WHAT
We would like it if the search capabilities were enhanced more. I am required to type my input on all searches for the exact casing. Most modern search engines whether on simple apps, games, or websites do not factor in the casing of words. This is throughout all searching in Mabinogi (Auction Board, Bulletin Board, Inventory Search, etc.)
EXAMPLE
For example, if I'm looking for Magic Powder
I type in "magic powder" and nothing is shown in the results.
I type in "Magic powder" but nothing is shown in the results.
I type in "magic Powder" but nothing is shown in the results.
I type in "Magic Powder" and finally I get the item I want.
WHY
It's really frustrating when we go to search for items in the Auction House, Inventory, or pretty much anywhere and cannot come up with the correct items. Almost every search engine does not specify the casing of inputs. If I searched on Google for "Mabinogi" it would still show me results for Mabinogi (i know the URL is lowercase, but still).
POSSIBLE CODE FIX
We could simply fix these issues by switching the code around a bit. Convert all typed input strings (words) to be title cased before it calls the Get API (or whatever you use to make calls to your Database) to request the items. I don't know what code or framework you guys use, but as an example in JavaScript, it could be something like this
// This is just whatever the input coming in is
var input = "MaGiC PoWdEr";
// Lower cases the input of all characters, so "MaGiC PoWdEr" is "magic powder"
// split will group this string into an array of words, split from each space
// so "magic powder" is ["magic", "powder"]
input = input .toLowerCase().split(' ');
// This basically says, for each word in that array
// at the very first character, upper case it and replace
// the word
for (var i = 0; i < input .length; i++) {
input [i] = input [i].charAt(0).toUpperCase() + input [i].slice(1);
}
// This groups all the array of words back into a string of input
input = input .join(' ');
POTENTIAL CONFLICTS
The current system will look if that string of input contains the word. For example...
If I type in
sword my results are
Broadsword,
Longsword,
Fantastic Greatsword.
if I type in
Sword I get completely different results like
Celtic Royal Knights Sword and
Bastard Sword.
We could avoid this issue by either
1. Modify the query to the database to return both the matching title case words and words that contain the lower case
2. Modify the database to contain lower cased words, so anything we type in, the system cast's it to lowercase and you can grab matching and items that contain the string.
3. Making two calls to the database, the first to title-cased input and the next to lower case input. Then show the results by some priority. Maybe we show all the title-cased inputs first, then the items that contain the lowercase input.
4. Just enforcing us to use the entire word, so don't show Broadsword but show Celtic Knight Sword when I type in "sword"
and this will just be a trade-off to allow us to search better.
5. Or some other way the developers can think of it because I'm too tired right now.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I truly believe this will improve the quality of life in this game to allow the users to search more freely. I know we as players are trained to use case-sensitive words when searching, but as a new player, I find it more of an annoyance and it can give bad perceptions to new players.
