The new CoreGui is a downgrade

[Abcreator]

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to create an immersive experience with the current new CoreGui “upgrade”. There is a disastrous count of issues with this new UI which I will try to briefly mention in this feature request:

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Goals?

First of all, the “goals” of this UI appear to have been missed entirely! With-in the announcement post for this change we receive the following reason for this change in the UI:

@JuiceBoxYoda

The current UI is not flexible enough to seamlessly support new features and controls. For example, when users enable their device’s microphone and/or camera, the mic and camera icons are currently placed above their avatar’s head, obstructing your experience. We believe that experience controls should be simple and minimalistic, so that developers have a stable space for creative innovation.

However, this goal has seemingly been missed entirely for many experiences! The new CoreGui takes up even more space than the previous UI on experiences which use the most basic-form of the CoreGui, let’s compare both UIs in their most simplistic form:
OLD UI:

NEW UI:

At a glance, the first CoreGui is obviously more “minimalistic” than the second CoreGui as it uses less buttons to match the exact same purpose. Therefore it’s safe to assume that being minimalistic at a glance didn’t end up being a successful goal (at least to developers who disable most of the CoreGui). So what are it’s “benefits” to those developers? The other reasons that were provided is that “it’s easy to iterate on and add new features”, and that its “easier to use”.

First, I very well disagree that this is “easier to use”, functionality-wise nothing has changed despite having more buttons. If anything, it has been made harder to use as the chat button is now on the opposite side of the screen to chat. I know the point that was brought up here is that players will no longer need to move their finger from the movement thumb stick on mobile to enable chat, however in order to message in chat they still need to do so! Why can’t this respect ChatWindowConfiguration.HorizontalAlignment to allow developers to move the icon and make it easier for players to chat on mobile instead of Roblox doing so for us?

Useless buttons?

Okay, so there are extra buttons on the top-bar, so what- As long as these buttons have a decent purpose that makes sense, this isn’t as bad of an issue. Let’s take a look at the right icon’s selection options:
This experience has all Enum.CoreGuiType options disabled

Chat is still displayed as an option (which is a bug) and other than that, the only selectable option is the report button? This is a waste of space! I understand the importance of surfacing the report menu to players however this is not the place to do this! Never in my life have I ever felt the need to report an experience so fast to the point that it needs a dedicated option in right-hand side menu, this just detracts from developer usability of this side of the screen. That is all this does!

Nothing was fixed?

There are many genuine UX issues in the CoreGui that would have been great to address with this CoreGui update although it seems as if none of them were addressed! Here are a few examples:

Mobile is still visually permitted to reset even if it is disabled via SetCore

“Set By Developer” text for shift-lock is misaligned in offset

“Help” menu is not helpful for most experiences, even if Roblox knows it won’t be (dev has overridden the DevComputerMovementMode). Albeit this one is more of a feature request than a bug. It does however affect UX which is the reason for this CoreGui “upgrade”.

And the list goes on, each of these have their own bug reports / feature requests (and if you support these, please support their connected report / request instead) yet it’s still sad to see that such a major CoreGui upgrade would not attempt to implement these features / fix these bugs that the community have voiced.

MRU is pointless?

Even just purely from a player perspective, the MRU is confusing. Originally I believed it to simply be a way to collapse all options except “Chat” under a dropdown until I later found out otherwise. There is no reason why the MRU needs to be a required feature of the CoreGui and should have been something provided as an option to developers!

Backwards compatibility

There is no backwards compatibility provided for this CoreGui upgrade which makes sense since creating a mix-match UI for older experiences would create a poor user-experience in where users must learn to use two CoreGuis. However, the problematic thing about this CoreGui rather than any of the other CoreGui upgrades is that it’s game-breaking, elements of UI that are under CoreGui elements (such as the new right-hand icon) are no longer interactable with, possibly ruining experiences.

Even if experiences adapt using the new API to ensure their elements are always visible and active; such experiences will have poor UX if they do not upgrade their buttons to match the same artistic-style of the now required right-hand button, etc. Roblox appears to have tried to dampen the concerns over this issue by stating that “70% of the top 100 experiences are already using the ‘…’ button” giving the impression that most experiences and UX will be unaffected by the change.

@JuiceBoxYoda

User Familiarity: The new experience controls take the same space as the familiar 3-dot navigation icon found in ~70% of our top 100 experiences.

However I believe this is an unfair comparison since it appears as if most of the top experiences are “social experiences” which obviously benefit from such button, the new right-hand button is also different in style and size to the current “…” button which will still create a learning curve for players coming across it on their first-time. Many other popular experiences (such as Doors) use the top-right menu to display stats, etc. These experiences now have to adapt to the new sizing and API changes to work with the new CoreGui.

Developer control

There is zero developer control given with this new UI. This is problematic as it requires developers such as myself to edit my own experiences to match the new style of the CoreGui. The CoreGui needs to have some level of developer control if we are to truly create “immersive experiences”. UX improvements to players should be of the developer’s volition and not be forced by Roblox as it may interfere with the artistic intent of the developer. If this was focussed on rather than a pointless “UI upgrade” that hurts most experiences, the development community would be better equipped to integrate their experiences with the CoreGui rather than working around the CoreGui, increasing immersion drastically!

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If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would no longer have to edit my entire experience to simply match an “upgrade” that Roblox thought was important. As a developer, I should never be required to do so, especially when we have very little control over the CoreGui itself!

[Clxzed]

Just another amazing update suggested by Roblox’s trademark Bad Ideas Team™

[OnceCrowned]

Getting topbarplus to work with this is gonna be such a pain in the butt man

[InsanityFE4R (INSANITY)]

I don’t see the reason we still need a Top Bar for CoreGUI as people on PC (I am being specific), do not require this as they already have a Keybind for the Menu such as ESC and for Leaderboard you have TAB. I have never used the UI Buttons are most of the time the games I play, lock my mouse in the center thus not even letting me press it.

I do understand how useful it is for mobile as well but is it??? On Android you have the Back navigation button of OneUI and for iOS you have something similar I think? Roblox should overall rethink the idea of having any CoreGUI at all visible on the screen and maybe allow developers use their own menus in the future.

I do understand malicious intent, however, you can already implement your own menu using the ESC key but you don’t get features such as the following: Translation, Master Volume, Graphics, Exit, Reset and friend request.

[heedicalking]

It’s consistently the UI team with these awful changes I said it back when they overhauled studio icons for no reason, failed to implement proper toolbox search for the audio update, and forced that awful desktop client. They’re constantly looking for “problems” to give themselves something to do otherwise they’d have nothing to report.

[CenterWalled]

I also don’t like this update. GUI that was previously designed to go along with the old CoreGui now cannot be used.

[moo1210]

I’m also still questioning how this is supposed to be helping consistency. Now there’s at least 3 different UI components displayed across the client, the one that’s been in use since 2013, with the backpack, most elements use the modern UIBlox components such as in kick messages and the player list, and now, there’s yet another one. It doesn’t match the modern UIBlox theme at all, which is used all across the new parts of the app.

On top of this, it has numerous UX issues, and takes away developer freedom for not great reasons. I’m quite disappointed, I would rather have seen the 2020 menu, that seems to be abandoned if you aren’t on desktop VR, be polished and released much rather than this.

[LOCK3DOOR]

If they removed that annoying little roblox icon in the top corner realistic FPS games would look a lot better, and like you said, PC players can already open the menu with escape. Who is going to move their mouse all the way to the top corner every time?

[straublights (chewtoys deer)]

I hate it too. There’s two main reasons why it sucks so much.
First and most importantly, it really messes with Roblox’s look. Having chat on the left side and the button on the right side is… why??? The circles also look like garbage and ruin Roblox’s squircle design they’ve been working for. Also, not being able to hide the 9-dot menu is so stupid.

Secondly, this breaks UI that was uniform with Roblox’s earlier CoreGUI look. I really hope they listen to community feedback on this change and at least alter some pressure points to make it more palatable.

[9swr]

Bump. Would prefer to be able to opt in or opt out of this, like how you can use LegacyChatService as opposed to TextChatService.

[TheKman2019 (idonthaveaname)]

This makes me nuts. I want centered objects and modern UI, not metaverse low-quality UI.

[bitsplicer]

CoreGui beta. Roblox is a big company and hearing a rant on their forums won’t change much. in my opinion it looks nice but is buggy (and will improve) then will release.

[Abcreator]

@bitsplicer

hearing a rant on their forums won’t change much

‘They probably won’t listen’ should never be a reason for putting up with a change you passionately dislike, it is up to the community to voice their opinions on this beta since there is a chance that so many developers are outraged by the change to the point that it isn’t even viable to ship it. Looking at the replies to this topic so far, the general consensus is that quite a few people have issues with it.

Believe it or not, Roblox has reverted large changes in the past to align with developers’ outrage. If you are truly happy with the new UI, then that’s your opinion and is a totally valid opinion to have! However, you should preferably not imply that everyone else should conform to acting as if they like the UI because they won’t be heard otherwise, as that is unhelpful to the situation.

[Wertyhappy27 (Werty)]

@bitsplicer

and hearing a rant on their forums won’t change much

They do read the feature requests/bug reports, this even showed them that nobody even wanted that always save to Roblox when trying to create a game, they now start as local files (thank god)

[moo1210]

The whole reason it’s in BETA is so they can get feedback like this. Constructive feedback on a beta feature is much different than constantly complaining about something on Twitter, you’re providing valuable details to Roblox here. If no one gave any of this feedback and just stayed silent, a lot of these issues would likely not have been addressed or mentioned before being promoted to a live feature, excluding the obvious crashing bugs.

This is how it works for all companies regardless of size, if they didn’t want external feedback for this feature, there would be no beta.

[PeZsmistic]

I don’t think its that bad. There’s a couple of issues to be ironed out, sure, but the overall design and changes are solid, and we’re even getting API to know how much of the topbar area is safe.

The biggest issues IMO are that I have to redo my topbar for the third or fourth time, and a handful of inconsequential styling issues that you mention that will probably be fixed down the line. The button always being visible isn’t that big of a deal with that API (nobody should have been using that space anyway, visibility of that menu was at the mercy of platform updates). I don’t even think the chat button being far from the default chat position is a big issue; how often do you enable the chat and then immediately want to talk in it? We have a hotkey for that. If I want to scroll it, it’s a little harder, but IMO not so hard that it’s worth another permanent button in the topbar. Honestly. It looks and feels just fine.

The rest of your issues are bugs though, and you should report them in separate topics.

[nekropost (mice)]

Last I knew, they overhauled the studio icons because they used icons they didn’t have the rights to use. Maybe I heard wrong, but it’s honestly not a big deal. I actually like the new icons, anyway. They’re not really something I think about when I’m doing stuff.

[Abcreator]

@PeZsmistic

(nobody should have been using that space anyway, visibility of that menu was at the mercy of platform updates)

Many top experiences are even currently using this space, it also does not seem like unintended behaviour nor was it flagged by Roblox to be so. This button being required now rejects two corners of the screen from being used rather than the singular corner blocked previously and affects immersion in experiences which now have to cope with two icons permanently visible at all times on a player’s UI.

[Tomi1231 (Chilly28)]

@Abcreator

Even if experiences adapt using the new API to ensure their elements are always visible and active; such experiences will have poor UX if they do not upgrade their buttons to match the same artistic-style of the now required right-hand button, etc. Roblox appears to have tried to dampen the concerns over this issue by stating that “70% of the top 100 experiences are already using the ‘…’ button” giving the impression that most experiences and UX will be unaffected by the change.

@JuiceBoxYoda

User Familiarity: The new experience controls take the same space as the familiar 3-dot navigation icon found in ~70% of our top 100 experiences.

70% is kind of low, you’d expect it to be closer to 100% if the UI was actually good, especially considering the amount of work that is required to get rid of it.

I myself am trying to get rid of it so my custom leaderboard can fit nicely in the corner, however, the current 3 dots menu is made in such a way that you need to disable emotes, the (downgraded) chat and the backpack (which I have yet to do since I need to make my own, yay) to make it disapear

If I cannot get rid of the new one, well it will look very bad with my custom leaderboard. I really have no idea how I would be able to make it fit nicely (without having the move the leaderboard down, which just looks wrong)

[InsanityFE4R (INSANITY)]

Quite literally, I have to take pictures inside studio rather than in-game because the Roblox Icon is not removeable at all. The Roblox Icon would simply ruin a perfect screenshot. The Roblox Icon acts as a sort of watermark for screenshots and NOW WE HAVE TWO.