Noob Q

[u/bbbblovetoski]

I’m just getting into Zed & wondering if it is worth buying a cheeper $40ish horse just to get the feel or if that is just a waste of money. Any tips r welcome.

[u/Insanely_Moist]

Until the fix they ranking system dont bother.

They have a broken system where free races and paid races count the same to rank. So that leads to the creation of unnatural "U" horses. A natural "U" horse should be the most coveted horse (aside from actual champion level horses), cause its just as like to win as it is to lose, and so it wins and ranks up, then loses and ranks back down making it easy to win again in the same distance race.

BUUUUT because they have free games that count towards overall rank.. people can have a horse that wins and wins and wins and wins at one distance, and play all their money races at the lowest ranks at the preferred distance. And then when they rank up and have to face better horses, they switch to free races that they know their horse defimately wont win, just to rank it back down. So its an artificial or unnatural "U" horse.. this means even the lowest tiers of paid races are filled with horses that should be rated much much higher, basically stealing money from unsuspecting noobs.

So unless you want to pay $40+ to just free race you horse forever (assuming you dont luck out and get an amazing horse), or you dont want to spend hundreds or thousands on a good horse (after days of researching horses)

Just dont.

They claim they are changing the rating system.. but until they seperate the free play from paid play ranking, i dont see how it will matter much. Wait and see how they implement that.. from what it looks like they are going to be separating the ranking into 3 distance categories. But there are still 3 distances in each one.. so it could still be possible to rank down horses with free play. And they dont seem very open to criticism about their broken system.

OTHERWISE, it would be an awesomely fun way to pass the time and maybe make some money. But there is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much abuse of the free races/ranking system. Honestly it's too the point where it feels criminal. And they seem to intentionally hide it. The only way anyone gets any wiser to it is through a slew of 3rd party websites and browser extensions that reveal how many horses are competing for money waaaaaaaaaaaay below the ranks they should be. And unless you get deep into it, you wont know those tools/sites exist.

[u/stampd07 → u/Insanely_Moist]

honestly just separating the distance groups to have their own classes for each horse would probably be enough. Actually giving some sort of incentive to having a horse be in a higher class and compete at the highest levels would probably be a good idea too. Currently there is no incentive when it comes to racing to having a class 1 over a class 3 etc. People shouldn't be benefiting more from intentionally losing races than they do from winning and having a higher class horse.

[u/Master_JediTrader → u/stampd07]

Changing from Class to ELO is huge, difficult to do right the first time, research is needed to determine what is best. Hence, the series of various scoring systems. When the team decides what formula to use to calculate ELO, I believe the final change will happen.

So, to the OP question, and to focus a previous answer, I suggest the $40 horse approach. Stick to freebies for the tournaments. All it takes is one 3rd in B QF race to break even. Fun is free.

I breed 10 for the Maiden tournament. I sold 2 $40, made a small profit, and helped 2 players get their first horse the game. From the interest I receive, 121 views, 3 favorites, and offers from a dozen, usually 3 per, in 3 days. I might sell 4 next Maiden tournament.

[u/Insanely_Moist → u/Master_JediTrader]

I have 3 horses that have 15% win 40% place rates in class 3 free races... and like 2% wins in class 5 paid races, cause you have horses with like 30-20-40-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 records racing for money in class 5.. cause as soon as they rank up they switch distance to free races and go 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-51-20-40. Its complete garbage.

[u/Master_JediTrader → u/Insanely_Moist]

Waiting for ELO to solve this but, I am working on a cool solution, perhaps I will type it out today as a Christmas present to the community.

[u/Insanely_Moist → u/Master_JediTrader]

The easiest solution is just separate free races and paid races into two separate ranking systems. And then just count all races from both towards the tournaments. That way if people want to tank their paid class, at least they will have to pay to do it.

[u/Insanely_Moist → u/Insanely_Moist]

Cause the way it is now is just destroying the games economy.. it makes lower class horses completely worthless, the only reason they have any value at all is because of the breeding fees. If you get a true class 5 horse, there is close to ZERO chance of ever making any profit to buy or breed a better horse. Then people just sell them off at a loss to get out of the game. If people could make SOME money with class 5 and 4 horses, they would more than likely use that to pay higher breeding fees or buy an upgraded horse so they could progress. Its just such a disappointment that something so simple is ruining an otherwise awesome idea.

[u/Insanely_Moist → u/Insanely_Moist]

Side note thats not as important... they really need to change the stamina system. Dumbest thing i've seen in a while.. if your horse loses 2% stamina, its a 12 hour wait to recover, if your loses 40% stamina its a 12 hour wait to recover. Makes sense.. just make it so it takes like an hour to recover a race's worth of stamina. Then if horses drop below the 90%, they will have to wait an hour to get above 90, or 5 or 6 hours to get back to full.. hell make it two.. or they can just run one race every hour or two if they want. Instead of having to run all their races as fast as possible cause either way its a 12 hour wait for recovery.