Launch of Recommendation Feed on Roblox Web

At the end of the day, they do have to pay for Server Costs, employee’s, moderation, Data, Info, and more so it is somewhat understanable to do that

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Could someone explain what the recommendation feed is?
I’m not sure what it is. And unfortunately the post doesn’t seem to explain it?

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I don’t think that’s an issue of discovery, rather I’d assume an issue of how moderation at Roblox works. Based on public information, I’d assume moderators only delete things when reported, not actively search the website.

It wouldn’t make sense to ask hundreds or more to go into the website itself and search the platform. There is a manual reporting system that also is aided by ML on-upload of said item.

For discovery, Roblox could blacklist the term “R63” maybe. Roblox has the value of safety at its core.

@Hooksmith could you jump in here? Roblox in its current state shouldn’t allow suggestive content. I do understand the amount of content uploaded and existing on Roblox is large. I feel reporting the content is the best advice to give people, but other than that, I’m at a loss.

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I understand your use case here, and I agree to an extent. Having only continue and favorites on home might be good for some, but it’s not for the majority, creators and Roblox included as well.

Roblox starts on the homepage. The most traffic Roblox gets is the homepage. So, Roblox adding discovery to the homepage makes sense for better platform retention. The better the recommendation algorithm, the better that homepage and retention is. The issue here is that Roblox’s recommendation system isn’t good enough and has its limits.

I think users should be able to customize their own homepage. The default can be with the recommended sort, but that use case you mention of favorites and continue only is valid.

What would you say to a feature like this? (Toggling the recommendation sort on the homepage, but it being the default.)

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I doubt we’ll see anything like this soon. The least they could do is just move favorites to the top like people have been asking.

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The Recommendation Feed is a list of games to play. The games on that feed are added based on various factors in an algorithm. Each users’ recommendation feed looks different.

The idea is to match users with games they’d want to play without them searching/directly knowing. If you’d like more info on how the algorithm works, I made this post about My Research on the Roblox Algorithm & Discovery for Experiences/Games.

Does this adequately answer you question?

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Thanks, Roblox! Now I can see all the latest skibidi toilet simulators because we all know it isn’t going to recommend anything personalized.

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This is really disturbing to me. If one of if not the most top earning developer on Roblox is being screwed over by the algorithm, then no one is safe from it.

Roblox, please please please please please actually look into what is going wrong with game sorting. Every month it seems like recommendations are becoming more and more detached from any sensical user statistic whatsoever. There are literal fetish games popping up in my younger family’s homepage, and moderation sure as hell isn’t taking care of those.

I really want all this to make sense, I really do. But if not even money is enticing you guys to injure discovery then I don’t know what is. This is a systematic failure that’s built-up for far too long.

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which indeed makes it an intentional feature

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Can we get an opt-in toggle to just turn all this recommendation stuff off and get practical features (such as favorites and recently played) without algorithmically generated clutter or intervention?

I understand you guys want to maximize engagement but developers and other power users often have different goals than the bulk of the playerbase.

As a developer I want quick access to a preselected list of experiences (games I am working on, or which I am interested in or enjoy more than the average game). Similarly, some players have experiences which they spend a disproportionate amount of time playing in comparison to everything else.

For these kinds of users, if they value their manually created lists over the algorithmically generated lists, they would prefer to disable the latter on the home page, and if they want to get recommendations they can just go to the “Discover” page.

I would also point out that you may be able to increase engagement by improving the overall performance of all experience-related UIs. The website app is kind of sluggish and clunky which reduce the likelihood of me doing things like expanding collapsed menus (which literally means being taken to an entirely separate webpage! I don’t want to do that, I want things to be inline and fast!) or visiting the Discover page, but these issues can be solved with better UI design and performance optimization. The mobile app is okay (and doesn’t need this homepage change imo because it’s already super easy to go to the discover page) but the web UI kinda sucks.

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Roblox is on a crazy good update streak. Keep it up!

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Hopefully it isnt gonna be neutral to what roblox decides to shove down users throats.

For example: My hero battlegrounds and their enhanced search algorithm.

However it sounds promising : D

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I see recommended games, whats the difference between the old and new?

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Who’s excited for some skibid toilet simulators :toilet:

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My entire “recently played” section is messed up, last game I played was a game I made, but its halfway down the page. Instead, roblox is showing games i last played a month or 2 ago.

A game I havent played in a LONG time is above the game i truly last played.

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We launched an update in December that lets your monitor Home recommendations impressions, conversion rate, and more in your Acquisition analytics page.

You can use filters to see web only traffic.

Here’s a link to that announcement: Analytics: View Home Recommendations Conversion Rate and Recent Icon Updates

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I have a few issues with the recommended tab and however the algorithm works.

Like the fact that the recommeneded games seem to be completely random and I wouldn’t really want to play any of the games there. Another issue is all the games there are just popular games I would see on the front page. I want to see more smaller games, I have to find good games on youtube and using browser extensions make Roblox a whole better experience when it comes to finding games like having a random game tab. Last issue is the fact the page ends instead of just continuing to give you more games, this also goes for the favorite tab and I have to go through my profile to actually find a complete list of my favorite games.

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Slightly out of context, but why “Friend activity” was gone in the first place?

People usually make friends in-game, and the game in question is something they both enjoy, resulting in that “friend” having decent probabilities that he knows similar games, which i find it more reliable to discover new games than whatever “recommended” is trying to guess.

you could argue that “currently playing” is enough and you don’t really need to see a friend playing in 2 different visuals, but what if i miss the user playing for a hour on a game ? i don’t really want to be actively refreshing my home page to know what my friends are up to.

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We plan to incorporate Genres & Experience Categories seamlessly within the user’s discovery journey including search landing pages and metadata within the home tiles.

yooooo genre sort might return!!! (probably not, dont get your hopes up.)

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Roblox will do anything - absolutely anything - except return genre control back to developers. Don’t get complacent about discussion regarding developer-curated sorts; when the announcement mentions genres they’re talking about algorithmically sorted experiences that you have to luck out on to get sorted into and that appear at the bottom of the discover page. It’s nowhere near adequate.

I’m not looking to play the same 400 top-earning experiences. I want Roblox to start acknowledging the niches on the platform and allow developers to once again have power over how they can reach their audiences without needing to depend on absurd amounts of capital or third party platforms.

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