This is enforcing a kind of “Dictatorship” where only those who agree with Roblox’s ideas can get on the top of the front page. They want to hand-pick the games which get popular and which don’t. All this update does is take power away from the players, as Roblox has been slowly doing for a long time. They are enforcing their grip on the players. I suspect that after having one update after another suck, players will start leaving en masse. The general consensus among average players is that Roblox’s updates suck (even if they don’t). Currently, everyone is joining Roblox, and is kind of just pushing through the “bad updates”, but some things like this are just too far.
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That’s a bit bold considering a business which has been experiencing a big rise in new users needs to streamline for the casual / average player.
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The business has to streamline for the casual and average players, and the casual and average players are the ones being affected by this. If I went into a game right now, the majority would most likely say that the updates suck. Massive protests ensue (Save Colors, RIP Tix, etc), but (usually) everyone gives up when they realize that Roblox doesn’t care, except for the “Save Colors” movement, which only got there because of massive advertisement campaigns and protests on the forum. Some others that I don’t know of were probably like this, but I doubt that Roblox listening and changing their decision is common at all. I think that Roblox should listen to the devs and players more.
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The “majority” that riots isn’t the majority of Roblox’s player base at all, most of the players are young children.
But I do agree that Roblox needs to get better at listening to devs and players more.
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The young children are the ones that are rioting most of the time. Honestly, they don’t have the best judgement, but they’re right on some things. Kind of sucks when you feel like you don’t have a voice.
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That’s exactly what this is. Just look at rthro. Not as popular or used as they want it to be. Solution? Convince developers by making a whole front page section for games that are willing to use the new feature. Anyone who doesn’t take advantage of the feature(whether because they don’t like it or because it’s not easily compatible) is left behind a bit
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The featured section forces rthro? For every single character or just player’s characters?
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I thought so, turns out I was wrong. Sorry for that. Point still applies though that Roblox is tightening their grip on what games people are playing.
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I actually thought it was a April fools joke.
I guess it will help small developers rise for a change, I’ve seen many games that deserve more popularity.
Roblox would be better as a whole if it was one.
Why does everyone say this? They only draw from the top 250 games. I wouldn’t consider those “Small Developers”.
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What I mean is, many people do not even scroll through the list of popular games. They just pick the first 40 or 50 and just play those. The new game page would help the games that only get around 100-300 players surface.
Yes, it does help those smaller games, but they are still quite large. It isn’t like the “Featured” section is in any way helping smaller developers.
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True. The featured game page is not really helping. Roblox should really add a new category like “Rising” games. Games that are starting to grow should be put in a category like that on the game page.
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My only complaints are popular should still be on the top and featured to not be full of old and not fun games. A suggestion I have is to let us customize our games page, i.e, pick favorite topics like Twitter and show games about those topics in a suggested games category.
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Or a toggle option to see a somewhat similar layout to the older design.
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There are a lot of bias issues regarding the featured and popular sort. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and when you have the whole pie, you don’t want to share. I feel as though this change was a slight improvement, but still not great.
I see some developers from the popular sort complaining about this, which should inspire change. But not back to the way it was. Both the Popular and Featured sorts are very narrow in terms of diversity in games, and if the front page is going to consist of the same games over and over like it does, then why doesn’t Roblox instate a game approval process like steam?
Sure, this raises a few flags, and doesn’t seem immediately practical, but the reality is; it’s just not fair to everyone the way it is. If we had a post approval process, Roblox could be assured that all games on the games page meet a quality standard and are safe for users to play.
Instead of sorts in a permanent order from top to bottom, players should have the option to sort whichever way they want using a dropdown menu. If they are sick of playing the same popular games over and over again, they could use this dropdown menu to easily sort based on ‘Popularity’, ‘Date Added to Games Page’, ‘Featured’, etc. ( And if they WANT to play the popular games, boom, there you go. )
Before players pick a sorting option via the dropdown, the games page can be filled with random approved games, cycling every few hours to ensure everyone gets a chance at the top spot. ( Remember, this is visible by default. )
Developers shouldn’t have to win a popularity contest. The games on the front page are popular BECAUSE of the popular sort. But because of this, we also acknowledge that popularity is a big factor from the player’s point of view. Nobody wants to join a game alone. It’s a tough problem to solve.
To conclude, I believe that this update is a step towards a more balanced chess board, but it is still not very good.
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I get that Roblox wants “quality” and well “polished” games to represent their platform, but the sad truth is that a well-made game doesn’t equate to it being fun on a gameplay level which is why many polished, quality games fail and why some “unpolished” games get lots of players is due to it being fun on a gameplay level. Kids don’t care about how ambitious, well-made, polished, etc, a game is, they just want it to be fun.
Also if you ever compare most what happens to most games on the featured tab after they get taken off featured, then you’ll notice a rather big decline in its concurrent players. If you need to rely on ads and featured sort to keep your game alive then something is wrong with your game on a gameplay/fun level.
I feel like too many devs now are trying too hard to show off their technical skills and sacrificing fun gameplay.
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I’ve come to the conclusion I’m not a big fan of this update. I find that having Roblox control what players see at the very top of their screens is a bit worrying. Although the games page has it’s problems, this really isn’t a solution.
I’m also worried about the effect this will have on sponsored game impressions, as I can see a possibility that less people will be looking through the other categories, as featured doesn’t show sponsored games.
The featured sort itself seems to have issues, as I don’t really see why old games that don’t seem to even have any updates are being featured. I’d much rather see some original, new games being featured instead of just looping through previously popular ones.
This update is on the right track, but seriously lacked in it’s execution.
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It’s sorted by 13+ and under 13 player counts. It still displays the player count for both age groups which is why it leads to confusion.
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Featuring games is, in my opinion, essential because there are some games that may not be for the mass of people but those can be truly good games that are pushing the Roblox boundaries.
For example, if a game has a high rate a crash on low devices because it is more complex but in the same time, it is a really well-made game, then it might have its place on the front page even if it isn’t the most played.
In the end, a game isn’t only valued by the number of players, so this is why we need some kind of featured sort to show a different variety of game to the players.