Introducing Exact Match Search for Experiences

[C_Corpze (Cartoon_Corpze)]

I would love to have search-by-genre back again.
This feature was removed long ago for super vague reasons but I actually found this feature to be extremely useful.

Genre filtering made it super easy to find games such as shooters, horror games, exploration games and to filter through all the generic cash grab games that sometimes flood the front page.

It’s how I found some of my favorite games back in the day and I wish to have it back.

[russiancrown (Nikolai)]

Hi @Cartoon_Corpze and @kinery, in that case I have some good news for you because it is coming back somewhere mid 2023 according to the Creator Roadmap.

[Herbz_Dev2106]

Great Roblox update, this really is needed! Even if a game isn’t so popular in visits, players should still be able to find it when you search for it and for the search results to be more accurate for the game you are searching for.

Not only does this mean, that it isn’t just the biggest games that are the most easy to search for on the platform and not just necessarily the ones that get played the most by players, but also gives players the option to more easily search for new types of games that are less popular on the front page, that other players could/might enjoy playing the most out of!

[Dylan56202 (Dylan)]

It’s nice that this is finally being added but adding a button to enable exact match search instead of having to use double quotes would be much easier and way more user friendly.

This kinda feels like a sloppy way to implement it and most users will have no idea this feature exists.

[addisonshiu]

I would hope this feature could be added into Creator Marketplace as well, it has been so broken and you cannot find what you want even you type the exact title.

And sometimes it just lemmatize the keyword incorrectly and it just give a punch of unrelated results. Like searching “Anime” or “Animal” just give you a punch of animation result and it is very confusing to use.

[VortexColor]

@OutlookG

No Roblox user is going to use this because of the requirement of quotations. If this is the “solution” to the search and discovery issues that still plague the site, then this is a piss-poor answer to developers concerns.

Then what would be the real “solution” to the search issues?

[VortexColor]

One thing we really need is sort options for search

[OutlookG (Outlook)]

Having search that accurately shows games with the highest metrics (playtime, engagement, monetization) coupled with player count first, and worse games last.

Don’t show games with worse metrics before games with better metrics, that doesn’t make sense.

[RemainingTissue]

Thank you, this is much needed for games that are impossible to find in the search bar. As most of the time it is spammed with scam games.

[VortexColor]

@OutlookG

Having search that accurately shows games with the highest metrics (playtime, engagement, monetization) coupled with player count first, and worse games last.

Don’t show games with worse metrics before games with better metrics, that doesn’t make sense

Why should those metrics be prioritised?
Depending on what metrics are prioritised there will always be winners and losers.

The better solution (in my opinion) would be bringing back sort options so users can use the metrics they like.
It would allow a lot greater discovery on what the users exactly want.

[realOmlet (Omlet)]

How is this a good thing? Shouldn’t exact name search be the default all-along. Them removing the original system is a BAD thing. This is just them covering this change up

[jumpcats1234 (Jingus)]

What if the game has quotes in the title? Will that ruin the feature?

[BillB1ox (Will)]

I really think this should be the default, then show what we have currently. This update seems to have ruined search.

[rosariobono]

For some reason you cannot search several separate terms within quotes, it will treat them as if they are all within the same quote.
Examples:
If I search “Tycoon” “Industrial” it seems to show only two games

If I search “Industrial” “Tycoon”, I get different results even though it should be the same results as the previous search.

If I search “Water” “Tycoon” I can find a game that should have been under the prior searches as it includes both “Tycoon” and “Industrial”.

It appears it combines quoted terms into one term, rather than searching for “Quoteterm1” and “Quoteterm2” in each title, its searching for “Quoteterm1 Quoteterm2”, resulting in extremely fewer results.
If the user wants to search for titles with both words in a specific order, they can search with both words in the same pair of quotes. If they want to search for games that include both words anywhere within their title, it wont let them. This is an issue for plenty of other cases, mainly with games that contain 3 or more words in their title.
Ex:
a game called “Drive for 9999 Miles” It will never show up if you search “Drive” & “Miles”
If you search “Natural” “Survival”, natural disaster survival wont show up.
If you search “Bee” “Simulator”, bee swarm simulator wont show up.
(occasionally some 3 word games aren’t effected, this is rare)

[rosariobono]

I just found another oddity. if you search “nova” it will show results as if you searched “new” for some reason. Some other strange search issues I’ve found (I am basing this off how google’s quote search system works, which the roblox search is supposedly following):

• searching “tycoon 2” will show results as if I searched “tycoon” “2”
• searching “pilot” “flight” “simulator” shows results for “pilot flight simulator”
• searching “forces” “phantom” doesn’t show phantom forces, and instead shows a few games that have “forces phantom” in their description?? (4 games show up, 1 says “forces phantom” within its title if you untranslate the title (the quote searches search across languages?), one says it actually in the title, and the other two have it in their description, which I thought quote search only searches titles. (if you can do separate quote searches for titles and descriptions that would be great)

[Reditect]

https://create.roblox.com/roadmap

sad moment

Roblox seems to really enjoy the idea of AI as that kind of stuff is taking over what we actually need and want:

Updating Creator Roadmap - 3 Months Later

Love the communication here, it’s awesome to see a list of things and information. Roblox has feature requests and bug reports, which go to different teams at Roblox, but we as the community don’t really know what all teams there are. I feel as though certain teams are not effectively communicating with the community. It’s not a new issue. There are thousands of feature requests and bug reports that haven’t seen a response from Roblox. I don’t think all Roblox employees have developer forum a…

[rosariobono]

Unbelievable. Game discovery has been getting continuously worse every year, and one of the few confirmed hopes we had left that could help redeem it is now canceled?!

[hyde12345678]

@rosariobono - It’s not cancelled, when has “On Hold” mean cancelled?

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They’re delaying it for some of these reasons probably:

• Funding
• Time
• Polishing
• Fix Bugs and Vulnurabilities
• Other Update

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It’s not easy to do thing like this. Be happy that it’s on hold and not cancelled.

Be paitent please /lighthearted

[Reditect]

@hyde12345678

It’s not cancelled, when has “On Hold” mean cancelled?

Thanks for clarifying, I didn’t catch it myself till you mentioned it.

It’s good that it’s on hold as I want Roblox to do it right and not rush it. They do have a core value of “taking the long view” after all.

And, I want to give Roblox credit here, they’ve stuck to the roadmap quite well. I rechecked the website and a lot has released. On another note, I feel as though the Search & Discovery team are not listening to developers. There are feature requests, but a lack of communication. Maybe we are the vocal minority.

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Also, my ideas have changed on the following a bit:

@Reditect

Roblox seems to really enjoy the idea of AI as that kind of stuff is taking over what we actually need and want

I think Semantic Search is a good idea paired with Dynamic Filters, but either alone is not a good idea.

• Semantic Search, like much of Roblox’s Discovery system, tries to assume user intent with various factors in a string of text.
• Dynamic Filters can be used to directly say what a user wants themselves via various filters.

For some specific things, there could be a price filter, genre filter, server size filter. I have many ideas, but I want to stress the importance of letting users manually find content the they want. Roblox assuming user intent, when that is the only system, isn’t a good idea imo.