Return Game Comments, but allow us to have a "White list" for those that can comment

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

What’s the issue?

As a roblox developer, it is impossible to acquire direct feedback from most of the player base without resulting to silly alternatives. Silly alternatives include using the comment section on an asset or relying on groups, which I will explain to be not good enough.

As a roblox player, it definitely feels like we need a comment section. It could help me decide if I want to play the game or not.

I think most can agree that a comment section would be nice, but we’ve had them before, and the experience for most developers was awful. This is because the comment section was full of scams.

I will first explain why we should have a comment section, and then how we can prevent bots. I looked through all the web feature requests, and looked for any with “comment” in the name. Lots of posts asked for a CAPTCHA, but many will argue that is ineffective. This was the closest post I found to what I am requesting, but still not enough to grant us full control against bots, though you can correct me if you feel that I am wrong.

Why can’t we use alternatives?

  • Groups:
    Players don’t want to join groups just to see if they want to play the game or not. There’s also a large percentage of players that do not want to, or cannot join groups, so those players cannot give any feedback. Even for those that join the group, the group wall would have discussions or posts not all directly related to their opinion on the game. The group wall shouldn’t be an alternative for game comments.

  • Using an asset as a comment section:
    This asset would be linked on the game description. The comment section on that asset can still be spammed with bots, and we shouldn’t have the ability to whitelist who can comment on our asset. This returns us to the same issue we had before if everyone just switches to this. It’s also awkward for the player to have to search for the comment section, instead of it being on the game page.

  • Using PMs:
    This one is quite obvious. Not only is it hard to go through PMs for feedback, but that feedback is not displayed to the other players, which a comment section would provide.

  • Using off-site chats:
    The only platform I could see helping with feedback and player communication towards the game would be discord, which isn’t even allowed. Even so, off site chats would not be visible to all of the players, and we end up getting a similar issue to that of groups.

If you don’t want a comment section, you can always disable it, but there are many developers and players that would like a comment section.

  • I would like to have the comment section back
  • IF we can prevent bots, then I would like a comment section
  • I do not think a comment section is needed

0 voters

How can we prevent bots?

We can’t have a black list system, since bots can just create new accounts. What we need is a white list for each game, players that are able to comment on the game.

When you choose to enable comments in game settings, I am suggesting you have to choose two things:

  • Play time required: The developer must choose the amount of minutes the player must play the game for before acquiring the ability to comment. The minimum time should be 30 minutes, and the maximum 5 hours, but those numbers are debatable.

  • Permission required: This is just true or false. If true, then the player not only needs to play for that long, but needs to have permission by the developer. I would like for us to be able to choose if players can comment or not through a whitelist, and they get permission if they are on it.

game.Comments:AddPlayer(userId) – or something along these lines.

This would mean that bots would not only need to play the game for periods of time in order to comment, but would need to get permission.

I would assume that most games would grant this permission to players that finish a tutorial, or perhaps those that get certain amounts of money/kills/something they need to acquire, that bots will be unable to do. It may even be only for players that spend robux.

Now of course I do see that this may be abused to create biased comment sections, but lets consider when that will matter:

  • Scam games: Games that promise robux or bc as a scam would abuse the comment section to make their game sound legit. However, the issue here would not be the comment section, but that we need to moderate the game.

  • Unprofessional games: The big games on roblox would benefit from a bot-free comment section and would not fool their own comment section, but correct me if you feel differently. There may be small games, however, that end up only granting comments to alts so that they can make the game sound better than it is. I would assume that it will seem almost obvious to the players, from a dislike ratio not matching the comment section, or from the long time players still not having the ability to comment, and they will spread the word.

TL;DR: We should return game comments. To prevent bots, make us grant players that finish a tutorial or acquire enough currency the ability to comment. This would be given through the server, and they will also have a play time required before commenting.

I would also hope that a player can only comment once every 2 hours, to prevent spam.

26 Likes
#2

I haven’t read it all (I’ve read the tl;dr) but I can already tell it’s not the right solution.

4 Likes
#3

I think people would be trickier than you think. Maybe not giving comments to alts or friends, but still only to those they know liked the game. People who have played the game for many hours, people who have completed very difficult landmarks that require dedication. Doing this they’d be able to expect positive feedback, because people don’t play games that they don’t like for that long.

3 Likes
#4

I do agree, it is possible to make the game look better than it is.

However, although it could work as good click bait, I think the players would soon realize it is. Now, it may be cleverly put to make it seem like like it isn’t, but if players would catch on, we can expect them to not only spread the word, but to dislike the game if they feel cheated.
Then, the dislikes from this action even out the game’s reputation from the comment section, or at least that is how I see it.

On the other hand, even if only a small portion can comment, if they find a bug, you will find it in the comments. You also know that this comment section is reserved for those dedicated, so you could check it for important feedback, rather than on a group wall.

1 Like
#5

This could be used negatively, as said before. The developers can manipulate the section so it is only positive, and both solutions are not the greatest.

The developer can set the value to an extremely high time, and have bots play the game for that time and leave good comments after it.

This restricts freedom of speech and some people just can’t take criticism. Also, there is a reason why scammy youtube videos have manually approved comments.

I can’t really support that.

2 Likes
#6

Tbh, they could make it require BC to comment on games for now. I doubt many bots would have BC.

8 Likes
#7

That sounds like a pretty good idea. But that would also mean that non BC developers can’t even comment on their own game.

2 Likes
#8

I think that a lot of people are forgetting that way before bots the comment section was plagued by general spam from the children and scammers. The children post useless copy and paste spam for no reason, and there are a lot of children here these days to do it. The scammers are the real problem, though, and they use gullible children, once again to spam their scams in the comment sections for them. Furthermore, they will always find a way to exploit this. For example, if we were to make a BC requirement for commenting on games, the scammers would simply create a bot that logs into the accounts that they have already stolen and quickly post a series of scam comments using that BC account.

5 Likes
#9

I don’t think giving developers the ability to choose which accounts can comment is the right fix for this problem. It can lead to bias comments and, if implemented poorly by the developer (totally possible and likely), bots might still be able to comment in the end. I also think shifting the moderation burden of Roblox onto developers isn’t a good fix.

3 Likes
#10

As Roblox now has its own captcha system to prevent bots from joining groups, I think we can have the comments back. I mean, they were removed because they were filled with comments that had links to “free Robux websites”, posted by bots in the first place.

Having comments back would re-open a way for developers to receive feedback directly from their players, making them stop using in-game feedback systems.

3 Likes
#11

The new captcha system hasn’t stopped bots from what I can see, there are still lots of group pages being bombarded with them.

2 Likes
#12

Roblox can just come up with a new captcha system, them starting to use captchas is the real deal. They can improve it and use it against bots in the entire platform; we still have comments for assets and those are flooded with bots too but as far as I know, there is no captcha to post a comment there.

The kid-friendly captcha is a good idea and once they make it a kid-friendly and working captcha, I don’t see a problem on expanding its use.

2 Likes
#13

This simply isn’t true. Before anyone even thought about bots, comments were filled with spam by gullible/trolling kids:
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(This is a gif. It gets even worse.)

I don’t even remember a time when they weren’t like this. The comments were never a good source of information for developers, or even players, for that matter. While they would be cool to see back, I think it’s in everyone’s best interest if groups are improved instead so we can get actual feedback better.

2 Likes
#14

Well, if comments do come back, I think they shouldn’t be like the past. They could be more like the Steam comment system, which you would post one comment that you can edit later. The creator of the game could have the ability to remove comments too.

6 Likes
#15

Maybe the date of your roblox account could determine if you could comment or not.

2 Likes
#16

While that is an approach you can take Its not effective in the long run as my self have several accounts made back in 2015 or earlier, I feel the most effective way to prevent botting accounts while it is restrictive to a large community is having some type of larger verification on your account whether it be phone verification or having your account physically verified on your age.

There needs to be some type of safegaurd in place that will discourage people from messing around or spamming the comments through a source of consequences whether it be a simple warn on your account or disabling access to post comment on other games as well.

Why I do believe in having consequences in your own actions I do not believe if your account was hacked or compromised and a bad actor did post something that bypassed filters the user should be severely punished, a simple warn on the account or a single day ban will suffice enough or locking access to comments from that user is another route as well.

2 Likes
#17

Heres my list of precautions to prevent spam and violations.
1: You must be at least 1 Years Old it can be Confirmed through The Veteran badge
2: You may have Only 2 Maybe 3 Comments per game Trustful users can either have more or no limit
3: Have a verified Gmail account
4: Have Human Operated Moderation to ban spammers and other violators
5: If you get Banned from Comments you will be Unable to access the Comments for a certain amount of time but there should be an appeal system

2 Likes
#18

Indeed, the comment section needs to come back. Analytics are great, but it does not take into account why a player may have dropped a game within the first 5 to 60 seconds of gameplay.

I really like the idea of having an API for the purpose of whitelisting players who completed a tutorial. Sure, it can be used maliciously to make a game look good, but that’s what the “like to dislike” ratio is for. Players can just view at the like ratio before reading the comment section.

All of my ideas for adding back the comment section:

2 Likes
#19

They should also make it so you can change how long a person could play your game for in order to comment, maybe the same for how long they’ve been on Roblox for.