It’s been very much a changing landscape on Novus Earth these past few months.
We have racing 2.0 complete with segmented classes and we have breeding 3.0 including the recent edition of the much anticipated “Super Breeds”.
It seems that all the important foundational blocks for a competitive and sustainable Zed Run ecosystem are in place aside from one.
I feel the final major piece of the puzzle is aging and I’m excited to see it implemented.
The details are still unknown but my best guess and the most logical idea would surely be aging by number of races a horse has run.
For example after 500 races a horses stamina begins to take 24 hours to regenerate instead of 12.
After 1,000 races it takes 48 hours to regenerate, after 2,000 races it takes a week and so forth until a horse can really only race a handful of times a month.
My numbers are hypothetical of course.
Maybe the number of races will be higher, maybe they will be lower but either way I trust Facundo and the team will find the right balance even if it isn’t spot on right out of the gate.
Eternal track domination just doesn’t work in a healthy ecosystem so however they calculate it, aging in my opinion will be a good thing.
I’d go as far as to say it’s essential if we want the game to grow.
As time passes the superstar horses of Novus earth will all reach a point where they really only surface for the absolute best of the best tournaments and races.
On the way through the ranks smart jockey’s will restrict these horses to higher dollar buy ins so as not to waste precious races.
Organically this should hopefully segment horses by skill level vs buy in.
High buy ins for premier horses, mid-range buy ins for good horses and low buy ins for the bottom tier racers.
I saw a chart Danshan posted last week that really hit home the need for the implementation of aging.
If you take a look at the speed chart below you can see the 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 parents represented as red and blue dots and their 3.0 bred foals in yellow.
Looking at the green line we see the average speed of the red and blue horses combined and the large majority of yellow dots are sitting below it.
Imagine the red and blue horses slowly aging and leaving the daily race scene.
The yellow dots above the green line would then become the rising stars racing for high stakes and winning tournaments.
Perhaps the owners of those horses will be eyeing off the chance to take on the greats like Blood Duchess and Rendezvous Peak?
A shot at glory when those horses hit the track in a rare monthly premier tournament or something like that?
A good super breed bred in that environment will be an absolute KILLER!
Below that we have the mid-range horses.
Likely these horses will be racing competitively and winning decent money around perhaps the $10 – $25 buy in range and doing well in conditional tournaments too.
Maybe some people will prefer to run them in small buy in races which will win them money faster but the trade-off will be less overall ROI.
They will be good horses but wont reach the heights of the horses previously mentioned.
Then we have those dots down around the bottom.
They will be racing in the low dollar range and some will find success there.
Another thing I’ve been excited about with the implementation of aging is class 1.
With the biggest prize pools and incentives in the top class, the value gain for Genesis horses that can breed good to great C1 foals could be immense.
Take the marathon funnel for example, there are only a handful of seriously dominant marathon horses right now and when they age the reward for breeding the next marathon champion will be great.
Ready Set Boom Super Breed anyone!
On the flipside I know some people may be (strongly) against aging as their current monster horses won’t be able to continue their eternal domination of racing but for the good and growth of the game aging is a necessary step forward.
That said I think that former racing value/income will be moved to a much more sustainable and long term breeding value/income so the pill shouldn’t be too hard to swallow for most once the dust settles and the new reality sets in.
As a caveat to that, I’m talking about Genesis horses here and I do feel your pain if you have a valuable bred monster.
The only advice I can offer there is to use your remaining breeds very wisely!
(And your remaining races once aging arrives)
From what I’ve read on Twitter and around the way aging will be with us by the end of March.
The sooner the better.
In the meantime we may get a taste of what it will be like running 3.0’s vs 3.0’s in the next Maiden tournament which according to Facundo’s lunar cycles isn’t far off.
I’m crossing my fingers for a Super Breed but if I don’t breed one I hope you do!
Looking further ahead, once we have aging implemented I feel like the core of the game looks very solid.
Very sustainable and ready for a larger user base.
Perhaps some cosmetic stuff like a larger variety of race outcomes and visuals, some more filters and easier to navigate user interface.
I’m not a tech guy but that sounds far easier than the large strides we’ve taken with the game of late.
After that I can’t see any further reasons why the marketing switch wouldn’t be turned on.
Could we see an influx of new users by the later stages of 2023?
I hope so and if we do I think they will arrive to find a game and an ecosystem that’s finally ready to have them.
Thanks for reading guys and good luck on the track!