Responding to this post: Discovery on Roblox: Past, Present, and Future Vision
If Roblox’s mission is to “connect every user with the best creation and community for them”, why is it so difficult to find the content I want to? Why are Tags & Filters not the solution?
If Roblox’s mission is to “connect every creation with the most relevant audience”, why can’t people better search for my content? Why are filters for Age Ratings, Genre, etc. not the solution?
If Roblox’s mission is to “keep the platform fresh, vibrant, and exciting with new creations and updates”, why can’t I filter content based on Creation Date or Last Updated?
If Discovery has “expanded to include social connections”, why can’t I filter based on Server Size to find a game I can player with X amount of friends? Why can’t I look for Multiplayer versus Single-player?
If Discovery is “Merit-based”, why can’t I filter by those metrics? (Like Rating, Time Spent, Money Spent, etc.)
If I have agency to “reach and describe a creation to an audience”, why can’t people look for my game with a Genre Filter? If the idea is for me to “understand…how to improve a creation”, why is there no Reviews or Feedback system like Steam?
If the community understood “the ‘why’ behind changes to the Discovery system”, people would still disagree, as I do. That “why” is limited. Roblox’s findings/data are not publicly available to fact check. There’s power in that… and a flaw in that. There is distrust in the system. The roadmap helps. The AMAs help. Responding helps.
It would be reasonable to argue that an entire system of Filters and Tags is not “seamless and immersive”, right. But, those systems would “provide more visual information for a user to make a decision”.
Clicking and scrolling through multiple filters can be considered not “fast”. That said, that same system allows for a more “diverse set of interests”. Something that can be “Personalized and Broad”.
Roblox is a social platform, it makes sense to include “socialness” in the algorithm. However, that means that people who make single-player games are put down. And, for people who want to find single-player games, like me, can’t find that content easily.
So, again, why can’t there be a filter for server-size here? Or a tag for “single-player” that I can search for/put on my game? There’s an audience for those games; and it’s not currently “fast”, “flexible”, or “actionable” to find those games.
Wouldn’t a Filter & Tags system enable developers to create that “vibrant multi-sided marketplace”? A better “chance of succeeding” by allowing them to “find an audience”, by in-turn, letting players find that more specific content?
Better the searching with Semantic Search, yes. But don’t miss out on what Filters and Tags can bring to the table. The universal search bar, the semantic search, creates that “fast” system you want, right. But, that comes at the cost of the end-user a bit. Filters and Tags still can have merit with Semantic Search. I go in more detail here: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/robloxs-flawed-vision-for-search-a-universal-search-bar/2532121
Let that “Discover” section/page be those Filters and Tags. That would be “something more powerful and dynamic”.
Wouldn’t this idea of growth being based on spikes in engagement hurt games that launch with a lot of content (and that don’t update content weekly or monthly)? To clarify, I could release a game with 100% content on release, updating the game for bugs that come to my attention. And, since I do that, I’m not rewarded as much compared to if I simply delayed those updates?
There’s a precedent that’s becoming more common in the game development industry to not get full games on release. That kinda sucks for end-users, especially if they pay for. Which, is a whole other topic for Roblox, supporting games that cost Robux. There should totally be a Filter for Price. Free, 800R$, etc. That would bring more of an audience to that niche, right? That could be a more viable thing, something consumers might want too. That monetization strategy works better for some genres. So, since Roblox doesn’t support that right now, it damages that audience (and those games) coming to Roblox.