MTG CB Beta - Combo Winter and Unlimited

Happy New Year, collectors!

Here's an update on what's been happening with the MTG CB Limited Edition Beta and our road to Unlimited Edition.

(As always, you can access the beta here: https://preview.mtgcollectionbuilder.com)

State of the Beta

Since our last update:

• We've pushed fifteen new builds of the beta to production, including dozens of suggested interface and bug fixes.
• We added collector numbers to every set in Magic, even those that didn't have them printed. This allows for easier sorting when placing cards into binders for older sets.
• We added the ability to deep link searches for easy sharing.
• We added persistence to many settings on the site, so it'll remember your preferred number of cards per row, cards per page, and so on.
• We completed the massive "Combo Winter" release ahead of schedule! Read more about that below.

Combo Winter

Our original roadmap for releases was in this order:

• ✅ Limited Edition Alpha (Complete): Initial feature parity progress with the current MTG CB.
• ⏳ Limited Edition Beta (In Progress): Completing feature parity and as many of the new MTG CB features that can be squeezed in here (Tokens, Custom Collection Goals, and Foreign Cards).
• ⏳ Unlimited Edition (Pending): Full release of the new MTG CB.
• ✅ Combo Winter (Completed early!): I need to invest some time in upgrading the libraries used by the new MTG CB. 
• ⏳ Revised Edition (Pending): The v1.1 update adding a single new requested feature.
• ⏳ Future Updates (Pending): Future updates will follow the same pattern of v1.2, v1.3, and so on, each adding a single new feature in focused iterations.

However, we had to pivot and complete Combo Winter early, as you can see above.

This is because the code libraries MTG CB was using for its backend was costing us $200 a month in hosting costs due to their overuse of memory, especially during boot-up time. At first this wasn't the end of the world, but coupled with the removal of ads on the site and an increase in traffic, this resulted in MTG CB dipping into the red for a while.

In addition to the added cost this was causing, we kept having to hack around the code libraries to implement some of our features. This was slowing us down.

We tried to hack the library apart to fix it ourselves -- but it worked out being better to just do the months of work required to rewrite the entire backend API and database system to use the newest version of them -- which involved many breaking changes. We had some bad luck with when we started using this framework and when they decided to make some massive changes, requiring the rewrite in order to use their new version.

This task took up most of Q4 2022 and was completed and deployed shortly before Christmas -- and we're now saving $200 a month and everything runs better and it's way faster to add new features under the new system. :) A happy ending and a perfect way to cap out the year.

With this technical debt distraction on the way, we can focus on the rest of the features we're looking forward to.

Coming Up Next

For the Limited Edition Beta to be complete, we need to:

• Evaluate 112 pieces of Patron feedback regarding interface suggestions and ancillary features and implement those that are critical for release. These range from small items like the color of progress bars to large items like implementing a proper privacy mode.
• Complete reaching feature parity with the current MTG CB, most notably re-implementing the importers, exporters, and account management tools.
• Complete the new core features: tokens, emblems, foreign cards, and custom collection goals. Some of these features depend on The Great Subset Split™ prerequisite, where we we will split up some promo sets into subsets and insert them as part of main sets.
• Test and iterate on the interface of the beta until it feels much better than the original experience for the majority of users, on desktop and mobile.
• Switch all users to using the new site, sunsetting the old.

This is the focus of 2023.

Current Site

We've added 6099 cards to MTG CB since our last update.

This comes out to WotC releasing 8 new cards a day.

Despite continued improvements in how MTG CB automates adding new cards to its database, the frequency of new releases and complexity of card variants and their sources has been a literal time 🧛‍♂️.

I'm still keeping up with binder templates for new sets as they are released too. Feel free to ping me if you have a special request.

The Podcast

I'm feeling close to ready to starting the podcast back up again. I want to make sure it doesn't detract too much from development time and want to make sure that once it starts back up, it doesn't have to stop again.

We're definitely doing an episode on Collecting Fatigue and how it relates to the increased speed of new releases. There's a lot to catch up on!

Closing Thoughts

Thank you so much for supporting MTG CB -- not only through Patreon subscriptions, but also just by being part of its community. Whether you reach out to me on Facebook, via email, or hang with us daily in our Discord server, I feel privileged to have met so many cool people just as passionate about collecting and organizing as I am.

I know that 2022 was rough for a lot of us, but I'm very hopeful and excited to see what we can make 2023 do for us.

Happy collecting!

Feedback

• Have any questions or feedback? Feel free to reach out to me via Facebook, email, or Discord if you're a Patron.
• If you want to support development of MTG CB and get access to our Discord, feel free to Support Me On Patreon -- there are cool stickers, magnets, and postcards you can get as rewards at specific tiers!

P.S. Opting Out Of Emails

If you're like me and suffer from email Inbox fatigue, you can always opt out of these emails notifications for any Patreon creators that you support by heading over to https://www.patreon.com/settings/email