The great challenge was about the same as usual, though I appreciated the free Staff I would have gotten if I was trying rather than the horrid Zonkeys. The treat battle was eh. Fighting for a rank was not worth it (spending tons of Equus to get good prizes to throw away) so I took most of the prizes I got, occasionally trading store items. I didn't really try too hard to log in often during the battle mostly because I was busy with work and life.

Also why is an egg considered a treat (the lizard gummi was cute though)?

The great challenge is ok, easy to complete each day with just normal daily activities.

Please can you ditch the festivities and bring back the lottery, but not the one with the clovers the first lottery we used to have with decent prizes, even a divine as a prize. It didn’t matter how many tickets you bought, you still won good prizes and even tickets that would allow you to enter the next draw if you weren’t able to get on the game. So much better

Number one to whom mentioned the tickets, I never was there for that but I doubt it would be better to have less of a chance to get anything. Now about this present event, I swear the game makers and runners are cheaters. They set all these games up from the get go with a length of time most can't complete the game by unless they can afford the key or extra bonuses using passes. Not everyone can buy the passes to afford the key in this game or the speed ups in the others. In every game so far I have loved the prizes tho. But I really wish it ran long enough for me to have been able to get the staff, and I really would love a chance to get the raven. So far I have preferred the games where we can pick our prizes and easily gather the coin for those prizes without real money out of our pocket. And so many complain about the prizes in those games.
The battle was worse and as someone else said pretty much it is pointless to throw away perfectly good items just to try to get the higher ranks. I too rarely tossed. The prizes I really liked or wanted because it is better to get something than nothing. The battle is akin to that story of the beautiful dog with a mouth full of jewels and saw her reflection in the water and not realizing it was a reflection of herself, out of greed for more and something better, fell in or dove in and lost it all. Nope not me I won't be that dog or fox. Only cheaters could win these games or the filthy rich.

Oh the lizard gummy or plushy was cute I wish that could be like a toy by way of being a companion for one of my horses. I'd give it to my werewolf one!

The prizes were disappointing and repetitive. Only one of the things gave a me a precious prize most were just common.

gave away all and paid high to get replacements , sort of depressing still didnt make the top 20 on any of my 5 versions

same!

the great challenge was as per normal.
. The Treat Battle was not designed for anyone that doesn't have a lot of spare time on their hands.
. Plus i really didn't understand why i had 105 stars but couldn't use them on anything it seemed pretty pointless if i couldn't buy anything with them for them to even be there for me to look at.

I appreciate the items I got in the contest, thank you Howrse team! Many of them were very useful to me such as the fertility wands, Artemis’ arrow, and the tears! I was a bit taken back by the graphics, I didn’t think they really meshed into the platform. I didn’t really enjoy spending large amounts of equus to trade the items for other items, because the equus increased really fast, and the quality of the items was not linear with the cost increase.

The Great Challenge is not so great or challenging, especially in recent years. We still have to keep collecting no more than 100 horseshoes each day and the objectives are more-or-less the same. Once you make it to your goal, you have to wait with everyone else for tomorrow before starting the same process over again.

Why not make it more interesting than that? Why not make it so we have to collect a higher amount of horseshoes, or change up those same old objectives? Like, instead of entering a single competition for one horseshoe, we could give an apple to a horse. Or maybe instead of buying a horse in the direct sales, we could bid on a horse in auction, regardless of whether or not we get it. Those are a few ideas that could work.

The UFO battles is more insulting because they only turn up 3 times a day, and the wait is so very long. The prizes were one thing, but no matter how many I give up to improve my ranking, I never make it out of the bottom tier. It's a painful struggle that ends in vain. The lottery made more sense anyway.

The Great Challenge needs to be changed around on its head if you want more players to keep enjoying it.

Yeah... These latest events have not been it. I'm a returning player after being active in the early 2010s. I recall the events, when they came around, had a lot of thought put behind them and a player could easily gain great reward by putting in the work instead of having to pay to play. The Great Challenge was pretty easy to get rewards, but the huge limitations on gaining horseshoes made is extremely boring.
For the Battle, there was almost no chance of getting higher up in the rankings if you weren't on it throughout the day. I gave up after a few days when I saw I would never breach the 500 mark. Granted, I did not log on for every changeover, but I'm an adult with a job, whatever. Can we have the old Lottery back?
There is so much potential with all that's being thrown out in this game. Slowing down with the events will allow for higher quality and more excitement. I believe Howrse is losing passionate players because of this aggressive money-grabbing model. I say this as someone who wants this community and game to both thrive!

I miss two ufo events the 9 pm to 5 am ones. One by 30 minutes so i just try to get the littles to bed a little after 9 pm.

If they make the gecko a companion i hope its not another pinata. The original pinatas can be pinatas but no piñatas expected the birds. The burds are cute in the daytime.

Like many others, The Great Challenge is the same all the time. The UFO's do accumulate, so if you only log on once a day like I tend to do & it's late in the day, I get all 3 UFO's -- I kept all of mine. Wasn't worth trying to give them away to get a better gift as I never get into a better bracket of gifts. I didn't even waste my money sending out help requests.

Please wait for a few weeks before starting a new event. I need to get my passes built back up as I have to renew my employee contracts & I only have the Daily Objective to get them right now, can't afford to buy any.

It Was Kinda Of Fun But Really Didn't Care For The Great Horseshoe Challenge And Or The Treat Battle And Still Really Don't Care For Ascent Of Olympus

A complete bust for me: even though I exchanged every single item for ranking I never got past the medusa’s blood..

The great challenge part was quite okay, I liked that it didn't demand any extra action. The great festivities on the other hand was more like a great disappointment, I got very few good prizes, 95% of time I got saddle pads and Kitsune ...

I always do events. I hardly went on howrse as I Don't care for this one at all

Other than the key to unlock all prizes being way too overpriced, I rather enjoyed this event. Even though I was aiming for a harmony pack, I got quite a few HOPs which led to me getting Ymir, so I can't complain!

Honestly, I don’t understand the complaints wanting fewer events…just don’t participate. As someone who doesn’t buy passes, I love the events as a way to gather BMI that I otherwise would not have. Maybe an option on disabling event pop ups would solve this for players who don’t want to see banners etc.

What I like about both parts of this event is how we have options about how we want to play it based on our game situation and objectives.

For me, I didn't buy the Key until I was sure I could finish; my scedule can be uneven.
(and I REALLY wanted that Raven)

And for the Treat battle, I tried for rank most of the way to see how far I could go because I felt I had enough of the items offered or didn't really need them. I missed a couple UFO windows and switched to keeping some near the end. I think I finished in the top 1000 which satisfied some personal objective / experiment and was happy with the couple UFOs I kept / upgraded.

Someone mentioned somewhere not being able to send the UFO to a specifie player, I feel like back when snowbals started we could? Now it just means we see who forwarded / discarded the UFO, I think.

So I get that many might see targeted Snowball type fight as being 'unfair' and a popularity contenst which I get can be frustrating. But as popularity IS a metric we pay attention to on the game and is usually deserved by some combination of treatment of other players, recognition of skill, style, personality, etc. I feel it is appropriate for there to be ONE mini game that acknowledges this.

On the other end of the spectrum, I know that lower level players loved being able to send snowballs or treats (items) to howrse friends and receiving them too. That is an aspect of the game I feel has slowly and subtly subsided from when I started; the sort of interpersonal sharing, gifting, and helping... specifically to other players we choose from friends list.

I'm not a fan of this one because I can't be online to wait for all the treats to float by. I didn't get the divine as usual but I did get 540 fragments for it somehow.

I'm not a fan of how the Treats Battle prize ranking cutoffs are the same across all servers, as some servers are much larger than others. It makes it more difficult and expensive to get "nicer" prizes on larger servers like this one.

And I was disappointed at the prize discrepancy between the ranking prizes and the ufo prizes. Ranking prizes probably should be geared towards wealthy, long-term players that won't confer as many benefits for newer players- Romanticism and the Raven Companion were great examples of those kinds of prizes but there were too few offered for the number of players on this server. I would love to see Howrse incentivize having players with massive equus reserves sending desirable prizes to newer players.

I did like the UFO prizes that were offered though. The frequency of items like the F.Wand and A.Tears was too low for my liking, but I am glad they were available. I was excited to get a couple of HoPs for my collection

As for the great challenge itself, I wasn't particularly thrilled with any of the prizes or the way it played out. I barely noticed the "challenges" and it didn't really add anything to the gameplay. I think the fact that the 4th community goal was so far out of reach detracted from the experience.