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 Frustrations and Where the game can go to the next level 
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Post Frustrations and Where the game can go to the next level
As much as Starters Orders is by far the best horse racing game out there, and SO7 has improved in certain aspects, I still find many parts of the game so frustrating, and I think its because the game has gotten more and more realistic, but then there are things that are letting it down in terms of just going the extra bit to being pretty much perfect as far as realism goes, and these things seem such small things that could easily be implemented (Albeit they seem this to me as a non game developer).

Some of these things I'll write below in the hope that others may agree and these elements can be added at some point.

- It would be great to have owners even in the trainer mode game, this way trainers could have horses running in multiple silks as they do in real life, and being able to assign 'retained' trainers to owners would mean we could have trainers having horses running in the silks of owners they do in real life. For example, Charlie Appleby, Saeed Bin Suroor and a couple others having horses running in godolphin silks ect.

- It would be great to be able to assign a general stable quality, so that the top trainers (and owners if the above point could be implemented) get the majority of top horses, this would mean that the bigger races are realistically filled with horses from these stables. Such as the classics which in real life are rarely won by smaller stables and the fields are dominated by the big trainers and owners.

- Similar to the above point, having stable sizes assigned to trainers (And again owners were the top point to be implemented). This would allow stables like Mark Johnston to have lots and lots of horses and other trainers to only have a handful of horses. This could go for owners too, owners like Godolphin and Sheikh Hamdan could have lots of horses and other owners with only a couple of horses, this would work with the large number of silks now possible.

- There seems to be unnecessary caps put on certain things that really limit the game, especially now with other elements being expanded massively. For example with the expansion of the possible horse pool size, things like a cap on the number of race meetings per day and the number of foreign trainers you can have in the game are so frustrating, having only 10 Irish trainers possible when you can have an Irish horse pool of thousands is very annoying and seems so unnecessary.

- Speaking purely on the flat game, because the jumps game is so far from being anywhere near the level of the flat game still, it would be good to have more types of races, in particular different classes of maidens and novice races. For example the maidens and novice races at bigger tracks tend to be better quality than at smaller tracks, and the winners of these better maidens and novices usually go on to run in better graded races, and receive higher handicap marks. It would be great for this to be reflected in the game.

- The AI entries and horse careers have improved massively, but still require a lot of modding to get them to a realistic level, but I think the above points would help with this too. And I think an extra trait on a horse regarding how often it can take racing would be good, so some horses run less frequently and others more, and also a trainer trait whereby some trainers are more inclined to run horses often like Mark Johnston, and others less often like Michael Stoute for example, I think would greatly add to the realism of the AI.

- Jockeys and Trainers retiring and being replaced by new fictional one. This seems a very basic thing for a sports game like this to be able to have and I think should be added to Starters Orders.

These are all the ones on my mind for now, and I don't wish to seem like I'm complaining, its just there really are no other horse racing games out there, and for Starters Orders to be so close to perfect, I feel it can really see massive improvements that would bring more people to playing the game. It is frustrating to see such points overlooked in a game that clearly has realism as a focus.

Thanks


Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:00 pm
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