i like the fact that not even 1 people has voted on the good or great option to this moment. i hate this update, it shouldn’t be a forced thing.
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They aren’t looking to improve the platform. They share the same fate with almost every other corporations that will flip off its loyal customers after a successful IPO.
Like every other people have said and I have said before, I do not care about dynamic heads until they are forced on me. It’s not hard for Roblox to maintain stability in the player base by offering players to choose between classic and dynamic.
In my opinion, no one should be anymore grateful cause what they’re doing is already bad to not be excused. It’s unjust forced consumerism due to deceptive practices of forcing users to turn to buy the shittier product to impress their investors. You are only given the option to buy shitty items for something that sucks a hole in your opinion compared to the older service you had before which might be lower quality but actually fits you.
They lied about Roblox being a “powering imagination” platform. EAT MY A
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For some time, I was questioning why Roblox would just suddenly take down classic faces sales for this but THIS??? THIS IS THE REASON??? “Allow our players to express themselves and communicate with their friends in deeper ways”
First, cutting off the sales of classic faces prevents players from obtaining them and expressing it. This is especially for old Roblox players and usually any blocky avatar. From this, Roblox as a corporation are restricting players from being able to express themselves. The existence of classic faces does NOT affect anyone’s ability to express.
Second, NOBODY or almost nobody uses dynamic faces to communicate. A text or voice chat is already deeper in communication than enough and deeper than dynamic faces could be. I couldn’t imagine anyone communicating with man faces with moving teeth and open the mouth and call that “communication”.
You can “upgrade” the faces to support animations, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT JUST TAKE IT DOWN AND REALLY CAUSE ANY ISSUES. Dynamic heads and its execution are the one that’s restricting players from being able to express themselves.
The corporation should just be honest for once that they don’t give a flip and not give the player base a whole rollercoaster ride down to hell. IF the corporation was being honest about it trying to stand out to the investors by worsening quality of loyal customers’ experience, I will shut up for once and accept it. It’s very obvious when you say this, yet you still restrict the majority’s expressions.
You are not being transparent at all, the details given in the announcements to convince are mostly likely lies. Bunch of lies.
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The update appears to mostly affect avatar bundles, in particular the newer ones, as of late. I believe the last time Roblox uploaded a new animated head based off of a classic Face, it was in October.
The thing is, Roblox doesn’t really see the text chat or voice chat by themselves as “expressive ways to communicate”, if it ain’t looking like Facebook’s vision of the metaverse, then it isn’t good enough for Roblox. Considering Roblox has a BUNCH of experiences, they want to emulate this metaverse as closely as possible, so that means they want expressive communication for that.
When I see people use an animated head, I don’t really see them use the voice chat feature along with it. This may be because 1: Most dynamic head users are few and far between, or 2: People genuinely find this feature off-putting. If the latter (or even the former) is true about why people do not use this feature, then it’s clear it’s not working.
Roblox hasn’t been caring about their player base for a long, long time. This is true for most corporations. Only problem is, if they say that they don’t care, they will make more people angry than they already are, and that won’t please investors. The funny thing is that it doesn’t matter anyway, because people will still get mad at Roblox even if they lie through their teeth! If we really want Roblox to change, we’re going to need a change of leadership that won’t try to push their vision of the “future” on us players.
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please just put the original faces as items inside the new bundles… i really don’t want to wear versions of faces that are aliased, only support one shape, and blink in games that force R15, there’s so many faces that i wanted to buy but can’t anymore because you can only get the 3D versions now. all those faces might as well be offsale now
or, maybe just add an option in the avatar editor that makes 3D heads always behave like the R6 version even in R15, if you really care so much about Enabling™® User Expression™® in Avatars™® in the Metaverse™®
(although it’s not like they seem to care about the avatar editor in general, with it randomly failing to show some items in your inventory, and giving you a “Switch to R15?” popup every single time you try to load an outfit, and thumbnail camera editing still being mobile exclusive)
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Continued radio silence…
We’re coming up on 1 year since this was first announced.
I don’t get why Roblox continues to ignore all the feedback here.
Thanks everyone who’s been keeping this thread alive. It’s really frustrating how Roblox has just left us in the dark here.
What’s even happening with Dynamic Heads at this point? Roblox hasn’t released any new obtainable Dynamic Heads in almost eight whole months. Yes, they’re still working on creating new heads behind the scenes, but what’s happening with Classic Faces? We’ve gotten barely any information regarding those this entire time.
I’d really like to think that Roblox has simply paused the rollout so they can figure out a way to let existing Classic Faces remain obtainable due to all the backlash, but we can only hope.
Roblox likes to talk about their company values, a key one being “respect the community”, yet it’s hard to say they really take it seriously when they won’t communicate anything about the current status of Classic Faces, which has been quite a major concern in the community over the last year. The fact that this thread is still active clearly shows.
Anyway, since it’s been about a year, I’d like to look back and once again go over a lot of the main problems with this release that remain prevalent, along with my thoughts on Dynamic Heads as a whole.
Forced “upgrades”
For the most part, replacing heads in existing character bundles honestly isn’t that big of a deal since they’re usually nearly identical; if you hate the blinking that much then all you have to do is unequip the mood animation and the head won’t blink anymore. Unfortunately there’s no interface for this in the avatar editor right now; it’s only possible through direct API calls. You can use a game like “Catalog Avatar Creator” if you don’t want to mess with the API.
But replacing Classic Faces is a big problem since the dynamic replacements oftentimes appear drastically different from the original and completely change the look and feel of the face.
Not to mention, they only have one predetermined head shape, as opposed to the wide variety of Classic Heads you can use with Classic Faces. Dynamic Heads also don’t work properly in R6, and a lot of games don’t even fully support them. So they are ironically less customizable than their 2D counterparts.
If Roblox is so eager to roll out Dynamic Heads in such a primitive state, then Classic Faces should remain obtainable. I get wanting to have only one version on sale to prevent confusion, but since Dynamic Heads are a bundle type, all they have to do is include the old faces in with the new head bundles, I don’t know why they’ve been avoiding this for so long. Most of the new heads are not at all a solid replacement in their current state.
This is a joke.
When Roblox first started looking into facial animation many years ago, I originally thought they were working on some crazy new technology to add deformation capabilities to Decals. I did not expect them to just roughly recreate some existing Classic Faces’ expressions onto the exact same 3D blocky head template, and then make said faces unobtainable.
Also, if Roblox ever decides to forcibly “upgrade” Limited Classic Faces like this, it will completely destroy their value, causing owners to potentially lose hundreds of dollars worth of Robux. No one who owns expensive Limited faces ever expected this to happen, nor do they want it to happen. This is another great reason why existing Classic Faces NEED to be included in the new bundles they create for Dynamic Heads.
What’s the point?
I still struggle to understand Roblox’s aggressive push for Dynamic Heads. Why does Roblox think that it’s worth the insane amount of effort it takes to convert every single head/face on the entire website to a fully-rigged animatable 3D model, and to enforce this requirement on all UGC heads, just so that <1% of all the people who visit voice chat hangouts can have their avatar’s face track their real-life facial expressions? I just can’t wrap my head around this.
I rarely ever see anyone using the camera feature, and whenever I do, it’s just plain creepy.
Seriously, why would you want your in-game avatar’s face to track your real-life face movements? Who ever asked for this? How does Roblox not find this creepy? It’s just such a weird concept to me that I cannot understand at all.
It’s fun to play with for five minutes, but afterwards, who cares? It just feels like a massive gimmick to attract investors. At least it’s optional.
Roblox said that they added this feature to allow people to better express themselves and to push deeper immersion and engagement between users. Sure, it adds “immersion”, but not in a good way. If I cared about immersion then I’d use VR. This is just, in my opinion, oftentimes really unsettling and genuinely repulsive. Now I can actually feel someone staring right into my soul, thanks Roblox!
When Roblox first started working on face tracking, I thought it would remain a Studio-only feature for making animations. I never expected it to be a feature used for player avatars in live games because the idea of that just never made sense to me. But apparently this was the goal of Dynamic Heads all along? Why does Roblox seem to have this vision that everyone will want to track their face? Why is Roblox so obsessed with this creepy idea of “immersive communication”?
(Still haven’t found a single experience besides Roblox Connect that utilizes the calling APIs, by the way.)
And sure, if you genuinely like the feature then you’re free to keep using it. But the point is, I don’t get why Roblox thinks it’s necessary that every single head on the entire platform HAS to be fully capable of using this feature. I guarantee you that over 99% of all active users do not care.
It’s clear that most people don’t care about Dynamic Heads.
If you check the Marketplace, practically all of the most recently-uploaded heads at any given time are bypasses in some way, usually either “static” heads or headless ripoffs.
And yes, “static” heads are bypasses, because Roblox has plenty of checks in the UGC validation process to make sure that the head you’re uploading can actually animate. To get around this, people just add some random geometry in the center of the head that you normally can’t see, and that deforms instead. Sometimes people make random parts of the head itself wobble around and it looks ridiculous.
Creators would rather do this than make the face actually move. Modelling a fully-rigged animatable head with eyes and teeth is hard enough anyway.
Why not just open up Classic Heads and Classic Faces to UGC creation so that these “static” heads can actually be properly categorized? Those categories exist for a reason, why make people clutter the Dynamic Heads and Face Accessories categories with them? If people want to create animatable Dynamic Heads then so be it. But trying to force all heads to work with facial animation is clearly not working and only results in a massive sea of miscategorizations.
And it’s especially funny when people reupload previously-obtainable Classic Faces as a face accessory or something. I’ve already seen quite a few “Check It” ripoffs - a face that was free. People would rather pay the upload fee and risk moderation than use Roblox’s awful dynamic replacement.
Despite Roblox’s efforts, people just don’t seem to care.
And as a company, I don’t know why Roblox would do this. By making Classic Faces unobtainable in favor of new dynamic versions that people don’t care about, wouldn’t that hurt their profits? Especially since a Dynamic Head is hard enough to create as it is.
I’m really curious as to how many people have bought the dynamic “Stitchface” head in the past 30 days in comparison to how many sales the Classic Face would’ve gotten if it were still available. I’m sure this face used to make Roblox a lot of money.
Kind of unrelated, but it’s also pretty ironic that Roblox is investing so much into heads when “headless” avatars are one of the most popular avatar styles on Roblox. So many people literally don’t even want a head, period.
Overall, a failure
The rollout of Dynamic Heads has to be the worst of any release I’ve ever seen on Roblox.
- These new heads are being forced in an unfinished state, severely lacking customization and oftentimes appearing drastically different from their original 2D counterparts.
- Camera face tracking might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen Roblox attempt.
- No one’s even publishing any heads to the Marketplace that can actually animate, which is, you know, kind of the whole point of Dynamic Heads?
- Adoption rates of these new heads and camera tracking are pretty low. It’s clear that barely anyone even cares about facial animation in the first place.
- In my opinion, trying to kill off Classic Faces might actually take the cake for the worst unnecessary update of all time.
I’ve been through every major avatar change over the past 12 years, from 3.0 avatars, “bacon hairs”, R15 avatars, animations/emotes, Rthro avatars, layered clothing…
But all of those were optional. And with enough time, I’ve actually grown to adopt many of those technologies. I love layered clothing and it’s all I use for clothes now.
But that doesn’t mean classic clothing should ever go away; it still has plenty of use cases that can’t be achieved with layered clothing. The same can be said about Dynamic Heads. In fact, I might actually adopt a Dynamic Head on my avatar, if they were more customizable.
The potential…
Dynamic Heads do have the potential to be a really cool feature, but Roblox’s forced rollout of them in such a primitive state has seriously damaged their reputation.
Roblox, if you’re reading this, why not expand Dynamic Head customization?
For starters, launch the ability to change head shapes, as Dynamic Heads really shouldn’t have been forced without that ability. But it can go so much further.
Let us reposition/scale the eyes and mouth on our head!
Give us a proper UI for swapping eyebrows, eyelashes, and moods! Let us refine eyebrows, too!
And since you already have camera face tracking, what about letting us create our own custom mood with our camera in the avatar editor, instead of being forced to equip a pre-defined mood?
And let us refine those custom moods! Let us pick which parts of the head we want the mood to affect! For example, by having the mood affect the eyes, we can effectively disable blinking during an idle animation. Let Dynamic Heads be super customizable!
With accessory refinement on the horizon, what about body part refinement? Let us slightly reposition/scale R15 body parts to dramatically increase the amount of body part combinations that are possible! This would also let us fix the problem where the head is positioned too high for many Dynamic Heads, which was apparently an intentional decision, though it makes them incompatible with certain torsos.
Oh, and give us an option to return to the classic 2D version of a face/head if we want to, instead of being forced to use the dynamic version. It makes no sense to make Classic Faces unobtainable when the technology behind them will always be supported. Even if you can somehow make the new heads look exactly the same, a lot of people genuinely just want a static head.
Lastly, it’d really help if Dynamic Heads weren’t so hard to create in the first place. The truth is, most people don’t have much experience with setting things up in Blender. I might be asking for too much, but if you could somehow create classic-styled Dynamic Heads right in Studio (perhaps with the help of AI tools?), I bet more people would adopt them.
Final thoughts
To clarify, I don’t want to say I’m particularly against Dynamic Heads or face tracking, I just don’t quite understand Roblox’s aggressive push towards it. Facial animation should be an optional thing, instead of trying to force everyone on the platform to use it.
But what I am against is making Classic Faces unobtainable, especially when Dynamic Heads are still in such a primitive state and ironically provide less customization than Classic Faces. A lot of people don’t even want an animated face to begin with!
The fix is simple. Just include the old faces as an extra item in the bundles that are created for each new Dynamic Head, so that you can get both items in one purchase. Please, actually “respect the community”, as you like to say.
When Roblox first announced Dynamic Heads many years ago, I was actually pretty excited. I usually try to be supportive of avatar changes, but I had no idea that the release was going to turn out as disastrous as this.
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Really don’t see the point in taking the older versions off-sale but ok.
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People will go out of their way to edit, reupload, bypass, overpay, just to not use dynamic heads. It’s such a colossal flop that the UGC store is filled with copies that are constantly taken down, yet people will still buy them over and over again.
I don’t see what’s Roblox’s game here. Are they just gonna drop the rest one day or did they give up?
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Likely the former, as they’re currently focusing their attention on animating Bundles rather than Faces.
I do believe that they are still actively working on making more animated versions of Classic Faces, but Roblox sees the amount of backlash this caused (in particular the complaint that the updated heads look NOTHING like the original), so Roblox is currently trying to fix these Heads before they make any more.
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Hi Roblox Team,
I’ve been a part of Roblox since 2020 and started developing in May 2021. I wanted to share my perspective on the push towards realism within Roblox.
Roblox has always been known for its unique, blocky characters, which are a significant part of its charm and identity. This style sets Roblox apart, similar to how Fall Guys is recognized for its bubbly characters. While I understand the vision for the metaverse and the incremental steps being taken towards it, I believe that fully transitioning to realistic avatars could undermine what makes Roblox special.
If Roblox avatars become too realistic, the platform risks losing its unique appeal and could start to resemble a generic Unity game. The current style fosters creativity and a sense of fun that is distinct to Roblox. I hope you take this into consideration and maintain the essence that has made Roblox beloved by so many.
Thank you for your time.
EDIT: Thanks yall for the likes, make this comment get to the roblox team, we need it.
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Another thing too, let’s compare to minecraft, which is like one of the most played games in the world, which the visual style and charm, has remained almost unchanged for more than a decade.
You definitely dont want to completely alter the style that your game/platform is known for if it is what made you successful in the first place.
I play roblox cause I find the blocky/lego-like avatars way more appealing than “realistic” ones.
It’s fun, goofy, simple and charming. And that’s what roblox is best known for pretty well. It’s great.
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oof no update on the getting the static faces as well as the animated faces and i think they’ve actually abandoned feature as they haven’t made any new faces or showed anything on the ability to use and head on any face thing they’ve promised
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They need to scrap it as a whole. Its a useless feature and it takes away from the original appeal of the game. It needs to be taken off as well as all of the limited rip-offs, as users have been abusing the dynamic head UGC system.
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I disagree. Dynamic heads are a very good concept. They’ve just executed it awfully and most of the heads look nothing like their original 2d versions.
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That’s fine, but I still think its useless. Oh well
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ROBLOX:
Also ROBLOX: Removes the ability to get the (better) classic faces and forces people who didn’t get it already to get the ugly dynamic versions.
Static
Dynamic
It looks like they didn’t even try to make it look as close as possible.
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Roblox has once again updated Stevie Standard and the only change is that in R6 (or any place that doesn’t support MeshPart heads) the head now looks like this:
I’m really confused. It’s just a stretched version of the default face. What was the point in doing this?
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Because of this, I actually like the old one more!
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In all honesty, the original stevie standard was definitely the best.
The current one is just lazy and the “v2” used up until now was soulless. Atleast it’s still present on the dylan head.
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