If a game is actively showing up on the Discover page, I think it’s very unlikely it would have less than 100 players, let alone 0 players. And with this update I expect those games with the least players to have a better shot at getting more players quickly.
1 Like
This change is to the home page, not the discover page. Assuming that was just a mistake in your message, that’s not universally true. Most of the games I get recommended have very few players at any given time, because I spend most of my playtime in niche corners of the platform.
A lot of them are clanning games that only lose out from not having playercount displayed, since they’re not meant to always have people on, but instead rally a good number all at once at specific times. Quite a lot of smaller group games are built around the premise of only being enjoyable when people are online to host events and not being able to see when that is at a glance outside of Discord is lame.
2 Likes
Seems to boost player counts on games that previously had less players.
Screenshot of Live CCUs on an old dying tycoon.
4 Likes
I hope an extension such as ro pro adds this.
1 Like
A moment of silence to devs who have a higher difficulty or complexity games that are being downrated to oblivion by players who want every experience to have an “autoplay” button.
3 Likes
tl;dr Give me genres. Good change though, and welcome to see how it plays out.
I will never believe this as genuine until developer-defined genre sorting makes a return and algorithms favour other factors besides monetisation (they probably do but it feels like they don’t). There needs to be more aggressive steps towards providing niches a chance to shine. This is a great first step in that direction, but I still need the whole package.
Popularity bias still exists in the algorithms and sorts that are not picked out by developers but instead by staff and/or automation, which will continue to be absurd. I hope and pray these are moves towards trusting developers with genre sorts because last time there was a disappointingly unsatisfactory answer about the return of genres.
1 Like
i like the idea of having the 16:9 thumbnails as the icons; however, i really want the player count back when it shows me games.
2 Likes
I know right. Hopefully they can also add an option to affect all games too, so that it isn’t just on the home page but also on discover. @Dice_RoPro
@ivy_poisond @ivy_poisond @ivy_poisond Please … review … this … with … the … team… … … … … … I don’t want to check out any of these newer experiences because I know basically nothing about them! If you think I’m going to use the recommend for you section after this update, you’re wrong. I don’t have the patience to guess which games matter.
This update backfired, so double check your experiments because the comment section here paints a different picture. I wouldn’t be suprised if someone makes an extension to make the improvements such as Player Count Changes on Experience Tiles - #56 by debugMage or
Player Count Changes on Experience Tiles - #66 by idorosem or Player Count Changes on Experience Tiles - #133 by synical4 or Player Count Changes on Experience Tiles - #178 by ittrgrey. These people are not paid to come up with these ideas, yet they somehow came up with better ideas than the team behind this update. Congrats!
Simply put, the people behind this update had a job to do and did it perfectly (no shame to them), but when people aren’t being restricted by the ideas of some random person, it’s almost like their job can become more productive. I’m positive someone behind this update disagreed with removing the player count, but their opinion was shut down. I think the picture below sums up my feelings towards this update…
4 Likes
I really wish the home page would stop changing all the time… I just refreshed my page and now I have a totally new font and my home page only takes up like 60% of my screen…
Even with AdBlock disabled there is still so much screen space just left unused, its so uglyyyy
(Shoutout dev forum for just blocking the image, if you click it it loads)
6 Likes
Gotcha, and yep that was a mistake on my part. The unique case of clan games is an understandable objection. But I understand Roblox not weighing that use case very heavily since clans are so niche.
Oh wow, cool!
I fixed it by removing all the bloat. I don’t need to have 4 different categories for recommendations.
2 Likes
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
No. I don’t think I need to explain my reasoning.
5 Likes
Fantastic idea, would be a much better replacement
3 Likes
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
No. As a matter of fact, I fixed the entire site for you using RoPro, BTRoblox, and UBlock Origin:
(topbar cropped out for privacy)
1 Like
I made some code to put the player counts back!
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
@ivy_poisond This is a super useful ! 
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 
. 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 
roblox updates.
2 Likes
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