Summary of the Creator Roadmap AMA (Jan 24, 2024)

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

Continued Asked & Answered

Q:

@colmidy

are you gonna fix game promoting algorithm and search?

A:

@Aelarix

Search and Discovery are areas of our product where we invest continuously to ensure we can match users with experiences that they’ll love and to give new experiences opportunities to be discovered. In 2024 we will continue to make improvements to these areas as you can see on our creator roadmap . Some examples:

• A continually scrollable Home feed - targeting first half of the year
• Labels like Friend presence in the experience on the Home page - targeting first half of the year
• Algorithmically-Generated Categories and Sorts - Highlighting new, high quality, and trending experiences - later in 2024
• Ongoing improvements to the algorithm improving refresh rates, signals, and many more

See related response here.

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Q:

@younite

Currently the UGC limited profit share is completely unreasonable and unbalanced. There is no reason to make limiteds due to the expected profit loss, yet Roblox keep pushing it and promoting the feature.

Will we expect to see a more fair and equal profit share for UGC limiteds in the future?

A:

@Aelarix

Thanks for the feedback. Limiteds are a relatively new product for us and we are constantly looking to iterate and improve it. By having a quantity, this creates scarcity and can increase the value of the item. Since launching in 2023, we have seen Limiteds selling out and resale transactions higher than the original price. With that said, we are exploring some changes to how Limiteds work and the per-unit fees ahead of opening up creation for anyone in order to address some of these concerns.

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Q:

@0RCL

What are your plans regarding roblox-made limited items? Back in 2022 you started making old items go limited from time to time, and i was wondering if you plan on doing that again.

A:

@Aelarix

Thanks for the question. We don’t have any immediate plans to do so. With that said, we are regularly evaluating our approach to Roblox-created items.

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Q:

@LegendOJ1

Social interaction and community is key to Roblox games. Are there plans to expand the SocialService to prompt players to join groups from in-game?

Related to groups, will the new “Collaboration” feature on the Creator Dashboard that has recently been announced replace groups in future?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Thanks for this feedback. We’ll look at expanding SocialService to allow inviting a group of players, though it’s not something we’re actively working on. We appreciate the suggestion! For social interaction broadly, we’re also thinking about how to enable durable groups, and enabling the ability to join communities too. We’ll be moving the ‘collaboration’ use cases for groups to Creator Hub over time, but these changes will not replace the social use cases for groups.

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Q:

@idelww

Is there any planned graphical improvement coming for PC and higher end devices when the mobile graphics improvement announced at RDC will come in?

For example, better quality shadows (less pixelated)
Overlay for custom materials (highly requested feature for materials like bricks, & rust metal)
And Volumetric fog, which would improve the lightning and graphics in games

AS WELL as, an advanced/improved graphics settings (change particles, render quality, distance and texture quality individually)

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Based on community feedback, many creators avoid adopting newer features due to their lack of ability on the low end. For now, we are focusing on improving mobile performance, fidelity and scalability so that our higher-end features are available to more players. As we close this gap we will transition to adding more features at the high end like some of those that you mention.

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Q:

@NotRapidV

We all know that games on Roblox are evolving into games that could definitely be mistaken for games on actual game engines such as UE5 or Unity. The graphics, functionality, UI, etc., are all evolving to become like AAA games. Because of this, what are your plans on accommodating for such realistic/large ideas?

My dev team & I have ambitious plans for making a highly realistic roleplay game. However, we are quite concerned on how the engine/servers/game itself will handle such plans. I know other studios and companies are facing the same worry as well: that Roblox can’t handle such great/ambitious ideas.

Of course, we can do things on our end as well (we would love tips from you guys as well on what we can do ourselves). But what about on the Roblox side of things?

(personally I would love to see an increased limit of server memory as 6.25 GB can be reached quick, see this article about why I & many others want this

Here’s what we’re working on, but we sometimes feel like Roblox doesn’t have enough foundation/support/capabilities to host our ambitious ideas.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Many of our creators are already making amazing, high-fidelity experiences, like Frontlines. We want to see more experiences that approach this level of quality, and we want to continue adding functionality to the platform to make it easier and easier to build realistic/large worlds. Two years ago at RDC, David showed an image of a 50,000 person stadium as an example of the type of experience we’d like to support, and we haven’t lost sight of that goal. We want to enable limitless scalability and fidelity long-term.

In terms of specifics, this year we will be working on significantly improving performance, especially on lower end devices (better client frame rate, improved memory efficiency, etc.) so that higher fidelity experiences can reach everyone on Roblox. We’re also focused on avatar performance (such as layered clothing performance), and pushing the limits on larger experiences. If you haven’t turned on streaming, I encourage you to do so. We will continue to improve this system and long-term this is what will get us to being able to support truly massive worlds.

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Q:

@M4nele

Will we be able to upload accessories with SurfaceAppearance? Only Bundles and LC accessories support it currently.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Yes. We are in final performance testing and plan to release this feature soon!

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Q:

@russianaudi

Under Reporting & Appeals it says that in the future we will be able to manage our reports. Does this mean we will have more insight on our reports such as the status of our report (accepted, rejected, pending) and maybe a reason incase our report gets rejected?

A:

@Aelarix

Yes, that is directionally where we want to go in the long run. We’d like to close the loop with reporters when their report is reviewed and closed, and provide status information. We plan to share as much information as possible on the reasons behind our decisions. We have not solidified our timeline for this yet but will share when we do.

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Q:

@DDDDooooommmm1

Will Roblox introduce enhanced tools or features in the future that allow game developers to create higher and more realistic water waves, providing a more immersive experience for players?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

As part of our new fluid dynamics system, we are launching hydrodynamics later this year. Similar to our aerodynamics launch last year, this will improve the behavior of objects in water and allow for more lifelike simulation and interaction.

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Q:

@metatablecatmaid

My question regards the reworked Studio UI, generally, whats the progress on it, but also, at RDC 2023, it looked like Studio would support multiple WorldModels in the tab divider, where tools could render their own isolated views per tab (though I might be misremembering here)

A:

@Aelarix

Thank you for sharing your excitement about the new Studio UI. We are planning to release the first Studio UI and ribbon update in beta in early Q2. We have no plans to release a multi-view viewport in Studio but we released further improvements on docking last November that allows for more flexibility in the UI layout.

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Q:

@PhantomHaxxor

A Roblox Admin stated back in January of 2023 that there was a plan to release a callback loop synced with Physics rate, akin to Unity’s FixedUpdate method. The need for this is immense for numerous uses, one such being raycasting vehicles which my team has been trying to implement for a while but can’t because of this limitation. Can we expect to see an update on this anytime soon?

Adaptive Timestepping as Default - #52 by Hajimalago

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

This is still coming, but we are taking a step back to look at this in the context of what we call our “next-generation programming model.” We’d like to take everything we’ve learned to improve the programming model so that simple things (like data binding) are trivial and more advanced things (like streaming) are also easier and seamless or free. As we do that, we’ll enable physics scripts, but also other types of scripts that need to run at different rates, like audio scripts. Obviously this is important to get right and we are still working out all the details.

Given this, we don’t have an exact timeline, but we are working on it!

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Q:

@AceDevArnav

I am very curious about the future of ads and sponsors on the platform, specially how Roblox plans to dive deeper into finding better ways for developers to advertise/promote their games and assets like UGC.

Should we be expecting something big regarding this?

A:

@Aelarix

Thanks for your question. Ads are a big area of investment for us, and we want to build a product that works really well for advertisers, publishers and users. This year, we are providing more tools to advertisers (including creators) so you can improve the performance of your campaigns.

In particular, we are investing in better ad targeting for eligible audiences so you can better direct your campaigns, improving placements of sponsored ads on the Home page, and testing the video format for Immersive Ads.

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Q:

@grif_0

I like that you guys are working on a Ban API so people don’t need to invest time and resources into working with datastores or an external system to create their own moderation system.

As much as this is great, This has the possibility for abuse for games that use user generated models or levels that use scripts to communicate with the game and make things work. Without the ability to sandbox these scripts in an environment that the developers of the game can limit (which would be AWESOME), this leads developers to work on their own workarounds to prevent certain functions from being called - which leads me to this ban API.

Will this ban API provide a way for experiences to ** completely disable** the api all together, whether they have their own system and choose not to use it or choose not to use it and wish to disable it to prevent any backdoors from blocking a lot of users from joining. Just “not using the api” is not really a viable option for some, and can destroy possibly these experiences if we are not given an option to disable this ban api.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

At this point, in-game UGC is limited to geometry and does not support code. So if I’m understanding your question correctly, this scenario shouldn’t be possible or at least would be out of policy (injecting Lua code with API calls into the experience).

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Q:

@BubasGaming

So, i heard that users in USA can have voice chat without verification (only phone verification). When will this also be avaliable for other countries?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We are actively working on enabling voice (and voice moderation) for languages beyond English. We expect to deliver the first set of these languages and thus expansions into new countries in the first half of this year.

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Q:

@SillyMeTimbers

Will there be a better version of the decoration system (grass) such as our own models that are procedurally placed similar to how it was demonstrated in the RDC when it was first announced?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Since we previewed decorators a few years back, we’ve taken a step back to think about how we can support these in a more general framework. We are currently gathering feedback and working on a plan for a unified, scalable, and flexible system that works for everything from smaller objects like grass to larger ones like forests. Given other priorities this year, we don’t anticipate these improvements arriving until next year.

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Q:

@Reditect

Can the staff behind Search & Discovery please communicate? Our feature requests are not being responded to. Our voices seem to be ignored and have been. Looking at the activity on the forum of the staff that have responded: it’s empty.

A:

@Aelarix

Thank you very much for the feedback - we hear you loud and clear. We are committed to communicating more frequently. First of all, we aim to publish a vision and strategy post about discovery products (Home, Search, Discover, Matchmaking, and Notifications) in February, which will kick off a series of related deep-dive blog posts and dialogues with our developer community. Secondly, we are committed to offer more Search & Discovery focused AMAs, similar to this session.

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Q:

@Qxual

Are there any plans regarding the algorithm of the Avatar Shop? The updated Terms of Service states that classic clothes will be sorted based on popularity. However, the current search results shows the same random clothes for everyone when searching for “red top” for instance. It only displays the clothes with the exact same name regardless of relevancy or popularity.

A:

@Aelarix

We’re making improvements to the Marketplace both in terms of UI and search and discovery for an improved shopping experience. As we make these updates, we will be communicating with creators so you can better understand how items are ranked.

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Q:

@EmesOfficial

We’ve received an additional feature related to grass decoration—the ability to adjust its height. However, there’s a requested feature that would enhance the experience. We would like the option to remove grass decoration from specific areas of the terrain without resorting to leafy grass.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Thank you for the question. We’re looking at further customization options and how to build a much more robust procedural placement/set dressing system, but we have no plans to announce at this time.

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Q:

@foodeggs7

When we available to self transfer games to groups and is it possible to ever transfer experiences from a group to another group with data store etc it’s handful for my game jam group since some come to a real game and can visit counts in group games go to the group owner

A:

@Aelarix

Self-service experience ownership transfer will launch in the second half of the year. Group to group transfers are actually available today. Instructions for the current process can be found here .

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Q:

@Mauio64

Hi, Dan/Manuel! I’d just like to ask: what’s the timeline for EditableImage being enabled for use in games?

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The reason this is so important to me is because, currently, Roblox’s image compression is unescapable and completely ruins the aesthetic of pixel art games. EditableImage would at least give me a way around this issue. More info below.

Compression of pixelated ImageLabels on mobile unavoidably ruins our game's aesthetic & graphics

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We’re aiming for Q1, but we don’t think EditableImage will solve the issue for you, since those images will not be replicated. We are tracking your image compression bug internally but have no update right now.

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Q:

@PokieDev

What is going to happen to already existing UGC applications? Applications are closed, and have been for some time now, but it’s unclear whether those who haven’t heard back from Roblox about their application are still being reviewed or not.
Thanks!

A:

@Aelarix

We have plans to open UGC creation for all users in the first half of 2024, and no application will be needed. Therefore we are not accepting new creators into the UGC program, as in the future everyone will be able to create, publish and sell their creations.

When we open up creation, we will require Premium 1000 or 2200 and ID verification tied to an account to improve accountability and support adherence to community guidelines. This month, we have already started requiring UGC Program members to also ID verify and subscribe to Premium 1000 or 2200 in order to upload, sell/publish, and earn from Marketplace as either an individual or as a group.

See more details here.

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Q:

@apenzijncoolenleuk1

With recent platform expansions (playstation, vr), are there no plans to support Roblox on Linux/Steamdeck?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Adding support for a new platform requires significant resources across the company to not only make sure the first version works well on the new platform but that every new release continues to support the platform. Right now, we have no plans for Linux/Steamdeck support.

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Q:

@ItsRadioRBLX

Well, since we are practically going for almost 100 days without any major incident, I wanted to ask you if there was practically an improvement, or if they say there is something else to improve, and what work they did to maintain almost 100 days without problems, and even endure major experience updates. Thank you in advance for the opportunity.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

There has been a lot of work to improve our reliability and so far (knock on wood!) we are pleased with the results. Efforts to get here include notable improvements to our core infrastructure layers (how we deploy and manage servers, our instrumentation of all services, our storage systems, and our networking systems), as well as a regular cadence of stress testing key services on the platform, and overall improvements to the readiness of teams to respond to issues if they do start to occur. Note though, we’re not done yet and expect even more progress on reliability over the course of 2024.

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Q:

@EmesOfficial

I would appreciate the ability to disable FallenPartsDestroyHeight and, instead, implement a feature where a connection listens for when a part is below the set height. For instance, if a player falls below the map, make a custom system that would automatically teleport them back to their last position with solid ground beneath

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Thank you for your feedback. This is not currently on our roadmap, but we always appreciate hearing community feature requests like this.

S:
Here’s a non-built-in custom solution for something similar:
Fallen Character/Parts Recall Height [v1]

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Q:

@heedicalking

Byfron has done an amazing job combatting exploiting on the platform, but it’s still a bandaid solution to the underlying problem which is Roblox overly trusting the client for things such as movement. There was a brief mention at RDC about server-authoritative character movement, has there been any progress on this?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Server authority remains on our long-term roadmap and we agree that is the ultimate way to address these issues. Our current focus in this space is in providing tools, like our upcoming ban API, so that creators can more effectively moderate their own communities.

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Q:

@INDBRO_San

Not quite related to the roadmap itself, however, I still have the exact same question I’ve had for a LONG while now.

Creator Roadmap - AMA with Dan and Manuel - #164 by INDBRO_San

In addition, can we expect something along the lines of SurfaceAppearance.EmissionMap and/or SurfaceAppearance.Color?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We are working on adding coloring to SurfaceAppearance and aim to release it later this year. Emission maps are still on our longer-term roadmaps, but we are not actively working on them now. Our primary focus for lighting is bringing Future is Bright to Android and releasing our new GPU Lightgrid system. This will bring high-fidelity lighting to a wide range of devices at a higher level of performance than we have today. We are not currently working on adding alpha support.

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Q:

@VSCPlays

How would Vietnamese support be added if the font they use for the user interface [Gotham] doesn’t support every vietnamese letter?

Will Roblox add Arabic support?

When will Subscriptions contain the Robux version?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We are working towards having proper font support for all 16 of the standard languages we support, but I don’t have a specific timeline for Vietnamese. Early last year we added right-to-left text support which includes Arabic support, so that is already available.

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Q:

@NotRapidV

Are there any plans to increase server memory? It’s no secret that games in ROBLOX are getting much more realistic functionality wise and visually, and I feel like we should be equipped with more memory to maintain these higher realistic projects. I understand a lot of it is on the developer to optimize and use resources sparingly, but eventually some developers will hit the ceiling of the current 6.25 GB limit of server memory (before the server crashes when it hits the limit).

Here’s a post with better reasoning and in-depth detail, along with many people wanting this:

Increase server memory or provide better memory tools

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We do not have immediate plans to increase server memory, but we are working to improve memory efficiency which will let you do more with the current allocations. Longer term we will of course be increasing server memory, but I don’t have any concrete timeline on this.

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Q:

@SilentFish20

Many moons ago it was announced that the CLOUDS feature would be getting an update introducing things like new cloud types, cloud height and more. That update never came. Is there any reason as to why? This was a highly anticipated feature for many.

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Unfortunately, we’ve had to prioritize other critical work so we could focus on creator pain points like performance, lighting, and terrain improvements. The cloud features are currently on hold, but we will let the community know when that changes.

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Q:

@Valkenheim

@Aelarix

The split between affiliates and creators encourages the marketing and distribution of items beyond the Marketplace

Can we see an increase in price floors to make “marketing beyond the marketplace” viable and realistic?

A:

@Aelarix

Thank you for your question. We constantly review floor prices to support a healthy and growing marketplace economy. We recently made an update to price floors for avatar bodies and heads and are seeing positive results. We plan to do more of these in support of the ecosystem.

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Q:

@dvdko

For Audio APIs, will there be an option for voice chat without the proximity effect?

Pertaining to UGC, for Improved Avatar Face and Body Tooling and Bodies and Animated Faces, will imported armatures and bones ever have support for bone drivers and bone constraints? And for Powerful search and browse capabilities, will that also apply to the UGC Marketplace and include features such as boolean search operators?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Yes, with the Audio API, there will be options that provide more control over voice, allowing you to implement changes like fine-tuning distance attenuation, building features like walkie-talkies, and enabling non-spatialized voice.

For avatar tooling, we do not currently have plans to support bone drivers and constraints on imported armatures. If you can expand on your feature request though, we’re happy to consider it!

Lastly– for the powerful search and browse capabilities we outlined in the Creator Roadmap– those are in reference to the homepage and experience discovery. Not all of them are applicable to Marketplace, but we do plan to improve the discovery and usability of avatar items. This includes algorithm, UX, and interface improvements to help with discovery and navigation.

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Q:

@LaAeroooo

Are there any plans to add screen space reflections?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Thank you for the question. This is not currently on our roadmap.

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Q:

@NotRapidV

Can we please get closure on the car company dilemma currently on the platform? We have had 0 closure by you guys on the moves going forward in terms of vehicle models. There’s many games in development, or are already out, that do not know what to do: custom models or stay with the debranded vehicles? Of course, going custom is always the safest option. Are games allowed to use debranded vehicles as long as it is debranded, not a gamepass/robux locked, and a different name? Or should we stay completely custom? I understand this might not be your area to answer, but an answer is better than no answer.

A:

@Aelarix

Thanks for your question. Roblox respects intellectual property rights and operates a robust notice and takedown system that allows rights holders to report content when they believe it violates their IP. Before you upload any content to Roblox, you should make sure that you have permission to use any 3rd party content that is included in your creation. If you have specific questions about what is or is not IP infringing you may want to speak to an attorney.

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Q:

@TheGuyWithAShortName

Are there any plans to bring emission maps to Roblox in 2024?

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

Emission maps are on our longer-term roadmaps, but we are not actively working on them now. Our primary focus with lighting is on bringing Future is Bright to Android and releasing our new GPU Lightgrid system, which brings high-fidelity lighting to a wide range of devices at high performance.

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Q:
Unknown question from @colbert2677. Only found question appears unrelated.

Question was related to “genre sorting” but was removed by the poster as a similar question had already been asked.
A:

@Aelarix

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. We acknowledge that you are not getting the response you would like on your earlier feature requests. We are committed to better communicating discovery products related changes via blog posts, AMAs, and other formats, starting this quarter. We will also share our active work through the creator roadmap (Roblox Creator Roadmap ).

To clarify, our recommendations look at a number of signals to match users with experiences they will love. This includes long term engagement, retention, relevance, and monetization, among other signals. We have also made improvements to accelerate the discovery of new experiences that are showing staying power. Several new experiences have achieved success thanks to these improvements.

We mentioned earlier that discovery by genre is something we’re rethinking. Genres are very fluid on Roblox as we see creators evolve their experiences, and users on Roblox look for experiences by other attributes (like themes). There are also diverse opinions on how genres should be defined, and we also find that genres can be easily abused without the right safeguards. We are now thinking about how to build trusted sources of genre information: from creators, users and other expert sources, and how to do that at scale and in a way that can’t be abused.

Please continue giving us feedback.

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Q:

@hoontee

With regards to Studio Luau File Sync Beta, there have been rumors circulating amongst developers and staff that Roblox is working on a Protocol Buffer (“protobuf”) based file format for places and models.

The purpose of protobuf is to enable multiple community tools to easily process these files without having to maintain multiple ser/des implementations, as is the case with the current binary (RBXL/RBXM) and XML (RBXLX/RBXMX) formats in tools like rbx-dom, rbxmk, Lync, and others.

The Question: If we are to see this new file format incorporated into Roblox, will it be added alongside the Studio Luau File Sync Beta, and if not; where on the roadmap can we expect it to be added?

Thanks for the AMA!

A:

@TheKingsHappyFool

We realize the limitations of our current serialization formats and are actively thinking about what is needed to enable a rich ecosystem open to third-party tools. While we cannot commit to an exact serialization format at this time, our vision is that creation on the platform is open.

When we release the Studio Luau File Sync Beta, it will include a preview of a new format to help test our assumptions about what the ecosystem needs. It’ll take time to refine this as we evolve both solutions while maintaining backward compatibility. Our long-term plan is for the finalized format to be released alongside the full release of Studio File Sync.

Stay tuned for more information here, we are very excited to learn from each other as we build out both products!

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