Hello everyone, Zeroden here! I'm coming to speak to you on behalf of our Horse Training community as a Black Desert Online Ambassador!

I'd like to discuss a topic near and dear to me with all of you, and that's the "Training" life skill. I'd like to preface this post by saying this is not to adress all life skills, and in this post we will be strictly focusing on the training skill, and things that surround the training skill. I ask any feedback you may provide please remain focused on training. This thread will be forwarded to the community management team, and your feedback here is important. First, let's cover some discussion norms!

Do's and Don'ts:
- Do provide direct feedback to the recommendations made here.

- Do provide ideas for for requests within reason.

- Do share your experiences on the subject matter at hand.

- Don't use this as a platform to launch wishlist items/requests that are unlikely to be entertained.

- Don't stray from the topic by comparing apples to oranges (i.e. horse training to other methods of silver generation or other life skilling)

- Don't get into "what if" scenarios that presume how PA generates its dollars. This is not constructive to the topic at hand.

That covered, let's dig right into it. The primary problem with horse training is that to maximize your profits, or even to attain a Tier 8 Courser for personal use requires horse skill reroll tokens. This is a bad system for everyone, made worse by the fact that it's an RNG system, and one that can exclusively be attained by paying for it with real cash. What my post here aims to do is correct this stop-gap while allowing PA to maintain its current market system and allowing players to continue spending their own money if that's what they desire to do, while making it so that free to play players can take this life skill seriously. It will also provide the lifeskill some active-play measures so it's not relegated to purely AFK activity. This will improve the quality of life for everyone involved, both those who seek to purchase horses and those who seek to train and sell them.

On average, a it would take roughly 10-15 Mount Skill Change Coupons to create a courser from a horse with 16 skills using the lowest probability skill exchanges. I personally have experienced it taking up to 60 tokens to attain S: Sideways Move. Presently, Mount Skill Change Coupons sell for 250 pearls each. That means on average a single T8 Courser, given that your horse was lucky enough to learn 16 skills to begin with, costs over $35 to create. This is abysmal for everyone involved, and serious trainers most especially.

To this, I have forumulated a three prong strategy that will honestly result in a net gain of quality of life across the board for this life skill, with a fourth point that will adress an eventual problem that increased horse efficiency would create.

1.) Allow Mount Skill Change Coupons to be attained through Golden Seal - [Imperial Training] at the rate of 1 coupon per 20 seals: This would encourage players to go out and catch wild horses, train them to level 15, then sell them through imperial delivery. Suddenly, every wild horse has innate value. 10 seals for 1 mount reroll token is still a remarkbly low rate, as we've discussed it would take an average of 10-15 to make a single courser at T8. This methodology alone is not enough, so this brings us to our second change.

2.) Add a daily quest where you can attain 1 Mount Skill Change Coupon per day by capturing a horse from a specific region: This suggestion feeds right back into #1, which makes the content even more meaningful. Ideally, this quest would be offered to you by Izaro <Stable Keeper> (South stable) in Heidel near the storage keeper, and might require you to catch a horse in either Calpheon, Serendia, Mediah, or Drieghan. Heidel is centrally located, so this makes logical sense to be the location where the quest would be offered. Izaro is the best candidate to offer this quest because, unlike the other lazy jerk, he doesn't take off in the middle of the night. Offering a single token per day through this methodology would increase a free-to-play player's horse token generation through active play by 7 tokens per week, allowing the players the realistic probability to make one decent courser every two weeks.

3.) Only allow one Old Moon Grand Prix track, and rotate the three tracks on either a daily or weekly basis. Add a Mount Skill Change Coupon as a tradable reward for Grand Prix Trophies: By allowing only one Old Moon Grand Prix track (instead of the current three), you create a focused funnel for all players to join into horse racing and complete the content. The problem with having too many tracks on offer is that the community cannot see what other races are currently on-going, how many players are waiting in each lobby, and this is a problem that is made exponentially worse by the fact that some tracks are objectively better than others (The Balenos track, for example, has the best balance of skill requirement & time spent to complete the track). Because of this issue, horse races simply do not take place. No one wants to join an empty horse race and wait for 10 minutes or longer to see a handful of people come and go. Offer a single track, everyone goes there. It's as simple as that. You can keep the other tracks in the game by either rotating them daily, or with every maintenance, and this also maintains the variety as the spice of life. An alternative would be to randomize the track on a per-instance basis, but I feel like that could be manipulated or abused. By adding a Mount Skill Change Coupon to be traded for Grand Prix Trophies, once again you are actively encouraging horse trainers to participate in their favorite content and rewarding them by making their lives better in their favorite life skill. I would recommend a rate of 20 Grand Prix Gold Trophies/30 Grand Prix Silver Trophies/60 Grand Prix Bronze Trophies for x1 Mount Skill Change Coupon. This is a fair rate of exchange and would require a decent amount of effort per token. It can be pursued actively, or over the course of a week depending on a trainer's level of commitment to active play. Essentially, you could grind Old Moon Grand Prix races instead of mobs.

All of the above suggestions would instantly reduces the purely P2W aspect of horse training, while still leaving players with less time to spend on active play incentive to make purchases in the Pearl Shop. It also makes the lifeskill far more meaningful and approachable for your low-cost (or free to play) users.

All of these quality of life changes would create a new problem, however. The average player typically only needs 1-2 good horses, so how do we ensure that the market remains viable with what would surely result in an increased flood of courses? Simple. In the case of T7 and T8 Coursers, you introduce a box that you recieve as a reward for Imperial horse delivery in addition to their usual quantity of seals and silver.

- From Tier 7 Horse boxes (call these Granverre's Treasure) you receive dream horse materials that can be sold on the marketplace. This will increase the quantity of dream horse materials available to all players, and allow more players to make attempts at dream horses, while allowing those who simply wish to be paid for their horse the ability to fill the income gap of Imperial Horse Delivery from the marketplace to some degree. Allow these boxes to offer x10 of Stonetail Fodder, x10 Pure Forest Breaths, x10 Breezy Conch Seaweeds, x10 Swaying Wind Shards, and x10 Rumbling Earth Shards. This would keep the value still below the marketplace value of selling the horse outright, but still provide a strong incentive for imperial horse delivery that would additionally feed into the first suggestion on our list, which would allow more coursers, which would feed back into Imperial Horse Delivery (Recycling is good for the planet, I hear).

- From Tier 8 Horse boxes (call these Krogdalo's Treasure) you recieve dream horse materials that can be sold on the marketplace at the rate of x30 of Stonetail Fodder, x30 Pure Forest Breaths, x30 Breezy Conch Seaweeds, x1 Krogdalo's Origin Stone, and additionally you will recieve x1 Dreamy Powder. Dreamy Powder is currently a Tier 10 item that is time-gated due to the Fern Roots exclusively being attainable through a daily & weekly quest, and by far the most frustrating part of the material aquisition process. By adding this as a reward for trading in T8 Coursers, these horses will now have a serious demand for users chasing the Mythical Tier 10 Horse, which will in turn ensure that the market stays healthy.

With an active & living horse race scene, players will be able to complete their weekly quest to attain and use or sell their Dreamy Feather through the Old Moon Grand Prix.

All of these problems are solved in one fell swoop with a few really solid changes that would benefit horse trainers, and best of all, it's all done through horse training. I have put a lot of thought into this in order to benefit our community. I now ask for your help in sharing this message, and generating your feedback. I am aware that some of you habitually downvote my content because I may have put a greatsword in you at some point. I ask you to please put all that aside for a moment, and to not to hate the message because of the messenger. I want BDO to be the best version of itself, and as someone with a lot of experience in horse training, I know we can make this corner of our block a lot better. I have already spoken with our CMs and they will be forwarding this to our development team. Please, help me share this message. Help us make BDO better.

I thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing you on our adventures together!

***EDIT***

Fair Community Suggestions that should be strongly considered:

o Change the manos trainer outfit to give more mount exp than the silver embroidered outfit, and increase mount movement speed proportionally. It should be the top tier training outfit and this would make it so. 

o Increase the spawn rate of wild horses in all areas so that they reappear more frequently

o Change the taming mini-game, spamming spacebar can damage controllers and injure players with wrist issues because of the repetitive nature. Consider making it a "tug of war" style mini game where you are tugging against the horse by pressing S when the horse pulls you forward, and using using W to inch forward slowly so that you are moving towars the horse while resisting tugs. This would be a unique mini-game but not unlike others that presently exist in the game.

o Mount Brand Stones are relatively useless right now. They should offer a gauranteed new skill to be learned, and should have the function of premium mount appearance change function and mount brand stones could be rolled into one, and this would make it both more valuable to players, and increase it's functionality on the pearl shop.

o Consider making Tier 6 horses capturable in the wild in specific regions such as Drieghan.

o Horse skills which have been fully learned (such as Drift, Sprint, etc) should raise the market value of a horse by doubling the silver offered for the skill in question.

o This one is from me. Please....PLEASE bring back the regional riding music theme toggles. These songs were awesome, and I miss them every day. Having them toggleable as on/off was ideal. I don't know why we lost this option!

----

Please keep in mind that mount breed resets are still exclusively purchased through pearls and thus remains a strong incentive for making purchases, as well as easily accessible skill change tokens. None of these measures will stop someone who wants to shortcut time for effort from spending money.

Well frankly speaking, as much as I do love the horse content, and I do, it is not the meat and potatoes of the game, nor is it proper to attempt to seclude oneself into one specific realm of content within the game-- EH NOT TODAY... LET"S GO 👏👏👏👏

Crossing fingers for seeing genuine change in fixing some of the worst remaining P2W in the game after three years of campaigning for it to be yeeted~

edit: while I'm here, a bit more feedback:

※ Explainations on the exact way BDO's server gives out horse skills both while leveling from 1-30 and when using a skill change coupon. Our best guesses right now is a bunch of hypothetical percentages, and it's a culimination of work over six years to provide as accurate as possible chances for spending a skill coupon on a horse. If hidden stats on weapons and pearl costumes/outfits can be revealed, then why are stats from a direct pearl purchase not revealed either? If I'm spending $20-40 per horse, then I would expect to know where my money has a chance of going. Lootbox mechanic on horses isn't a good look in 2021.

※ Add in BDM-style horse mechanics to BDO horses, including replacing the existing spacebar spam-minigame with the three-try BDM horse catching minigame. It's sad when an app has a better minigame than a PC game. Additionally, adding the bond buffs from BDM (like combat/lifeskill EXP, AP up, horse temporary speed boost, more weight boost, etc) that are given after hitting level 30 would make more sense with the level cap being raised. A lot of the problems with BDO's horses was solved with BDM, and it's strange that no improvements from a sister-game ran by the same company has made it to PC.

Another thing is they reaaaly need to reqork how the minigame works, both horse catching and thr skill training. Both are extremely toxic

I think the main point of contention is the availability of Mount Skill Change Coupons within the game. Being able to purchase these in large quantities will almost certainly gain you a net advantage over other players who can only obtain them rarely via events or sales in the Loyalty shop.

While I think that making the coupons more readily avaible to players is an excellent idea, I'm not entirely convinced this will solve the problem. The main hurdle with Training is attaining a Tier 8 Courser. If this becomes easier then the value of both coursers and dream horses greatly decreases. Over time the value of dream horses has already significantly decreased, as with the inflation of the economy within the game, the value of the horses themselves on the market was never adjusted. There's also a point to make about the items used in the awakening process, but that's another whole can of worms I don't want to dig into.

However we must consider the positives for players here. It is not a secret that the horse market is usually completely sold out when season servers start. New players, as well as returning or even experienced players need a decent horse to enhance their seasonal server experience. This creates a need for well trained horses. Undoubtably training is a part of everyone's progression in BDO, wether they buy a horse or train one themselves, they'll definitely need a horse to enjoy their adventure.

So the question that I ask here, is there enough demand for a higher average of horses being actively traded, and if so, would these changes bring this demand to satisfaction, potentially causing saturating and stagnation of the horse market?
There's no use being able to make coursers with more ease if no one wants to buy them because they can just as easily make them, and because the market is so saturated with them it might take you a long time to sell a horse.

Even if there's a new way to get rid of your coursers via imperial delivery, its only a matter time before those interested have their dream horses and the market might slowly become saturated. This may be a contraversial point to make, but I think most players do not want to go for a Myhical horse for two reasons: they can't be traded, therefor this means you sink 25-30bil in costs roughly to get a Mythical horse that no longer has any market value, and finally, their stats and skills do not really set them far enough apart to warrant the extra cost for most of the players.

Obviously, training is a passionate lifeskill and most players who heavily invest into it will do it because they love the life skill and that aspect of the game, but for your typical player who probably just buys a horse instead of dealing with the RNG that is making their own, 25-30bil in gear (be it for pve or life skilling) would have a much greater benefit than a horse.

That pretty much sums my main concerns with this suggestion. I think the idea is great but I worry that there may not be enough of a market within the game's economy to allow for such a change unless prices are adjusted as well. There's a small nod to be made here in regards to how incredibly silver efficient Mount Skill Change Coupons are when it comes to their pearl to silver ratio. They are somewhere around 150% as efficient as other means of earning silver by purchasing and using pearls with the downside of being a much slower investment due to the time it takes to carefully train a horse and make optimal use of them.

Can we get an in-game means to get Mount Skill Change Coupons???  They let us have an in-game means of extracting crystals.  How about Mount Skill Change Coupons?

I'd like to get a T8 Courser.  My T8 (I have a few T8's and an Arduanatt) only needs S: Sideways.  Why can't I choose to pay or play in this dept., why is it only pay (or get extremely, extremely, lucky)?

PS - Yes, I know there is an "efficient" way to get Courser skills (forechop method).  But that still requires mandatory Pearl Shop purchases.  Why can't we play our way to Courser?  Why is it only pay our way to Courser?  Stumped.  Confused.  Feelings of betrayal.

Yes, pleeeease!!

looks really well thought out. i generally only just catch horses at duvencrune, level them overnight, breed them and then i imperial them once they're out of breeds. with that said i've only ever had maybe 1 t8 courser in the past 2 years of doing this process.

i very much doubt PA would add a F2P way of making re-roll coupons but i feel that 10 seals for 1 is actually really fair all things considered. Racing is pretty dead but i feel like if there is re-roll coupons for trophies would actually make it worth doing.

im full F2P and i horse train since the only limiter on it for going afk over night is just having carrots which are 1 silver and weigh pretty much nothing.

good post, hope something comes from it.

I upped the quantity of seals required to 20 for a coupon based on feedback both here and on the official horse training discord.

I must reiterate that this is a holistic view. It makes everything both more accessible and recyclable while increasing active play options. If the amount seems low, it's because of how costly it is currently. 20 tokens will take several days to grind, and 1 courser per week per trainer should not be a far cry or unrealistic. There's not a lot of us, but there could be if the lifeskill became more accessible. 

This is one of the last P2W corners of BDO. We can fix this, which allowing the whales to continue whaling.

Taken from: Black Desert | PEARL ABYSS (playblackdesert.com)

It is no secret that Horse trainers and no-trainers alike agree that the chance of creating a natural T8 Courser to awaken is a impossibly small, minuscule, microscopic, non existant chance. Would not surprise me if it is by design, so players spend money on Skill Change Coupons. All of this of course under the concept that we don't NEED Coursers or Dream horses. But if we label it like that and closed the topic, we would agree it is p2w content. Which beats the "work and grind your butt off" to obtain end-game content. I have tried to find the original patch notes when Courser system and Dream Awakening were released to see what changes were made to Training to accomodate the new system. Cause right now they seem like two completely different dishes. "That's not logical" I hear you say, and I know it doesn't sound logical because it's still horse-related.. but nothing in your lifeskill supports you making coursers or awakening horses.

And being honest, I understand the "pay for higher chances but nothing is guaranteed" model. And this game is designed so you are subject to RNG and a heck load of a grind and that's alright too. But the Courser System is way too far on the p2w model.

I am not exaggerating just to get a point through. Ask any horse trainer about T8 coursers and they WILL mention Skill Change Coupons, no exceptions. If you ask about the "Mount Brand Spell Coupon" they will also agree it is not worth it. So here are a few suggestions on how this could be tweaked in favor of the player, without making Skill Change Coupons unncessary.

Suggestions that would be nice, but would not really fix the system:

🥕 Buff the Mount Brand Spell Stone.

Was thinking that perhaps, This item could aditionally:

1. Give your horse one new skill guaranteed.

2. Fixed chance to possibly give you 1-2 extra skills. 

Even raise the price if needed to support these changes.

Meanwhile Mount Skill Change Coupons would still remain in the pearl shop for easy 24/7 access to donators. But award them in ingame systems more often for f2p players. Not only would a change like this encourage more people to buy Branding Stones for mounts (Since some Trainers already use Premium app coupons for the chance of extra skills), but it would properly reward your donators and give more flexibility for the f2p trainers. As well as it cannot be abused as this can only be used per mount afaik.

🥕 Let us buy Mount Skill Change Coupons on the Central Marketplace. 

🥕 Add them permanently once per week in loyalties.

🥕 Add a couple of Mount Skill Change Coupons in Black Spirit's Adventure boards. (1 or 2 across all boards.)

🥕 Alternatively, swap one Event Courser Training Item in the Attendance Rewards for 1 Skill Change Coupon. (Mysterious Blue Conch, Fruit of Yianaros and Crimson Fire Flowers. I have to admit giving Awakening materials for free to players who might never get a T8 Courser, unless they spend money of coupons, is kind of silly.) And the other two with "[Event] Rare Courser Training Box"

🥕 Give a Mount Skill Change Coupon when a Trainer Imperial Delivers a Horse that either:

1. Is a courser

2. Is Lv. 30

Even lock it behind Master Rank to reward the lifeskill grind.

Suggestions that would alleviate the process for f2p players by providing rewards for effort: 

When a player has Master or Higher rank in Training they could:

🥕 Have a Random chance of obtaining a Foal / Miniature pony pet from breeding. The higher the tier horse bred, the higher the chance.

Could even have a cute item description like: "This foal was found next to your mare and would not leave it's side. We don't know where it came from but you seem like the right person to take care of it."

This pet would:

1. Give Mount Skill Learn Chance +1% at T1.

2. At T4 the pet would give 5% Mount Skill Learn Chance. (You can have 5 pets a time, which would mean 25% Mount Skill Learn Chance tops. Which is the same bonus as being Master 2 in Training.)

3. If that is too much, cap each T1 pet at 0.5% and T4 at 3%, which would mean 15% with 5 pets.

🥕 Give an increased chance to learn a new skill if you Master an existing skill on the horse. (Train it to 100%) Much like leveling up and "the chance of it learning a skill has increased" Which I assume works similar to a failstack, but considering we still see this when a horse levels up past 30, it's probably not worth a kahoot atm.

🥕 If a player with Master Rank breeds a courser, the offspring should be born with 3 skills and 4 skills if you are a Guru.

Sadly the single benefit of breeding coursers is absolutely useless. For comparison:

My T8 Oling, born with 1 skill, had 11 skills by Lv.15. 16 Skills at Lv.30, 17 Skills after an appaereance change and became a courser 15 coupons later.

I leveld up two horses (Aureate and Freebee) from the Scallywag Treasure chest , with 3 courser skills at Lv1, only had 8-9 skills by lv15 and reached Lv.30 with 15-16 skills. 

Having 2 skills at Lv1, make NO difference whatsoever.

🥕 Buff the "Skill Gain Change" in our lifeskill rank. Even if it's just a flat increase of the % so they are releveant.

Or perhaps it could work different; With higher rank you would unlock a set of random levels assigned from 10-30 in which the horse will 100% learn a skill. For example:

T1 - T2: Lv13, 18, 21, 27

T3- T4: Lv12, 20, 22, 28

T5: Lv14, 21, 27, 30

T6: Lv15, 19, 25, 29

Could even increase it for higher tiers from Lv.5-30 and 5 guaranteed skills if you reach Guru-Master.

T7:  6, 10, 14, 24, 30

T8: 7, 15, 21, 26, 30

This would be a small push that would help players train coursers and while I'm not terrific at math; giving 4-5 guaranteed skills is not game-breaking in my opinion, specially when a T8 courser needs SEVEN skills out of a 20-skill pool. Seven skills from which 3 of those skills have LESS than 1% chance to be learned with every level up.

Of course the set of numbers would not be disclosed to players and could even be random with each coat, just like skill chances are.