Today I wanted to write out my version of the whole '5 things you want to add' for Star Stable. I've seen it on the forums, I participated on the forums but I'd like to write a little more about it and add a few more things (which, technically, makes this 10 things I want to add). I’m actually going to do it twice, not just one long one - one for strictly gameplay related features and one for things outside the game itself, more inclined towards the general experience as an SSO player and enthusiast within the community! I'm splitting it into two because I feel like both of these two categories deserves getting noticed and deserve their own lil' list. When I see people do this whole '5 things I'd add', it's nearly always gameplay features. And that's cool, I get it. But don't forget about the general experience, either, what goes on outside the game and how you feel when you need help with something and have to contact customer support or what it looks like when you log into your account page.
gameplay
1 - BANK FEATURE
The 10,000 Jorvik Shilling limit is a little annoying. I understand its use, as the limit on shillings makes it more likely for people to buy Star Coins, but a little tweaking couldn’t hurt in the long run. What I would do would be to set up a ‘bank’ feature to organize saving projects, Star Coins and general currency in your possession. It would include a way to put together ‘savings accounts’ where you could only deposit money (be it SC or JS) until you’ve reached your goal and a general ‘account’ tab where you could have a max of 20,000 JS stored up for a rainy day. The saving account goals could not total to more than 10,000 JS (to avoid blowing the cap too muc) but SC goals would be limitless. It would make the total, combined cap on JS 40,000 instead of 10,000 which isn’t a massive amount, but enough to give people more flexibility in general and would add a way to organize our money a lot better!
2 - TACK VARIATION
So far, there’s not a whole lot of options unless you wanna be a Cowboy Kid or a Fancy Dressage Babe. Which covers the basic bases of horse equipment, yes, and there's a lot of options for customization even there. There's a lot of clothes options, too, but there’s a lot more out there! So, so much more that it would be great to add into the game. I know I would kill for a TC saddle in the game and some bitless bridles. And that's just the two things I would love most, there's a whole list of other things I would adore having. Boots instead of horseshoes and neckropes! Colors and shapes and fun everywhere. It would take a long time to get up to a solid variety, for sure, but just starting somewhere would be great. More types of bridles, saddles, pads and minor accessories would be absolutely stellar.
3 - CHAT OPTIONS
In general, there’s a lot I would like to change about the chat the way it is now and I'm not going to rant too long about it, so let's stick to the short version (which is still pretty long). First of all I’d like to be able to turn it ‘off’ completely, to basically go into stealth and silence mode. I don’t always want to talk to anyone, sometimes I want to be alone. It would mean nobody could message me and I couldn’t message anyone which would give people the option to not have that stressing them out, if they wished. Being able to get notifications from certain channels/everything, setting oneself to AFK, smoother typing/being able to go back and edit typos easily are also things I’d love added. And there’s the mess with the automod and chat bans - I would like that drastically changed, too, but I have too much to say there to take it all here. Having a specific channel to 'pin' club ads to would also be nice - then people could scroll through there if they wanted a club and view the 'pinned' messages (or maybe just like an ad board in the different towns or something, anything to reduce spam). Or maybe just the messages there would stay longer, something something. Basically, a place for clubs to put their ads.
4 - UPGRADE EQUIPMENT
Some of the stuff available for purchase/received during holidays/rewarded from quests look neat, but I’ll never really use it because the stats are rubbish. I want things optimal and fast and the stats make a big difference when training and doing championships. Some sort of system to let you level up your gear would be great and would make it a lot more fun to use all the gear available, everything I hoard but will never use. Not completely sure how the system itself would work, but maybe it could be like purchasing sewing equipment/leather polish/etc and then using it in the currently unused tackroom to upgrade things to a certain level or maybe a specific set of daily quests to do which would give you what you need to upgrade things.
5 - TEST RIDING HORSES
This one I see pop up a lot and I agree with it completely. One of the things I dislike most about buying a new horse is not knowing how it is to ride, what it looks like, what it feels like and how the gaits are. It might look great in the stall and it seems so perfect, but maybe I loathe the feel of riding it. It’s happened before - it’ll happen again. Being able to test it, if you so wish, for a few minutes would make it a lot easier to decide which horses I’d want to purchase and which ones I should probably not. A specific button that would take you to a paddock where you could ride around, maybe an option to have it with a simple set of tack to see how that looks. Nothing complicated at all, just so people could test before they buy. I would do it in real life, why not in the game?
The 10,000 Jorvik Shilling limit is a little annoying. I understand its use, as the limit on shillings makes it more likely for people to buy Star Coins, but a little tweaking couldn’t hurt in the long run. What I would do would be to set up a ‘bank’ feature to organize saving projects, Star Coins and general currency in your possession. It would include a way to put together ‘savings accounts’ where you could only deposit money (be it SC or JS) until you’ve reached your goal and a general ‘account’ tab where you could have a max of 20,000 JS stored up for a rainy day. The saving account goals could not total to more than 10,000 JS (to avoid blowing the cap too muc) but SC goals would be limitless. It would make the total, combined cap on JS 40,000 instead of 10,000 which isn’t a massive amount, but enough to give people more flexibility in general and would add a way to organize our money a lot better!
2 - TACK VARIATION
So far, there’s not a whole lot of options unless you wanna be a Cowboy Kid or a Fancy Dressage Babe. Which covers the basic bases of horse equipment, yes, and there's a lot of options for customization even there. There's a lot of clothes options, too, but there’s a lot more out there! So, so much more that it would be great to add into the game. I know I would kill for a TC saddle in the game and some bitless bridles. And that's just the two things I would love most, there's a whole list of other things I would adore having. Boots instead of horseshoes and neckropes! Colors and shapes and fun everywhere. It would take a long time to get up to a solid variety, for sure, but just starting somewhere would be great. More types of bridles, saddles, pads and minor accessories would be absolutely stellar.
3 - CHAT OPTIONS
In general, there’s a lot I would like to change about the chat the way it is now and I'm not going to rant too long about it, so let's stick to the short version (which is still pretty long). First of all I’d like to be able to turn it ‘off’ completely, to basically go into stealth and silence mode. I don’t always want to talk to anyone, sometimes I want to be alone. It would mean nobody could message me and I couldn’t message anyone which would give people the option to not have that stressing them out, if they wished. Being able to get notifications from certain channels/everything, setting oneself to AFK, smoother typing/being able to go back and edit typos easily are also things I’d love added. And there’s the mess with the automod and chat bans - I would like that drastically changed, too, but I have too much to say there to take it all here. Having a specific channel to 'pin' club ads to would also be nice - then people could scroll through there if they wanted a club and view the 'pinned' messages (or maybe just like an ad board in the different towns or something, anything to reduce spam). Or maybe just the messages there would stay longer, something something. Basically, a place for clubs to put their ads.
4 - UPGRADE EQUIPMENT
Some of the stuff available for purchase/received during holidays/rewarded from quests look neat, but I’ll never really use it because the stats are rubbish. I want things optimal and fast and the stats make a big difference when training and doing championships. Some sort of system to let you level up your gear would be great and would make it a lot more fun to use all the gear available, everything I hoard but will never use. Not completely sure how the system itself would work, but maybe it could be like purchasing sewing equipment/leather polish/etc and then using it in the currently unused tackroom to upgrade things to a certain level or maybe a specific set of daily quests to do which would give you what you need to upgrade things.
5 - TEST RIDING HORSES
This one I see pop up a lot and I agree with it completely. One of the things I dislike most about buying a new horse is not knowing how it is to ride, what it looks like, what it feels like and how the gaits are. It might look great in the stall and it seems so perfect, but maybe I loathe the feel of riding it. It’s happened before - it’ll happen again. Being able to test it, if you so wish, for a few minutes would make it a lot easier to decide which horses I’d want to purchase and which ones I should probably not. A specific button that would take you to a paddock where you could ride around, maybe an option to have it with a simple set of tack to see how that looks. Nothing complicated at all, just so people could test before they buy. I would do it in real life, why not in the game?
general
1 - CUSTOMER SERVICE REVIEW
Know how sometimes when you've contacted customer service for a company, you get asked to rate the experience and add a few comments? Yeah, that. I am generally saddened by SSO customer service and how ineffective, frustrating and clumsy it can be. Being outsourced probably has something to do with and I don't fault them for doing that, but that doesn't excuse the quality suffering this badly. Being able to rate and review their customer service would be a great way to let them know how to improve, what they need to work on and give them overall feedback on the customer experience.
2 - BETTER LOGIN
This is probably very much a personal opinion, but I’m not a huge fan of logging in with my email in general. And I dislike not being able to change my email, being able to have some control of my own account as there are times when I have a need to change things. It's not really possible to do that with SSO accounts and I'm not a huge fan of it and I feel like it's also a place of weakness in terms of account safety. Being able to pick a username, a security question perhaps, would make things a lot smoother and would at least make me feel better. Instead of whatever-you-want usernames, perhaps a few pre-made options based on our in-game character’s name and starter horse. A security question isn’t unusual to have, either, and there's not really a big downside to it.
3 - ACCOUNT CUSTOMIZATION
Being able to pick a profile picture maybe from a few pre-made avatars or our in-game character in a few poses would really spice up the account page a little. I don't see a point in putting too much into it, but a little bit to make it feel more personal would be nice. Being able to tick off without having to log in if you’d like to have chat turned off, maybe, and see what club you’re currently in and if you have any unread mail. More stats from the game - how many horses you have, how many friends you have, how many this or that or whatnot. And being able to see and replying to post would also be cool to do from the account page, actually, maybe even put together a better mail system overall.
4 - LIVE CHAT SUPPORT
Seriously, I would love this. It would probably be a little costly for SSO to do but they could benefit greatly from having a live chat set up that you could use when logged in to get help from them. Minor things can often be solved super fast and it would make the general experience a lot better! And, frankly, I feel like us players and us being able to get help from them should be something they prioritize and invest in. I feel like we're worth the effort and the money.
5 - SERVER INFO
I think it would be really nice to get some additional info on the server we're on/the ones available to us. Viewing server status of the server we’re on, to see if everything is okay. Being able to see if there’s tons of people in there, status logs from the last 24 hours maybe and some statistics for when it's most crowded and how often people leave/join the server.
Know how sometimes when you've contacted customer service for a company, you get asked to rate the experience and add a few comments? Yeah, that. I am generally saddened by SSO customer service and how ineffective, frustrating and clumsy it can be. Being outsourced probably has something to do with and I don't fault them for doing that, but that doesn't excuse the quality suffering this badly. Being able to rate and review their customer service would be a great way to let them know how to improve, what they need to work on and give them overall feedback on the customer experience.
2 - BETTER LOGIN
This is probably very much a personal opinion, but I’m not a huge fan of logging in with my email in general. And I dislike not being able to change my email, being able to have some control of my own account as there are times when I have a need to change things. It's not really possible to do that with SSO accounts and I'm not a huge fan of it and I feel like it's also a place of weakness in terms of account safety. Being able to pick a username, a security question perhaps, would make things a lot smoother and would at least make me feel better. Instead of whatever-you-want usernames, perhaps a few pre-made options based on our in-game character’s name and starter horse. A security question isn’t unusual to have, either, and there's not really a big downside to it.
3 - ACCOUNT CUSTOMIZATION
Being able to pick a profile picture maybe from a few pre-made avatars or our in-game character in a few poses would really spice up the account page a little. I don't see a point in putting too much into it, but a little bit to make it feel more personal would be nice. Being able to tick off without having to log in if you’d like to have chat turned off, maybe, and see what club you’re currently in and if you have any unread mail. More stats from the game - how many horses you have, how many friends you have, how many this or that or whatnot. And being able to see and replying to post would also be cool to do from the account page, actually, maybe even put together a better mail system overall.
4 - LIVE CHAT SUPPORT
Seriously, I would love this. It would probably be a little costly for SSO to do but they could benefit greatly from having a live chat set up that you could use when logged in to get help from them. Minor things can often be solved super fast and it would make the general experience a lot better! And, frankly, I feel like us players and us being able to get help from them should be something they prioritize and invest in. I feel like we're worth the effort and the money.
5 - SERVER INFO
I think it would be really nice to get some additional info on the server we're on/the ones available to us. Viewing server status of the server we’re on, to see if everything is okay. Being able to see if there’s tons of people in there, status logs from the last 24 hours maybe and some statistics for when it's most crowded and how often people leave/join the server.
And those are my '5 things I would add to SSO' - both gameplay and outside of the gameplay! And I know that my personal wants probably don't line up with everyone else's, but it happens. We're all different. I know a lot of people want things like weather, more 'realistic' horses and behavior, dressage, wagons, houses etc. I'm not that into those things, if I have to be honest, and some of those things I simply don't want to have at all. And that's alright, we all want different things from this game and we all want different things added into the game.
What would you want added into the game? Leave a comment below!
What would you want added into the game? Leave a comment below!