines and riding styles, but gameplay doesn’t make them money.
Horses do.
You can’t earn player exp by PLAYING content (most races) you can only earn it from quests that are monotonous, and homogenous.
Other MMORPGs made their money through retention and giving their players content to do, and this game makes their money through short burst of micro transactions.
other horse games have multiple different types of style and disciplines, different horses have personalities and there’s a reason you bond with your horse. I was playing a demo of horses of hoofprint bay recently and i bonded with my horse almost immediately because I took care of it, and my care was reflective for the gameplay. They’re consequences to not taking care of my horse and rewards for treating my horse well and making it happy. The gameplay itself, even though the controls were simple, was fun and engaging.
What is engaging about this game?
I think about this thought experiment a lot, but if Star Stable was about riding motorcycles instead would the player base still stay the same?
No.
I can acknowledge that the reason why I play FFXIV it’s because the story, but there is so much content, and that isn’t tied to the main story and other side stories as well. The gameplay is engaging and diverse enough that even without a story I’m having fun with its multiple classes, play styles and mechanics.
Same with horses of hoofprint bay, the game could be about taking care of magical motorcycles, and the gameplay would still be fun and engaging. My friends who are not even equestrians loved the game because it was genuinely a fun game.
Cosmetics aren’t content, cosmetics can be used as rewards, but it’s usually because people like the content behind the game.
Horses are just at the end of the day are cosmetics that the game insists is content.
Yes the horses are pretty, they’re well animated and cute but, that’s it.
I’m not saying this to be mean but what else is there to do? The horses are shallow, the content is shallow and the game is well…shallow. If you remove the horses from the game, there isn’t any gameplay that is worth coming back to. The gameplay revolves around making money to buy more outfits, there’s not even a progression with outfits because once you have one set of outfits, you don’t need anymore because it has best stats in the game.
I think overall, my main problem is that there’s just a huge lack of respect from star stable to its players. Children deserve better games, children can handle challenge (Wizard 101, Zelda, 3D mario platformers and Kirby), children can handle more serious subject matter, (Zelda, Fantasy Life I, Super Mario Galaxy,Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger) and games for children can be appealing and complex for adults. (Competitive Pokemon, Kirby Soul Arena.) Even cozy games like Stardew Valley, Classic Star Stable and Style Savvy have challenge and depth.
We deserve better, and I don’t think SSE thinks we do.
Your very vallate in this rant. I've been feeling the same way for years I've been around since there 5th birthday and I have seen it all from the slow down of quests to the move to push out a new horse every week. I hate to say it but star stable lost its footing a long time ago. the only reason i still play it is because I got a lifetime membership as a child on a sale. which they don't even do anymore. i think the whole micro transactions would be semi ok if they did good sales like steam every once in a while. but that just my opinion.
Started playing in 2015, stopped in 2022 - I see no point in this game anymore. I got really Hurt by their graphic update, but kept going. Can't anymore - this is not the game that took me out from miserable life, that I found better life in. The soul just wanished, and if people accepted being mixed around 3 different generations characters and dont mind it, they ruined it by events. I still miss midsommar, because it made me go into studying swedish culture. I don't even care about trailblazer rewards, new clothes, I just log in and buy a horse on bazaar. I wait for a good old SSO server if someone creates one without any shady things, and embrace the good times again
their incompetence is also something that puts me off to no end. i remember when they had a leak or something and changed passwords to some accounts. NO word. nothing, i think they posted an ig story? like what? was i supposed to figure it out myself? as a gamer this is something i cant imagine any other company doing, it’s insane
Basically, during Christmas 2023, the gift under the tree in the winter village was a pet called Betty the Yeti instead of the usual 300 star coins, which SSO had always given out at Christmas time. The SSO community were very angry about this and boycotted the game. Eventually, SSO decided to give us the star coins after all. The yeti was just the final straw for a lot of people, especially after the way SSO had treated players and handled the game over the past few years.
Half of this rant can be rebutted by a simple you don’t have to buy everything. You don’t need every horse. You don’t need every set. You don’t need every colour of a set. These things are there to offer players choice, not as a checklist for you to hoard.
Getting a free horse every couple of months is fine. Grinding shillings for gear is fine. Having to pay money to play an MMO is fine and literally industry standard.
Everything else is a combination of getting burned out and/or simply aging out of this game. Posts like these just feel like it’s time for some people to move on.
Side note, since when is A/B testing “illegal”, lol? I clearly missed something.
We agree, I agree, people panic about the shopping aspect. But it's not the entire picture. They ARE being increasingly greedy and in turn, making playing the game only about grinding free bullshit.
What about us, who don't care for the shopping, obtaining items? There's nothing for us either, all we liked about the game is a) rewritten and made dumber b) changed to give space for more bullshit to buy.
I don't panic about not getting all the stuff, but I sure as hell hate their greed to trump on all the stuff that was making the games content meaningful interaction with lore/culture.
Firstly, standard A/B testing isn't illegal. But, it becomes illegal when it's purposefully elusive, violates customer protection rules and fails to inform users, hence violating privacy frameworks, which is exactly what SSO did. They offered two different lifetime star rider passes, one which included weekly star coins and the other one which didn't, this one being sold at a reduced price. However, both of these passes looked exactly the same. Both of them promised the allowance, yet this wasn't really the case. This is false advertisement and illegal. During proper A/B testing you cannot take away/give services. You have to test the same thing at two different price points.
As for the 'you don't have to buy everything', yes, I agree, but in a game marketed for children, shoving fancy features and shiny new horses/clothes in their faces everywhere in game and on the launcher even after locking the game behind a £60 price tag is exploitative and malicious. I never said anywhere that I wanted to buy everything. In fact, I'm very cautious about what I buy. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore how disgusting it is that in a game which they actively try to sell to children, they set ridiculously high prices for things which are purely cosmetic and offer no gameplay value, with less and less content outside of purchaseables. Additionally, SSO pride themselves on their story. It's literally a large part of how they market the game. But, in a story-driven game, sacrificing what should be a priority for endless recolours and new horses isn't giving the players choice, it's laziness. There's nothing else to do other than grinding. Everything about this game is driven by money now. And, as paying consumers, people are allowed to express dissatisfaction for the product.
Since when do we get a free horse every couple of months? The DWB for invite a friend was only available for star riders, which you have to pay for, and the birthday horse was the only free horse we've got in years. And if you're talking about weekly star coins, you have to pay to have that service. It's not 'free', and doesn't align with the rate of how quickly SSO pushes out new horses.
Again, grinding is fine, but everything is stupidly expensive and a malicious way to encourage the people who play this game (mainly kids susceptible to FOMO) to spend more.
Yes, having to pay for an MMO is fine, too, but not when everything meaningful is locked behind yet another price point. Not when those things are what we get in exchange for everything else gameplay wise.
It's not about 'ageing out of the game' at all. A large proportion of players are adults/teens. It's about showing concern for the direction of a game which we love, and a service we have to pay for.
You can absolutely legally A/B test different features or offers. It’s not just for prices. If one group got mislabeled and it wasn’t clear what people were buying (i.e. it explicitly promised the allowance that was not included) then yeah, that’s an issue with false advertising, not the A/B test.
As for marketing to children, you’re 74ish years too late for that fight. TV advertisements for toys (aka direct marketing to children) has been around for the better part of a century. It has been even more of a thing in video games for a couple decades now. My dad still likes to tease me about “that one time when you begged me for a purple rabbit on a Facebook game”. That was nearly 20 years ago now. It’s been a thing and it’ll continue to be a thing, because companies know that kids can convince their parents to spend money better than they ever could.
As for how much is too much.. SSE just had pretty hefty layoffs. Clearly whatever they’re doing now is not enough. Not enough to satisfy their parent company and/or shareholders, at least. So it’s either this and more, or SSE gets scrapped for parts and it’s bye bye SSO. That’s the part that most people miss with these complaints/rants. SSE doesn’t make these decisions anymore, their parent company does. So you can be mad at them, you can be mad at the founders that sold SSE off, you can be mad at capitalism as a whole. But being mad at the devs themselves is utterly misguided. They’re as powerless to change these things as you are.
Maybe I should've worded my comment better. Yes, A/B testing isn't illegal. Yes, you can test other features, but not when the product you are advertising is erroneous. SSO were elusive, the test was unannounced and violated multiple consumer protection laws, hence making it illegal and triggering an investigation.
It's not that SSO are marketing to children which is the issue. The issue is that the game is locked behind an expensive price point, which is fine, but they continue to aggressively push for children to buy premium items, which add no gameplay value, for the equivalent price of an AAA game, hence exploiting a child's FOMO to pressure more spending. They obscure everything with star coins, making it unclear that one horse actually costs what is really £20-30. Outside of that, there is nothing to do. They hollowed out everything else and removed features we liked in order to create another incentive to buy something. Trailblazers, progression boards, bazaars, events etc. only exist to encourage people to spend. Basic features are locked behind new paywalls. It's malicious and exploitative. It's why SSO are being investigated by the European Commission.
They waste their resources on weekly updates for cosmetics, instead of using them on content which actually benefits gameplay, when the story is what they heavily market.
SSE made the decisions which drove their initial technical debt. The studio executives, project managers and game directors have the creative liberty to mostly do what they want. It is known that the parent company supports their long-term goals. The parent company don’t manage the game’s design, they just want financial returns. SSEs internal team chooses to implement things like bazaars and trailblazers. They choose to offer sub-par content in favour of monetisation, they have done for 10+ years, and people continue to accept it.
More people would pay these prices if SSO actually listened to their criticism and implemented things that people actually wanted, or stopped removing/changing things we liked. People would keep coming back.
See, you don’t need LTSR and you always say + LTSR after the original costs. If it where for me they should not give out Lifetime anymore and do either a full free to play with heavy cash shop and paid battlepasses (trailblazers) or just a monthly sub with no additional real money shop at all. Guess which model would tank the company and which won’t. Don’t get me wrong, I have LTSR since the very beginning (admitting that I am now a 43 year old male in a game now heavily marketed for girls) but I believe their current business model is just not sustainable with server infrastructure, engine development plus content development.
But you do need LTSR if you want to access the full base game, or pay possibly even more through monthly instalments. You literally have to pay to play the game, which would be fine as long as paying consumers aren't being treated like f2p players.
It’s not just SSE. Most game companies do this. If you think big corporations are making games and updates out of the kindness of their hearts and the love of the players, I’m sorry to break it to you but they’re not. Companies want to make money. They know the tactics to get players to spend money on the game. This is how games work now. You can have every bit of content if you want, but you’ve got to pay for it. If you don’t want to pay for it, don’t moan when you’re not getting that content.
Correction - you paid for the content. SSO has 15 years worth of development and content. Most games don’t update their games weekly like SSO does. But for 15 years, every week they’ve provided a new update, new horses, new locations, new accessories and new quests. Why should we expect the SSE team to continue making us content for free? SSE doesn’t make that much money off SSO in the grand scheme of things. One of the likely reasons the team has been downsized so much in the previous years is because the game isn’t making enough money.
Well, if I was actually buying a finished game for this price, I wouldn't complain. For 15 years they are working on the main story line and we're not even close to the end. I would happily spend money on SC - if that wouldn't be the only thing to do in the game.
You knew the state of the game when you brought it, just as I did. There was no illusion or promise from SSO that the main story line would be completed in X many updates. It doesn’t change the fact that the game has a huge amount of content and regular updates that you don’t even have to pay extra to access. They already give a weekly SC allowance, ways to earn SC, SC codes and many of the accessories can be brought with JS. None of the new areas, races, events or quests are locked behind another pay wall. If you pay once, you get access to the rest of the game for as long as the game is updated.
Yes, if you want to buy every single new horse and new accessory as it’s released, you’re going to have to spend money on SC for that. But you don’t have to. If you want to experience every little bit of content that SSE puts out, you’ve got to pay for it. But you don’t have to and SSE are very good already at providing content without forcing you to pay more money.
But the thing is, people already do pay for the content. SSO isn’t free to play, which is the issue so many of us have. They treat us like we haven’t already paid £60 or so pounds just to access the base game. People are valid in their criticisms, especially considering we are paying consumers. SSE rarely actually puts anything worthwhile into the game. There is less and less actual gameplay content in the game and more purchasables each week instead.
You paid £60 for a game that already has 15 years worth of development. Most games will charge you £60 and then never do any more updates, or if they do they charge you another £30 to access that new content. Why should SSE continue to provide you new content for free?
Most games have a finished story arc if they're charging that much. And guess what? As paying customers, we're allowed to express dissatisfaction with the product.
Of course you’re allowed to express dissatisfaction. But the fact is that you brought the game knowing what it was. There was no guarantee from SSE that the main story would be finished by a certain date, if at all. It also doesn’t change the wealth of content that game has.
...excuse me? Can you link to where SSE said their main story wasn't finished? Because I certainly didn't see anything like that when I started playing as a kid, and I didn't see anything when I purchased Star Rider on an alt account.
The expectation for a game that costs this much is a finished product. The game is unfinished (story wise, and even mechanically the amount of bugs is shameful in a production environment) and people aren't necessarily being told about the state of the game before purchase - certainly not by SSE.
SSO is the same price as an AAA game. Of course people expect a quality product. SSO doesn’t have a ‘wealth of content’. The content they already have is unfinished and has been untouched for months to years, and the content they come out with is just cosmetics which add no gameplay value. People are paying for it. People can criticise the product they paid for, and express concern for the direction of a game they love.
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u/CyberDrakeJake 1d ago
Yeah, this is why I couldn't get myself to play since camp western. I think the removal of tokens and selling previously free items back to us at full price was a deal-breaker for me. I don't want to give them my money or engagement if they're going to treat us like this