I’m all for increased graphical fidelity, increased flexibility for what developers can do, and other things like that.
However, this doesn’t make it easier. It’s just like R15 in terms of animating and programming, but all the buildings, vehicles etc, anything that depends on the size of the character will need to be changed.
Realism isn’t needed in Roblox. Realism =/= better games. Realism means it’s harder to develop games though.
I’d be curious to see, what are the use cases of this over R15 that are actually likely to happen on Roblox?
My thoughts, and take this with a grain of salt as they are my personal thoughts and my opinion does not necessarily represent the company in this case:
If you think Roblox should have an aesthetic, I disagree with you, and I think that your ideas are holding Roblox back. I dream of a Roblox that is the “YouTube for games,” a place where anyone can come and make video games and interactive experiences and share them with the world. I want their creativity to be unfettered by a rose-tinted-glasses-wearing community that demands nothing change. I want anyone’s vision to be a possibility on Roblox, no matter how realistic or unrealistic it is.
Every time Roblox as a corporation tries to move in this direction, it’s met with backlash. I don’t feel that the backlash is justified, regardless of its majority or minority status. If you’re arguing that Roblox should stay the same or that Roblox should have a platform-wide aesthetic, I completely disagree with you. I believe we should be pushing for more features which make developers able to make highly realistic games and not highly realistic games.
It’s already possible to make blocky games. This is good. I see no reason why we cannot also make it possible to make more realistic games. It seems like the idea is this: if it’s possible that games can be realistic, the apex of design is a realistic game, and will therefore kill all other kinds of games. We can see already on platforms like steam that this is simply not the case. There are plenty of games with non-realistic (even blocky) aesthetics that perform very well alongside “AAA hyper-realistic” games.
When you fight against changes like these, I believe you’re fighting against creative freedom. And I believe that’s wrong and unhelpful.
I don’t agree that ROBLOX should always necessarily stick with its blocky aesthetic. I welcome any change that’s an improvement over what we have now – these avatars (appearance –
not anthro proportions) are not an improvement.
These characters are made with tools we already have. This backlash isn’t tarnishing your ability to use these characters in any way. If you want to use them in your games, you are free to create and use them. Heck, that’s more creative than using the default characters. Implanting these will add nothing to creativity.
What I’m personally against is the push for these characters. It’s been made obvious that a large amount of users and developers do not want these characters. Yet there is a push for them. I want ROBLOX to have a unified aesthetic. I don’t agree with tossing out something that has been establish for 10+ years and replacing it with something not everyone likes. Blocky isn’t necessary ROBLOX’s appearance, but it does have an aesthetic. There’s something about it where when you see it, you know it’s ROBLOX.
This isn’t right to say. We aren’t fighting against creative freedom. You are free to make what you want. Nothing is stopping you. We are fighting against taking ROBLOX in the wrong direction. Without backlash, nothing will be changed and modified to be what developers actually want. This rig is far beyond perfect, and this comments makes it sound like you think we should treat it as such.
Unless ROBLOX can make characters actually function like they should, blocky, messy “anthro” rigs should never exist. It just shows how lacking the engine is if they take a shortcut and make something ugly that nobody wants instead of improving.
I’d prefer these anthro characters over totally realistic characters any day.
It retains the partially blocky feel whilst also allows for a more immersive gameplay
They fit in quite well - they’re very similar to @Tomarty 's anthro characters and nobody complained about them when they were added to his place.
People said the same stuff about R15 - that it’s ugly and that it doesn’t fit in with anything, however many front-page games now either support or force R15 (including jailbreak)
Note as well that it only ‘allows’ for ‘ugly characters’ - this doesn’t mean everyone will be forced to have these characters, in fact I think to begin with it’ll be quite a niche community who use it.
Then make it a free model, an easily installed free model, or even a plugin that auto-installs these morphs.
You’ve got to realize that, even if this change will benefit a few roleplaying communities, roblox will take great credit in these morphs and probably make it the new face for their website. That’s not to mention, this being a default rig would also bring in more catalog assets, by that point we would have catalog assets for R6, R15 and now some for Anthro? It would be very messy, and even then, making custom assets for the anthro morph would be alot harder than making assets / cosmetics for the lego rig that we’ve all grown to love. People have spent years mastering the techinques of desiging clothes, morphs, hats and GFX renders, all related to the lego rig. The R15 rig didnt change this, which made it acceptable.
Even if its going to be optional, alot of places will migrate to this new system, places such as Clubs, Roleplay Places or Hangout places in general will all adopt this new human like rig. And do you want to know what a more human-like rig brings? It brings more realistic body parts, and these body parts include body parts that some find attractive ( breasts for an example ). Now, you can argue whether ODing will increase by this or not, and I think it will. Kids or Adults who OD on roblox at the moment all dress with the 2.0 or 3.0 package already, they wear realistic looking hair and clothes, all because it draws more attention and sexuality ( Which this morph will do too ). We can also see this on places who already bring a more realistic approach to the playable avatar. I caught my little sister ODing on Shard Seekers for example.
Yet again, the R15 change differs alot from this avatar change.
The R15 rig still kept the lego approach, that we’ve all gotten used to. The R15 rig didn’t change the way people look at roblox, the R15 rig didn’t change the way we design clothes, faces, hats, or other cosmetics, and even if it did, It didn’t make it more difficult for designers, which this Anthropomorphic rig would.
Tomarty’s characters are nice because they’re used in moderation – sometimes things are great because of circumstance, and would be awful if copy+pasted everywhere mindlessly. I’d have a serious problem with them in all games. These characters don’t aesthetically fit with anything – it’s not a matter of ROBLOX’s current aesthetic.
ROBLOX won’t make Anthro the face of their website, at least not for a couple years if everything goes to their plan. Likewise, all current catalog assets aside from gear (WIP) work with both R15 and R6.
Again. This is optional. Like R15. You aren’t forced to script / make assets for it if you don’t feel the need to.
And perhaps ODing will increase. Personally, I doubt it - but you shouldn’t think of the worst possible case every time for every change, you just have to wait and see, and tackle that issue if it arises.
I agree with that - if people start ramming them into random places, it’ll be terrible
But I think that due to the community outrage at this, it’ll be used as it really should be - in moderation
Most game devs won’t risk adding it because it could upset their fanbase, and also because it’d require a ton more scripting and probably a total place rebuild.
What @NoCollider suggests is literally the exact same as what I think ROBLOX plans - the option for a game creator to add it if they feel that it’d improve their game to the extent that their game focuses around the anthro rig, but nothing more.
You honestly got a laugh out of me but this made me realize something. What you did in that image is the equivalent of cutting and pasting the starting roblox character in an image and that wont look pretty either.
So maybe if they refine the anthro clothing, faces and accessories they can end up being really good
It will be, what do you mean.
Ofcourse, every single Club, Boys / Girls only Hangout, Obby for admin, Highschool, City and Adoption roleplay place will all adopt(ᶰᵒ ᵖᵘᶰ ᶦᶰᵗᵉᶰᵈᵉᵈ) this new Avatar, and that’s what all the backlash is about.
People are obviously not against the simple idea of having some places use human like avatars, and to your response, yes. This will be released as a new avatar, not as a free model that some places can use.
And that’s whats problematic.
Bad plan. This is a waste of engineering resources if no one uses it. The core design should continue to be improved until it will be used substantially.
While we understand that it is important for everyone to voice their thoughts, please keep in mind that this specific thread was posted to the public section of the Developer Forum. Please remember to stay on topic throughout the conversation. We are taking all of your feedback and concerns into consideration but for this to continue we have to make sure all rules are being followed.
