Yup, this is a new bug because a slightly different message is displayed, I have the same problem. 2-3 days ago it was saying “No items are for sale in this group.” and now it says “Unable to load store items.”
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Now when you look at the catalog front page or any page for that matter. 2D clothes don’t show up only UGC items, seems like Roblox doesn’t care about 2d clothes anymore even though they are much more popular.
Since June something started to ruin the amount of sales in my group, I started to analyze it and I noticed another bug that almost killed my group.
After entering only one word in the search field, the sorting algorithm favors clothes containing only this one word in the name, it does not display popular clothes that, apart from this one word, also contain other words describing the clothes. I want the algorithm to search for clothes that have all the words entered in the search box in the name, but I want it to also find popular and liked clothes that have other words in the name in addition to the searched word. I want the algorithm not to place clothes with 0-10 likes above clothes with hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of likes just because the latter contain more words in the name. For example, when I enter the word “frog” I don’t want the very popular “frog overalls” pants to be excluded from the search results just because they contain the word “overalls” in addition to the word “frog”. I don’t want to be forced to describe clothes with only one word so that they appear in search results.
Often people enter one word in the search box, for example, the word “frog”, because they want to buy something frog-themed and they don’t know yet whether they want a dress, overalls, a hoodie, a suit or a school uniform or something else, and with the current algorithm they have no chance to see my clothes because I tried to describe these clothes in the best possible way.
The problem probably appeared in June because at the end of June I noticed that the level of sales began to drop drastically. The sharp decline in sales of my clothes almost completely ruined my group, sales fell more than 5-fold (and the level of sales was already ruined by the bug described in this thread), few people find my clothes and my group now. On the other hand, less popular clothes are favored and most often these are assets stolen from the original creators!
Example 1
After entering the word “frog”, the algorithm searches mainly for clothes described as “frog” without using other words, so very often it shows clothes that are not very popular or have even 0 likes, also stolen and freshly uploaded to the catalog. My outfit named as “Kawaii Frog Overalls” 🐸 Kawaii Frog Overalls - Roblox, very popular so far and having 25.4K likes, is not showing up at all! On my 27 inch screen, the roblox catalog shows 100 rows and these pants don’t show up in any of them while the first 20 rows have a huge amount of clothes with 0-10 likes and a huge amount of stolen assets!
Example 2
After entering the word “mafia”, the algorithm mainly searches for clothes described as “mafia” without using other words, so it shows clothes that are not popular, have very few likes or even 0 likes, freshly uploaded to the catalog and often stolen just because they contain only the word “mafia”. Popular clothes with other words in the name are placed very low in the catalog or not displayed at all. Pants I created Black Casual Mafia Formal Business Suit [-] - Roblox with 1.3K likes show up in row 22 on a 27" screen just because in the name, apart from the word “mafia”, there are also other words describing these pants and clothes with very few likes (often freshly uploaded to the store or stolen) are placed much higher in the catalog because they contain only the word “mafia” in their name.
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I will give another example showing how badly the sorting algorithm works, which completely ruined my group.
This dress (created by Reina group) has 42.1K likes, it is an original asset that has gained immense popularity:
Now, when I enter “mafia dress” in the search field, the first rows show copies of this asset, stolen of course, with very few likes:
The original asset appears in row 79, under dozens of stolen assets! Can someone explain to me how the current algorithm works? Unfortunately this algorithm has completely ruined my group and is very supportive of asset thieves.
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What’s happening with the sorting algorithm right now is a real mess. There are 2 types of how the algorithm works in different accounts, and it’s not that the algorithm works differently in each account because it is adapted to this account, not at all! There are just 2 versions of how the algorithm works and I have no idea what it depends on. In most accounts, the algorithm works according to version 1 described below, and in some accounts it works according to version 2. I will describe what both versions are about.
In version 1 (which is more popular) when entering one word in the search field, the algorithm favors clothes named with one word, so unpopular clothes are much higher in the search result than popular clothes with more words in the name (this bug is described here: https:// devforum.roblox.com/t/after-entering-1-word-in-the-search-field-the-sorting-algorithm-doesnt-display-popular-clothes-with-more-words-in-the-name). For example, after entering the word “mafia”, we see a lot of clothes with one-word name, named as mafia, and other clothes with thousands of likes are excluded from the search results because they have other words in the name besides the word mafia.
This bug almost completely ruined my group because a lot of people type one word in the search box and when I create, for example, a 1920s style black pinstripe suit I don’t want to name it just “mafia” or just “suit”. However, in these accounts, the sorting algorithm works slightly better when the user enters 2 words in the search box. The algorithm then first displays several clothes (sometimes even several rows and sometimes only 3-4 clothes) related to the search results (including popular clothes) and then shows clothes unrelated to what the user typed. For example, after entering “frog overalls”, the algorithm displays several rows of clothes related to what the user has entered, and then it starts displaying overalls that have nothing to do with the frog and even clothes that do not have any of the words entered in the name and description.
After typing “axolotl overalls” the algorithm displays 3 of my clothes in the first row and then shows clothes not related to axolotl.
In version 2 (less popular), the algorithm no longer favors one-word names and sorts clothes well when entering one word in the search field. Sorting clothes by type 2 in some accounts appeared about 2 days ago when I noticed a small but noticeable increase in sales. Previously, unfortunately, in all accounts, when entering 1 word, the algorithm favored clothes named with only one word and placed clothes that were not popular, often stolen and even had 0 likes in the top rows of search results, while clothes with thousands of likes were often excluded from search results. As I mentioned, this bug completely ruined my group (if it’s a bug because I’ve been told it’s intentional but to me this way of sorting the clothes by the algorithm is just ridiculous). In type 2, this bug does not occur and it resulted in a visible increase in sales.
However, when entering two words, the algorithm displays clothes completely unrelated to the search results, here are some examples:
- After entering “axolotl overalls” in the search box, the algorithm searches for clothes that have nothing to do with axolotl.
- After entering “frog overalls” in the search box, the algorithm shows clothes related to the frog motif in the first row, and the subsequent search results have nothing to do with what the user entered in the search box.
Of the 13 accounts I’ve checked, 3 had a situation described as type 2 and 10 had a situation described as type 1. Unfortunately, everything seems to be random and clearing cookies does not change anything. In addition, I noticed a rule - there are always a few clothes related to the search results at the beginning, then there are a lot of clothes unrelated to what the user entered, and then (unfortunately, hardly anyone will go through enough clothes to reach this place) there are clothes related to what the user typed. It’s one big mess! The algorithm worked great a year ago and before, and it’s a shame that it was changed to something that works randomly and ruins a lot of developers. These two bugs (favoring one-word names when entering one word and displaying clothes completely unrelated to what the user typed) completely ruined my group.
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My group’s ruined too, and I still haven’t given up occasionally sending them emails.
But they always give me this response:
They admit that their algorithm is complex but refuses to compensate or at least fix it
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Unfortunately, now 2 bugs are ruining the developers, one bug is that the algorithm favors one-word names when typing one word in the search box (but this bug does not appear in some accounts) and the other bug is displaying results that have nothing to do with what the user typed. Unfortunately, the first bug almost completely ruined my group, because many people enter one word in the search box, for example, when they want to buy something with a frog motif, they often simply enter the word “frog” because they don’t know what type of clothes they want to buy - whether a dress or overalls or a hoodie or something else. It would probably be best to program the whole algorithm from scratch, but it is probably impossible or difficult to implement, but fixing the sphagetti code is sometimes harder than writing the code from scratch. The problem of favoring one-word names applies not only to clothes, but also to UGC items. For example, after typing “wings” in the search field, we get a lot of items named with one word, the algorithm excludes wings named, for example, with 2 words, after all, it is completely pointless:
It should be that the more words we enter in the search box, the more narrowed the search results we get, displaying one-word names after entering one word is simply ridiculous.
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welp there’s nothing more I can do
Very frustrating on how we can’t at least be provided with some information on what the catalog algorithm is looking for like they do with the Discovery page for games.
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I deleted the above post because writing about the same thing all the time probably doesn’t make sense anymore, everything has already been described in the smallest detail and nothing has changed. Roblox is focusing on leyered clothes right now, and I feel like the issues with 2D clothes have been pushed to the sidelines. I’ve started to learn Blender intensively and maybe creating UGC items will be less frustrating but I suspect that the problem is with the whole algorithm because similar problems with the algorithm appeared when sorting games and developers also saw a sharp decrease in the number of users playing their games.
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Something bad is happening to the sorting algorithm again. After entering some words in the search bar, the algorithm searches for clothes completely unrelated to the entered word, here are some examples:
This only happens for certain words, which makes this bug even weirder. The search results for the words “dress” and “skirt” are exactly the same, as if the algorithm displayed the same set of incorrect search results for certain words.
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Unfortunately, the way the sorting algorithm works now is a disaster, see for yourself:
The algorithm focuses on finding assets whose names contain exactly the words entered by the user and then sorts them randomly. So in the 1st row we have a skirt with 1 like, in the second and 3rd row we have skirts with 0-2 likes and popular skirts with hundreds and thousands of likes do not appear in the first rows at all because, for example, they are named as "black plaid pleated skirt ". It shouldn’t work like that, the algorithm should narrow down the search results the more words we enter, but it shouldn’t exclude clothes that also have other words in their names. Not to mention the fact that clothes named as “black plaid skirt” are sorted completely randomly anyway.
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sorry for off topic but what is the extension that you use to show the number of favorites on the clothing
No need to say sorry, unfortunately, there is no such extension, or maybe there is (it would be very useful to me) but unfortunately I don’t know about it, I created it in a graphics program.
that’s weird. how did you made all those numbers that show all the favorites numbers.
also i hope someone make an extension like that
it will be very usefull
Sorry for the late reply. That’s true, it would be very useful! I simply took screenshots and pasted them onto separate layers, Windows has an option to copy a selected part of the screen. So I took a screenshot of what was displayed in the catalog after entering words in the search field and then I clicked on each piece of clothing separately and took a screenshot of the number of likes and pasted it in a graphics program on a separate layer, it was very time-consuming.
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It’s almost 2024 if its not already and the issue is still reoccurring. I doubt an admin is reading this post, but they should revert it back to sorting it by either the num of sales or robux earned or at least provide details on how the current algorithm works.
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It’s hard to believe that this bug was reported in 2022 and nothing has changed at all. I stopped writing here because I was motivated to write by the hope that since it was reported as a bug and reported to the engineers, something would change in this matter, but after some time I realized that nothing would probably change. I will show you how the sorting algorithm works now. I typed “pastel rainbow overalls” in the search box and got these results (sorted by Relevance):
As you can see on the screenshot above, the first rows in the search results are clothes with 0-3 likes, these are obviously stolen assets.
The pants with 2.9K likes are in the 18th row (no one will find them), even though they have “pastel rainbow overalls” words in the name:
The other pants with 1.4K likes are in the 17th row so a similar situation:
I will show you another example of how the sorting algorithm works (or rather does not work). Unfortunately, a faulty algorithm promotes stolen assets and is the reason why people do not find the clothes I create (even those that have gained thousands of likes), so sales have dropped significantly.
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Word entered in the search field: “frog”, search by “recently created”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered word
This is the first outfit in the search results:
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Word entered in the search field: “skirt”, search by “Relevance”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered word
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Word entered in the search field: “dress”, search by “Relevance”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered word
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Words entered in the search field: “long black dress”, search by “Bestselling”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered words
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Word entered in the search field: “plaid skirt”, search by “Bestselling”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered words
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Words entered in the search field: “mafia black suit”, search by “Bestselling”, random results, completely unrelated to the entered words
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Words entered in the search field: “school black uniform”, search by “Relevance”, in the first row of the search results there are clothes with 1-2 likes and the pants created by me, with 19.8K likes and with the words “school black uniform” in the name, are in the 31st row, under many stolen assets
in the first raw of the search results:
in the 31st raw of the search results:
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