I’ve noticed that all over the Roblox website, there is an inconsistent amount of players being shown playing a game.
Now that there is cross-platform, and every player can play with players of any other computer type, I think it’s important to update player counts to show a total amount of players in the game.
However, since there’s only 350 computer players playing, it will only display 350 people playing on the most popular games list.
I feel this is pretty inaccurate, and makes my game harder to find, even though many more people are playing it! The problem stems from the fact that XBOX players and PC players are playing in the same servers with each other. So if you join on PC, you’re playing with PC and XBOX players. If you join on XBOX, you’re still playing with XBOX and PC players. The number should reflect how many people are playing on supported device types.
Additionally, On my groups game page it only displays 30 people playing the game. This is even more annoying. There’s over 700 people playing! It’s displaying only the amount of players in the games landing area, which is a lobby system. The game uses multiple places, but any place that isn’t the starting one is ignored for player counts.
Especially now that Crossplatform on all devices is a thing. I think it’d be better to show a number from the total pool of players connected to a game.
The “Playing” section is the total players. If you go to the games page on a computer, it will show players on a computer. Same for mobile, Xbox, and tablet.
Not at all equally. Xbox players and PC Players are playing in the same pool of servers, together. I see similar games to mine that are more “popular” on the list, but with less overall players in the same pool. That’s what I’m arguing.
As a simple example:
My game has about 350 PC players, and about 350 XBOX players. These players are currently all playing together in the same servers.
A similar shooting game has 500 PC players and 0 XBOX players. They have less overall players, but are ranked higher on the most popular list.
However, my game has more players that are all already playing together. The website should list the total amount of players that are playing together for your device, but it should also include other devices when they are playing in the same servers.
If they allowed an option to disable crossplatform servers, then I wouldn’t be making this post, because you’d be correct on it being irrelevant. But since multiple devices are playing my game and getting lumped into the same servers, they should be counted as the overall playercount on the popular games list too.
In my opinion the game with 500 PC players and 0 XBOX players should be listed higher though…
The amount of players you have on your game depends on how many people are clicking on the game and how long people are are playing it for. That game with 500 players online is outperforming your game on the PC platform for those statistics.
If you had a city with a million people with these made up demographics:
50% Caucasian
25% African
20% Hispanic
5% Other
With the notion, that anyone can come into and leave this city as they please, would you advertise to the Caucasian people that there’s only 500,000 people in the city? You wouldn’t, because there’s a million people, and they’re all together in the city.
It’s the same principle as my game. Servers consist of players playing under multiple devices together. To suggest otherwise is pretty darn stupid.
What would change this, however, is if cross-platform play was disabled, and they were forced into their own separate servers. But that’s not what the case is right now!
The reason the player counts are separated per-platform is because a game could be optimized very well on one platform but perform horribly on another platform (bad controls, extremely laggy, etc.)
Imagine an extremely detailed game that has 30,000 players on PC and runs fine on PC, but instantly crashes people who try to play on a mobile device, or the developer hasn’t programmed any Xbox gamepad controls. Roblox definitely wouldn’t want this game to be shown on the mobile/Xbox front pages just because it has a lot of PC players.
The fact that PC and Xbox/mobile players can play on the same servers is unrelated to the reasoning behind this - it’s about the individual experience that each player has on their own platform, not whether they’re allowed to play with people from other platforms.
They could perhaps be more clear about when player count is reflecting a specific platform, since there often is confusion about the inconsistency of these numbers.
That’s where I disagree, because the “individual experience that each player has on their own platform” is now forced to experience other platforms. People use that number to gauge how many people they’ll be playing with. If it says there’s only 100 xbox players, that user is going to expect to be put into a pool of only 100 players, not a pool of (xbox + pc) players that is invisible to the user.
The count on the group page is bugged. Groups only count the #players in the start place, while the Games page and game detail page show players across all places. There is an existing bug report, and this happened with the egg hunt as well. This should and will be fixed.
As for the idea that showing per-platform is unfair because your game is lower than it should be, this is misleading. Just as your game would increase its #players on popular, all other games would increase their player count. While your game would rise from 350 to 800, Jailbreak would rise from 39,000 to 47,000. There would end up being no net effect.
It isn’t misleading, because my game is showing an incorrect amount of players playing. Showing 350 players, when I am in a pool of 800 players is stupid. Whereas other games report the proper amount because they don’t have cross platform support.
If cross-platform wasn’t forced on, I wouldn’t be making this post, but as long as it is, I strongly feel it should report how many people you would potentially be playing with.
You say there would be no effect, but that’s wrong. There’s plenty of games that are ahead of mine that are showing a higher number with a smaller pool of players (i.e. games that don’t have cross platform support). I’m sure there’s a bunch of games that are below mine as well that have even more unlisted players in their servers too!
What does that even mean? It doesn’t matter if Jailbreak is showing desktop numbers or all numbers. It would not affect our ranking. The current system is great because you can checkout other games and how they’re doing on that specific platform.
I hate when people point a finger as if somebody’s opinion doesn’t qualify because of their size. I had the same opinion a year ago before Jailbreak existed.
All opinions are valid.
In the same way, it should also specify whether it is the number of players in the game or in the place. There could be an option to show it combined or per platform.
This bug is still happening. The website displays the player count of the entire game everywhere else (even on non-start place pages, it displays the count of the entire game). It doesn’t make sense for the group page to display only the start place when everywhere else displays the count of the entire game. Consistency is better in my opinion.
For games like mine that have starter places that are lightweight and purely exist to dispatch players into other places, the game displays 0 players on the group which is less than ideal.
