Problem with sorting clothes in Roblox catalog

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

This is probably the last example I give, I put a lot of work into making these examples and illustrating the problem, which was reported a long time ago and nothing has changed. I started to wonder if anyone even cares about 2D clothes. It’s a pity that 2D clothes are so neglected because they are still more popular than 3D clothes, anyway that’s what I observed. The bugs described above are ruining clothes sales and it’s very discouraging for me.

I typed “frog overalls” in the search box and the pants created by me (which have both of these words in the name and 11K+ likes)

appeared in the 19th, almost 20th row, under 199 clothes that:

• have much less likes and even zero likes as you can see in the screenshots attached below
• have nothing to do with the frog (there are a lot of Halloween clothes and other clothes not related to the search topic)
• have a frog motif but are not overalls, such as pajamas, kermit suit and so on, of course many of them have less likes.

Only 9% of the clothes above have more likes but they are still unrelated to the search topic, most of the clothes above are clothes that have nothing to do with the search topic and have much less (often 0-200) likes. So the frog overalls created by me, after typing “frog overalls” words, even though they have 11K+ likes, even though they have the search words in their name, they appear in almost 20th row and no one will find them, they are under a huge amount of unpopular clothes, having little or even no likes, often stolen and under clothes that have nothing to do with the search topic (there are even clothes that don’t have any of the search words in the name and description).

[RG_BlueFlower (BlueFlower)]

Look maybe they’re still finding someone to fix this, not sure if this is official. Also, when the bug happened until now, I calculated and found out that I lost 400k Robux no joke, I contact Roblox but they always reply to me with copy-pastes.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I have to admit it gave me hope, thanks! My sales have fallen 3-5 times and remain at this lower level for 3 months, so I don’t even want to calculate how much I lost. This mystical search algorithm is not only ruining the sales but also making it harder to find something in the catalog, giving hundreds of unrelated search results.

[ekosan123 (Arthur)]

Not only this but the front page for 2d clothes overall are a mess. They are not sorted by sales past week or day neither are they sorted by popularity. What a tuff month for 2d designers including me. Hopefully this can get sorted out as soon as possible.

[Qxual]

Update as of now, the issue is still occurring if not worse.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

I confirm this, nothing has changed and it is even much worse. When typing “frog overalls” in the search box, these pants:

with a lot of likes and sales and having both search words in the name, show up in the 17th row, under lots of clothes with very few or even 0 likes, under stolen assets and most of all under clothes that have nothing to do with a frog (not even having the “frog” word in the description and name and tags). It’s been so long and I’m loosing hope that the sorting algorithm will be changed and that it will narrow the search results when entering two words in the search box, instead of broadening the search results. I will not paste screenshots with descriptions anymore because it took me a lot of time to create examples and nothing has changed in almost half a year. This randomness of search results is discouraging not only for sellers but also for buyers and unfortunately supports asset thieves whose clothes often occupy high positions in the catalog, higher than popular clothes, in which the creators put a lot of work.

[Deliqit (Nash)]

And now our roblox clothing aren’t showing up in the group catalog for alot of people, and if there is ugc in the group only the ugc is showing up, roblox truly does not care about 2d designers

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

Yup, I reported that today! Clothes only show up after logging out of the account.

[LvieReal (Lvie)]

Group/creator sorted items are now completely unavailable, doesn’t matter if you’re logged out or using another browser

Meanwhile, default catalog is still available

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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.”

[LvieReal (Lvie)]

Engineers are now working on the issue and it appears that you can now see items

[ekosan123 (Arthur)]

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.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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:

1. After entering “axolotl overalls” in the search box, the algorithm searches for clothes that have nothing to do with axolotl.
   
   
2. 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.

[RG_BlueFlower (BlueFlower)]

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

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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.

[RG_BlueFlower (BlueFlower)]

Oh a new response welp there’s nothing more I can do

[Qxual]

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.

[Szeloba (Shelob)]

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.