Favoriting an experience should automatically Follow it
Currently, we are able to Favorite the experiences we love and WANT to Follow.
But to Follow an experience for updates, you also need to click the Follow Icon:
I think a lot of users are missing this, and Developers who use the “Updates” feature through the Creator Dashboard are unable to reach their fans about these updates.
I’m not suggesting to remove/merge Follow/Favorites.
There is no API to check if a User is Following a game to give additional rewards, but that’s another feature request to be written
Please make it so when you Favorite an experience, you automatically Follow it. Allow users to make a choice of not following a Favorited place too. I believe this solution will accommodate the legacy behavior of Users using Favorites as a bookmark for games to find later while giving newer Users a better flow of receiving game updates.
As a Developer, I don’t want my players to miss the most awesome and important updates. To use a combination of group shout & other social media does not make sense when Roblox has a way for notifying opted-in players.
Thank you for reading, and I hope Roblox considers this for implementation in Q1 - Q2 2024
I personally never used the follow feature. I don’t want to be bombarded with a bunch of notifications saying a game has updated. The only reason why I favourite a game is to easily find it so I can play it. I don’t care about the game’s progress on an update and so forth.
Disagree. It’s better UX to have them be separate options, no matter how I think of different implementation.
If the idea is to remove the Follow button and add the functionality to Favoriting, then the Favoriting button should clearly imply that additional functionality. And, the info that would need to be shown about what the button actually does would be worse UX than just having two buttons.
If the idea is to NOT remove the Follow button, but instead force the UI to change based on the Favorite button… then I still don’t like it. Pressing one button that changes another is bad UX, at least in this context.
I find it interesting that you call it “the bell” rather than what the icon on the game page actually is. (some internet icon?) I think Roblox should change the icon for Following to better communicate its purpose: notifications about the game you follow.
And that’s okay! Users have historically used “Favorites” to ‘bookmark’ games on the platform. Keep in mind that I’m not suggesting for them to merge Favorites/Follows, you’d still be able to click the “Unfollow” button after Favoriting. You can easily navigate to games that spam out updates and unfollow them (and there is a 3 day cooldown for each update shout!)
I also don’t think that’s the best way to use Favorites. Favorites should be a signal for Roblox & Developers that those who have favorited those experiences want more and similar things of it, serving updates notifications & relevant recommendations.
Today, a lot of content is served with the Homepage / Algorithm so it easy to lose/forget those games you want to play.
I think that an expanded feature request, similar to this one. Favorites could then work as a built-in Roblox one that automatically follows as I suggested.
We also don’t have in-game or web API to check if a User is Following our game or not, so we can’t reward our communities for showing loyalty to us by Following us (but we can check if they have favorited it! )
Since a lot of users have favorited so much stuff and not separated into organized bookmarks, Favorites signals may be muddled up and more difficult to discern a user’s interests (from Roblox’ algorithm side)
I’m not suggesting for the removal of Follow button or merge of Follow/Favorites. I am suggesting that if a user Favorites a game, they automatically Follow it.
I believe that this is the best way to remove friction for users who want information on updates, and maintain the legacy feature of using Favorites as a way to bookmark although I disagree with it:
I wrote this feature request by the burning midnight oil and saw the “Bell” emoji and wrote what I saw visually
To solve the curiosity of me calling it the “Bell”, this is where notifications pop up on the web page:
You get a red “1” that you can dismiss by clicking on the bell per notification. If you are bothered by a game’s frequent updates (keep in mind it is a 3 day cooldown between Update “shouts”), you would be able to navigate to it and unfollow while not un-Favoriting.
The notification tab is shared by friend requests, trades, and games if I recall correctly. So I do not think the icon should be changed. It is a broadcast icon, and I think it broadcasts itself well.
The thought process is started by the desire to launch & live ops a large amount of games. We want our users to be able to easily get information on our game without the hassle of following us on:
Other Social Media (Guilded, Discord)
Group Shout (cap of 100)
Video Streaming Servies (Youtube, Tik-tok, Freshcut, etc)
We are able to reward players for Favoriting our titles, but we are unable to see if a specific player is Following us for updates. I want Roblox to remove that friction, and maintain the legacy mindset of using Favorites for bookmark (although I disagree with it! )
I agree that it is a can of worms to open but it’s for a better user flow. This benefits Players when favoriting a game they really like because then they’d get served update notifications, it benefits Developers as it makes it easier to reach out to users when a cool update has dropped, and it benefits Roblox in measuring engagement / acquisition per shout and keeps traffic on the website.
When the follow feature came out, all your favorite games were followed. Now I’m notified for updates of randomass games I don’t play anymore. This is why I removed the notifications tab and follow button for myself.
There is no way to find what games you are following, and there’s no way to mass unfollow, so this feature would just makes things worse.
You are able to unfollow when those notifications appear. Eventually, you’d be able to unfollow most active games, or maybe re-discover an old favorite that just received an update.
I agree though, there needs to be a category / place to see what you are following. I think that’s another feature request though.
Favoriting an experience should automatically Follow it 
I’m not suggesting to remove/merge Follow/Favorites.
