And the ones who did in the past when the filter still existed got some extra visits from having it, since people could find the game more easily.
3 Likes
I believe making drastic changes like this is going to majorly inconvenience many smaller developers and make it even harder for newer or up-and-coming developers to get their game off the ground, even if it’s for only very few people to see. Changing the featured sort to only be promoting the games in the top 200 for retention and time played is majorly hurting smaller developers whose games would thrive off being featured even if for a short period of time. The featured sort wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was much better in my opinion when well-made, but not necessarily popular games, were getting their spot in the limelight so that they can grow their fanbase, grow their revenue, and most importantly feel like their hard work is worth the effort. I know me being upset about the featured sort is strengthened by the fact that Flight was going to be featured but was then told of the changes and told that the only thing you guys can do for us now is promote us on the streams and social media accounts. Being on the featured sort is more valuable in my opinion as the game stays on a prominent position on the games page for a few weeks 24 hours a day. Not everyone watches the streams, not everyone watches the youtube videos, not everyone watches social media, but many more people visit the games page every day. As for “connecting players with games fostering long-term engagement” that’s just a fancier way of saying you guys are just going to keep promoting the already popular games that have people playing them a lot and for long periods of time. Again, this is hindering the development of growing games and wildly decreasing their potential as they aren’t being given a spot in the limelight. As for asking for more sorts, I have posted on the devforums multiple times suggestions about how to improve existing game sorts to promote not only popular games that make the company money, but smaller niche games that need to grow to be more profitable and get roblox more money. I would be glad to link these threads if that would be wanted.
Previous suggestions I made:
Change the Games Page [PLEASE NOTE: this thread is from 2016, please do not reply to it unless absolutely necessary]
I have other posts I have made but I would have to go way back through my reply history as they aren’t threads I created.
25 Likes
This actually sounds pretty promising. Now obviously with a change like this, a lot thought needs to put into it, as to make sure it doesn’t create unintended issues. But so far the ideas people are coming up with seem pretty good, and I would love for them to be implemented. Whatever the end product is, I can definitely see it being a much needed improvement to the game page.
5 Likes
Please add back the drop down menu,It was really useful to see my favourite games. The favourite games in my inventory is all out of wack and its just stupidly confusing to use.
32 Likes
As stated many times throughout the forum, and the RTC. The popular sort should remain at the top, which is a popular idea.
What could happen, which would be a happy middle groud is Players should also be able to customize their own page by dragging and dropping or even deleting entire sections from showing up, so they can choose a games page that best interests them.
To put it simply, “Don’t fix what isn’t broken”, Allow this to be an optional thing, where players can change their own sort.
8 Likes
Here’s some issues I have with the way things are right now with the game sort (and games page in general):
- Give upcoming games exposure. Maybe even give them a seperate tab? With the way the game tab is at the moment (May 2019), new/upcoming games are buried and are hardly discoverable. Adding a new tab/putting upcoming games on a featured sort or somesuch would improve discovery.
- Please improve the search algorithm. Half the time I’ll search for a game by it’s exact name and it won’t even be the first result. This impacts game discovery for less popular games.
- Please improve the algorithm for the “Recommended” row. It should be recommending similar games/games of the same genre. In order to make this row really work, developers need a way to add tags or genres to their games. At the moment developers are quite limited in their genre options from the configure game page. I would recommend a tags system, something like what youtube uses. Here’s an example : User-defined genre sorts for the games page - #15 by As8D
This also applies to the "Because you liked<gamename>" category. - The order of the rows is an issue. Here’s the order that would make more sense (in my educated opinion):
- Featured - Featured games should be on the top. They’re featured for a reason - they’re being shown off as they are upcoming/well done games. These are the games Roblox is showing off. It wouldn’t make any sense to have them lower down!
- Popular - Popular is fine where it is, except it should be in the second row under featured.
- Top rated - Again, top rated is fine where it is, it would simply be bumped down a row due to Featured being 1st.
- Recommended - This category can be great for exposure if the algorithm were improved. This is the equivalent to finding cool new songs on youtube, you listen to a song you like and youtube’s recommendation panel comes up with similar songs/music in the same genre. This could benefit from a custom tags system/more developer controlled genre system.
- Because you liked
<GameName>. Also another great way of exposing games in the same genre. If you’re launching a game with a targeted audience (roleplayers, scifi lovers, etc), this row is your friend. Again, this could benefit from a custom tags system/more developer controlled genre system. - Top earning - In my opinion I think the amount a game makes in revenue should have minimal bearing on a game’s discoverability, so it’s fine on the bottom as it is right now.
29 Likes
I would have to disagree with the featured and popular games position on the games page, I think popular games needs to be on the top. But everything else I would agree with.
9 Likes
Could you clarify as to why you disagree with the position of the featured sort? Featured games are games that Roblox is showing off, it’s a showcase row. It makes more logical sense for it to be on the top where it can be properly treated as such.
4 Likes
Popular games have been on the top of the games page for a very long time, It just does not look right when popular games are lower down. It also is going to impact on response games somewhat as kids will most likely click see all on the popular games page (as its on the top) which is an endless list of games which is good for sponsored games.
Also with all the new changes to featured sort, I think it should be below featured.
6 Likes
Thanks for the feedback! The current goals are shared to help provide context for everyone who is providing new sort ideas. The changes planned will need to be monitored before we officially release it to the public. Hopefully this provides more insights, let me know if that helps! 
7 Likes
This doesn’t seem like a good justification to keep it the way it is. The amount of time it’s been in that position is irrelevant here, we’re looking at the functionality of the featured sorts - not what’s more nostalgic.
I don’t see how this would impact clicks. Unless someone is using a bot to automatically ‘click’ all of the games in the top bar, the second row would be perfectly visible to potential new players.
Sponsored ad games would still be perfectly visible too, they’d be in the second row is all.
3 Likes
I suggest maybe going back to a format similar to the older formats.
Similar in format, not by the actual looks and stuff
They had the genres on the side, along with the way to sort them by when they were made.
Also there were tabs at the top, separating the Popular, Top Favorites, and Featured. This could probably be done with top paid, RTHRO, etc.
Also the games seemed to be more in a catalog format, so there were alot more games on one list.
15 Likes
Why haven’t we gotten genre sort back? It was doing the exact same thing that you guys are saying you’re trying to do in the post.
8 Likes
I don’t know what everyone thinks, but I feel like this format was actually more user friendly.
4 Likes
TL;DR - Tags and sorts filtered by tag.
As a player, I am not interested in most of the current sorts.
- Popular
- Half of these are genres / game types I don’t care about. For instance, if I don’t like simulators / tycoons / roleplaying games, I’m forced to scroll through dozens that I will never want to play and there’s no way around it.
- Top Rated
- Same issues as above.
- Featured
- Was somewhat useful, more uncommon types of games tended to show up here occasionally, but I’m not sure how that’s going to change now that featured games will be automatically determined.
- Rthro
- I don’t really care. It’s nice to see my avatar properly, but it’s not integral to the game. I use this sort mostly to find games that allow me to use my avatar.
- Recommended
- I’m not awfully interested in most of these games, and if I play something unusual, it seems to poison the results. It also includes game types I have no interest in.
- Popular near you
- Why do I care?
- Top earning
- Why do I care?
I want the ability to find games or view sorts of games that suit my current mood more than I want a random jumble of “popular” games. If I want to play simulators, minigames, roleplay, see showcases, or play sci-fi or horror games, I want to look for popular games specifically of that type.
The current sorts fail me because they run out too quickly before providing enough games that I am even potentially interested in. No person enjoys every type of game, so it makes no sense to force users to try to discover new games through sorts that do not allow the user to specify what they care about.
I want to browse sorts of games filtered by developer-specified tags (ie. horror, sci-fi, showcase, minigame, roleplay, etc). The games page would be much more interesting if I could see most popular and highest rated games under a tag, or “subscribe” to tags to see a mix of popular games that fit what I’m interested in, like a Subscriptions sort.
In short, tags would dramatically refresh the games page and offer games to users in a much more versatile and friendly manner. They would allow users to find more games they really enjoy, promoting engagement, and allow users to properly search and find diverse game experiences, instead of being spoonfed whatever is common by the current jumbled sorts.
29 Likes
This. We need this. (Check my post for more info)
5 Likes
Why? It’s very rare to see a player using an Rthro package (unless it’s free), so this will make no sense. We already have a whole section for games that support Rthro, but nobody cares about it. Rthro is just a useless feature that is used only for memes.
9 Likes
kind of agree, it also feels out of place for roblox
4 Likes
If you have any cool ideas for other tech related sorts we should include in the future please let us know.
2 Likes
We will be closely monitoring these changes before officially released to everyone. We want to make sure these changes positively impact our developer community.
4 Likes