Do not merge Favorites with Continue Playing sorts on Home

[PeZsmistic]

I noticed today that on the homepage the Favorites and Continue Playing sorts were merged. This is likely behind an AB test to determine if this is a good idea or not, so I am making this thread to explain why it is not a good idea.

I would prefer the Favorites sort remain separated, but perhaps sorted within by most recently played.

The top three games in this image are games I played once today to see what they were like. I am not at all interested in playing them again, so this space is wasted when it could be showing me games I have favorited and would rather play.

I and many other people use favorites as a way to keep track of games I like or wish to return to later with ease. By combining these sorts it is now impossible for me to find these games on my homepage without digging through a massive pile of other games I have recently played mixed in with my favorites. It is a mess and defeats the purpose of my favorites, which used to be a nice organized sort that I personally curated myself.

The games I have recently played are distinctly different from the games I have favorited - my recent plays I often don’t wish to return to since I am an explorer, and my favorites I wish to return to sporadically or infrequently, since I have only a few games I really like. Combining them almost completely defeats the purpose of showing favorite games on the Home page; I cannot easily find these games anymore.

In fact, some of my oldest favorites don’t even show up in the new Home sort at all.

On the Home page, it used to be one click to see my most recent favorites. Now, if I want to find games I have favorited without sifting through a list of recently played games and games I’ve favorited, and without missing games that are mysteriously absent from the sort, I have to go to my profile, scroll down, and then click on “Favorites >” so I can see them all in my inventory. This is a problem because this area is completely separate from where all other user-tailored game sorts are, the inventory UI is not as friendly to use as the sort UI, and getting here is a really convoluted and uncomfortable path. This is not at all accessible or user-friendly.

Please do not combine these sorts.

[M_caw (Macaw)]

For a different perspective, I like to revisit games I like and play them over and over again. This is the general purpose of Continue Playing within my practical purposes, as a way to keep track of games without having to:

1. Bookmark a game, or,
2. Favorite a game.

There are also favorited games that I don’t wish to revisit and are more of a historical thing. Having them mixed with Continue Playing is once more confusing. You’re combining games which I would want to visit with games that I would not want to visit. Since favorites are publicly shown on my profile, I often use it as a way to show games I want to promote but not necessarily play.

Lastly, there are also those who like to use the favorites page to give their profile a certain aesthetic. Have you ever seen these:

These games have 0 content in them. I also, don’t want these games with no content to be mixed with games that I wish to continue playing.

I don’t support this merging. Please separate the two. They don’t mix.

[SnakeWorl (Droopy440)]

I use the favorites bar as quick access to all my projects so I don’t have to go through the pain that can be the develop (now “create”) tab.

Please don’t do this to me.

[Zomebody]

Not only does mixing favorited games with recently played games hurt the ease of navigation, it also blurs the barrier between ‘likes’ and ‘favorites’. If a favorited place is not easy to find back, then how does it functionally differ from just leaving a like on a game to the user?

[DutchBloxxer]

This ruins my experience both as a player and developer. I use favorites as a way to bookmark things, and not especially because I want to play those games over and over again.

Please revert this change. Having these things seperated is fine and I don’t feel like it’s an improvement of the UX to merge those.

[PeZsmistic]

Some of the points brought up in other replies to this topic are about the impact of this change on developers who use favorites as a way to bookmark particular games. This is an important use-case that can be resolved by offering a developer-facing feature similar to favoriting that bookmarks games somewhere they can be easily browsed later. However, offering a feature like this would not justify damaging/destroying the utility of players favoriting games.

It is critical not to forget that this forum is biased towards a developer’s point of view since regular players are not inclined to visit here, nor obtain membership to post. By no means are development-centric uses for favoriting games the only use-cases that are damaged by this change, so do not take the appearance of developers protesting this change as a sign that this feature is only used by developers for unintended purposes. The use-cases of favorites to me as a player are outlined in the OP, and their significance should be abundantly clear.

Players favorite games for one reason: to be able to find them again. This change directly makes this harder by burying favorite games under a pile of games you played once during a browsing session.

An important part of games is to be able to play them more than once. This change makes it harder to find games you want to keep playing long-term, and punishes you for discovering new games by pushing your long-consistent favorites down a list of games you tried once and forgot about.

There are plenty of good reasons for players to be able to consciously choose which games they want to keep in an isolated sort on their Home page. Combining these sorts does not improve UX, and makes it harder for players to find their favorites, especially if they like to explore new games often.

[Xelia4 (Xel)]

Completely unnecessary update for no real reason. How am I going to find my favorite games through all of the clutter that is my recently played games?

This doesn’t make any sense, and is an update that makes the fluidity and sense of the site worse.

Thankfully, this only appears for beta testers.

[byc14 (byc)]

This sort is useless to me, I can’t find my favourite games.

I join a lot of games, either to mess around or try to find something engaging. How many of those do I enjoy enough to add to my favourites? Maybe 1 out of 100.

My favourite games shouldn’t be merged with other sorts. I don’t care about my recently played, recommended, friends playing, etc, they’re all useless to me.

Even before this feature was enabled my favourites sort was the last sort on my home page, under all the other ones. It should be the first one.

There’s no easy way to keep track of games you’re developing outside of studio using the ancient /develop page. you have to use favourites or scroll through tens of games. this change destroyed that use-case.

[ForbiddenJ]

This is an AB test. I’m not seeing your change on my screen.

I too would prefer the favorites area remain its own page. Otherwise, why would I bother to use the favorite feature? The same purpose as the Facebook like button?

As a side note, even the current setup might be confusing for new players. Many other programs and websites use the favorites concept for displaying desired items in a dedicated section at the top. For example, Google Contacts has a favorites section for contact profiles, and the Steam client has a favorites section for its games.

This is what I see right now, minus the two sections in between:

[RuizuKun_Dev (Kitsune)]

Well this is really lame…

We should have the capabilities to Customize how we discover games and manage the different Sorts.

I’ll be writing a comprehensive Feature Request which will propose a fix to:

• UX
• Game Discoverability
• Game Sorts Customization
• Sharing
• Privacy

It doesn’t matter how good a product is if no one can find it, especially when the search feature is more or less broken, Advertisements and Sponsors are nearly useless…

Thus why Roblox has to improve how users find games.

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