The nature of Roblox (at least from how I’ve understood it) is the ability to quickly join a game, play, leave whenever you want, and find another game. Players don’t want to stick around for hours as they would a traditional game you install and load up via Steam or some other launcher (again, I might be wrong - perhaps some Roblox games really are that engaging).
I’m wondering if there’s any effect from having in-game menus that load up when you start the game and require the player to go through additional steps to start playing. For example, in a non-Roblox ‘normal’ game, you might need to sift through your settings/loadout, select a server, create a group with friends, do some matchmaking etc before you even actually start to play. Would this work well in a Roblox game? Or would some players find it too tedious? i.e., perhaps younger players may want to simply jump into an obby and play rather than sift through buttons.
Has anyone found any actual positive or negative effects from utilising start menus for their games? Any drop in player retention, or perhaps longer play sessions from having these menus?
I may also just be micro analysing a non-issue here
I’d assume I’m losing someone from my game menu, but I have save files. Showing the UI like I do is industry standard and the best UX from what I know. I’d say a positive is having save files, so that players can replay your game from the start if they want to. I don’t have any data per-say to back stuff up.
Immediately I’m seeing that I could shorten my personal loading screen or remove it entirely. I do think it adds to a feeling of quality however. But, regarding the save files UI, I’m not sure how I’d make it better for UX.
I’m interested to know what you would say about my main menu. I feel like having save files, and UI selection for it, is a good things for players.
It is 2 button clicks to actually “start” the game, but it wouldn’t feel right to just put a player into the game.
Thinking about it, maybe I let the player click once and show then they have save file options when they re-enter the game after playing it once. But, then again, that just delays the problem and is bad UX imo.
My opinion is that menus should be inserted when they are really needed or if they add something interesting to the experience.
It’s just that if they have to be inserted, being a bit of a showcase for the game, they have to be taken care of, otherwise the player already leaves disincentivised.
In Roblox in particular, starting with the icon and the thumbnail, everything, even the menu, is used (often improperly) to attract attention.
This as an amateur of video games breaks my heart a little, but I accept it as long as the game is then smooth.
Ultimately, I would tell you that it’s not absolutely true that menus in Roblox are always useless, but as you pointed out, they sometimes make access unnecessarily long, not increasing the player’s hype, and perhaps only compensating for the absence of interesting content.
In the specific case of your game, being purely single player and wanting to give the player the chance to reset their experience I can understand (though I don’t entirely agree).
But in the case of an obby or in any case a casual multiplayer game without too much pretension, inserting a menu doesn’t add anything to the player’s experience, on the contrary, it stops them from wanting to quickly access the experience.
This sentence makes little sense to me, though, because that screen that you say gives ‘a feeling of quality’ actually creates expectations.
Expectations that are shattered by the style of gameplay that is then shown.
I’m talking about the artistic mismatch and cultural mapping that you guessed was there in that screenshot, obviously none of this alone significantly changes the game, but I find it more satisfying when everything is consistent.
From my understanding, you are saying that my personal loading screen quality is higher than the gameplay and visuals after loading into a save file.
Does that expand to the UI (User Interface) that appears after the loading screen? Or, just the gameplay presentation itself?
I’ll think of ways to better the quality overall, but with a focus on gameplay. I have some ideas on how to better where the player spawns, it is a tutorial. And, it would be naive of me to not better first impressions.
If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for the feedback.
I meant that the art style of the loading screen is different from that of the game.
Parallel to this there is a cultural mapping whereby an initial loading screen with the company’s logo is synonymous with a quality game, but it’s just a mapping, we know you don’t have a big AAA game company and therefore the budget for making the game is zero.
That’s why I would advise against giving it too much importance, rather focus on improving the gameplay.
In any case, maybe I will say something a little counter-cultural, but unless there are particular features that for narrative or technical reasons it makes sense to explain, I would avoid tutorials altogether.
They are, in my opinion, a patch for an insignificant design.
For example, if you are a winged piglet and you are faced with an obstacle, this is already enough as an affordance to suggest to the player to jump over it, there is no need to explicitly write it down (this is an example).
Actually, a menu is useful only for options and settings (or for server selecting), but if the game is made for quick join, it may be better just adding a small “settings” or “change server” button.
The menu UI is not reactive at all. Maybe add an animation at the background or/and to the buttons, title, etc. because… it looks too “unsensitive”. An easy fix is to add tweens like you did with the “loading screen”, with the difference being that it would change other properties instead.
Also, the loading screen is more like an “introduction screen” which just adds up some “quality”, but I agree with @iScream96 when it said that the art style is completely different.
Another thing which is probably unrelated is that the ingame coin and menu keybind (not the menu) ui is very big for a secondary feature (I guess its not primary). Pretty good to add the capability to return to the menu, I have seen multiple roblox games that lack this functionality.
Yeah. Most games I play that have start menus for no reason make me less inclined to play.
Some games actually have a reason to have a start menu, such as the start menu being for setting your loadout and selecting your server before teleporting you into the actual game place.
Other games have a start menu that require you to click Start to get rid of the start menu.
Nonetheless I prefer to be able to play immediately and not have a start menu, or at least implement the features of the start menu into the game world.
