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 Features I'd Like To See 
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Selling plater

Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2019 11:45 pm
Posts: 84
Post Features I'd Like To See
Okay, I'm a noob that just got hold of the game late last week and have been playing for a few days, however, I'd like to share my initial impressions. I've often found that fresh eyes are temporary and essential to improving any product.

First, let me start by saying that I owned a major quality assurance testing company in the games industry for two decades. QA people are brutal. We don't tend to understand the concept of a sh*t sandwich as we focus on what needs attention. What doesn't need attention is understood to be expected so we simply forget to mention it. I've had products I've loved get PR people freaking out thinking I hated them because I sent them to 20 things I thought needed attention. I really like this product or else I wouldn't have invested in it after the demo. I applaud the developer and everyone that seems really taken with the series. I look forward to a long experience with it. So bear that in mind with these comments:

1. I'm finding the documentation to be incomplete. Many things I'm looking for information on simply seems to be either lacking or non-existent in the manual. Manual's are often really a challenge and for an awesome undertaking like this, it has to be a real hassle.

2. I struggled at the beginning to do simple things. Just selecting where my stables live was not all that intuitive. The instinct is to click one of the white dots on the map even though the text says to click "SPACE". That just isn't clear. Perhaps saying click any "empty area" of the map would be more obvious. I kept clicking white dots which took me to the track in question where there was nothing to do. It took watching a youtube video to figure out the actual process. It was hard to change my stable name. That should be obvious on the Stable page and always available. I also can see NO way to change your PLAYER name if you miss the chance at the start.

3. A simple thing that would make things MUCH easier on the eyes: add commas to currency listings. $1257281 is much harder to read than $1,257,281.

4. Add support to pause a 3D race. Space is the universal key to pause and start a video. Here it skips the race. Ouch. When you're used to videos this gets you into trouble. I'd love to reassign the space key.

5. I've quit the game without saving so many times now that it hurts to think about it. We need an obvious option to allow for a prompt to verify that we do want to quit.

6. I'd love to see an automatic backup option. Adding #5 would heavily impact this, but not entirely.

7. I'd love to see the scroll wheel of the mouse supporting for zooming in and out of the race screen. It's another UI standard that people would quickly adapt to.

8. It would help me greatly to be able to tag things that are of importance to me and to be able to skip right to them. If my horse is in a race, let me jump right to it. If I tag an auction I'm interested in, let me jump right to it. Absolutely don't just skip right by ANYTHING I've tagged without alerting me. The most tedious part of this game so far is having to live by the Skip buttons. My race is the 5th of the day so skip four things I don't care about to get to what I do care about. Why?

9. I feel like the top level of tabs should always be shown (except for things like the Race view). They are the key interface navigation features. Taking them away seems counter-intuitive to me. Think about virtually any productivity app. The File menu doesn't just vanish when you go to another area of the app.

10. I really didn't get a sense of what I really should be focused on and spent two quick seasons essentially running out of my initial money because nothing really gave me a clue as to how to view the goals of the game. I see many saying the only way to really make quick money is to bet. Okay, say that in the overview, or somewhere.

11. As a US player I'm confused by several things like the lack of the term "Claiming Race" anywhere, which is different from a Selling Race. I'm also confused as to the lack of being able to place a Place bet. It appears I can bet to win or to win, place AND show, but not any one other than win. Obviously there's no daily doubles, exactas, trifectas and that's fine.

That covers the most obvious things. For what it's worth I was a parimutuel at Garden State Park in the mid-80s so I at least have a feel for the industry and my QA company was a lead developer of the first respect horse racing sim (including breeding) with SportTime's OmniPlay Horse Racing in the late 80s. Nothing approached the depth of that game for decades. This appears to have surpassed it by a nice margin. I've been waiting all this time!

Thanks...


Mon Apr 22, 2019 8:20 pm
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Handicapper

Joined: Thu Sep 08, 2016 3:57 pm
Posts: 481
Post Re: Features I'd Like To See
Agrajag wrote:

5. I've quit the game without saving so many times now that it hurts to think about it. We need an obvious option to allow for a prompt to verify that we do want to quit.



When you are closing a panel using the button in the upper right, and accidentally close the whole window. Arrrgggh. I wish there was some sort of trap & confirm on that. It has gotten me quite a lot. I started saving the start of every day.

Fascinating background, btw.


Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:35 pm
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Selling plater

Joined: Fri Apr 19, 2019 11:45 pm
Posts: 84
Post Re: Features I'd Like To See
Hechicera wrote:

Fascinating background, btw.


Aw, thanks! I didn't want to sound like a jerk, but thought the people here might appreciate the reason behind my thinking. I will say the GSP job was one of the best I ever had. I had a great salary and actually made more in tips than salary. So much fun. Even dated a female jockey (once).


Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:21 pm
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