As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to get a newer game noticed in many aspects.
Roblox is currently focusing on resolving this issue by concentrating the Featured sort, however there’s an underlying issue with formatting of the web page which almost undermines this concentration.
Top Earning is positioned as the second from top sort, and therefore second most visible. There are a few reasons why this shouldn’t be this way;
The Top Earning sort contains many of the games featured on the Popular section, and so there are many repeats in a short amount of space (due to spending patterns)
Top Earning is invaluable to us as developers, and for statistical use. However, it is not really all that useful to the average player, and the first things you see on the Games page should be the things that are most valuable to the player.
Roblox could resolve this issue by switching the positioning of the Top Earning and Featured sort, this way the Featured sort is visible on a standard resolution monitor without scrolling (promoting ease of access, and helping newer games get themselves out there), and many repeats are removed from a first glance view of the Games page.
I agree that the top earning sort should be lower however I also have complaints about the overall quality/consistency of the featured sort. I think there should be a new category for games with a high rating/place visits ratio. So new games (with less place visits) that appear to be higher quality (given the ratings) would get exposure, independent of the poorly curated featured category.
This could be called a “Trending” category. It keeps old games that have gotten their share publicity out and will constantly promote new and interesting games.
This way also, the higher up on the list it becomes, and the more people that play it, games that are trying to abuse this for publicity will get some publicity but can quickly sink due to dislikes.
I would love this. Game variation needs to be pretty much served to the player at first glance. By showing “top earning” before “featured”, you partially get rid of that.
As a person who’s been in the Featured sort, I can tell that “Featured” is a great kick-start and can raise your existing player count by around 200%. However, this sort will never help games become popular without creators own effort, no matter how high the Featured sort will be placed in the front page.
If your game is perfect and just needs to be noticed, the Featured sort does that perfectly already and your game will become popular.
And/or set that as default so new people to the website can see a vast range of games, then show an option on the games page to switch between columns and rows.
You’re being selective here. Robot 64 is new, and various other new games have made it to this section before. Most of the games in this section are not the same as Popular sort, and the Featured sort serves the purpose of introducing new games.
@loleris Agreed completely, but surely it makes more sense to have something that players can make use of in the first glance visual of the page rather than a sort which has little use to most average users?
Ok there’s one new game, you’re completely missing my point. It is dominated by old games. that is in NO WAY what I said in my post, therefor your assertion that what I suggested already exists is false.
except that it doesn’t? Did you read my post at all? It was about keeping a category constantly full of super fresh games and only promoting games with low place visits.
Congratulations, you literally defined the Featured section.
The Roblox team are working to increase both the rate at which the Featured section is alternated, and on a system that makes it easier for you to submit your game.
Again missing my point. The featured section is completely up to what staff at roblox think is “good”, I made a huge complaint to Dev Relations about certain choices where they completely failed to make even remotely quality picks.
My suggestion guarantees 100% fair playing field between all games. You can’t tell me we already have a “Trending” tab. it does NOT exist.
That’s simply not true, Featured section is comprised of what we submit via the form. The main reasons a game may be omitted from the sort at the moment is if it doesn’t meet requirements.
Between Top Rated and Featured, the role of a ‘Trending’ tab is fulfilled. It would simply be clutter on an already filled page.
The Trending tab would bring a bunch of unique games to the front page while it’s already full of at least 3 different categories that are just repeats of eachother. And again like I said, Featured category is not 100% fair playing field. look, I know you’re game got on it, congrats, but that doesn’t change my concerns about having a completely unbiased, automated, trending category. I believe such a category would surface all sorts of games that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen .
Top Rated hardly EVER changes. and featured only takes into consideration a tiny sliver of all games and doesn’t have the greatest quality control at times.
Featured Catagory is fair providing you meet requirements. My game being on the Featured sort has nothing to do with my counter to your suggestion, so please don’t bring that into this. It’s just irrelevant.
Having a sort such as what you have suggested would mean a lack of consistency, a volatile sort (the last thing we need), and a gateway for scam games to reach the front page via bots; along with the fact that it literally already has it’s purpose served by Featured and Top Rated.
I think there’s probably reasons they dislike the games, a lot of games start out with high like-dislike ratio which is then affected negatively upon becoming Featured- I saw this with Disaster Island for sure- we had something like a 90% like-dislike ratio prior to becoming featured.
