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Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose
2. Suggestions
3. Conclusion
3.3. Fun Facts
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1. INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Second Quintessential Thread, where ROBLOX's coolest, fanciest requests and suggestions come to... be bunched up into an enormous megathread of suggestions, I guess.
Now, I'm aware that some parts of this may or may not be against the WNTS, to which I say: I don't care. Just because it's in the What Not To Suggest, it doesn't mean it should be immediately rejected.
ROBLOX is ALLLLLL about freedom, sandboxy stuff, building, creating places and doing your own bidding, right?
Well, nowadays it seems like it's slowly turning into the opposite, what with the chat filter (I'm not gonna bother bringing this one up), the new Leaderboard and others.
I have been a member of ROBLOX for 4 years. And I can assure you that while most of the new changes are fairly decent, some of the older, nicer features are still missed by many.
In this thread, I'll attempt to bunch them up, summarize them and make them as clear as possible.
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1.1. PURPOSE
The purpose of this very thread is simple: Requesting features that'll help shape ROBLOX into possibly the best sandbox building game people will WANT to play for a long time.
Now, you care about your userbase but you also want money, right? Fulfilling these suggestions will most likely bring you more players and positive reputation than you could ever handle. Which is a good thing.
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2. SUGGESTIONS
This is where it gets good: We're getting into that one bit with all the fancy nancy text about suggestions players have wanted for a long time, let it be former features that were removed a long time ago or don't even exist yet but would likely completely change the way ROBLOX works. When you look ahead, expect to be amazed: It's all full of ideas, imagination and creativity.
The core purpose of ROBLOX.
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2.1. Editable, Visible, Non-ROBLOXLocked CoreGUI
This feature is simple enough: Make the CoreGUI editable so place makers can add, remove and edit the core components of the User Interface.
You want to bring back the ol' 2008 retro feel? Feel free to do so. A mobile-specific interface? Go ahead.
Opening CoreGui editing to everyone (With its respective restrictions, of course) would completely change the way ROBLOX works, for better.
2.2. Old Leaderboard
I understand that you'd want to make a mobile-friendly leaderboard in your game, but let's be honest. It doesn't need to be on PC.
It's as simple as one plus one: Let PC have the old leaderboard, give iOS the new leaderboard.
2.3. Game Server IDs
Originally suggested by Gusmanak, this is a dandy feature most players would like to use when finding their friends in a wave of servers: Game IDs.
This feature would let you search for a specific user in the game server list, or sort them by Age (Time it's been open), Popularity (How often people come and go from that specific server), etc.
2.4. Badge Notifications
Badge notifications were used in the chat to let players know they earned some super cool badge. Okay, cool.
Then you decided to remove it for some reason.
This can be summarized as "Bring them back".
2.5. Site Themes
You haven't used the Themes tab for a while, and you even removed ROBLOX 1.0. and ROBLOX 2.0. for some reason. Some themes to spice the site up would be nice. Even if they're based on older themes, such as the 2009 theme.
2.6. Viewing B&'d Users' Profiles
Let's assume your favoritest place maker is pbanned for some absurd reason. You want to check their places out, but you can't. Guess why.
They're banned and you don't remember like half of their place names.
Simple solution: Make their profile still visible, with a bold red [B&'D] where their status would go, and with whatever offending content he or she posted on their profile [CD]'d.
2.7. Usermade Contests
You barely make contests anymore, ROBLOX. If you want to bring activity back to the Contests page, make users able to create, vote, participate and play in contests for rewards such as Tix, Robux or a Model. Players could participate with Shirts, T-Shirts, Pants, Decals, Models, Places, whatever they want that's allowed in the contest. At last, the Contest Master and his assigned Judges can pick one out of the top voted items. Last item wins whichever prize.
2.8. Place Suggestions
Instead of having to read through the painful Comments section, place makers may make a Place Suggestions page with polls, submittable requests and suggestions, etc.
This would help keep the maker and the players in touch.
2.9. Clear your Place Comments/Suggestions
Oopsie. You updated your place after months of working on it, but now you have the old comments fluttering around. What do you do?
Click a button that grays out all the old comments, suggestions and others players have posted, and have them allocated to a "Previous Comments" tab with sub-tabs with a timestamp stating when the comments were purged.
2.10.
For the tenth suggestion, I'll be reposting one of my favorite self-made threads on BINARY DATA.
Hold on to your hats or skip straight to 2.11. if you're that lazy, 'cause this is a long one that needs a LOT of reasoning to convince anyone.
Now, some of you might say "OGMOMG BUT BUT DE KUSSTOM SOUNDSIES ARE 2 HADR 2 MODARAT ND TAK UP SPAC ADN KOPPYRIGHTSE!!!!" in response to this thread's title.
The answer is, you're right.
But you're not completely right.
To start this thread off, I'm just gonna explain why everything you have said is invalid.
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1, "Hard To Moderate"
Now, you might have noticed, decals, tees, shirts and others undergo a moderation process before being published completely. Of course, this is to avoid inappropiate content. However, most of you also know that this does NOT apply to Places or Models. This is not only because they come out in MASSIVE flocks, but also because they take much more effort to make and upload than other custom content. Same thing applies to sounds. Instead, moderators replace the typical review moderation system with the famous Report Abuse system. When an user reports an inappropiate item, the report is reviewed and moderation is served.
This model works much better than the review moderation model, too.
2, "Takes up space"
Back when they were permitted, sounds were stored in a long string of seemingly random characters, that was actually an "abridged" file that was sent to a cache that was cleared after a set amount of time. They weren't truly uploaded to ROBLOX, but rather, encoded and decoded by the game to save MASSIVE amounts of space. This also applied to the old Decals system.
3, "Copyrights"
This one is pretty easy to explain: Copy rights do not apply to usermade content, ever. If a game with custom content such as GMod, for instance, had a Spongebob model uploaded, Nickelodeon has no say on it, as it's free AND made by the userbase, and it'd be pretty dang rude to sue Garry or the model's creator for it.
Now that that's done, we can move on to the topic: Binary data.
What WAS binary data?
The definition of binary data on ROBLOX is "Encrypted strings of text not uploaded on the site and decrypted by the game to convert it into content". Simple as that.
How did it work?
Back when it was permitted, binary data could be "uploaded" through the now-missing Decals button in the Insert tab in ROBLOX Studio/Solo. The process was broken up in three steps:
1.) The content is received
2.) The game "translates" the content into a readable, writable string of characters
3.) The game decrypts that string back into content for its own use and stores it in the Cache that's cleared every once in a while
This spawned two things: The encrypted string of characters and the decrypted file in ROBLOX's cache folder.
After that, the text could be copied over to other users for their own use, where Step 3 would occur for every user that typed in the text.
-How were they moderated?
When one of these strings, which would be more commonly known to end-users as meshes/sounds/decals/animations/etc., was inappropiate, it'd be reported and the content would be ultimately deleted. Just like with models or (uncopylocked) places, it'd only stay if an user decided to save it to his hard drive in the form of a ROBLOX model, which isn't all too concerning considering how users will just report it if it's reuploaded until it's ultimately banished.
-Why was it removed?
Reasons unknown, someone working at ROBLOX (Likely someone new) decided this feature was way too abused (It wasn't) and ultimately removed it, and made a boring code snippet in the game's XML decoder that skips binary data/strings when typed into certain object Properties, more specifically, "Content"-class properties.
This is the main reason this topic was created: A (quite long) attempt to get the content infamously known as "Binary Data" back.
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Now, onto the reasons why they SHOULD be brought back.
Besides the reasons specified at the beginning of the post, there are several reasons why binary data should be brought back:
1. Their removal was pointless
Users used these ALLLLLL the time in their places, leaving MANY people upset when they were removed. Up to this day, many people like me desire their ultimate return to our beloved game, ROBLOX. Others didn't "live" long enough to see them happen, but hear stories about what they were like and also would like to see them back.
2. They open up more possibilities
Custom meshes let you make whole new bodies for characters, custom animations let you make weapon animations with ease, custom decals remove the need for moderation when all you're trying to do is upload a high-definition texture and custom sounds let your place gain another layer of depth and can give certain kinds of models and places more life.
3. They attract professional developers
All day and all night, you ROBLOX devs go on about how you're adapting ROBLOX to bring in more skilled devs seeking a sandbox to forge their skills in.
Readding binary data would open the game up for expert musicians and composers, skilled modelers and professional animators.
4. More users will enter the game and stay
If a player sees a GOOD game with DEPTH and well-made custom content by a single user, they'll go 'Wow, that's pretty neat!' and likely register. When developers listen to users and are kind and caring, a great amount of users will buy premium features/donate to the developers as a thank-you for helping the game go on forth.
5. Keeping users happy
As stated above, players buy and donate if they like how the developers are doing. The proper way to do that is to keep them satisfied and adding what they want. Over the years, you have gotten many requests to bring back custom content. If these requests were listened to, the more mature users who have easier access to online payments would end up buying Builders Club in gratitude.
Heck, if they were brought back, I'd save up for lifetime OBC and thank ROBLOX for the rest of the years.
I believe that's enough reasons. If not, there's probably WAY more I can think of.
All in all, binary data was a great feature with little to no cons and loads of pros.
Thanks for reading.
(tl;dr: Bring back Binary Data.)
2.11. Comment Replies
Just like in YT, you could have a Reply button so people don't have to go thousands of pages through the comments trying to find the one they're supposed to be reading.
2.12. More Hats
Being able to wear like, five hats wouldn't really be that laggy. Sure, it'd probably make some random dude sink the moment they step in terrain water, but that's their problem.
Besides, five is a cool number.
You probably agree too.
2.13. Inter-Server Communications
This'd be a feature that communicates two game servers with each other, allowing them to interact in ways the place maker can script or select, such as inter-server chat, dungeon-like servers, usermade miniservers, etc.
Sort of like Data Persistence, but way WAY cooler.
Seriously, do this.
DO THIS. DO YOU REALIZE HOW COOL THIS FEATURE WOULD BE I CAN'T EVEN THINK OF EVERY SINGLE ONE AT FIRST AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGHGHGGH ALL THESE IDEAS
2.14. Gravity
A configurable Workspace property that lets players pick how heavily Gravity affects players. Certain objects can also have a Gravity property with an influence field and a gravity force setting, for uses such as making artificial gravity in spaceships for space games that involve a LOT of planets.
Let me tell you: Falling downwards in a game about friggin' SPACE isn't very immersive.
And now, it's TIME FOR THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR.
THE FINAL SUGGESTION.
2.15. Get rid of that freaking Message object that keeps appearing every like five minutes in ROBLOX Studio when I open my place
it's annoying to see, okay
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3. CONCLUSION
That's a lotta suggestion. Most of them are simple enough and a "Must", though.
I hope you enjoyed reading that as much as I enjoyed (sort of) writing it.
I have written a lot of suggestions before, but these are easily the ones I want to see the most.
Having people read it and reply is only half the battle, the other half is drawing the Staff's attention and reasoning with them.
3.3. FUN FACTS
• I have been writing this article for like an entire hour.
• This article is a whopping 14234 characters long, easily the longest coherent OP on ROBLOX.
• Elephant.
• I will SERIOUSLY make ROBLOX a really REALLY cool award and send it to them by mail if these ideas happen.
• For some odd reason, I couldn't stop thinking about Indiana Jones taking a golden idol and running away from the trademark giant boulder while writing this. Sort of like when you do something over-the-top to achieve something and it actually works. (Let's hope it does.)
Thanks for reading. |