Most features that get phased-out go through a sunset before either deprecation or a plain refactor.
You have to create BodyMovers via commands or scripts to place them in the explorer, which is irksome since there are no complete analogs between those and the new physics constraints.
The My Feed page is gone, making group shouts pointless.
The animation update is no longer opt-out, and the sound update was promised to be addressed further but there has been no indication of commitment towards that.
All of these are cases of Roblox just not caring enough to keep things consistent across versions, which is very disappointing coming from a billion dollar company.
That is true, though not every game from yesteryear gets its deserved justice. Some developers just don’t care enough to upkeep their games, and the third parties who have the capability to spin them may not even be aware of some older games.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on this. Unless direction changes at Roblox, I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Are we unable to have versions of the engine from certain time periods? Before Roblox did to Finobe what Nintendo did to Brick Bronze, Finobe had older versions of Roblox available to use. Why can’t Roblox do the same? With the functionally “infinite” resources you claim they may have, shouldn’t they also be able to host older versions of Roblox just the same, if not exceeding what Finobe had?
All of this to say that I distrust Roblox, given their repertoire. An update like this is sure to put more work on developers if they just want to keep things the way they were, probably beyond just a simple boolean property in the Players class.
This has not been confirmed or denied by Roblox and considering their track record on these types of updates it is wrong to give them any sort of benefit of the doubt.
People here can read infact, the vocal opposition is by and large to the removal of classic heads and faces from the Marketplace. Dynamic heads being in beta testing for some time does NOT mean that players should have expected this to happen, quite the opposite considering that layered clothing and classic clothing have been able to co-exist in the Marketplace for an extended period of time.
faces on R6 look completely dead inside.
I use this face on my human avatar and it became an essential part and i simply CANNOT use “Face of Disapproval” because of that reason. Also it lowers my shades and make it even weirder.
if roblox the next thing they do is REMOVE classic faces, they force me to hide the rest of the face with a scarf that covers mouth.
Actually, all you have to do is go to Studio settings and enable Deprecated Objects, and then restart Studio:
Group shouts appear under notifications now, I believe. You may also have to enable that. If they don’t, I know that the game update notifier thing (bit too tired to look up what it’s actually called right now) will send a notification to everyone who’s following the game. There’s also some new notification thing that I’ve just now seen called “Notification Strings” and I have no idea what that is as of this moment.
Not quite sure which animation update you’re referring to in this case.
The issue here is more that Roblox is really slow with their updates. I was hoping that their roadmap would be more transparent with all of their activities, especially those that were announced in previous RDCs even from several years ago and have yet to see any announcements on even if they’re still in progress or dropped.
Also not quite sure what you mean here. Keeping what things consistent across what versions of what?
The roadmap and their apology give me some amount of hope at least. Plus, keep in mind that Roblox actually used to be much worse with this sort of thing. People like to praise classic Roblox, but it was really bad when it came to many different things.
As I said in my post, that part isn’t the issue. The issue is that they need to keep certain aspects up-to-date. Whether that be to make sure that all services remain functional or just required by law in some areas. This specific topic can go much further in depth, something I don’t particularly feel like doing right now, but it’s something that is unrealistic in that particular way.
Now I don’t think it’s actually impossible. There are other ways to preserve games, such as opting out of all new updates automatically by default. A lot of deprecated things do still actually work perfectly fine. They’re only deprecated because they’re no longer maintained. That is one of the issues with having something live such as Roblox. Even Windows struggles with this, keeping all sorts of legacy stuff in for various reasons. However, they seem to be throwing that out now with Windows 11 onward. It does require an amount of resources to keep everything working as core framework constantly changes. Definitely not impossible, but you can see that there is a very real cost there. It’s also considered as bloat.
I have personally not seen anything that would actually make me want to move away from Roblox. The services it provides are more valuable than the downsides that Roblox has, in my opinion. As far as this update goes, the boolean is really all there is. If you don’t trust that, you can create a system to replace it with a classic head, which isn’t actually hard to do in this case. I saved the original R6 avatar when R15 was announced just in case, but it seems that wasn’t needed.
Now I don’t think you should have to make your own system, but at least it’s possible if needed. But if you actually look at these updates, so far everything reasonable has had a way to opt out and that has stuck. Don’t get me wrong, I understand your fear. I guess I should also clarify that I’m not really defending Roblox here either. They need to make sure that this always remains the case. But I will say that the services they provide are more than worth it currently for me.
Gee, that would have been really nice to know about. Maybe, oh, I don’t know, some more publicized post elaborating that this setting exists? A contextual tooltip when searching for deprecated classes to inform the user that there is a setting for deprecated classes to remain visible? Am I wrong for expecting better out of a billion dollar company?
(Scroll down, you’ll get it)
Methods to circumvent this update exist, however obscure and never publicized.
You’re free to opine that Roblox still has value, which it may for some, but my point is that there is no guarantee that things will remain the way they are, for better or for worse. Developers will always be in a rat-race to maintain their game, to fix things they never broke to begin with, and personally I’ve had my fill of that.
Yes, deprecated objects are still functional, though entire libraries or facets of the API are not permanent fixtures onto the engine.
That was a hypothetical. If they were to make it toggleable in game options, no harm no foul, but we’ve gotten no concrete word with whether the originals will remain accessible or not.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the people in charge of maintaining the Linux Kernel do no such thing. Isn’t that a novel concept?
Most of my points development-wise are done with direct comparisons to other engines. I understand that Roblox is a unique platform, though developers should honestly get a feel for how things are done elsewhere - it’s much nicer, trust me.
I’m well aware of the things Roblox provides free of charge, but engines such as Godot by the Godot Foundation are free just the same, provide an equal amount of documentation and community support, and doesn’t ask for a single penny from your profits. Again, I understand that Roblox takes a lot of the brunt off of the service-end of things, though it’s still worth pointing out that alternatives exist. Disgruntled developers here shouldn’t be left in the dark for healthy alternatives.
If people are fine developing games on Roblox, then that’s their choice, but I personally wouldn’t want to enable Roblox to continue making decisions like these, potentially forcing developers to revise their work. Am I getting through?
To be fair, only older devs would even know about these objects to begin with, unless they’re following an outdated guide. I think it makes sense from Roblox’s perspective to hide it in a setting. While it could always be shown, as they’re already grayed out, it’s worth noting that your average user might not even question why that is, even if there were some type of tooltip. Perhaps a message box could come up warning them. I don’t really think this is a big issue overall as you could look this up, as any developer should when they have a question. I personally found it because deprecated objects were actually previously shown, so I looked through the settings because I was confident that there would be a setting to enable it again. In this case, I think it’s a bit complicated, but the option is still there regardless.
I’ll just give you this because I’m not really familiar with this particular update and I’m not all that interested in animation related things anyway.
This is true, but I don’t believe this is as bad as you portray it to be. Though I’ll admit that I’m only judging this through my experience over the years, perhaps it’s different in other areas that I’m unfamiliar with.
As I said previous, Roblox updates are actually very slow. They also give you plenty of time to prepare, if you keep up-to-date with announcements. I’ve also never had anything break on me in my own experience. With that said, this is why I continue to suggest that new feature remain opt-out by default to avoid issues like this.
Roblox won’t remove anything unless it absolutely must for whatever reason. If it were an invalid reason, we would protest. We know that works because they have reverted several updates for that very reason, including the material update. Roblox has also actually published old utility modules that can be used as well. Though I have to admit that you’d have to actually look it up in order to know that it exists.
Seeing as this is still the case, I see no reason to to bring this up as an issue until it becomes one.
I think you’re missing my point again on why they can’t in this case, but I’ll leave it there.
I completely agree with this on the basis that competition is very important. Don’t think much more needs to be said on that topic.
Unless Godot provides free servers, data storage, and everything else I’ve mentioned, I’m not sure if that’s really a valid comparison in this case.
I’ll once again completely agree that competition is good.
We, the community (yes I’m assuming a bit here), will always fight against forced changes that will cause real issues. Sure it would be nice to just leave a game as is and have it remain operational, but the maintenance isn’t really all that demanding either. Plus, as I said before, I’ve actually never had an issue with Roblox breaking anything in any of my projects/games. I won’t say that doesn’t happen as I’ve definitely seen much older games run into some issues, but I do think it’s relatively avoidable and easy to maintain otherwise.
I’ll just go and say that there is a cost to develop on Roblox, and you do get things in return for that. It’s totally up to the individual developer on what they value. If you don’t want your game to be live service, perhaps Roblox isn’t for you after all. Or perhaps you want to use p2p or whatever else. I do think it’s important to realize that Roblox stands out in its own way due to what it offers. I agree that Roblox could do better at backwards compatibility, but it’s really not that big of an issue in my opinion. This isn’t really an excuse for Roblox, but by the time a game starts breaking from updates, it’s usually well beyond dead player wise.
I know this really sounds like I’m defending Roblox, and in some aspects I am, but I’m only trying to give the other side. I fully support your core idea of backwards compatibility. I do hope Roblox takes steps to better preserve the games on their platform. Though do understand that Roblox doesn’t purposefully want to break games, and they do already try to update carefully. Roblox can do a lot better, but they are at least trying already.
I’ll also leave a disclaimer that obviously everything about Roblox can change at any point. Even if Roblox is perfect, that can change. Roblox may even shutdown one day, though hopefully not for a long time. That is something any developer will just have to accept about any live service platform. This is just an objective fact that each person will have to judge based on their personal needs. Games/experiences on Roblox are best designed as live service games/experiences, as that’s essentially what they are.
(I really need to stop writing essays without meaning to…)
Is the face tracking somehow bad for privacy?
Does Roblox track this? Is there a privacy policy for the face animations?
Does Roblox store them permenantly? Are they analysed and profiled?
It is very concerning if one or more of these is true.
Bit ironic trying to advertise as pushing “self expression” more than ever, by taking classic faces off sale, oppressing self-expression.
Pushing these dynamic faces in our faces while and then thinking its okay to strip us from our classic heads because you have simply given us something you want us to want or anything else in general, does not promote self-expression.
People can like dynamic heads, but it does not give Roblox the right to come to the conclusion that since some people (even if everyone liked dynamic heads) like dynamic heads, it should completely override classic heads.
No-brainer solution: keep both classic and dynamic heads
I believe camera tracking is an opt-in thing when using dynamic heads. It’ll be made clear when Roblox asks for permission to use your camera, and you still have the right to decline their use.
well 4 days went by since this post was added, the community has expressed how much their dislike of it is. Everyones opinions are ignored as a whole not shocking welp I guess its time to start learning more C++ coding and try out that unreal engine, or unity.
I specifically need a member of Roblox staff to clarify what exactly will happen to non-dynamic heads. I need to know exactly what will happen to Roblox’s current slew of Classic Heads.
@SergeantBlocky , as the person who made this announcement and provided this thread with an update, could you clear the air on how players can opt-out of dynamic heads on their avatars, even if they did not own any faces or heads prior to the update going live for new accounts?
We must adapt to the vision that Roblox has and the changes that will come in the coming years, even if you want the classic faces, you have to think that the dynamic heads. They allow Us as developers, for example, that NPCs Smile or make other types of facial expressions
I would prefer if faces/heads just had a ‘2d’ variant instead of putting them all off sale. Like if a head you buy has a 2d variant, you will get the 3d version and the classic version.
the reason people are annoyed is because you can’t do those things, at least not yet. roblox hasn’t actually released features to fix the new heads, and is it going to be a static possition of the animated head? or will it be the original decal?
(“one of these things is not like the other”)
no it cant what are you talking about. its a setting you can just turn off and it poses no security risks as the data is is used on your computer and your computer only. the only thing roblox could observe is the output data, e.g, the way your roblox characters face is moving. and I’m pretty sure they aren’t tracking that data
Honestly, I wish they would just keep them separate, let the animated head users buy the animated versions, and let the people who don’t want to own an animated head buy a decal version.
I still wonder why they think that having 2 heads / faces that look the same in a different category is bad to them, I don’t see any issues with having 2 faces that look the same to each other.
