Player Count Changes on Experience Tiles

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#199

This is such, such a dumb change…

Not only are the 16:9 tiles VERY ugly, and not only does friend activity take more priority than a game’s rating (to the point where it gets rid of it as a whole), but removing the current active players counter does more harm than good, since i tend to play more niche, smaller games that don’t get a huge amount of active players (sometimes none at all at some hours of the day), being able to see if theres someone already there that i can play with on my recently played is of huge help to me to decide if i can even be bothered to join, i wouldn’t want to be forced to make an extra input to be able to tell if there’s someone playing.

Looking at this from a developer perspective as well, all the games i make have very small followings since they’re very niche, so whenever i see someone online on my recently played, i rush to the game page to see if they already left or are still playing, to join them and interact a little, get some comments, etc. However, not being able to see if there’s anyone playing (due to the removal of the active player counter) will just make me not even want to consider bothering to refresh the game’s page to see if the Active counter went up, that’s genuinely just unnecessary and making something that was a very simple process more clunky and convoluted for no reason at all.

I can’t think of a scenario where this isn’t harmful to a huge amount of games, as not everyone has the ability to draw in players by pure presentation with very few statistics to back it up. A game with 9 likes and 1 dislike will show a 90% like ratio the same way that a game with 9000 likes and 1000 dislikes will, so the focus on the game’s like ratio isn’t helping the game anymore, also, getting back on the topic of the 16:9 tiles, since i was NOT aware of this at all, they are very ugly and have a ton of empty space (where the play count would’ve gone, as in, the right side), this makes it look like a streaming service for movies more than an online game platform that’s supposedly trying to give the little guy a chance against the very evidently present huge corporations and groups that have managed to pull in millions of visits and other stats, but i won’t even get into that.

I feel like i’ve already written more than enough, so i’ll cut this off here, this just seems like a very stupid change that hurts way more than it tries to help.

11 Likes
#200

No. I don’t think I need to explain my reasoning.

5 Likes
#201

Fantastic idea, would be a much better replacement

3 Likes
#202

I don’t think the change is hard to adapt to, and I 100% get the idea behind it, but in terms of verifying legitimacy of experiences, doesn’t this now render it useless?

To the naked eye, I’d rather see a player count and a rating to see if the game is even worth playing, or yet, adventuring. You can’t verify that it is legitimate, or can you assume it’s a community-driven game. I prefer on a personal level to see these statistics to understand a game’s legitimacy, quality assurance and playability.

Not the best change, or priority in my opinion. I’d rather see engine features.

3 Likes
#203

No. As a matter of fact, I fixed the entire site for you using RoPro, BTRoblox, and UBlock Origin:

image_2024-04-08_203745794
image_2024-04-08_2037457941920×926 218 KB

(topbar cropped out for privacy)

1 Like
#204

I made some code to put the player counts back!

image
image1023×689 109 KB

To run it, you need to install a browser extension such as TamperMonkey or ViolentMonkey, then make a new script with the following code:

Code 
// ==UserScript==
// @name        16:9 Player Count
// @namespace   Violentmonkey Scripts
// @match       https://www.roblox.com/*
// @grant       none
// @version     1.0
// @author      PoppyandNeivaarecute
// @description 4/9/2024, 10:55:28 AM
// ==/UserScript==

let Count = 0
let Total = 0
let GameCounts = {}
let Universes = []
function Delay2() {
    if (Count != Total) {
        setTimeout(Delay2, 100)
    }
    else {
        for (let i = 0; i < Universes.length; i += 50) {
            const chunk = Universes.slice(i, i + 50)

            let xhr = new XMLHttpRequest()
            let params = JSON.stringify(chunk).replace('[', "").replace("]", "").replaceAll('"', '').replaceAll("'", "")
            xhr.open("GET", "https://games.roblox.com/v1/games?universeIds=" + params)
            xhr.send()

            function check1() {
                if (xhr.status != 200) {
                    window.setTimeout(check1, 100)
                }
                else {
                    let loaded = JSON.parse(xhr.response)
                    for (let info of loaded.data) {
                        GameCounts[info.id] = info.playing
                    }
                }
            }
            check1()
        }
    }
}

function AddPlayerCounts(games) {
    Total = games.length
    setTimeout(Delay2, 5)
    for (let game of games) {
        let card = game.getElementsByClassName("base-metadata")[0].getElementsByClassName("game-card-info")[0]
        console.log('startign the load')
        card.innerHTML = card.innerHTML + '<span class="info-label icon-playing-counts-gray"></span>'

        let Universe = game.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.getAttribute('id')
        Universes.push(Universe)
        Count += 1

        function GetInfo(){        
            if (!(Universe in GameCounts)) {
                window.setTimeout(GetInfo, 100)
            }
            else {
                let playing = GameCounts[Universe]
                card.innerHTML = card.innerHTML + '<span class="info-label playing-counts-label">' + playing + '</span></div>' 
            }
        }
        GetInfo()
    }
}

function Delay() {
    let games = document.getElementsByClassName("wide-game-tile-metadata");
    if (games.length == 0) {
        setTimeout(Delay, 250)
    }
    else {
        AddPlayerCounts(games)
    }
}

document.onreadystatechange = function () {
    if (document.readyState == "complete") {
        Delay()
    }
}
16 Likes
#205

@ivy_poisond This is a super useful ! :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth: Take some notes for the team and bring back the playercount please. You’ve been awfully quiet since making the announcement… I hope that means that you’re reconsidering the removal of the player count?

Also, ever since the larger thumbnails, the recommended page has started hurting my eyes just looking at it. It feels very cluttered and close together… it would probably help if each card was distinct further than just a margin.

And finally, it feels super slow. And I mean slowwwww :turtle:. The hover effect is super laggy and the hover border goes over the other games.

Once these concerns are even addressed, I’ll maybe be satisifed. But until then, I’ll throw this post into my list of :wastebasket:roblox updates.

2 Likes
#206

bad bad update, don’t like how it uses thumbnail either. my game, like most only changes their icon on update but not their thumbnail since the thumbnail was never meant to be the first thing you see

1 Like
#207

Y’know, at first I was thinking “Yea maybe this isn’t that bad of an update”. But now since y’all have screwed up the home page I change my mind. How in the world do you mess it up this badly??? THE FRIENDS LIST ISNT EVEN AT THE TOP ANYMORE?!? Why don’t we focus on something more useful to the community, like that audio update y’all promised over two years ago and never followed through on.

image
image1915×900 148 KB

10 Likes
#208

Continue, friends, and favorites are all buried down within recommended and sponsored games. Who approved this? The home page now feels like the discovery page. If I want to join my favorite game, now I have to dig through unrelated games and find it each single time.

5 Likes
#209

Quality control and testing went out the door… :skull:

6 Likes
#210

this is such a god awful update dude i have to scroll past 4 ROWS of games i’ll never play just to see my friends list and continue playing

i dont get how roblox manages to push such terrible updates so consistently

5 Likes
#211

Our recent experiments show that users enjoy Roblox more with this change. We saw that removing player count contributed to a 6.79% increase in users discovering unique experiences and a significant increase in engagement for new and emerging experiences . Additionally, overall engagement from recommendations also increased by 8.24% (on desktop & web), indicating that users are enjoying these experiences. We think this benefits all types of creators and makes Roblox a more vibrant ecosystem long term.

I personally would like to see an in-depth view of this study, sample size, etc. I think seeing result numbers without actually being able to see how you got to that result is what is leaving a lot of players and developers, including myself, skeptical.

Until that case study is further explained, my thoughts are this:

Roblox is a platform heavily reliant upon community engagement and socialization. Immediately, from a user experience perspective, I feel isolated when I do not see player counts. The home screen feels weirdly empty and isolated.

An experience with a 93% rating and 100,000 players compared to an experience with a 100% rating and 1 player is going to mean something very different to me from assuming their quality. But I can’t see that anymore from a first glance… why?

One thing I’d like to see from this study is, what does ‘discovering unique experiences’ entail? Does it mean they actually played the experience? Or does it mean they simply navigated to the experience page before clicking off? I would assume the latter would be inflated significantly because the first barrier of assessing a game’s quality, which in my eyes is comparing player count to rating % on first sight, is no longer there.

I’m not completely on board, nor completely disregarding this. I think we just need more information. Please consider releasing your study.

5 Likes
#212

Player count is good data
it also helps players find small games

2 Likes
#213

Immediately not a fan of how the new home page is organized, and I’ve already seen a decline in my game’s popularity as a result of the player count change. Respectfully, please make some changes to how the home page is organized so there’s less annoying recommendations, bring the friends list back to the top, and put less priority on the unappealing 16:9 thumbnails anymore.

3 Likes
#214

There’s no way to tell the difference between stolen versions of my game now. This is on my Recommended for You:

image

23 Likes
#215

like why is continue section so downwards bro like revert please

1 Like
#216

Let us see what our thumbnails look like when they are put into the recommended sort.

1 Like
#217

This looks awful. Like, usually I think I’m kind of an odd one out in a group with an opinion like that, but this time I am quite sure that this is the majority held opinion.

The previous icons were smaller, thus you could see more games at once. And they had player numbers, something you got rid of for some reason… That’s the equivalent to YouTube removing dislikes on videos. I fail to see how this update is anything but a downgrade.

16:9 thumbnails are cool, I guess? But the box icons were already perfectly serviceable and in-fact were better because they displayed more information and there could be more of them on screen at once.

Despite how much worse this is and how much people do not like it, I do not think they’ll revert this. Just as any company that scrubs away what worked and replaces it with something that doesn’t (TF2 removing Quickplay and replacing it with Casual is a good example), they will refuse any reasons to revert what’s broken purely because of sunk cost fallacy. They think they’re too far in to stop now. And that sucks.

I don’t usually use website styles, as I like to keep my experience as vanilla as possible. I might just make an exception here.

4 Likes
#218

Been checking player counts for some of my Experiences and a significant quantity created by others that I’ve been using as comparison metrics for some time both before and after this update, and by every metric every single game I’ve checked for a prolonged time period has been doing substantially worse since these changes went live. I don’t understand why long-standing developers are being punished in such a horrendous manner.

Clearly, to Roblox, some Experiences are more equal than others. Another godawful change pushed by the investors methinks.

I can’t understand how there hasn’t been a single response from staff to address these complaints. @ivy_poisond Please do your job. I don’t blame you for the outcome of this update but you have a duty to listen to feedback and to escalate it with the product managers who work above you.

To echo what everyone else here is saying, please bring back the CCU count on Experience Tiles.

4 Likes