If a game has one person in it, and that person isn’t your friend, you can’t see that they are in it unless it is your game. If it isn’t your game, the only option you have of joining the game is to press play, and in many cases that will put you in a brand new server that the other person is not in. If the other person isn’t the owner of the game then it is literally not possible for you to play together unless you become friends. actually you can still go to their profile and follow them if they allow that, but that is terribly inconvenient.
Take Eclipsis, for example. Eclipsis - Roblox I like this game. It does not have many players, though, and I do not have any friends in it. I want to join the server that has the most people in it. I can’t do that now.
The removal of showing servers your friends aren’t in is also affecting people in the clan world and for other situations too.
Server hopping:
In clan raids, a “tactic” known as server hopping is used where raiders will move to a small/new server and start a raid there (in case original server was unsuccessful, etc). However, due to Roblox’s newest update to server display, all raid members MUST be friends with each other or with the people in the new server in order to join it. This is very unlikely and thus server hopping will no longer be able to be used. This tactic is used heavily across the clan world for raiding and not being able to use it anymore will prove very annoying for clan members.
Pending:
In clans, members are expected to pend for the server where a raid is taking place as a form of “reinforcements” for defenders/raiders if server space opens up. As from personal experience, the penders may not always be friended with those people in the server. As a result they will not be able to see the server and cannot pend/help which would be a problem for clans.
Furthermore, what I want to enter a particular server to meet a certain person (who isn’t friended) to play/talk to them? I would no longer be able to do that.
I do understand that most of these problems are mostly just for clans or for small games and they are rather niche problems anyway. But do not forget that clans are still a large part of Roblox and this update is only hindering warclan’s activities rather than improving them.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like this new update and I do think its better than before where seeing masses of servers (on front page games) was pretty much pointless. Personally, I think that the ability to see servers that friends are not in should be added back alongside with the current feature. How this is done, I’m not sure; I guess you could show them both side by side or something. But all what warclans and I want, is having access to the old display of servers as well as the new.
I vouch for this for the same reason waffle does. I don’t see the point in removing the running servers feature in the first place and restricting it to friends, It would be great if it showed both. The update would be a very good update if it didn’t remove the active servers.
Removing the active servers causes more problems than it fixes.
I completely agree, I play a game called ‘Risky Strats’, and for the exact same reason, this bothers me alot.
And also, no, this update didnt patch Spam Bots, or mass-ddos attacks.
The API still returns the server list, they just dont display it.
So, with this being said.
There is no reason at all to restrict this, as it only breaks aton of stuff.
One approach that would “unrestrict” this, would be to add an option under account settings, something along the lines of “Only show servers with friends online”.
The API you linked will probably be phased out soon enough, especially because a staff member confirmed on the roblox forums that this change was made because of phishing bots / spam bots.
How am I as a game developer supposed to meet players in my game and talk with them about their opinions and feedback for the game now that comments are removed for games, and joining a random server always joins me to a person on my friend list instead of a server of my choice?
The getgameinstancesjson API seems to be usable for visitors on the website still - not sure about normal users, but while I’m logged in, it’s blocked.
I would personally still like to see the server list as a feature - personally being able to choose a sever, especially if you are trying to join a cirtain server due to a player requesting an admin.
I also agree with Waffle since you would need to be friends with anyone that you wanted to join.
Maybe this ‘servers that your friends are in feature’ could be hidden behind a drop down - since being someone who doesn’t accept FR’s, I can rarely think of a situation that I would just happen to be playing the same game at the same time as someone on my Friends List.
I would like if there was an option in the place’s configuration page where you could enable expanded server lists. Mostly because clans rely on this to for example:
Identify a server with enough defenders present (by looking at their uniforms)
Identify another clan member they want to talk to (that is not their friend)
Join the right server if there are multiple ongoing trainings at the same training center
If the concern is bots scraping games pages for user profiles then a middle ground is pretty simple. Don’t include usernames/userids/profile links, just have the avatar thumbnails and keep the server lists and player counts. Usually I don’t care who specifically is playing in each server, and if I do care, I can probably recognize them from their avatar icon.
I have the same problem as As8D. I am a developer of Lava Tumble, but not the owner. I used the server list all the time to server hop, meeting new players and interacting with them. This update removes my ability to do that.
One of the things that I do to promote Lava Tumble and generate excitement and loyalty for the game is to join different servers and throw a party for the players present. This is fun for most players and they get a badge as a result. Without this ability to server hop, I can no longer select the server to visit. This is disastrous to my ability to interact with the players.
Can you it so if I click the play button, I avoid my friends’ servers if possible?
The auto-join feature is terrible for a lot of (competitive) games, and there is no way to opt-out of it currently.
If I didn’t manually join their server, I didn’t want to be in it.
Currently the behavior remains the same.
