Personally, the idea of removing a control scheme on the basis of percentage of users, is asinine, considering one of the most popular games, Adopt Me, has a majority of users using dynamic thumbstick. And it’s also the game with a majority of Roblox’s playerbase.
Control schemes aren’t operating systems, so killing them off because robloxs biggest game accounts for most of Robloxs player base is a really dumb idea. And it doesn’t take much to make sure they work with each scheme added because most of the time, the central library isnt changed.
I appreciate staff responding to our concerns, but I still dont see why control schemes should be removed purely because of users appearing to not use them.
Jump Button zone - there is a touch zone around the button but it does not cover the entire space as shown in your graphic. As far as balance is concerned, I’m not sure why this is important?
The Dynamic Thumbstick shows up at first, when you start a game, along with a subtle dark section where the zone is, so players understand the thumbstick is available in that area.
A strong reason to have a zone where you can put your finger down to set the center of your thumbstick, is that people have different hand sizes and there are a lot of different sizes of touchscreen devices. Having a larger zone allows someone to comfortably put down their finger, which might not be where the legacy thumbstick is located. This is also somewhat true for the jump button (although you don’t normally hold this button down, unlike the thumbstick). We experimented with a zone for Jump but this made it more difficult to move the camera and wasn’t a great trade off honestly.
We made sure you can still tap UI, use tools, etc. in the DT zone so this shouldn’t interfere with interacting with items in that area of the screen.
Can you give examples please?
The good news is that we are still working on structuring the playerscripts so it will be easier to tune the controls and cameras going forward, so developers can fine tune their game’s controls.
This is great and helps to establish the convention that the thumbstick is located in that bottom corner. I didn’t know it did that at first but I found out earlier.
I strongly agree that increasing the area that can be used to spawn the thumbstick is beneficial for players. As you mentioned developers will be given more variables and ways to tune the controls going forward, and a way to customize this range would be helpful.
After playing around in a couple of Roblox games with the DT, and playing other mobile games that use a DT/Thumbstick like movement system, I found that there is one major issue that I’m having with the way the DT is implemented and how it differs from the classic Thumbstick which is the following;
When using DT, it is essentially a Legacy Thumbstick that doesn’t visually display how finger movement translated to movement direction and movement speed. There is no clear “thumbstick center” indicator that displays where the center of the thumbstick is (There is only a vague white line), and the lack of a circle around the center to indicate the thumbstick range/bounds makes it impossible to accurately control your movement speed.
This is where my concerns regarding usability, precision, and conventions come in. To name a couple of issues I’ve been having since I forced myself to use the DT as part of this PSA:
I’m trying to zoom my camera in and out. Naturally, I have a couple of fingers on the left end of my devices and a couple on the right side of my device. Bringing one finger on each side of the device in to tap and pinch towards the center of the screen, which is the convention used to zoom in and out across mobile devices, doesn’t yield the expected result of manipulating the camera. Instead, my left finger is hijacked by the DT which is extremely frustrating, and I can only imagine what it would be like for kids with smaller hands who cannot reach their fingers as far into the center of their device which is what I need to do to fix this issue.
I’m walking around in an indoor map with a lot of corridors, corners, and other ‘obstacles’. It’s fairly spacious but in order to navigate I need to know how my finger movements translate to character movements. I’m moving forward and want to turn the corner to the right. However, since there is no clear visual indicator of how my finger position translates to character movement direction, I find that moving my finger to the far right only results in a slight change of movement direction. It appears that the thumbstick center is in the far bottom of the screen.
I’m trying to walk around slower than the maximum Walkspeed by moving my finger roughly halfway the thumbstick. I find this extremely difficult to do as I do not know where this halfway point is. In trying to find out where to place my finger to achieve this goal, I’m constantly looking directly at the thumbstick but not having any luck because the only indicator is a vague white line and some dots.
Some games have tackled some of these issues already. They are using the visual style of a thumbstick, increasing the screen area that can be used to start (initiate) movement, and will “dynamically” move the center point as the players finger is moved further away from the initial center point to always maintain a clear convention of how finger position translated to movement direction (and speed). This avoids the need to constantly lift your finger off the screen and re-initiate the thumbstick to switch movement directions as well.
Brawl Stars, Archero, Fortnite and PUBG to name a few. All with different Thumbstick systems, but all maintaining the thumbstick conventions that communicate clearly to the player instead of offering a magic white line.
Ideally the Legacy Thumbstick and DT would be merged into a system that provides the improved accessibility of DT while maintaining the precision and conventions of Legacy Thumbstick. The current DT isn’t suitable for games that require more precise movement due to the aforementioned issues and reading that the Thumbstick will be removed because the DT is a identical or better replacement worries me. These differences and shortcomings are significant enough to not deem the DT an accurate enough input method when compared to Thumbstick, and removing Thumbstick / forcing developers to fork doesn’t seem like it will achieve the intended goal.
My friend and I had a conversation a long time ago Legacy Thumbstick sizes. We’d often joke about the Legacy Thumbstick having settings that’ll allow it to change sizes (Such as making it bigger or smaller.) Having settings like this was good more people who had different hand sizes or people who didn’t like the controls taking so much space. This would’ve been a slightly better solution then just removing it completely because the controls were “To small,” or “Less comfortable.” Like my younger cousin who’s IPad is really big that controls are far apart or hard to use could’ve changed the size bigger, Or like me who used a small phone for 3 years and wished the controls were smaller to have more space.
I agree. This is honestly a dumb decision on ROBLOX’s side. This update can get people to stop playing ROBLOX if they can only play on mobile. I know I’ve stopped playing games because of dodgy controls. What’s the point of ‘playing’ if you can’t control it? I think people are only supporting this because, they either like DT or they haven’t played mobile themselves so they don’t realise how annoying certain controls are (Touch to move, DT, etc.).
Ok, so roblox can remove studio, just because it is change. All changes arent good. And also, why you give us reply permission on anouncments, when you are ignoring, when we say, that something isnt good idea.
I would say that many Players were very much and maybe even many New Mobile Players would be very much Attached towards Legacy Controls, the very reason being that you can easily view and control a Joystick which I believe many people are Quite Familiar with. Though this has now become pretty old, I would say it was the best and an All Time Control Mode.
The current movement system doesn’t really appear as a joystick or you know basically something through which you get that Typical feeling Of Controlling Your Character and randomly if you just move the screen to view your surroundings your player starts moving, which a lot won’t like.
this new thumbstick does not work well when the game forces portrait mode (like natural disaster survival which is basically unplayable in mobile), it is difficult to rotate the camera with the right thumb as mobile players usually are accustomed to since the thumbstick area becomes the entire lower area of the screen, including the right side, resulting in thumbstick inputs when players are attempting to move the camera
As it is past October 9th and Thumbstick still functions properly in Studio, am I correct in assuming it is fine to use the Thumbstick? I have also tested in mobile, and still I understand why Roblox is pushing for the Dynamic Thumbstick, but simply cannot give away that much screen real estate.
Why is this change needed? You can keep Dynamic Thumbstick on by default but I feel as that roblox players should have the freedom to choose their schemes. It feels unnecessary to remove these as lots of players (including myself) still use other schemes besides the Dynamic Thumbstick
