All of the sorts seem completely random. I don’t mean to seem overly-cynical but the current sorts are absolutely useless to me, and I think a lot of players as well. None of the sorts except for ones like Obby or Tycoon live up to their name; Players Love is just a repeat of already popular games, so is Featured, Recommended, Top Earning, Most Engaging, etc etc.
But all of that has already been said. I’d like to propose a sort based on a recent influx of players and like ratio combined, sort of like a Rising sort. I don’t think we need any more genre based sorts like Roleplay, Obby, Tycoon, Simulator etc, because in all honesty those also don’t seem to help newer games get noticed. It’s all so dysfunctional right now.
Please. It is next to impossible as of right now to get across any sorts without being either a big name or having some arbitrary recognition that we are not aware of. Genre sorts allowed players to find games of different categories and allowed many games to achieve top placings and recognition when the main sorts get hogged by the same games for months on end, giving no space for smaller developers to even think about competing.
Whether it is restored in its old glory with newer ways to ensure its usage or some way to categorise games chosen by the developer or modified to fit the standards of the sorts now, having a way to sort out of the same games every time or not having much say in getting into those other sorts (e.g. Simulator), discoverability is so difficult.
There exists no global sort that Roblox could introduce which would significantly improve the state of discoverability of the platform. We’ve been down this road already, it doesn’t work.
Rather than chasing down a dead end, let’s take a page out of the playbooks of many major content delivery websites. Let developers add up to 3 custom tags to their game and show the top tags to new players when they register on Roblox, asking them to select the tags that interest them the most. Alert players when a new game starts trending on a tag that they are interested in. Allow players to browse all the tags at any time and view a specialized front page for any given tag.
We’re stuck in a pretty big discovery rut because the scale of the platform has far surpassed the capabilities of a front page as we know it. The only way to tackle this problem is to take an actual product risk.
What if their is an Adventure tag where the game that is on the top of that tag only has 200 players playing and another simulator has 20k people playing it? What if the Sim tags itself as Adventure just to get ahead? Besides that I think it’s a good idea and I see a lot of other social media websites using this feature.
I think the idea comes down to having a system that would recommend you games in the genres that you play & like the most. You love simulators, there you go, here’s a thousands of those. You prefer FPF, we got you covered. etc.
It leads to having players actually like the games they are being offered, thus increase the chances that they will play those for longer period of times.
The single reason I could find for the removal of genres is simplification. But filter settings shouldn’t be simple (as in satisfactory not enough to fiddle around with) just easy to access and use.
Some filters I have in mind are,
• Game Genres (Simillar to Steam genres)
• Most Sold (Ranking from most generated robux out of paid acess to the least)
• Suggestions (Games based on what you played; genre/paid or not/good rating)
• Innovative (Outstanding graphics, best polished games, some sort of permanent featuring list)
To get rid of issues I personally think it would be a great idea that only games over 1000 players have access to getting these tags, and genre choice can be “reviewed”.
I hope to see a more efficient way of finding certain genres of games that I enjoy, ever since the Horror Genre was removed i’ve found it extremely difficult to find any quality horror games on the platform.
Would be nice to have a section dedicated to Horror like how we have sections dedicated to Obbies & Tycoons.
I’ve read through this thread and I’ve not seen anyone mention something I was thinking about. I’m unsure if this already exists within the “popular” category algorithm:
It would be interesting to have separate recommendations based on your age group, so games that appeal to younger children (6-8, 9-10, 11-12), games that appeal to teenagers (13-14, 15-16, 17-18) etc… Could be far more specific or varied but just not “popular” all in one.
The reason behind this is that far too often I see players driven off the platform (especially my own age group, 16-18+) as all of the games are directed at younger children (10 or under). I’m well aware that Roblox’s main demographic is younger children but it might bring a positive light to the platform if we can see recommendations based on our peers rather than everyone merged into one.
Well, first of all I think that game sorting should be more simplistic and take out the useless sections such as obby because that section is filled with free modeled and have money in mind. Nothing there is original and is is just spammed like for example: “Granny obby Granny Obby Granny Obby” also up and coming is broken since thee are games there that have been popular for months or sometimes years. I saw some people talking about the old genre searching and I think that is a good idea to bring it back since It’s easier to shed light on nw developers that are actually up and coming, I also think that there should be more care about what’s put into these tabs such as roleplay. Jailbreak and madcity are not roleplay games, I’d also like to go off of HeadlessHorror’s idea of
This is also good for the popular tab so people can have more variety based upon their age groups like when people set their birthday upon signing up for an account.
I think it would be nice to have this feature but only with a couple of steps taken to ensure that it doesn’t go wrong. I would want the process to be like this first:
A game is using the wrong tags, what should a Roblox player do?
Report it for misuse of tags
Moderators should review the report and check the game and its tags first
If the tags are misused, the developer should just get a message in their inbox with feedback telling them to correct their game’s tags, with of course a 10-day cooldown in a specific game of theirs to avoid mass-reports. The 10-day cooldown should also apply to the reports (what I mean is that, if a specific game has already recieved a tag misuse report within 10 days, then the moderators do not need to review the next reports until 10 days have passed since the previous report. I feel that this cooldown can be used to reduce the pressure for moderators.)
Well, maybe the cooldown could be slightly reduced
As some others said, it would be nice to have a sort that is not personalized, new upcoming games, and most of all bring back genre sorting and maybe make a few more new types. And make it so on place/game publish you pick one.
Categories I can think of:
(Current) popular, top earnings, (I can’t think of the others at the moment.
New)
Up coming and or Newly released (basically takes new games that gain traction fast)
My category idea: VR
There are more and more VR games. But they are hard to find for VR players. This would make it easier for VR players to see the games that are made for VR or VR friendly.
I too would like game genres to be back, not only would it make it easier for Players to find the games they wanna play but it also would help developers so they would have no need to include “RPG” or “Simulator” in their game name for the players to find the game.
My idea is to have a filter option in the Games page where it would show a list of genres, for example RPG, MMO, Horror etc., clicking on one of the genres refreshes the page and only shows the games with the genre the player picked.
When I search for games on steam, I often use the tags in tandem with the search to slim down the results and exclude games I know I won’t be interested in. For instance, filltering out first person shooters.
So a Major problem on the front page games is that the recommened thing sort doesn’t fit my games i like and the Major part of the front page is somehow mostly build of the same games i.e:adopt me jailbreak it would be really nice to see that roblox brings up someother games goood games on the front! Just because they are less popular doesn’t mean they are bad!