We’re updating Heads!

Whether you said it was “better” or not is pretty much irrelevant since you insinuate Roblox should be tied to their 2006 identity.

Oh, and my paraphase wasn’t “2006 was better,” it was “this isn’t at all like 2006!”

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At this rate you’re completely misunderstanding and your insinuations aren’t helping this case at all. Trust me when I say that you don’t need to correct people on paraphrasing of all things, and that just goes to show how you need a second or two.

I’ve already told you that change is fine and I’m obviously aware that by my join date, roblox was changing anyway. The ‘metaverse’ bullcrap I was talking about was exactly how I describe it: stripping away any life this game had and turning it into a lazy attempt to garner attention through popular trends. This update is proof of that.

Can we move on to how no employee has bothered to comment or are you going to pick at straws more?

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If you would like to.

I wouldn’t expect any employees to respond since, as far as I’m aware, Roblox has never responded to taking items offsale, certainly not in the last 5 years.

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I think it’s safe to say that 2023 MIGHT be even worse than 2022, becuse everyone knew that 2022 has been the most terrible year or Roblox, like the infamous audio privacy update that destroyed game- I MEAN EXPERIENCES, or the “Sponsors” that replaced events

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You can tell an update is not well received when an update post with 39 comments has the exact number of likes as a post with over 700.

I personally do not mind the new heads. This will allow other users to design their avatars in new and creative ways.
I do however, like many others, have a problem with this update. Not everyone is interested in using the animated heads. If someone wants to use the classic faces, they should be able to. Taking away all but two of the free classic faces and several paid faces was not a good idea. This change seems to go against giving people more freedom over their Roblox avatars (something Roblox frequently advertises for the platform.)

There are some things I believe can be changed to resolve this problem:

  1. Simply reverse the decision to make the classic faces go off-sale. This will allow people to pick between using the classic heads and the animated heads, not limiting people to one style of face.
  2. Combine classic heads and animated heads in the avatar editor and marketplace, and give people the ability to select if they want that head to be animated or inanimate. Because classic heads are just being updated to be animated, I do not see a reason why they need to be displayed as two different items located in different tabs. By owning the Animated Man Face, you should be able to select a button to turn the animation aspect of it off, resulting in you wearing the Classic Man Face.
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Thank you for your feedback on this post. We hear your concerns, and we’d like to give you more context on where we’re going and why we’re making these changes.

Our vision for avatars is for everyone to have an avatar they love, where they can communicate and express themselves in a way that’s authentic and natural.

To achieve this, we are adding face animation capabilities to all our avatar heads. This means that, over time, all the classic static face decals will be replaced by animated heads, featuring the same facial features and expressions, but with the added ability to animate. This process will be gradual and take some time – once heads have finished being updated, you will receive a new upgraded head with animation for each classic face you own.

We will update most heads by the end of the year and complete the rest in 2024. In the short term, you will see some differences:

  • Each animated head will have only one head shape at the beginning. In the future, we will launch the ability to change head shapes, allowing you to recreate the range of face/head combinations available today, and more.

  • The animated heads may not be an exact match – you might see small differences that cause your accessories to fit differently. In the future, we will launch a new way for you to adjust your accessory positions to get a custom fit on any head.

Although we will be replacing the classic face decals with animated heads, the iconic Roblox faces that we all love are not going away. As soon as a face receives an upgrade, we will remove the equivalent classic face from the Marketplace and replace it with the upgraded animated head so there is only one version available for purchase. And as a reminder, when we take a face off-sale in the Marketplace, it does not impact the faces that you own and already have in inventory.

When we launch the ability to animate your face with movement using your camera, you’ll have the option of animating your face using the camera on your phone or computer. This is optional and will always require you to consent to use your camera in this way. Roblox never transmits the video from your camera – all processing happens on your phone/computer. If you do not choose to enable your camera, your face can express using default animations instead.

We’re excited for you to try out animated faces for yourself, but realize this came as a surprise. In the future, we’ll give more advanced notice when we make changes that affect Roblox heads. Please continue to provide your feedback and read on for more information:

FAQ

Why did you take the classic heads and faces off-sale?

  • When we add an upgraded head that supports facial animation we will remove the equivalent classic face, so there is only one version of a face available for purchase. Taking a face off-sale does not affect faces that you already own.

Why are we doing this?

  • Our vision is to empower avatars that allow our players to express themselves and communicate with their friends in deeper ways. To enable this, we’re upgrading every face to support face animation.

Are you getting rid of blocky?

  • No, we are committed to all avatar styles including the classic look of our early avatars, while enabling all avatars to support the latest avatar technology such as face animation.

Can I get my original head shape back?

  • Yes. If you had a classic head equipped and you want to revert back to it, your original head is still in your inventory under Classic Head. In the future, we will be providing a new way for all your animated heads to match the classic shapes.

I can’t find the matching animated head to my static face.

  • If you had the static face equipped, then the matching animated head will be in your inventory under Heads. Some of the names of the new animated head names are different from their static counterparts (Freckles is now Sun-kissed Freckles), but we are working to fix that as soon as possible to avoid further confusion.

Will my fantasy avatar head be upgraded with facial animation as well?

  • Yes, we will be upgrading more heads to support facial animation to the shop so that in 2024 every head on Roblox can animate.

Do you store data from facial animation?

  • No, we take your privacy seriously. When you use your camera to animate your avatar with your movement, animation key frames created by this process are deleted in real-time after they have been used and cannot be shared. Video from your camera never leaves your device. Learn more here.

What if I don’t want to enable my camera?

  • That’s totally up to you! If you wish to not enable your camera, you don’t have to and can still use emotes to express yourself.

Why does my head with facial animation look different than the classic head?

  • Converting a face to support animation sometimes requires technical or artistic changes to support the technology. This can result in small differences in eye or mouth position. In addition, each upgraded head has only one head shape – in the future, we will add a new way for your animated heads to match the classic shapes.

Why don’t heads with facial animation work well with certain accessories?

  • The upgraded heads may have small shape differences due to the technical and artistic constraints needed to support face animation. Plus, each upgraded head has only one head shape right now. In the future, we’ll add a new way to adjust accessory positions so you can get a better fit on any head.

Why are heads with facial animation more expensive than classic heads?

  • Soon, we will allow creators in the UGC Program to make animatable bodies and heads, so we want to benchmark the price of animated heads at a higher rate so our community-created avatars are properly valued.

Will my limited classic head be devalued?

  • Limited heads will be updated while retaining the same serial number and limited quantity, with the added benefit to express emotion.
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I appreciate that we finally got a response, but I still disagree with some of the decisions being made and the way these changes are being treated.

This should have been included with launch. We’ve been promised future fixes to disastrous updates (most notably the audio update) that have still not shown up years later.

This just feels like an excuse- it doesn’t hold true with other asset types like layered clothing in which Roblox offered multiple free shirts/pants.

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I can’t wait for Roblox to join Facebooks metaverse! Who agrees?

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Not this “too confusing for new players” @#$& again. The reason why we are so upset isn’t because we think that adding new dynamic heads removes the “blocky aesthetic,” and it isn’t because the heads are somehow bad, it’s because Roblox is depriving us of the opportunity to purchase new classic faces.

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Yeah. They are forcing us to get rid of any nostalgia or anything for the old game. If a kid played in 2 years there would be nothing from the 2016 Roblox left.

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The difference between roblox making bad decisions in past is that they reversed the changes or just didn’t make them mandatory, this is being made mandatory. You could wear either r6 or r15, blocky or 3.0 or even rthro, but now that is being gated in lew of a new head system no one wants. This directly appeals to the shareholders as it takes the site out of being called “lego game” and makes their investment more “modern”. Even if this decision wasn’t fueled by money or stock prices, it is still being pushed by incompetent devs that don’t understand the climate of the community that they are designing for.

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Before going any further I’d like to reiterate that my comments here are directed at Roblox’s incompetent product managers who are deciding on the course of action here, not the staff member who has communicated it.

Seeing as I haven’t left my thoughts on this yet, I felt now was the time to do so after what is quite frankly an inadequate, unhelpful response that just pushes the corporate line on the issue further. People do not want and have not asked for these changes to be made and I think it’s appalling that Roblox is taking the same approach it did with the audio privacy update in blatantly ignoring community concerns.

Why? No really, why? What possible explanation is there for doing this? Considering that “classic” Face and Head items are separated into completely different categories in the catalog, the reasoning of wanting to avoid potential clutter in the catalog is outright invalid.

There is simply no reason to take classic Face and Head items offsale other than attempting to force adoption amongst your community of a feature where other pre-existing feedback (e.g. on improving the characteristics of the dynamic heads) has already been ignored.

Putting up a brick wall and refusing to listen to the people who make your platform what it is is never a good idea, less so when you’re already forcefully updating existing outfits which have to be manually rolled back by users.

NO, NO, NO. Let’s not spread blatant falsehoods here. I’m afraid that what you are doing by placing existing classic Face and Head items offsale is limiting player expression and reducing the ability for your users to “power imagination”, as per your company’s own motto. This update is still very much not acceptable. Trying to bury and hide away a technology which will technically still be supported by virtue of the offsale items anyway is (to put it “bluntly” as Sorcus would say) pathetic.

It is time to stop ploughing on with this against your community’s wishes and reconsider.

If you’re so committed to the “classic look” of your “early avatars”, why are the avatars of accounts across the platform, old and new, being forcefully “upgraded”? It should, at all times, be up to the player and the player alone (other than where items have been moderated) to determine the look of their avatar. Just this afternoon I had to spend half an hour going through various accounts to reinstate their desired appearances. This should not be necessary. Proceeding to start rolling out a forced upgrade (as seen previously with Erik Cassel’s avatar being updated despite his death 10 years ago…) and then announcing it later on, is also simply unacceptable.

Let me get this straight - your “upgrade” is to an incomplete, unfinished feature and meanwhile you’re carrying out a forced rollout onto existing avatar outfits and placing existing heads and faces offsale? Cancel it, go outside, touch grass, and listen to people. It’ll do you some good.

After recent reporting of what appears to be multiple different data breaches of Roblox Developer Conference attendees between 2017-2020, I think I speak for many in saying that this feels like a bit of a sick joke that glosses over these events happening. Roblox clearly does not take its users’ privacy seriously and I would encourage users to remove as much PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from their accounts as possible, including things such as phone numbers.

Hold on. You’re actually going to forcefully replace Limited/LimitedU items that people purchased under completely different pretences? This alone is going to substantially devalue items that people already own. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants this. If you start replacing items that are already in people’s inventories that are tradeable, they will drop substantially in value and people will irretrievably lose value on their items. This is abhorrent.

Some time ago, I recall Roblox stating that they wanted to address community concerns over the rollout of their platform’s updates. However, with this “upgrade”, they appear to have catapulted into doing the literal opposite. This is appalling and cannot be allowed to stand, and as I remember stating for another update, managerial heads must and should roll for this. These disasters need to stop happening if Roblox is to survive.

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Before reading this reply, please note that this is not directed toward the staff member that is communicating this to us. This is directed to the extemely incompetent “investors” that have come up with this absolutely heinous idea.

The thing is, we dont NEED more. ROBLOX has already had enough of its fair and share adding things that people DONT WANT. We can already make extremely customizable and unique avatars with what we are already given. UGC Creators amplify this even more by creating their own creations. Theres no need to bloat even more features into the game that nobody approves.

You say you aren’t removing The classic ROBLOX Faces that you guys know everyone loves, However you take them OFFSALE? What’s the point of taking something off-sale you guys KNOW people love and enjoy? Then again, you guys even mention that when you’re done adding these new heads NOBODY WANTS, you’ll be taking away all of these faces you KNOW people enjoy?

This even further contradicts the point that you’re Not removing anything. You guys are removing probably one of the most iconic things Roblox has had. You’re forcing these onto players when most of the ROBLOX Community DOESN’T want these new hats.

You honestly could’ve at least spent more time polishing and optimizing it instead of rushing it. People have already pointed out how unoptimized and unpolished these heads actually are. If you’re gonna force an update, at least make it optimized.

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Then why did you take 17 faces offsale (including :], braces and know it all grin), and upload 12 dynamic heads. Why did you take an extra 5 faces that currently do not have a replacement offsale? What is the point of that?

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But everybody is complaining and saying to not do this?? I get that you guys want your “perfect metaverse” crap. I don’t care. Just please stop replacing the classic faces in favor of that crap. I dont want it and nobody else does. And hey, if somebody does, let them do it, but do not force everybody into it.

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Surely a better option would be to leave the static faces on sale alongside the dynamic heads. That way you could definitively see which way causes more players ‘love their avatar’

It seems that me that Roblox is telling people what they should like instead of letting them choose on their own.

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Welp, lets do it again people.

I would understand a lack of concern over this point if roblox was actually putting an effort into keeping the original designs of the faces constant, but that isn’t what’s happened/happening. These faces do not work with most roblox accessories or even any ugc accessories, deeming them useless unless you would like to be bald. From someone who would like to work in game development when I’m old enough, it’s genuinely appalling that you would release an update in such a terrible state, alongside the terrible notice. How ever much you say that you’re doing this for the community, we know that you are lying through you’re teeth. Take a page out of Old-School RuneScapes book and poll these things before development gets this far and you wont have to ship unfinished product.

If you really cared about self expression, you would leave a “legacy” mode for faces after they get updated which keeps the decal variant as an option for those who want something that actually functions with the rest of roblox’s marketplace

Again, the update shouldn’t have been shipped in this abysmally unfinished state

I highly doubt that will happen soon enough or in a usable fashion.

A jump from mere cents to dollars per face is a obvious cash grab and disgraceful to see, if someone simply wants a the cheaper original version, why should they buy a useless animated one that costs way more if they’ll never use it?

Welp another gut punch to traders. If this update is taken without the aformentioned “legacy” mode, mark my words, all limited faces will drop after being broken from this update. A good example of this can be seen with the hocky mask limited, its texture was changed and it imminently experienced a 20k robux drop from 30k to around just 10k. Imagine all limited faces, some more coveted than a simple halloween mask, dropping at staggering rates

If you truly hear our concerns you would heed our warnings and put this update back on the shelf, or include a “legacy” mode for all changed faces and decrease the idiotic prices

Edit: To add to this, me and others also have concerns on how this is going to be massive bloat in any sanely made game, as honestly when are you really looking at the players head. The only games that I’ve seen do this, already have graphical requirements much higher than roblox (these games being, GTA5, Gmod or VRChat), and have the added advantage of being installed locally rather than sourcing from a cloud, meaning they can actually viably do this without nuking your personal computer. Ironically these games don’t even use an idiotically intensive system of tracking the users face (exception for vrc, though it is very optional), and just use voice level tracking.

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This doesn’t seem to be the case, as many of the faces recently taken offsale do NOT have a counterpart yet (for example, Check It and whistle). Will faces be taken offsale let say a couple days to a week before the new counterpart is uploaded? Or will the face be replaced at the same time? If it’s the latter, which I hope, please put many of the faces you took offsale back onsale until a counterpart has been uploaded.

Personally, if I was calling the shots, I would bundle the 3D and 2D variants of faces into one, so that every user can experience either face without having to own it before the 2D variant is taken offsale.

This isn’t a good idea. A very large reason as to why 3D clothing isnt nearly as common as 2D is the price, if you are a Roblox user only purchasing 1-5 dollars worth of Robux, it is MUCH cheaper to simply purchase 2D clothing and 2D faces. And it’s still bull that previously free faces (Chill Face) will now cost 120 Robux or more. It’s not good for joining users. Please offer these faces based off of free faces for… well… free, and since faces will cost more, please offer a wider variety of free faces. Maybe extremely popular and originally cheap faces like Freckles can live a new life as a free animated face?

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People want the option to choose between dynamic and classic faces

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Roblox Management, have you ever heard the phrase “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”? Because that describes your decisions lately to a T.

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