erinnexchange

[erinnexchange]

Major Server overhaul, 0.8.9

As the last interim step before releasing v0.9, I did a near complete rewrite of how the server was structured. This was needed to allow for me to have multiple web applications hosted on the same virtual machine. Makes way for new projects in the future, but also updates a kind of antiquated system in place from EE v0.1. This weekend will see the roll out of v0.9, which includes the email system, the feedback forms and the Edit Listing functionality. As promised, this is likely the last "feature patch" that I'll put out in the Beta. v1.0 will be largely the final patches and security features needed to call the site done.

[erinnexchange]

College Notes, I mean patch notes - 0.8.5

I just landed at college so I'm still getting adjusted. Patch 0.9 is going to be delayed until classes actually start since I've got orientation taking up all my time.

Fixed Bugs:

Empty searches now work.

Gold is now properly formatted

Listing Detailed view is now more obvious, with an magnifying glass icon

Something to note: The username being displayed on listings is intentional. The system gives the character name to the buyer only when they have won the listing. This prevents people from just coming on the site to get ingame names.

[erinnexchange]

While Mabi Patches, I write patch notes.

Erinn Exchange has seen some neat updates these past few days, and it's largely been due to your support and feedback. Thanks for your help!

Anyways here's a rundown of what works now, what's coming, and what is working as intended, with Beta Version 0.8.1

Fixed Bugs:

Account Page works again. One letter typo in the wrong spot, and the whole thing breaks. Great.

The detailed view of listings now display your notes for the listing below the description. 

Logging in now redirects after 2.5 seconds.

Listing submissions now have a cooldown, as well as bidding.

New Features:

When creating a listing using the item name, the page now displays a table of items to choose from if the name entered has more than one possible match. When a row is clicked, it auto-fills the table.

Email system framework is complete on the server side. More work is required to have it tie into everything completely.

Next Patch:

Edit existing listings. While you'll only be able to edit the  tags and the additional notes, it does allow for fixing typos, etc.

Feedback and sale confirmation page for closed/completed listings. This is the last step required before the email system goes live, and the core system is considered fully developed. 

Account preferences. Want more listings displayed on the homepage?  Want to ignore certain items or certain users? The preferences system will lay the groundwork for all of that.

[erinnexchange]

Erinn Exchange's lengthy Roadmap

So this is going to be a twofold post, detailing what EE is, and where I plan to take it. I feel like I should give some back story on where I'm coming from in terms of MMO markets.

Before Mabinogi, I was a hardcore EVE Online player. I had the big ships, and big spreadsheets, just like most of the people did. But what myself, and the people I played with, did differently, was that we would regularly create price history graphs for items we were trying to sell. This was a bit of a feat because there were trade hubs all throughout the game universe, and we'd be creating three or four graphs at a time, from XML data pulled from any one of the numerous data sites that took EVE's API data, and turned it into workable XML. It became part of my MMO experience to reference these graphs, and created educated estimates of where the prices would go, and act on them. I made and lost money just like everyone else did who speculated on market prices, but my group had a major edge that most people didn't, as we understood where we were, where we had been, and were able to use that to figure out where we were going. 

tl;dr: I come from a background of making educated sales based on price data over large periods of time.

The question then becomes, how the hell does this apply to Mabinogi? There's no centralized source for market prices, Mabi has no API or way to check what's being sold in-game beyond the housing board. In reality though, the major price changes occur in Dunbarton square on Ch1. EE is there to bridge that gap with one simple strategy:

Encourage players to list their sales outside of the game, in a context that allows for listings to be price checked against competitors and the previous sales of the items, thus ridding the million GP question of "How much does this cost?" from the minds of the users.

This is both a short and long-term goal. 

As far as the road-map goes, the following list of features will be implemented together as their features require.

1) Reward System for creating listings, bidding and winning auctions.

Of course as EE stands now, there's not much by way of data to create graphs from, but that's where the users come in. In the short term, the reward will be accurate data to base your prices off of, but down the road, I'd like to have a reward system that allows people who sell items regularly on EE to purchase "reserved" listing slots with their reward points, that show up at the top of related queries instead of in whatever order the database finds them. Reward points will never be sold for actual money though.

2) Standings system to counteract spam listings.

 I've got the groundwork laid out for a "standings" system, that acts as a verification to prove that the listings and sales being made are actually legitimate and not faked. When a sale is made, a unique code, no longer than 7 digits is generated. The seller then puts this code in along side the item in the ingame mail, and when the buyer picks up the item, they put the code into the feedback form for the sale, along with any comments they have. The standing that the lister gains is related for how many times they've sold to that specific person, but regardless, a legitimate sale gives a standing increase. Standings will displayed alongside the detailed view of listings, but unless the standing is considered poor/bad, there will be no repercussions on the seller.

3) Icons tailored to the sale, accurately representing the in-game item's colors.

Without going into too much detail, Mabinogi items have separated layers in their actual textures. The game then applies colors to each specific section of the texture, and then lays one over the other to generate the final image that's seen in the inventory. I plan to implement similar functionality into EE, drawing from converted textures, and giving the user the ability to match their item's colors exactly on each listing they create for items like clothing. The final image will be displayed as the icon for the listing, replacing the stock icon. This is a big deal, since Mabinogi fashion items can be worth millions of Gold, simply based on their colors. 

4) Price checking and price history graphs

Obviously this is the big one. Mabinogi's item prices have largely been done by word of mouth, and I've seen more people than I care to admit get cheated over because they simply didn't know how rare an item was. EE is largely designed to counteract that, and this feature will probably be the first one to be released after EE enters Beta testing.

In the end however, this site is for the users, and I'll be keeping a close eye on your feedback. If any of these ideas sound bad or you just have a question about how they'll work, please feel free to email me at maldaris@erinnexchange.com

As a general update of where the site is, I'm currently working on finishing the Account page, where you'll be able to view your active bids, and listings, and also view any of your previous bids and listings. Once this is completed, the notifications and email sending side of things is next on the list, where you'll receive notifications of when your items have sold, or when you've won an auction. 

-Maldaris

[erinnexchange]

I'm here, don't kill me.

Before anyone asks, yes I'm going to still post updates in the /mabigen/ thread. This is just for me to put more stuff up that shows what's going on in the site/my head as Erinn Exchange evolves that I don't want to clog the thread with. I get filtered enough.

I guess a little bit about myself. I'm a recent high-school graduate who's a self-taught programmer in various languages. I've played Mabinogi since closed beta, although only recently did I actually begin to take it seriously. I listen to some pretty out there music from well before I was born, and when I was in diapers. Ill watch just about any movie that doesn't have Sandra Bullock in it, and that includes Gravity. I'm also typing this at 4:45 AM, so I guess I'm a bit of an insomniac. I tend to do most of my programming in the hours after midnight, and before 10AM.  

Going to preemptively answer some questions I expect to get.

You're from 4chan?

Yes I come from that pit on the internet called 4chan. But I don't share the same idiocy. Calm down Tumblr. I won't make politically charged posts, and I won't respond to any either. Technically this is a business, so I'm going to treat it as one.

Did you steal the idea from Mabi Mart? Did they steal it from you?

No, Erinn Exchange has nothing to do with Mabi Mart. Infact I didn't find out about Mabi Mart until well into developing the server and the database. Nihl and I have already talked, and we feel as long as one of us succeeds, it's all good. 

How did you come up with Erinn Exchange?

Erinn Exchange initially started as a dinky idea that I was throwing around to save me the trouble of searching player shops in Dunbarton. I drew up how I would imagine the perfect eBay, and how I would develop a robust searching system for auctions, and got to work. It ended up evolving into my day-job. Not to say it's a chore though; the best jobs are ones where it doesn't feel like working. Developing EE is a crap-ton of fun, and I've learned quite a bit about web development, all while making a pretty neat site.

I'm going to follow up with a "What is EE" post in a bit that will go into more depth of what Erinn Exchange is now, and what it's going to be.

Suffice it to say for now that Erinn Exchange aims to be the fastest, lightest, and most intuitive Auction House and Market for Mabinogi. 

You can find Erinn Exchange here. Please keep in mind it's still a work in progress. I would guestimate at the time of writing that it's 85% done before being considered "fully functional".

Please feel free to tell me what you think about the site, what's broken and what you'd like to see out of it through here, or using the BugHerd plugin on the homepage. (You should check them out here, they're awesome!)

Thanks, and hope to see you using the site soon!

Shayne "Maldaris" Fitzgerald

Developer of Erinn Exchange