Interesting… Very very interesting. I’m going to wait and see how this evolves.
I want to point out that the api to hide the topbar was a project I initiated and completed over a series of months while doing an internship in 2015, so this nonsense speculation @Aurarus posted about the company culture is unfounded.
Community feedback is important but also game development isn’t a democracy. Users aren’t game developers/designers. The last avatar project got us R15 which is magnitudes better than R6. So I’m excited to see experimentation is constantly being done and would not want to discourage it.
I would not use this prototype in my game personally, but can see it leading to something I would use.
FYI @Aurarus if an intern has an issue with a feature that’s proposed, they bring it up with the product manager. Not go complain publicly to the community. What would that accomplish?
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I was under the impression that the anthro avatar bit was about how they want to allow you to scale individual parts of your character (a la Robloxian Highschool), but everyone seems to be focusing on the prototype characters that look straight outta Animation Lab.
I stopped watching after that bit was over. Was it clarified in a Q&A or something that they want those characters to be the default?
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Stuff like this in roblox only seems to work as a novelty (animation lab, etc). the main problem with the rig is that I don’t particularly see anything about it that screams ROBLOX to me. Although i’m confident that they are aware of this and will work on it. I’m quite interested to see how this changes farther down the line
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What about the avatar page?
http://devforum.roblox.com/t/web-avatar-editor-live-for-beta-users/35731
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Listen everyone. Before you get into the spamming-characters and messages at staff, keep in mind:
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This change will be really beneficial to a bunch of developers. I know a group of games who would really benefit from this change in their roleplay and gameplay aspects.
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This change will be optional. I believe this means both that ROBLOX will make it optional for game makers, and also optional for roblox users. Unlike R15, I think it’d be wisest for roblox to disable user choice here, though, as it’d make for some pretty odd gameplay.
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This change, even if it is the worst scenario (which it isn’t), really wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. Sure, if this was made the mandatory requirement, I’d be pretty shocked, but it’ll all be fine. Remember when everyone made such a big deal about R15? They listened to us and they made changes most of all, but also it was a really smooth release with pretty good execution
Let’s stop worrying about nothing lmao
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Might be worth noting that said “novelty” games using more robust humanoids such as Robloxian Highschool and Animation lab (aka Shard Seekers) are typically found on 1st/2nd page top earning / popular. So there’s clearly a large market for it.
Saying a feature doesn’t “scream ROBLOX” is the kind of nostalgiavision that doesn’t get us anywhere productive. It’s on par with “I want the old roblox back”.
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Robloxian highschool uses R15, which is a feature I adore (I use R15 for a majority of my projects. It was what I wanted the characters in ROBLOX to move like back when I was an avid player in 2010).
You seem to have misinterpreted my post as being distasteful towards anything that isn’t R6, which it is not. I am optimistic about what the team will do with the feedback they have been given so far, but from my initial observations the rig felt very generic. It probably would have been done more justice if they fit a package to the rig to show off how it would work with packages, rather than using the plain shirt and pants that they did, which is what I meant by it not “screaming ROBLOX”. If it was a redcliff knight or a korblox mage that we saw using this rig, it would have felt like it belonged more in roblox, rather than a random dude in a brown shirt and khakis
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Why does it need a change? Why do avatars have to change to be something that looks nothing like previous avatars. Why does ROBLOX have to completely change the face of their avatars? If something obviously doesn’t fit in (and a lot of people agree), what is wrong with saying it’s not ROBLOX like? I don’t think dismissing this argument is right. It’s a valid point.
I see no reason why avatars have to change. There’s nothing wrong with them. They have generally been the same for 10 years. Of course, they evolved a lot. But this proposed avatar is nothing like the current avatars.
I think I mentioned this before, but it’s like Minecraft suddenly coming out with smooth and rounded characters for no apparent reason. It will look very weird.
If anything, I think they should just continue improving on R15. It has a lot more potential than pushing for something a huge majority of develops dislike. Stop trying to redesign avatars. Every single thread that has been brought up about redesigning avatars has been met with backlash.
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Exactly. I feel like there is a general boundary of how much you can change things. With roblox’s well established avatar looks they generally want to stay under a certain boundary of change with their avatars. R15 did not cross this boundary whereas the new rig did for me. It’s like if windows released a new version that’s styled off Apple OS. It just doesn’t work
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I could really benefit from this ‘addition’ honestly, it’s not the end of the world and people will kind of get used to it just like many people sat there complaining about R15 and moved on 
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I really don’t like these so far. R6 and R15 fit ROBLOX much better in that they work as “blank slate” avatars. They’re relatively charming and you can put them in most game scenarios without things looking too unusual.
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it’s a prototype, guys
Seriously, watch the whole presentation. Sorcus emphasizes scalability and backwards compatibility and doesn’t state that this is the finished product.
Let’s settle down and keep the feedback constructive. What is it that you don’t like about it? What would you do to fix it?
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The design itself is odd. We are going for realism, yet we still have the cracky joints. The backward compatibility doesn’t even look that great if that’s why your going to get.
The joints are even more visible. You can’t have realism with visible joints. Yes, R15 has visible joints. But R15 isn’t shooting for a realistic body shape. They still look blocky.
And as many people mentioned and people try to dismiss, it doesn’t look like ROBLOX. Honestly, if ROBLOX is shooting for better proportions, just scale R15 to be taller. Don’t redesign something that has been established for over 10 years and try to push it. Obviously that doesn’t work. As Echo mentioned in the original post, Yourius’s models are great. They fit ROBLOX’s want for better proportions and they keep the ROBLOX feel that so many people want.
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Not do it.
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?
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B-b-but they did that?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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