Maple.FM - Free Market Search Tool

You're thinking of maplefm (not Maple.FM), which is very similar. I appreciate your concern, though.

[MENTION=6123]kruimel0[/MENTION]; The person I'm working with (he does the data side of things) said he has plans to expand to EMS soon.

[MENTION=5956]hadriel[/MENTION]; One of the nice things this site does is it exposes all of the meso sellers. If Nexon wanted to go on a mass ban spree, they could just do a search for Arrow and sort by price.

Didn't expect that. Thanks for the heads-up!

This again? Last week, people were chastising and rebuking folks for taking advantage of ignorance (throwing star prices and availability), and today, the same people are bashing this site because it promotes knowledge and stabilization of prices.

Not only that, once again, the same people try to veil these arguments in economics when there is clear personal enmity involved, albeit, with a different target this week. I can at least respect some of you for bringing your beef to the owner, though I would rather you do it in PMs. But the others? Your economic arguments are hollow and demonstrate a lack of understanding of concepts, stick to just being mad at the person and you won't get holes poked in your "theories".

Some of you should take advice from hadriel:

I'm not interested in what happened before. I'm only interested in the motive (by a bit only) and the functions and capabilities.

Hadriel

But I guess feelings are really hard to heal.

I have used sites like this in the past, they are useful. However, if Maplestory continues to give out free Owls every Monday, then this becomes less useful, especially if you claim several on mules, which is something that I don't feel bad doing, especially since it should be an in-game, non-NX feature anyways. If not, then the interest in such a site surely should tell them something, if their survey didn't already.

Ah, I'm surprised the site creator is also a Southperrian. Since you're the site creator, if you could give us a little more information about how it's done I think it would stop people from accusing you of using bots and being a negative impact on the community. Plus, I'm interested and just want to learn

won't we lose our official fansite status over discussing this, this thread is basically " hey look someone is hacking but it's okay because it benefits everyone"

Then basil would have lost their official status a while ago.

aside from being illegitimate as pineapple, the person who runs this tool could easily manipulate the data in their favor.


make the shops of some people display their prices as higher than they actually are, this site could be used to modify the market in horrible ways

Gotta say I'm pretty disappointed in a few of the members posting in this thread. Why are you supporting this? Because it benefits you? That makes you no better than any other botter or hacker out there. Just scan the damn FM like everyone else or wait for the auction house to come out. Pretty sad that's a-okay just because it's "useful".

make the shops of some people display their prices as higher than they actually are, this site could be used to modify the market in horrible ways

Lol what. You say this like they can just buy the item from the site. They still have to actually go there and buy it. Then they would know the prices are wrong and...not buy it.

ITT: Hypocritical people trying to pretend they're goody two-shoes and are the purest of heart.

Seriously? Making baseless assumptions against others claiming they're "cheating" / are "cheaters"?

this forces a lot of price stabilization that wouldn't be there normally. it'll create mass amounts of undercutting and competition. i'm cool with all of this but i have a feeling most people aren't(ruins greed).

All of these things should have existed in the first place. One of the biggest flaws with Maplestory's economy is how insanely easy it is to cheat someone, because of how terribly it was designed from the first place.

it'll also makes the free market less "free". it is pretty gamebreaking, or game altering if you prefer, and is against the terms of service, takes away from their profits while creating someone else's, and isn't likely moderated well enough to prevent account stealing/drive-by's etc.(ITS FAYTH FFS). all in all, it's bad, it shouldn't be here for sure, and nexon will likely take it down. hopefull this thread will be removed soon at least.

How is the FM even Free in the first place? To put up a shop, you have to pay (unless that's changed, it's been a while since I've played). To browse is free, sure, but in the end you have to pay if you want anything. Nothing about the Free Market is actually Free except standing there and saying something with lots of @s underneath it. It's just a Market.

Taking away from profits...is for the most part true but if the game were modernized in the first place the Owls wouldn't even exist anymore. It's another thing to show how ancient MapleStory is and how close to the times it isn't.

Where does it need to "prevent account stealing/drive-by's"? Not even sure what you mean by the latter, but the former...huh? There's no account to steal, unless I'm completely mis-interpreting your meaning here. Do you mean sale stealing? As in, someone who was about to hit that shop lost an item because someone who used maple.fm found it first? How is that any different than an Owl? If you mean literal account stealing...huh?

I would agree with you on the TOS part...but honestly, have you read the Nexon TOS? It's awful. I guarantee you everyone one of us has violated it because of how insanely strict it is. I'd look for that thread that talks about name restrictions that Nexon has put in the TOS, but really I just don't care that much. Surprised I made this response this big, but that's how I am.

Lol what. You say this like they can just buy the item from the site. They still have to actually go there and buy it. Then they would know the prices are wrong and...not buy it.

what I'm saying is, if this site is going to be used as a price reference, what's there to stop the host from messing with the data?

they could add a filter that makes it so certain users shops simply don't show up on the database?

if this becomes that widespread, it could be really dangerous to the market.

The above has happened before with TF2 spreadsheet. Owner of the spreadsheet was manipulating Botkiller weapons I believe to make a profit buying low and selling high. Not saying Maple.FM's owner will do that but it is a possibility.

what I'm saying is, if this site is going to be used as a price reference, what's there to stop the host from messing with the data?

they could add a filter that makes it so certain users shops simply don't show up on the database?

if this becomes that widespread, it could be really dangerous to the market.

I don't think anyone is using it as a price reference. They're just using it to find things they would have to spend unreasonable amounts of time or NX to do otherwise.

I think they don't catch 100% of shops already, not because of tampering, but because of limitations. And it's not like being off maple.fm is the same as being invisible in the actual game. And it's not like everyone uses maple.fm in the first place...o.o

I'm not really seeing the dangers when it looks like a lot of people question the morality of the site in the first place which already steers people away.

The drama is unfolding...
This site is neat and useful. It is also against the ToS. Some people will use it others will not. You can argue for either side, but you really can't force someone to either side. Pretty sure there are plenty of minor things we let slide (nx trades, language), not sure how big this would scale against those., but its up to Nexon if they want to stop it.

well gg owls.

There are a couple of critical problems in the system. Again I state that I'm only interested in the functionality.

(1) There are no item levels for the equipment, and therefore
(2) The potential tiers are wrong. Purple Senior equipment should not have 3%/6% lines.

Some more minor issues:

(3) Would be nice to have show what class can equip stuff (that goes into the DB I think), because I don't remember what class can equip Nova Hermes blah blah. Basically the DB needs a great deal of input to supplement the data that we need, and a more extended categorisation (see the SP database for example) before we can further refine queries.
(4) If you are already capable of showing potential lines, it doesn't go far to allow a tabulated display of the potentials itself, and possibly a query on the lines.
(5) As an extension to (4), allow sorting by WA/MA and/or stats.
(6) Is it searching Mushies and other store permits?
(7) This will be a slightly demanding add-on: have the FM room number appear beside the shop's name or something like that.

edit: (8) Have the option to search the name of the item only, and/or the hover text.

Hadriel

(2) The potential tiers are wrong. Purple Senior equipment should not have 3%/6% lines.
Hadriel

Adding onto this, it shows false potential stats on items that have unrevealed hidden potential. I bought a SW Chain Sword earlier with hidden potential, the site said it had +4 STR bonus potential, but it actually had +4% Attack and something else.

this is against the terms of service and is considered cheating. Shouldn't even be allowed to be posted or endorsed here.

Gotta say I'm pretty disappointed in a few of the members posting in this thread. Why are you supporting this? Because it benefits you?

Actually this qualifies as scraping, not botting, which is also what powered the ETLs and we clearly have no issue with. If Nexon has an issue with the site they'll remove it. Since the site doesn't teach you how to hack, sell you hacks, or bots, or otherwise do anything against the TOS besides gather publicly available info in a manner natively possible in several other Nexon games I have no concerns regarding the site.

Response to all this drama:

meh.

Im still not going to use this... Dont want to get hacked again :S

Actually this qualifies as scraping, not botting, which is also what powered the ETLs and we clearly have no issue with. If Nexon has an issue with the site they'll remove it. Since the site doesn't teach you how to hack, sell you hacks, or bots, or otherwise do anything against the TOS besides gather publicly available info in a manner natively possible in several other Nexon games I have no concerns regarding the site.

How can you call this gathering information in a "natively possible" manner? This is most likely macroing on top of both speed hacks and multi-clienting, all of which are considered illegal by the ToS. You can not feasibly or humanly go through all of these rooms, click the shops, and collect the data this fast without manipulating the server or client.

EDIT: I may have misread what you said a bit, but what I said still applies. You cannot take the rules or features available in one game and apply them to another simply because they are hosted by the same company. That is just asking for trouble.