As a Roblox Developer, it is difficult to reward players outside of my game.
Currently, badges are the only asset that can be granted to a player. (going into their inventory) The Badge feature has been around for a very long time on Roblox, but has not received much additional support since its creation. Due to their declining use in games, new users may be unfamiliar with the term “Badge” and what it entails.
Short Term Proposed Solution
- Consider renaming Badges to Achievements. A new name with the proposed refresh below could bring new life into a legacy feature. New users will likely understand “Achievements” more than they will “Badges” from any off-Roblox game experience. (Xbox Achievements, for example)
Confirmed: this is already a thing!
- Allow badges to be added to a Universe, so that they can be rewarded to players in any of its sub-places.
- For backwards compatibility, list “Universal Badges” and “Local Badges” where badges are detailed in the Game Details screen.
Long Term Proposed Solution
- Connect prize items (hats / accessories / bundles / animations / etc) to Achievements (Badges) in your Game.
- Developers can pay (x) ROBUX to add an Item to their Achievement (Badge). Anyone who acquires the Achievement (Badge) now also acquires this Item.
- The Achievement (Badge) asset page would display what items can be earned from achieving it.
Potential Flaws
- If an accessory prize is added to an Achievement (Badge) AFTER someone has earned it, how can they earn this new prize?
A) You can only add items to new badges. This does not allow backwards compatibility with existing badges, but also avoids new APIs.
B) Rework BadgeService API to attempt to reward all items attached to a badge every time it is prompted to award said Badge (Assuming currently if you own the badge, it does not try to give it to you again.) This allows for backwards compatibility, and could utilize Notifications to update players on new prizes; however, this still would require much more engineering time than Option A.
- How do you avoid Developers uploading bad/unoriginal/stolen content, thus polluting the pool of items on Roblox?
Make the price to reward assets very high. Having an item of your choice that someone can wear in any game is sorta a big deal. Why shouldn’t it come with a high cost? You can’t limit how many people this developer is going to give the item to, because you can’t determine how difficult their Achievement (Badge) will be. Moderation resources are not unlimited, so a high price point would give those resources more time to investigate the eligibility of items.
In the long term, I envision players earning packages of items created by Developers for achieving (really pushing it here!) things in their game. You defeated the final boss? Here is a bundle that is his armour, a gear item that is his sword, and an animation of his evil taunts.