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My thoughts are similar @ObsidianKitsune! Im just trying to find the footing with all these changes.

Well put @CrewCut! :)

What do any changes have to do with any of that? There has been color breeders from day one. ;) You have not been here long enough to know but it used to be way worse. It's gotten better if anything. Stars sure as heck don't sell for the same amount as C papered. And untested horses are just that untested. Why would they be worth the same as a well tested one.

Ok, to start off, I do not believe in judging foals as breeders by their individual pt scores, as my best of pasture foals rarely are among the highest pt scores, as the high scores in that pasture are so often snipped by BA, especially with bootstrapping.
Now that we get the fact that I don't breed for pt, what do I breed for? Not even, definitely color... If quality is breeding evenly or in foals being better than both parents then bootstrapping would certainly not be quality.
For me this all boils down to the question of what quality was that I had as a new player. Most of my mares were random creates, even and uneven reds from auction or from Cheers, and I think 2 blue 3rd gen also from Cheers. I collected foundation, 2nd gen and a third gen stud. Then Dark Star returned to the game and people talked about how she had the best horses, and so I snagged a Colt of hers the first time I saw dark star in the auction. From breeding goats in real life, I know that if you want better goats you find a nice buck to breed to. Was so excited, but he was too high quality, so breeding to him would not be quality (see the confusion in the statement?) So I continued breeding red horses, and eventually blues because that is better quality that getting gold fillies from a stud that would still be better than them. Eventually (near the end of that once colt's lifespan) I realised that even though even breeding does see improvement, I still could not recreate the quality of the Colt after a real life year and he would make foals better than my current breeding stock. That's the goal, isn't it? So I started bootstrapping. I first went off of paper, now I go off of BA trying to go with the highest quality stud I have. I believe I am breeding specifically for quality, but that is up for debate.
Now, there are still reds, blues and a yellow in my herd even though I am culling holds on being too low. These are just for collor, put lower horses in, keep blue offspring, then eventually switch to keeping gold and one day I will have horses of that color same quality as the rest of the herd. It worked for ice 1, but still waiting on the rest of the colors. I also got a straw from an ice 5 that gave me a yellow filly. I want to keep the gene, but breeding her evenly would certainly be bad breeding. I plan to breed her bootstrap and only keep fillies papering blue or gold. That way there is improvement on the gene.
Now the thing I don't understand it people keeping yellow and reds from the bootstrapping crosses. Those aren't making improvement on a foundation. Yes, keep a few horses to get a color going g, but I don't think yellow or red should be a standard to cull by when blue is a realistic possibility with decent frequency. There are so many brands and levels of bootstrapping that you can't make blanket statements though. I just like seeing my badly bred horses on the leader boards. Mwahaha

@Wildland Acres very good explanation
@FallenShadows714 I like how you put that!
;;)

One of the things I've noticed about this game is that there are a lot of different goals and a dozen or more different ideas of what is the 'right' way to breed horses and what quality is. It's great that there's so many ways to play, and yet it is very confusing sometimes, too, especially for new players.

The real world method of breeding the best stud you can afford to the best mare you have and hope for the best foal is called bootstrapping here, and usually leads to snipped foals so you end up paying that high stud fee and breeding/testing costs for a foal that you can't sell except at auction. Color breeding is sometimes high-priced and other times you can't even get create price for the foals. Breeding only by even generations leads to foals that some will say are wonderful and others will say are no good because they reached X gen without maxing out papers. Paper breeding leads to lots of uneven foals which someone will surely tell you is bad right after they say it's best to always breed by the papers, 'cause that's happened multiple times for me. :))

So yeah. Finding your way in this game is not easy, and the FAQ doesn't begin to cover it all, but there are always people around who want to help so it could be much worse. I'm very grateful to the experienced players who have taken the time to explain things to me at length and helped me figure out why nobody wanted my foals, especially the ones who were very patient with me in private, explaining things as long as it took until I finally made sense of it. You know who you are, and you are awesome! :D

Personally, after almost three months of trying to learn what I like and what will sell (which are sometimes mutually exclusive! lol) I've decided to try to breed towards the very best quality I can (high papers, high PT, consistent, pass SBA) in the colors/patterns I personally like. My tastes and other people's ideas of beauty seem to be different, and I'm just getting started so my foals aren't papering high yet very often, but I'll still offer my foals on the forum most of the time even though they will likely end up in the auction a couple of days later. :)

@ConfluenceFarms =)) I nearly died laughing because of the visulization at the end. I feel the same way. Breed for quality and colour!

@Xceptional your foals are always lovely! :x

Breeding for the purpose of selling horses has never really been a money-making tactic since tastes change and everyone’s tastes are different.

Personally I’d empty my bank account for a grullo horse with a pedigree filled of Grullo horses with a progression of papers (2-3 generations max of the same paper) but would only pay about 5k max for a black liver and would alter it for a show horse whereas another player will oppositely pay more for the liver.

But that’s why I like this game, you don’t need to breed the horses someone else likes or wants, you can follow your own path and breed all the horses you want.

It's as true in real life as it is in the game. In my goat herd I have one doe who is a kicker and has kind of a snotty personality. But she milks a gallon a day on minimal grain, has never once had an issue with parasites and is an amazing mom. I basically gave away my bred in the purple amazingly built show doe with the sweetest labrador personality because she was a shitty mom, needed TONS of grains and was my prime parasite shedder. The second doe was way better quality and temperament, the first doe is what I NEED in my herd though.

Breed what gets the job done for you. We are not one of those games where you are only as good as the desirability of your lines. Everyone just kinda does their own thing.

At my last 4-H fair, someone asked me if I was going to butcher all my goats because they were worthless. LOL, not something you want to hear at a 4-H fair about your pets. haha.
I am the black sheep which breeds for different things than many others. I considered mu goats that could produce 2-3 gallons a day better that their full sized dairy goats that were boasted at producing up to a gallon a day despite what angulature those goats had to their shoulder blades. I also liked phenotypes that do not exist in any one breed, so I cross bred to get fiery redhead colored dairy goats with blue eyes and blazes and erect ears.
There are issues in my line. I understand why people tell me to cull my entire herd, but I am making progress in improving and getting rid of those traits. Really, the goats do what I want them to do, and since I am no longer in any sort of show system, I am putting what works best on my farm before what some judge who doesn't have to deal with managing my goats says I should do. :)

Yeah, I've been there as a real life breeder of meat goats in a 4-H county that is heavy on the dairy goat. Many people didn't like that my goats aren't as handle-able as the average dairy goat, but they will make any predator that comes near their babies regret the day they were born, which is helpful when your animals are raised in the back pasture backing up to an undeveloped wildlife conservation area. Some traits are more or less important in different contexts.

But one of the things I appreciate about this game is the paper qualities that mirror real life breeding. There are a ton of fancy horses out there with star-spangled pedigrees, and some with spangly pedigrees that didn't turn out so hot. Conversely, you have real life "bootstrapped" horses like Harley D Zip and California Chrome that are very accomplished.