I wrote those packs on the international X-D Happy to see that some one posted then here.

But prices:

History Pack: 35 USD
Lycky Day: 60 USD
Olympus: 100 USD
Ultimate: 180 USD

Yes rides take a little bit more time as you have to do two types of rides.
The only thing is that once you've finished blupping there won't be much left to do.
Completing a horse's training doesn't take much longer than before to one or two horse days close.

We've looked at the breed profiles (because it's not something that can be looked at from a single breed's perspective).
Here is a little table showing what is currently on the game and what the changes do here on the preproduction.

Their repartition varies according to the skills that are allocated to each type of ride and competition.

Here is what's currently on the game on Howrse.com:


In red the breed profiles that require 2 types of rides and competitions to complete their BLUP.
In green the breeds that only require one ride and competition to complete their BLUP>

As you can see there are 6 breed profiles which hold a large advantages over the others.

Now this table shows what is here and active on the preprod:


As you can see there is only one breed profile who remains in green.
There is still a fair bit of red profiles but also a decent amount of profiles requiring either one ride and two competitions or two rides and one competition.

And finally we have worked on an even more balanced breed profile repartition with this proposal that isn't online for the moment and that would have:

for mountain rides
Stamina
Speed
Trot

For forest rides
Jumping
Galop
Dressage



Here we achieve a global breed profile repartition that tends to avoid having over advantageous breed profiles and very disadvantageous breed profiles.

This would mean that cross horses wouldn't be as adavantaged as they are now and would also allow two other breed profiles with 2 rides and 2 competitions to only have a single type of ride instead. This seems fairer that letting the crossers have the main advantage.

With this solution we lose a by of realism in the skill gain depending on the rides but is isn't really important but just makes the skills that are related to a ride a little harder to remember for new players.

What do you think?

Concerning the amount of energy used in rides. If we adjust it, it'll be of1 or 2%. Diminishing it more would equate to ending the whole training process much earlier than now.
On top of that with the future features comes the removal of the meadow and box actions and dispatch their energy gains on other elements (feeding will maybe give a bit more energy than now) as well as the arrival of the watering trough . We would rather make the adjustments at that point rather than anticipating and doing them twice.
Cheers