Studio feels sluggish and outdated compared to most IDEs, for games and for general software. It’s missing a lot of small UX improvements that make certain common processes a lot faster.
Most of the UX feedback on Studio seems to have virtually no effect on what Roblox works on.
These threads are basically full of developers saying “yes, I want this” or bumping it after a few months of nothing. This is UX feedback from people who use Studio for hours each day. Nobody knows what Studio needs more than developers. It should be used to prioritize what gets worked on in Studio. A small Studio improvement with 185 likes (Disabled Scripts) should get worked on right away.
From this, it feels like Roblox isn’t focusing enough on developer feedback when they plan tasks.
I don’t understand the point of this - of course the staff are actively looking into features that will improve the life of developers who have reported issues like that.
Just because an issue hasn’t been fixed, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been looked at, because every bug report or feature request is.
They are looking into things to make Studio better for us - you can check the Studio update logs for details of that, including many features we have asked for in the past.
Roblox doesn’t have an infinite amount of engineers to play with. Minor improvements tend to lose the priority game. While it would be nice to see these sooner rather than later, Roblox already has several huge features on their roadmap. Those need to be finished first.
@unix_system It’s not an all/nothing thing. There are Studio features coming out. There are also many popular features requests that Roblox shouldn’t ignore for months. I’m arguing that they should increase their focus in improving Studio UX, considering how many developers give feedback and suggestions about it.
@qqtt991 Of course they don’t have infinite engineers. I’m arguing that they should take some from other places and put more of them into improving Studio UX. These tasks should be prioritized over some of the big roadmap projects because
developers want them a lot more.
they’re often much smaller.
they’re usually months old.
Roblox isn’t taking developer feedback as strongly as it should when it’s planning tasks and assigning resources.
Updating studio to current industry standards could effectively require a complete remake of studio. While this would be great, obviously it’s a large job so even if it is on their to-do list, it’ll take a long time to complete.
I think studio, for now, is okay – at least when compared with arguably worse features like parts of the website and issues with general social things.
Looking at the first 15, 1/3rd of them have already shipped or are publicly confirmed to be in-progress.
Feature
Status
Dark theme
In progress
Option to Disable White +
Shipped
Problems with new Studio layout
Shipped
Install plugins from browser
Shipped
Parentheses highlighting
Shipped
There are also ongoing projects like overhauling the animation editor to be less Roblox-plugin and more up-to-par with professional tools, allowing developers to heavily improve their plugin workflow (e.g. Lua widgets), and providing a responsive, useful Studio landing that doesn’t spend 5 seconds loading the next page like the old 2013 iteration did.
It seems like the Studio team is already doing what you’re asking? What makes you think the other items on that list aren’t already in progress or being actively discussed internally?
1/3rd is a bad job. And only one out of the top 5 have been acknowledged.
The ongoing projects aren’t the most important things to be working on if we’re looking purely at what the users (the devforum) is asking for. An IK editor is a big task compared to a lot of more popular small UX improvements. The Lua widgets are 2 years old (Uses for custom Studio widgets). The Studio landing improvement was good, but it’s only part of 1/3rd or 1/5th of those most popular feedback threads.
I don’t. Part of the problem is that they’re not transparent about it. Why did they get rid of the public Trello board? It’s understandable why a company would want to keep their new features confidential, so I guess there’s no way to solve that. Now, taking that uncertainty into account, I’m concluding that they don’t care enough about this feedback based off of how active they’ve been with it over the past couple years.
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/what-ever-happened-to-the-roblox-trello-page/53248
Trello was taken off not because they wanted to keep their future features a secret, but because it wasn’t sufficient enough, and IMO unprofessional for a platform that big.
I guess you haven’t seen the recently released roadmap for 2018. That alone stands against your point that they “want to keep their new features confidental”.
I can’t afford to read everything you’ve written, but while reading what I can, I feel a great deal of impatience and lack of gratitude towards Roblox.
I think they’re doing a great job, and that we just have to patiently wait for new features to be developed. It’s not like they have superhuman developers, able to ship a complex feature in weeks or even months.
I’m sure that with our feedback on the forum and patience, we’ll get everything we need eventually.
As I’ve mentioned, I couldn’t read it all.
And even if my opinion is biased by that, if you wrote:
after you mentioned the roadmap, then you clearly don’t see what the roadmap means, and how it tells us that Roblox is trying to be transparent with us, developers.
The Roblox staff works tirelessly to make sure we get all the updates we ask for, some are just higher on the priority list than others. I don’t think the way you worded your topic was a good choice but that’s just me.
Roblox also has a list on the developer page stating whats coming and when it should be coming.
Not to mention their staff for this is nowhere near big enough to spit out updates.
Just because only 1/3rd of them are being actively worked on doesn’t mean the others aren’t in progress?
The Studio Team is a Department of Less than 50 people.
They don’t have infinite resources and just because something you want isn’t added, doesn’t mean it wasn’t looked at. Perhaps they’re working on a feature that already covers something you looked into? Perhaps it doesn’t align with their core product values?
Just because you don’t get something, and you don’t get it now doesn’t mean it hasn’t been examined. Roblox Employees are far more open with us about statuses on updates than most other companies of this scale. They have to get individual permission from a project manager just to reveal a single detail.
And no - if you’re basing everything off of what Roblox did in the past, then you’re really looking in the wrong direction.
I see no issue here - I honestly think it’s unprofessional to make a thread that has no purpose other than telling the studio team to ‘do better’.
I worded the initial post poorly so I made some updates.
A lot of these arguments seem to be along the lines of “Roblox is trying it’s best on this matter and they can’t do everything.” As I said, I understand that they don’t have infinite resources to do everything. There is a team working on Studio. My argument is that this team isn’t taking developer feedback as strongly as it should when it plans tasks. This comes from the fact that they removed a formalized process by which developer feedback could direct tasks (the Trello board), and they don’t respond to most of the top studio requests, most of which are about a year old (https://devforum.roblox.com/search?q=features%20%23platform-feedback%3Astudio-features%20order%3Alikes). Since none of us know exactly what goes on when Roblox plans Studio tasks, I’m just looking at the data on developer feedback and what’s been shipped/roadmapped. From that, I think it’s clear to see that developer feedback isn’t getting enough influence.
I argue that the existing Studio team should let developer feedback influence task planning more. I think it was a clear mistake to prioritize an IK animation editor over much smaller, more popular UX improvements and that most product managers would agree.
Then why is the biggest asking from the community which is dark theme being made right as we speak?
Why have player meshes come back to Roblox?
Why have they fixed CSG to make it better than before?
Why are they trying to make the layout easier and more effiecent for people to use?
If you’re saying they’re not focused on feedback we give them they also wouldn’t have allowed us to revert the studio theme to the old theme.
Too many flaws in your post to have a solid argument about them not taking our feedback.
Please inform us where they’re not taking our feedback to heart and we can come to an agreement and maybe a solution.
Not to mention the new lighting and much much more.
As far as I see they’re doing a swell job at taking developer feedback.
So what you’re telling us is that you want them to do instead of 10 huge updates you want them to do more around 50 huge updates in the span of a year?
I’ve read almost every post on this thread and still have yet to see your reasoning on how they’re not doing more than they can, making something like this is not easy, updating it is also not easy or quick, ask any engineer from Blender, Unity, Unreal, or any other game development software company and they’ll tell you the same thing.
Not everyone is going to get a response from the studio team or anyone at that matter.
They take things into consideration but why waste time on responding to a post instead of them going straight to whoever is higher than them and talking about it? This is how things get done. When they are made they ask us for even more feedback. This is how it works and so far it’s highly efficent.
Like I said before man you have to actually explain where they’re not doing more as you say.