Messages

1

Site Feedback / Re: Can we get a real-time price calculation of our collections?

« on: September 17, 2014, 11:12:01 pm »

Any game on this site with an Estimated Value is pulled from PriceCharting.com, which tracks a number of sources to get a fairly reasonable value for each item over time.  They already provide values for loose, CIB and new versions of each item.  The Doom example posted earlier includes both PriceCharting and Amazon data.  Although looking at that and a few other titles, they seem to be using loose pricing from January so I'm not sure if that's being kept up to date.

2

General / Re: Online Game Console Store???

« on: September 13, 2014, 02:42:35 pm »

btw - my friend Mike *IS* CCaG; so if anyone here is gonna buy from or deal with him...PM me 1st and maybe I can give you a reference or introduction, or something.

I'm tempted to make an order, but you should tell Mike that you can't just put the word "Secure" on the order form and think that makes it safe.  "Secure" is the "S" in HTTPS, and his site doesn't use it.  Paypal is probably OK, but I wouldn't submit a credit card using that form.

Aside from that, thanks for the reference.  He has some games I've been wanting at decent prices.

3

Site Feedback / Re: Can we get a real-time price calculation of our collections?

« on: September 13, 2014, 02:05:15 pm »

I would very much like to see this feature, for pretty much the same reasons as have already been suggested.  It would be extremely helpful for insurance purposes as well as just satisfying my curiosity.  And I really don't care if it's 100% accurate as long as it gives me a pretty good idea of the replacement cost, although it might help to indicate what percentage of game/hardware pricing data is available.

I would guess that the pricing data could be significantly improved if everything had a barcode, since PriceCharting and Amazon both let you search for that.  That's something I would be happy to work on for my own collection at least, but it would help to have an export that included the barcode field and pricing so I could see what's missing.

4

Modern Video Games / Re: Another Wii U stat

« on: January 29, 2014, 12:55:48 am »

4.) Bring online functionality up to MS/Sony standards. 
Free online is a big selling point.

I think this is the biggest issue.  When you've got friends playing games online, you buy the same system so you can play together.  That means an entire group of friends usually goes for either PSN (more recently) or Xbox Live.  Nintendo isn't even in that contest, but now that they're on HD hardware they could be a bigger player if they added a comparable online system with friends lists.  Even better if they bring 3DS users along for the ride.  I hoped Club Nintendo or the Nintendo Network would be used for some of that, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

The one thing that would really sell me on a premium service here, and I think a lot of other gamers too, is if they threw in a pile of VC games each month.  To the article's point, Nintendo could very easily do a Netflix style offering where you get access to a big game library as long as you subscribe.  Maybe they rotate the collection, so if you really like Mario you can buy that title and always have it available, but otherwise you're still getting a decent pile of games to pick from.  It seems to be working well for PSN's Instant Game Collection, and Nintendo has a much larger catalog to offer.

The best advice I've heard for Nintendo is to sell the WiiU without the Gamepad. Nintendo states this is $100 dollars of the cost. So, here are the benefits:

WiiU $199

" 'nuff said" quoth Stan Lee.

Several good points, but I don't see this happening.  The most recent lesson comes from Kinect- if you don't bundle it with every console, nobody develops for it.  If Nintendo pulled the gamepad, or didn't include them in the first place, I seriously doubt many games would use it.  At the very least it wouldn't be the primary control option like it is now.  And without the gamepad, it's really just a Wii HD.

I do like the idea of a 3DS as an alternative controller or second screen, but I'm not sure it could completely replace the gamepad due to the low video resolution and different controls.  Still, individual 3DS controllers for each player would be great on some games.  I'm thinking local 8-player Mario Kart, racing on 3DS systems while watching highlights and a map on the TV.  Who could pass that up?

5

Video Game Database Discussion / Re: NEW Duplicate Listing Thread

« on: January 24, 2014, 01:05:07 am »

http://vgcollect.com/item/13186 and http://vgcollect.com/item/49588

http://vgcollect.com/item/13190 and http://vgcollect.com/item/43527

6

General / Re: PSN, Gamer Tag, Steam, and Friend Code Exchange

« on: January 22, 2014, 11:36:21 pm »

Hi all!  I'm new around here but loving the site.

I'm inexodus pretty much everywhere.  None of my friends have an XB1 or PS4 yet, so definitely looking for others to play with online.

PSN, XBL, Steam, WiiU: Inexodus
3DS: 1504-6059-4483

7

Site Feedback / Re: VGCollect v3 Support Thread

« on: January 21, 2014, 08:43:42 pm »

From the item browsing pages, like http://vgcollect.com/browse/3doaccessory

I tried the individual item pages, they seem to work fine.  I hadn't been to the site in IE or FF before, so those were totally fresh.

Enjoy your dinner, I'm just having fun checking out the updates. 

8

Site Feedback / Re: VGCollect v3 Support Thread

« on: January 21, 2014, 08:05:14 pm »

I'm not able to add items to my collection or wishlist in Chrome, Firefox or IE, all latest versions.  I tried a few different items from multiple system types just to make sure.  I can check items and make the bar with the 3 buttons pop up, but clicking them gives me a javascript error.

Firefox error:
TypeError: temp is undefined in search-add-collection function
   temp = temp.split('_');

Chrome error:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'split' of undefined

9

Site Feedback / Item Search Suggestions

« on: January 19, 2014, 04:02:56 pm »

I'm wondering, based on the nearly 60 page thread, if some tweaks to the item search might help reduce the number of duplicates added?  My suggestion is that when a new item search comes up empty, a "deeper" query is made for less exact matches.

One general search feature that I think would help a lot (it doesn't look like you're currently using it) is the SQL wildcard "%" with the LIKE search.  If you replace the spaces in a search with the "%" wildcard, it should find matches with the words in the order entered regardless of the content between them.  This would let you enter "mario 3" and find Mario Advance 3, Mario Bros. 3, Mario Bros 3 (no period), etc without having to know the exact title and punctuation if the item you want.  I might consider doing this for all searches, not just empty ones.

I saw a couple recurring themes in the duplicates, and I'm sure others could add more.  In no particular order:
1: Wrong system identified
2: Misspelled title
3: Odd punctuation in title

For #1, when a new item search comes up empty you could also query similar systems that might get confused, especially if they're next to each other in the pull-down.  This would probably take some manual logic to group systems, but nothing too complicated (and I'm sure you could find some volunteers, including myself).  I'm thinking if nothing comes up for a GBA search, check the other systems in the "Nintendo Gameboy Handheld" category (GB, GBA, GBC) for matches.

For #2, a partial text query may turn up a valid entry for longer titles.  The easiest fix I can think of is to search for chunks of text.  Something like "does the first 2/3 match, or the last 2/3, or the first 1/3 and last 1/3" based on the query text length.

#3 could be addressed by stripping punctuation entirely, perhaps against a hidden punctuation-free title entry in the database.  This might significantly improve searching overall, since punctuation can be a pain and isn't always consistent.  This would also make the "bad" entries show up in a search, so they could just be fixed rather than having to deal with a duplicate later.


Hope this is helpful.  I figured in exchange for this awesome service I could at least try to reduce some of the editing overhead I see taking up the admins' time.

10

Site Feedback / Re: Collection page page entries with subicons

« on: January 19, 2014, 02:29:17 pm »

As much as I would like a unique icon for each console, the universal cart/disc icon wouldn't need updating until games start coming out on holographic cubes.   

I would maybe make the "other" icon something like a map and a figurine, so it looks different from the manual icon.

I like the layout change, will be much easier to see and update our collection info.  Is there any way we could go into "edit mode" for the full page instead of one item at a time?

11

Site Feedback / Re: Searching

« on: January 19, 2014, 02:16:43 pm »

That sounds great!  Would it be possible to have a default filter saved per account, or maybe some pre-defined categories for item type/region?  For example, I'm almost always searching for US/NA physical games so I would want to exclude imports, collectibles, virtual console, etc.

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Video Game Database Discussion / Re: NEW Duplicate Listing Thread

« on: January 19, 2014, 02:06:18 pm »

http://vgcollect.com/item/33472 and http://vgcollect.com/item/34931 Yossy (correct) /Yoshi Island [JP] - might get re-entered a lot since "Yoshi" is wrong in this case

http://vgcollect.com/item/27419 and http://vgcollect.com/item/5345 New SMB Wii