Problem with sorting clothes in Roblox catalog

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

Hello,

I have the following problem, which has not yet been reported and which is ruining my idea.exe Roblox group. The problem concerns the incorrect sorting of clothes in the catalog after entering the selected words in the search box.

Characteristics of this problem:

• very often popular clothes with many likes and sales are often under unpopular clothes, sometimes freshly created and stolen or unrelated to the search topic
• this is a global problem as this issue occurs on all tested browsers, on both computers and mobile devices, on all tested computers and various Roblox accounts in several countries
• the sorting of clothes sometimes suddenly changes completely and sometimes it’s completely different on other accounts

Repro:

• open the Roblox catalog and select Classic Clothing, for example Pants
• enter in the search box the word you are interested in, for example “axolotl”
• notice that popular clothes with a lot of likes and sales are often below unpopular clothes, sometimes freshly created
• compare the sorting of clothes on several other accounts and at different time intervals

The problem appeared in early November, I think it started around this point where pressing clothes configuration started to take users to the create.roblox.com/creations page. From that point on, the sales in my Roblox store (idea.exe Roblox group) started to drop drastically, and suddenly, in just a few days, they fell to the level of sales from a year ago, few people suddenly started joining the group. After a deeper analysis, it turned out that the reason for all this was probably changes in the algorithms that sort clothes in the catalog because my clothes, which for many months occupied the first places in the catalog, suddenly fell many rows below, while the higher rows were occupied by clothes not popular, with low number of likes, also freshly uploaded to the catalog, stolen from me and other groups, and also clothes completely unrelated to the words entered into the search box. This has started to kill the group that recently received a verified badge due to its huge popularity and dynamic growth.

Unfortunately, the problem causes the destruction of popular groups and supports asset thieves whose clothes suddenly took high places in the catalog. More and more unpopular and freshly created clothes are displacing popular clothes, pushing them to the lower rows in the catalog, gradually destroying popular developers.

I will present this problem in the screenshots below.

1) Sorting clothes November 18, 2022 in Sheloba account:

2) Sorting clothes November 19, 2022 in Sheloba and Szeloba accounts (the clothes are sorted completely differently than the day before):

3) Sorting clothes November 19, 2022 in Exoeel account (it is completely different than in Sheloba and Szeloba accounts):

4. Sorting clothes November 19, 2022 in SerrasaImus account (similar to sorting clothes on November 18, 2022):
   

   
   
   
   

5. Improper sorting of clothes supports asset thieves:

• searching by “kuromi” word
  

  
  
  
  

• searching by “black school uniform” phrase
  

  
  
  
  

[Focia19]

We’ve filled a ticket into our internal database for this issue, and we will update you when we have further information.

Thanks for the report!

[Qxual]

Just to update, this issue is still occurring and it’s affecting designers’ sales drastically.

[cpguy5089]

I can confirm that this bug has been existing for much longer than early november, and far beyond when the verified creator mark was introduced even.

It doesn’t matter what I’d search for, I would be seeing exclusively very blatantly stolen versions of clothing from very obvious bot groups. Even in the rare times something wasn’t copied much so it would still be visible on page 1, it would still be buried under the stolen versions anyway no matter how popular the original was.

The catalog is just RNG with one or two minor factors that can vaguely influence the mystical algorithm, while this definitely isn’t a bug as such it’s very clearly going against what really should be happening, especially considering Roblox was apparently implementing some functionality to avoid this sort of thing happening (and applied it to one test group and never did anything about it since)

---

I’d say sorting by sales would be a good idea but the sort by option was completely removed because it’s far easier to remove an important function everyone uses daily than god forbid trying to prevent this issue in the first place.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

Good to see I’m not the only one noticing this problem. Unfortunately, the problem still exists and it’s ruining my group more and more (the sales level has decreased 5 times) and after today’s tests, I have the impression that the problem has deepened. My clothes, which not so long ago were in the first row when selecting the default “relevance” option, are in 21st or 32nd row now, and even it happened that scrolling down the rows, I didn’t find them at all. Below is one example where you can see that the clothes with 298K+ likes are 20 rows below the clothes with 2 likes and my best selling mafia suits are in the 21st row, while the upper rows are occupied by clothes with very few (or even 0) likes, often stolen.

To be honest, I’m getting more and more discouraged from creating 2D clothes in Roblox because the amount of work put into it, the popularity of clothes and the amount of sales don’t matter anymore when clothes are sorted by this mystical (that’s a very accurate term) algorithm.

[Qxual]

Any updates? It has been 19 days and the issue is still occurring, if not worse.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

Unfortunately the issue is getting worse, I wonder if the problem will be solved at all, I must admit that I’m getting more and more discouraged. I will give the example, when I type “white suit” in the search box, the white suit I created, which was very liked and had a lot of sales, is now in the 31st row from the top, it is under hundreds of other clothes, also freshly uploaded, stolen or having little or no likes and nothing to do with the white suit (like Christmas Suit, Green Suit). The truth is that no one will find my white suit in the catalog anymore, it’s very discouraging.

So this stolen asset is in the 2nd row (after typing “white suit” in the search box):

And the white suit I created is in the 32nd row (no one will find it anymore):

[Qxual]

Yes, this seems to be an issue once you are logged in. Once logged out of your account, the catalog sorts clothes correctly. I don’t know what’s the cause of this bug, but this issue should be taken more seriously as it’s happening to most designers, if not all of them. My sales drastically decreased and I can’t devex anymore due to the lack of sales that I used to earn.

With that being said, this issue should be addressed and resolved as soon as possible. If any admin can be transparent with us that would be great.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I tested it and indeed after logging out the problem is less severe but still exists. For example, after logging in, the white suit I created is in the 31st row, as shown in the screenshots above, after logging out of the account, the same suit appears in the 5th row, but still the clothes are sorted incorrectly and the suit with 1,085 likes is under the clothes with few likes and under stolen ones, for example under these clothes:

However, the truth is that most people search the catalog while logged in because they want to buy something or to try it on and they can’t do that when they’re not logged in. I agree with you that this issue is serious for classic clothing designers and should be fixed as soon as possible. This bug not only destroys the level of sales but also supports asset thieves.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I will show you another example showing how absurd the sorting algorithm is now. These are the pants I created, they were first in the catalog for many months, even after entering only the “frog” word in the search box:

I entered the “frog overalls” words to find it and here are the results of the search:

As you can see in the screenshot above, the pants I created are in the 4th row and are under the clothes with very few or even 0 likes, under the stolen clothes (there are lots of stolen assets) but also under the clothes completely unrelated to the search topic (like christmas overalls, reindeer overalls, kidcore overalls, rainbow overalls, mushroom overalls and so on) and not even having the word “frog” in the name and description.

[Qxual]

It’s pretty awful how this post is being neglected and we aren’t getting any response if this is going to be fixed or not. I am quite disappointed with how roblox staff runs the Avatar Shop, but I am not surprised considering the state of catalog the past few years. I am honestly considering quitting the clothing industry in roblox if this isn’t fixed soon. This is not me hating, but wishing good for how they run things since I have been on Roblox for a long time and don’t want to see it in this state.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I agree with you 100% and I feel exactly the same, I’m discouraged and I’m thinking of quit as well (maybe I’ll try my luck at creating 3D items, I’m currently learning Blender) because the amount of work and effort put into it is no longer reflected in anything and it all depends on some random, mystical algorithm. I gave a lot of examples in the hope that this will be taken seriously and the bug will be fixed but to be honest I’m slowly losing hope in this matter. I feel like we can vent our frustrations here and the problem will remain.

[Focia19]

Hello creators!

Sorry to say, but I don’t have updates from the engineers yet regarding this issue!
I’m quite sure I will have after this time of the year ends!

Until then, happy Christmas everyone!

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

It would be great if the problem was fixed soon, or at least attempts to fix it started. I also wish you all a Merry Christmas!

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

An update from today! Clothes in the catalog are still sorted incorrectly and clothes with huge popularity, number of sales and likes are below clothes that are less popular, with less likes, often stolen and not related to the search topic. The more words I enter to narrow down the search results, the worse the situation (it should probably be the other way around). For example, my outfit called “Cute Kawaii Frog Pastel Green Overalls”, which has almost 10K likes, appears in the 6th row when you enter the “frog” word in the search box (also under less popular and stolen clothes), but after entering the “frog overalls” words it appears in the 11th row - under lots of clothes that have nothing to do with a frog and don’t even have the word “frog” in the name or description (like Halloween overalls, Christmas overalls and so on), as if the search query used “or” instead of “and”.
On top of that, there’s another problem destroying the sales of newly uploaded clothes (I’ve already posted a message in the Dev Forum about this) and now the clothes in the store are displayed in a strange order (on the first page there are no more newly uploaded or newly updated clothes, but probably the ones with the most sales in the last 7 days, so no one will notice the newly uploaded clothes anymore because they will appear on the back pages of the store).

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

The situation with sorting clothes in the catalog was indeed better recently, but now it’s even worse than when I reported this bug, I will show it in the screenshots.

In the screenshot below you can see that I entered the “mafia” word in the search box, my clothes are marked with a blue frame, they are still below some less popular clothes but the situation is not bad.

However, the situation was very bad when I entered the “mafia suit” words in the search box. This should have narrowed down the search results, but it did the opposite, as if the algorithm was using “or” instead of “and”. However, that’s not all, because dozens of rows above my clothes there were not only clothes with few likes, but also clothes that didn’t even have the “mafia” word and the “suit” word in the name and the description. This made my mafia suits (they have “mafia” and “suit” words in the name, they were very popular and have over 1000 and over 2000 likes) displayed only in the 38th and 39th row. These suits are now dozens of rows below clothes with only 50-300 likes, dozens of rows below clothes that have nothing to do with mafia (and have no “mafia” word in the name and description, such as yellow suit, spooky orange suit, red suit, pink suit, golden suit, watermelon suit, cartoon rainbow suit, colorful clown suit, moon cheese suit, pink bunny furry suit, noob suit, hazmat gas mask suit, toxic pumpkin suit, steampunk suit, santa claus shirt, scientist, Captain America, Spiderman, Black Panther, Harry Potter, Omni-Man and so on), but also below clothes that do not have any of the search words in the description and name, such as “Santa Claus shirt”.

So, for example, my mafia suit

is way below these clothes (note that none of them have either the “mafia” word or the “suit” word in the name and description):

The truth is that few people will find my mafia suits after typing “mafia suit” words (and most people looking for a mafia suit will type the “mafia suit” words into the search box).

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I will present on the next example how badly the clothes search algorithm works now.

I decided to search for axolotl themed overalls, first I typed only “axolotl” word, here are the search results:

As you can see above my clothes with 3099 and 4737 likes are below clothes with 3-56 likes, often stolen (I see a lot of stolen assets there).

I decided to narrow down the search results by typing “axolotl overalls” words (so it would only search for overalls related to axolotl theme) but most of the clothes found by the searching algorithm have nothing to do with axolotl (and there is no “axolotl” word in the description and name) but there are also clothes that have neither the “axolotl” word nor the “overalls” word in the description and name:

So the axolotl overalls I made, having 4737 likes, having “axolotl” and “overalls” words in the description and name, are many rows below the clothes not having anything to do with axolotl, also having nothing to do with overalls, having 20-200 times less likes. For example, in the 3rd row there are Purple Polkadot Overalls with 227 likes and my Axolotl Overalls with 4737 likes are in the 16th row. My overalls are also well below such clothes (having neither the word “axolotl” nor the word “overalls” in name and description and having several dozen to several hundred times less likes at the same time):

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

In short, the problem is that entering more words should more precisely describe what you are looking for and narrow down the search results but the opposite happens because after entering more than 1 word in the search field, the algorithm searches for clothes with only one of these words (as if the logical “or” operator was used instead of the logical “and” operator), and even without any of these words from search terms. This bug adds up to the fact that less popular clothes, often stolen and freshly uploaded, are often better positioned and this combo makes search results often ridiculous.

Another example. When I enter “cat dress” in the search field, I want to search for cat-themed dresses (“and” logical operator) but the sorting algorithm uses “or” logical operator and finds cat-themed clothes that are not dresses (like, for example, “Hello Kitty pants”) and also dresses that have nothing to do with with a cat (like, for example, Santa Claus dress), it shouldn’t be like this (and it wasn’t like that before), entering more words should narrow the search results, not broaden them.

[nivuke]

Bumping this because its still happening!

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

Unfortunately, nothing has changed. The algorithm still sorts by any of the words I typed, instead of narrowing the search results as more words are entered (and this makes my clothes often impossible to find and ruins the sales). I decided that the specificity of this bug is slightly different than what I described in this thread, so I sent a message reporting it as a new bug, that was 23 days ago and no one has replied to me yet so I have the impression that no one cares. I feel discouraged and slowly losing hope that this will be fixed