Hey developers,
Heads up that this change is now live! Feel free to comment below on the change.
Happy developing!
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Just noticed something.
Due to this security risk, we will be making changes to prevent access to Experimental Mode games to anyone other than your friends.
Does this mean every place pre-2015 or so with an inactive developer is effectively dead? Historical classic places like JJ5x5’s Thrillville (which I can for whatever reason still visit), builderman’s old places, etc?
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Sounds like it, which is a huge shame. Quite a massive cut in games just buried, with no way to access them. There has to be some middle ground which keeps security at a decent level, while still leaving these games accessible in the future.
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My solution that I admittedly haven’t thought about too much is making it so you can’t search for experimental games on the Roblox search and you can’t follow someone into an experimental game. Sounds like a good middle ground to me?
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I’m apprehensive about allowing developers to control player GUIs from the server, but code wrappers sounds interesting provided developers use them within reason (they won’t, they’ll do horrible things). I can see this enormously simplifying synchronization for less critical things though, and I’m pretty excited about that.
However, I’m very upset about cutting off the discoverability of experimental mode games. There are millions of old games that I want to visit for one reason or another. I want to visit them for nostalgia’s sake. I want to play those games with friends on a Friday night and abuse gear for an hour. I want to use them for inspiration or reference for other projects. Other players may want to do this, and more, as well.
There’s nothing like joining someone’s obscure pet project cafe, last updated in 2009, with friends, and burning two hours playing with hinge wheel vehicles that flail violently all over the map. I want to be able to find those games.
And, I desperately hope that this quote doesn’t mean outright stopping players from joining those games once they manage to find them.
If you’re going to do this, please at least take into consideration that 13+ users do not need to be sheltered from these games. I don’t see anything here mentioning these changes not affecting older users.
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/u/QuiteAmazingStuff on Reddit left a pretty interesting idea which I feel would be one to look into.
The first one isn’t as much, more of a last case scenario, but the second one I feel holds up nicely. The biggest issue I can see here is edge cases such as “what if the original person leaves” and “what about the friends of their friends”, but those would be issues that could be polished up and solved, depending on which angle Roblox wishes to go with implementing this.
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I think this is bad in quite a few ways, FilteringEnabled allows developers to make a fresh start on their games, and the reason it exists is for increased security and often decreased lag for players.
Although the basic: not replicating changes made on clients to the server is very much important, what is also important, possibly to a greater extent, is securing Server and Client communications, as well as verifying anything replicated between clients.
The problem I have with this is that I think we’re getting too close to essentially saying lets have filteringenabled in principle, i.e. client and server model, but return to the old system in the way we code things, anyone could quite easily create a client script and a server script which result in replication of everything that’s done on the client to the server, whilst still technically having a FilteringEnabled game, but we don’t do that because it completely removes the point of FilteringEnabled.
Running UI events and actions from the server confuses the setup of the client/ server model, and also causes lag.
I’m not too sure what ‘code wrappers’ really means, but if it means translating previously clientsided actions to serversided actions and clientsided actions respectively; it sounds a lot to me like we could end up replicating things done by one client onto others connected to that server (when not desired).
FilteringEnabled has always been a seal of quality and security, but it’s turning into a sort of hacky setting partway between the old and new system. I feel like experimental games should just be 13+, promoted less, hidden from search and not allowed to be advertised/ sponsored; but no further. It means that if someone wants to make that leap from making fun, recreational games, to making professional and well made games, they need to also make the leap from the old system to FilteringEnabled, and from bad to good code.
The play solo update is great, and very welcomed, as well as the CreatePlaceAsync.
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For Experimental Group games, do the visitors have to be a Group member to access it? Asking for a non-Dev friend who has a military Group. Hard to have a warzone if the raiders have to be on your friends list or members of your own army… I’ve been trying to convince him to transition to FE for months, but he prefers those “Ro-Nation standard” weapons that never were designed for Filtering.
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This is a case where an active game has an active developer. No excuses, fix your game to not be on experimental mode.
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Agreed. I don’t know why those war clans cling to such outdated systems and hold them in high esteem. My raycast scripts do more with 50 lines of code than theirs can with 1,500. But mine aren’t “up to standard”…
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We are not making FE filtering any weaker - all of these changes don’t change the fundamental security model, they just try to make FE more approachable. The problem with the “leap” idea you’re suggesting is that it’s very large, and rarely happens at an instant. Is a game that has 1000 concurrent players professional? What about 200? It’s hard to make a judgment call here. Plus the fragmented APIs mean that the scripts, libraries, toolbox models, etc. may or may not work in either mode.
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I don’t necessarily define ‘professional’ by player count, I define it by game quality and the intent of the developer. Experimental mode is great for people who just want to mess around with friends and meet new people while doing it, as well as those who have small tightly knit communities on Roblox.
But, in my opinion there is certainly a point, or if you like a line that is crossed, where people decide to make a game with the intent of it becoming popular, or at least working reasonably well and looking good. This is the ‘leap’ I’m talking about, sure, before this you can mess around in studio with parts and scripts, but once you try and make a proper game I think it means you have the willingness to learn everything you need to make that game, therefore, it seems like the perfect step up from experimental to filteringenabled, and weakening FilteringEnabled, (I know that the fundamentals aren’t changed, but the approach Roblox presents to its players towards FilteringEnabled is important) means it’s likely future games by current players who become developers will end up at a lower security and efficiency level than if this change hadn’t been made.
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Thank you!
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People bring up how old places will be hidden from sort but you forget that they removed genre so people can’t search for them other than the search bar in the first place.
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What if the game has turned on the experimental mode, but its only for one player per server?
I mean, games like this where is for one player and if the player wants to exploit it, does not damage anyone else
Edit: the game isn’t able to play since the new update, but here is a gameplay
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Unless they have some players and come up just from scrolling through the popular pages?
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Hey everyone!
Chiming in here to add a little more context to our previous update:
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Experimental mode games are currently hidden from the sort. This update is already live.
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This will not affect the search
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This will not block anyone from play now
Thanks!
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When will this occur, and does blocking mean only friends of the creator can join, or you’ll always get your own, empty server, and the only way for others to join your server is if they’re your friend?
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Please do not prevent 13+ users from joining experimental mode games.
If this is the plan, please reconsider. Killing off all classic games owned by users who have moved on from the platform long ago is by no means acceptable collateral damage.
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