Further Changes to Playing Ability of Experimental Mode Games

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#136

I mean after talking to some beginners with scripting, I feel like there’s a couple of very basic things that people don’t understand which I would definitely have to go over. Like a lot of beginners don’t seem to understand how the parameters of a function work, or how to connect to an event, or how connecting a function to an event causes the parameters from the event to pass to the function. I mean, I even remember years ago when I was learning to script, it was just those realizations that made everything click for me.

But yeah, I mean I absolutely hate writing(or typing) in that sort of “publication” format but I might give writing a tutorial a shot tonight

3 Likes
#137

I had bets, and was expecting a ‘people are tied up with nostalgia and viewing old games with rose tinted glasses’ response, glad I didn’t lose that bet.

The people who are campaigning against this feature are people who have more of a connection to these games, and a reasoning as to not restricting them. Not everyone has the same mindset as ‘get over it, it’s just your nostalgia’, some people have formed friendships in these games, had fond memories, and had it greatly impact their childhood. It’s unfair and unjust to presume we’re supposed to all just move on from this. It’s also a terrible argument saying that these games have barely any players. Thats never, ever a factor in judging anything, to say the least.

Presume Jardicel, one of your favourite builders, never came back to Roblox, and never uncopylocked his games. How would you feel?

In reality, some people have more of a connection to these games, and someone saying to move on and get over it won’t do anything.

21 Likes
#138

It is still nostalgia though. It’s not like I don’t have games I miss from 2009 or some other year way back, but the fact is that any game that doesn’t have FE most definitely wasn’t maintained very well.

The future of Roblox should have no experimental mode. Sure, the older games will be broken, but maintaining old games isn’t as important as making things simpler for the future. Any of those old games can just be remade.

3 Likes
#139

Time to reply to a few posts at once.

@PrismaTech What’s more important to you? (In the extreme)

The ability to play old games? Or the ability to play at all?

Roblox is attempting to move to a better environment for Roblox’s longevity, enforcing audio copyright would reduce the amount of possible legal issues.
By moving along this path with FE vs non_FE, Roblox is removing where most of the skids live and reducing the change of a media backlash.

@Revelted I agree Roblox should have told us ahead of time but I regularly see exploiting on Roblox both directly and indirectly. They’ll always find a way but what this has done is just broken an entire sub-section and given got an exploit admin to stop development.

@vsnry @Aurarus What’s more important to you? (In the extreme)

The ability to play old games? Or the ability to play at all?

@Younite See above.

I do understand why some are like that, wanting the old but security first in my opinion. Although Roblox is not off the hook in my eyes, there are many things could have done better and many have been seen here, including allowing just a small sub-section of the Roblox audience to try and play it in a very restricted way, eg friends or just oneself.

Edit: To explain the possible extremeness.

Someone’s parents sees their child playing a non-FE game and adult content is there. Parent is angry and takes Roblox off the device and tell all of their parent friends, who do the same. Maybe broadcast that out further with some other stuff.

Repeat that circle over and over again, translating it into other countries, and going around the world. Would Roblox survive that? Who knows.

(Again, it’s an extreme and is unlikely to occur but Roblox is not unbreakable.)

2 Likes
#141

Today my world ended: https://www.roblox.com/games/4175379/Paintball
@daxter33 if you are still around please think about updating this game to filtering enabled.
:sob::sob::sob:

9 Likes
#142

1:

This is the equivalent of bombing world heritage sites and detouring tourists to somewhere else like a shopping center.

What happened in those places is history and helped shape the platform it is today. Completely locking it away from all public is ignoring and debasing the creators who gave the early sustentation the platform needed.

I reckon that I would come to Roblox everyday to play these classics and that is most likely what has kept me here for so long (and turned me into a developer). I would probably be dwelling with Unity, Unreal, Game Maker or even nothing at all today if these games were not there - and many developers here from circa 2010 can relate.

Yes, I have certain feelings regarding these games. I do not think they should be degraded to insignificant annoyances in favor of reason as said above by a few people. But the point here is much wider than simply “nostalgia”.

We write and read historical documents to understand how the status quo is laid.
We preserve historial sites to see what influence it has on this day.
We take photographs and selfies to record on a later date how that day was important to us.

We save our old Roblox places and sometimes check them out to see what we were doing when we were young.

And now, in no way accessible or viewable.

The proposal above suggesting friends-only servers is nice and definitely better than chopping the games off.

2:

This quick-N-dirty solution1 is subjugating the real issue - that EE is still a thing. I see this change as a forecast that you are going to remove the mode definitely in the near future, which is a good thing, but this transition is just awful. It is brutal and it is not going to change the creators’ minds.

The wiki has articles explaining what non-EM is, its benefits, sure - I will give you that, but let us look at an excerpt from it:

In order to understand Experimental Mode it is important to first understand the Roblox network model.
Roblox uses what is called client-server architecture.
This is a structure where player devices (called clients) are all connected to a Roblox computer (called the server).
The server makes sure that every client gets a copy of the game world when the client connects to the server.
It also sends regular messages to the clients to let them know when anything changes in the world. 
This makes it so all players stay in sync and see the same game state as everyone else.

We understand it because we know what FE does. But what for beginning, 13-14 year old developers? Would they understand it? architecture? player devices? game state? what the is all of this?!

The current guides we have on the matter are not beginner-friendly. I have pointed many friends I taught Lua to to the wiki but they would just reply to me saying “I didn’t understand anything the wiki said. I want you to teach me instead.” It is abysmal. The quality of the articles is superb, but readability is… ehh…

Without understanding the wiki, let us see how the new players see FE x EM:

image
image765×265 24.4 KB

This is something that needs to be improved upon. The wiki is suffering from what I call the “wikipedia syndrome”: people do not understand a word, but they still Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V the code snippets (to their unfortunate detriment).

If you convert the games but not the developers, we are going to see a major decline in their number for the upcoming future.

^ 1:
This has happened before, such as in:
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/server-list-update/42744 (thankfully got reverted);
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/changes-to-thumbnail-icon-system/33289;
removing comments from games and official items…

42 Likes
#143

i think roblox really messed up.

Honestly, if FE games were just filtered to 13+, that would be fine. But restricting it to friends just ruins the idea of experimental mode entirely. I would have honestly thought that Roblox, of all the companies, would have realized that people agree to a ToS once they log on. Although some users might “fake” their age, it should be the parent who is responsible for the setting up of a user’s account, and as this is the case, I am assuming that this is barricade on non-FE games is a response to the negative press received.

The fact remains, Roblox is not forcing players onto games, neither are they providing a platform or haven for profanity, and in all honesty, they should have been more brutal in response to the press they received, but collective punishment on all game developers (for the actions of one), is just a messy way to clean it up.

Although I believe many developers were aware of the incoming age restriction for under 13’s on the Experimental Mode Games, I don’t think it was made clear at all that there would be an age restriction for those older, but also one imposed on those who weren’t friends with the creator.

My message from all of this, Roblox, (and this is just my opinion), you should have done better to communicate these changes before hand so fellow developers could prepare for it. What I agree with is a age restriction for those younger, as atleast the platform can say that a user’s age on an account is false (as risky as that may sound, its honest), but not at the scale of which all ages are restricted. There are still many games that make revenue but now cannot thanks to the new imposed regulations, and by essentially trying to protect the community, the company is causing more damage to those who rely on experimental mode games and thus the company is causing damage to the community itself. (however much a minority or majority those non-FE reliants are)

16 Likes
#144

Yeah I don’t know about you but I found myself playing classic games on the regular and enjoying them far more than the current generation of games.

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#145

It’s not as simple as just “oh remake all the thousands of old games you used to love and play!” What do you expect me to do? Go and steal the game’s assets and reupload them under my own name? It would never be the same nor would I consider stealing people’s games despite them being long gone off roblox ethical in any way.

11 Likes
#146

I never said it was simple, nor did I say to steal assets. Fact is the games are outdated and don’t matter as much as getting rid of experimental mode does.

If you miss the game for the gameplay, then the concept can be remade. That was my point.

#147

This is the most well constructed response to this issue, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, thank you.

5 Likes
#148

Doomspire Brick Battle is 10 years old and is extremely fun. Glad someone remade it or else that would have disappeared too. It’s fortunate the original creator uncopylocked the game, it won’t be the same for other games.

4 Likes
#149

Edgy start with that reply but alright, lmao. So in other words, you bonded with people and have connections to these places because of good memories. How exactly is this different from nostalgia?

You don’t play those games, and I can guarantee that most people don’t revisit these places until people mention it or something like this happens. Sure it sucks, this could probably have been done better but even then, if it means that the company and the platform will move forward then I couldn’t care less if old games can’t be played. We’re working forwards, not backwards.

Give it a few weeks and no one will be complaining anymore. That’s how it always is. And I will once again say “there’s not really any excuse for games today to not already be filtering enabled.”

Player safety is a first, Roblox don’t need more drama news articles that leech off Roblox’s success like parasites. Because that does in the end hurt us as developers too. So yeah… That’s my two cents on all of this. But sure, do protest for having access to places that hardly anyone but yourself will access which if viewed from a broader angle doesn’t make much sense.

7 Likes
#150

I’ll address your reply by paragraph.

  1. Wasn’t trying to be edgy at all. I was simply stating that I was 100% certain that someone would have this sort of reply. Bonding with people and making friendships =/= nostalgia.

  2. I do play these games. I play Studville often, for inspiration and to walk around and take in the architecture.

A quick twitter search shows I’m not the only one that does this.

Sure, this game will probably be fixed in the future, but who knows. The game I linked is an example, others relate to other games differently. We’re moving forwards, yes, but we could be moving quicker by providing alternative methods. (If I may redirect you to JadeFlames’ post: Further Changes to Playing Ability of Experimental Mode Games)

  1. This is not the case. People still complain about tickets being removed. People still complain about gifts being removed. People will still complain about this for many years to come.

People complained about Discord, and it’s being supported again soon. It just goes to show what we as a community can do, Roblox do listen.

  1. Player safety is a first always, and I agree with you on that. But, reiterating on the 2nd paragraph, there are a multitude of different ways they could have done to combat this issue in a better way.

Roblox removed server lists because of security issues, but after backlash, they revised this and opened them back up again. Once again, there are different ways to combatting this issue. Server List Update

Yes, I will still protest this issue, as will over 400 people on Twitter. https://twitter.com/robloxdevrel/status/1020415138208329729?s=19 I normally agree with any changes Roblox propose and deliver, but I don’t with this.

See also: Further Changes to Playing Ability of Experimental Mode Games

13 Likes
#151

Having the mindset of “people will stop complaining soon enough” is not a good mindset to have. This isn’t an issue that will just pass over because it’s not some trivial little update such as changing the logo or redesigning a web page, this is a change that destroys quite a bit of Roblox history. Sure I might not play games made before 2015 all too often, but I’d still like the ability to be able to and I’m sure there are some older games that people still play daily and now can’t. A good example would be some of StickMasterLuke’s older games and SFOTH. Sure I didn’t personally play those games much if at all, but there were still hundreds of people that would play those games often if not daily. Taking away the ability to play these games isn’t helping anything. FE shouldn’t be an option to begin with: if it breaks these games, so what? At least I’d be able to visit them and see what was once a great game. And who knows how many games are now closed even if they would still work with FE enabled and just didn’t turn it on before.

17 Likes
#152

Can’t we just re-enable 13+ users to visit experimental games as normal, but add a big warning about experimental games and the possible dangers it can bring? This is shown when the player attempts to enter any game that is experimental, either through the site or through the teleportation service.

That way:

  • The responsibilities of Roblox and the developers regarding player safety with experimental games are ‘shoved’ to the player due the warning given. If anything bad happened to a player, too bad because you’ve been warned.
  • Classic games aren’t unplayable anymore and remains open to 13+ users.This also doesn’t require any modification on the game such as 1 player servers, or forced FE, allowing games to operate the way they are and always have been.
  • While not being an ideal situation for developers, it does allow classic games to remain open, which seems to be a hot topic regarding this change. As normal, <13 users are denied access while 13+ users receive a warning regarding the dangers of experimental games. Nowadays devs are highly advised to work with FE due the limitations and warnings in access non-FE games bring.

In my opinion, the history of Roblox should not be destroyed merely because an exploiter managed to stir up a a PR crisis.

15 Likes
#153

You realize it’s children being protected, right? Children don’t and can’t make these types of decisions.

1 Like
#154

They might not matter to you but they do to thousands of the rest of us. And the decision is not to either choose classic games or choose improved security, because we have already offered better courses of action that would improve both.

5 Likes
#155

I’m confident a 13 year old (minimum age here) is well capable to understand a warning, especially in the format that says “We suggest to avoid playing this game.”

It’s like a “Don’t walk on the grass” sign.

12 Likes
#156

The point is most children lie that they are 13+

(Also, it doesn’t matter if 13 year olds understand it, it’s what they claim happened to their parents)