As a Roblox developer, and user, it is currently too hard to ensure that the way I and other players are able to utilize our avatars, particularly in terms of visual style, will remain consistent over time.
Bottom line is that, without significantly bloating the models of the heads, they’re never going to align perfectly with how they were previously, and given that the looks of some of these faces are extremely core to their identity, changing the way they look after how long it’s been is in many cases simply worsening the overall feel of avatars due to the inconsistency between the intended style of the avatar and the forced Dynamic Head, which given the fact that Roblox tries to maintain user expression this is just generally not a good change.
This becomes even more important when you remember that many UGC creators design their faces to be static because this basic representation more easily allows for expressive faces to be made in the first place. Forcing them to be fully dynamic spikes the barrier to entry and makes it significantly harder to get the look desired, and depending on the skill level of the artist, might simply be outside of their ability.
This problem is put on full display when you look at the side-by-side comparisons that Roblox themselves have put out stating that they are focused on a 1:1 conversion, and while some of them definitely look good, very few of them lack issues that aren’t immediately noticeable. If Roblox’s own internal teams can’t manage this despite having planned for this update ahead of time, then the conversion simply isn’t going to be suitable for keeping the same look and feel as the previous faces especially when UGC gets involved.
The solution is to simply re-allow Dynamic Heads to be fully static, and to convert Classic Faces into static Dynamic Heads instead. While I am more than aware that Roblox’s vision is to show off the technology of the platform, and that chances are things in this area won’t be going back to how they were, I would hope that for once Roblox would just trust the community on this one. Very few people use animated dynamic heads because it simply isn’t that useful of a feature, and it also requires camera access to control. Forcing all heads to be dynamic will simply decrease the amount of people who are satisfied with the look of their avatar, rather than increase the amount of people who consistently use them for expression purposes.
To end off, given the way in which not just the community, but people outside of the community have responded, there’s really no reason to not allow these things to be how they were, and convert the Classic Faces into static Dynamic Heads instead, it would keep performance where it is, have actual 1:1 visual parity, and would allow creators to continue creating the faces they want to make without compromising. All of which would help keep intact the player self-expression that made the platform what it is today.