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| 09 Aug 2016 04:55 PM |
Note: I may have removed some parts of ROBLOX blog entry because they were more informative and you couldn't really argue about them WARNING: Looooooooonnnnnnnngggggg read So I come on to the blog looking for news about the egg hunt, only to be sucker punched right in the gut with this: "In the next 30 days, ROBLOX will discontinue Tickets. This is one of the biggest changes we have ever made to our platform. While many of you will welcome this change, I know that many of you will be concerned. I want to explain our reasoning here, and also share details of the process we will go through with this migration." Oh dear. You better make it worth my time.
"We have come a long way since that time. Today, the economy in ROBLOX is more and more driven by developers, who create imaginative and creative games. Many of these games have their own currencies, and many of these games provide their own retention bonus systems. We’ve introduced a host of ways for our developers to make ROBUX. The ticket bonus for place visits has become a very small factor to most developers relative to the ROBUX economy." There's that word again. Developers. Developers. Developers. It's nice to bring services to developers. We get it -trust me, we DEFINITELY get it by now-, you like to use THEIR content to advertise ROBLOX, and so most of your attention will go towards them, but does that mean you have to throw every other type of player under the bus? What are people who were solely here to trade currency going to do? Nothing -yes.- ? What are you going to do about people who came here only for combat -such as me!- now that you are letting PLAYERS make animations? It doesn't make sense that because a dev's income is mostly ROBUX, we should entirely remove tickets. Like, where's the correlation there? -Rebuttal: Oh but it's also about preventing botting, alts, and- I know. I'll get there.
"Our catalog is going through a similar expansion over the next year, as we begin to allow ROBLOX developers to sell body parts, hats, gear, animations and other items." Congrats, you probably just destroyed the trading market and limiteds as well, now that users can replicate the same expensive hats and sell them for cheap. -Rebuttal: Oh but we have a system that prevents players from doing that Really? Then why didn't you make a system to solve all the problems that tickets caused? Why did you just say "Screw it! let's just delete it" considering the problems would have been just as easy of a fix as the limited market? Huh? Then you go on to say that any system that rewards players with currency will ultimately be botted. True, but though trading doesn't award players with money, It can still be abused in the same way that tix was once your system is in place! So you are going to delete one system because it got abused but not the other that also gets abused? Where's the logic in that? It's not fair to delete an entire system because it may get abused to an extent. Everything does. Everything. No matter what. Why don't you delete ROBUX then too? That gets abused. How about messages? Places? No? Why not? Because it's a core part of ROBLOX? Well guess what! So is tickets. And if you plan on removing the whole limited thing, fine. Ignore this, and drive a whole other portion of the community away, who spent hours upon hours, days upon days, and months upon months working up to get that amazing hat or gear. In place of a clone of that item for 1 ticket - I MEAN ROBUCK! Be my guest.
"We are removing tickets for a number of reasons. Although familiar to many of us, they are confusing to first-time users. We believe removing tickets will simplify our product in all areas, from the UI to the catalog to user-accounting." There's the thing with only catering to a niche crowd again. Although they are a huge feature in ROBLOX that pretty much everyone knows, very new players will get confused, SO LET'S DELETE IT! No. This isn't necessary. But are they really getting confused? What's so confusing about having two types of currency that can be exchanged, especially considering that everyone who plays ROBLOX has been exposed to that in the real world their entire life? It simplifies UI? Sure, if you consider having one less tiny little graphic on the already-minimal website much more simple. The catalog? Hardly. Only a handful of items were ever sold for tickets other than this tixapalooza stuff. Oh, and now you also won't have to worry about the search narrower for tickets! Hooray! User accounting? If by this you mean keeping track of everyone's tickets and ROBUX, then this is true. It would be more simple. However is it really a problem if there's an automated system -that you guys already programmed- that's doing all the work for you?
"We have many things in store for the majority of ROBLOX players who do not want to become involved with the ROBUX economy. In the catalog, we intend to provide more free items, so that avatar customization without ROBUX continues to be creative and rich. Today, we have introduced two free packages for your character. Going forward, we will feature the work of top creators in the community as we migrate to a fully community driven catalog." Sorry, but introducing new free hats isn't going to really satisfy the majority of people who aren't interested in the economy, simply because there are tons of small communities within ROBLOX whose main priority is not free clothing, and that includes: Sword Fighting, War groups, Trading (they like hats, but simply to profit), Currency traders, and probably many more communities that I'M not even aware of (Feel free to list one, to anyone reading this by the way). -Rebuttal: What does this have to do with tickets?
Not much to be honest, other than that the result of removing them will be this "solution" that you are presenting us with, along with your new weird animation update and stuff. -Community driven items will destroy the value of limiteds as mentioned above, thus destroying trading. -Community made animations will make it impossible to have a balanced fighting system, thus ruining fighting. Also, I hope you realize how much the fighting community goes out of their way to maintain balance and familiarity that your constant updates to the animations impede on. People have entirely recreated the old animations, the old sword behavior and everything, and they keep doing it every time the animations are tweaked. The amount of effort they put in to keep it alive is incredible. It has even gotten to the point where two sub communities have spawned, dubbed "Old ani" and "New ani". As a well noted SFer, I can confirm this. -Sub rebuttal: as in selling animations, we meant sell animations for other users to put in their games, not as a universal cosmetic such as hats. Alright, good. Now tell my why I'm wrong about everything else.
"There will no longer be any Ticket bonus for logging in daily. As our platform has matured, we believe the reason to come to ROBLOX should be the desire to experience incredible things with your friends. We do not want to incentivize people to 'check in' every day." That kind of sounds like you're openly admitting to being fine with giving users less reasons to come back. That's good for business. ROBLOXians can experience amazing things with their friends already. Removing tickets isn't a necessary step in achieving that. You already have. If it does anything, it makes ROBLOX LESS of an amazing experience for lots and lots of people who came here because it was so unique. I hope you are aware that somehow you managed to interest competitive players, devs, designers, builders, and economists all on one platform, and that it's pretty safe to say no other game has done that on the level that ROBLOX has. Do you really want all that to go away, because you found it necessary to implement these new updates? All you're going to have left are devs and casuals, basically (I'm not insulting those people).
"There is another benefit to removing tickets, and that is it removes the incentive to create alt accounts. We don’t believe it makes sense to provide a currency bonus to having multiple accounts, as this drives behavior that is not at the core of ROBLOX." Nice! The first time you finally said the a word! Just one thing, Why is creating more alt accounts a problem with money, when that money most likely will stay on that alt account and not benefit the main in any way? No one is going to invest the time to make an alt account, wait a day to buy the 20 tix t shirt because of price floors, then do it again just so the main can make money at an incredibly slow rate. Don't be ridiculous. Second of all, the main incentive behind alts, isn't money. It's so that users can have somewhere to go after they're banned. That's why they are called "alt(ernate)". -Rebuttal: We've reduced the price floors. Does this mean the tedious process has changed all that much? -Rebuttal: There's bots too. Which speeds up the process greatly. So can't you just make a simple bot blocker rather than REMOVING TICKETS? I don't know, how about you make some IP restricting system or something? After all, you made an IP banning system, which makes sure people from the same location can't make a new account to get on, So why can't you place a cap on the amount of accounts made on the same IP in a certain amount of time, or even better yet prevent them from buying goods made from someone on the same IP? That would essentially be the same program, with minor tweaks. Both involve preventing accounts being made from the same location. You could also just not give accounts money the first few days, or both.
"The impetus behind removing tickets is not to make more money. The primary reasons have always been product simplicity, botting, and not incentivizing certain behaviors." "always been" Oh, so you've thought about this for a while? Why didn't you ask about implementing the feature to the millions of users on beforehand instead of just dropping the bomb? It simply will inevitably be inferred by people that the reason you govern this way is because you are aware that your audience will not like it, but you don't care and want to implement it anyways. as for all of YOUR reasons for doing this - which are understandable(though your means of addressing them aren't)-, just scroll up.
"For those of you who are clothing developers, we believe that over time you will have a richer opportunity as we expand our catalog to a next generation avatar. We will be lowering the ROBUX price floor on shirts and pants to help increase the volume of sales of these items for our creators. We have a roadmap for the future of avatars on ROBLOX, and as these new features roll out, new opportunities for clothing designers will follow, making the catalog more robust and high quality." Maybe the new avatars might help them, but not anything else. Secondly, removing tix actually would hurt clothing developers. Consider the fact that most of their income comes from players who buy the clothes with TICKETS. Removing the ability to receive daily money would mean that all those people no longer really have any reliable source of income, (since you removed trade currency, too). What's reducing the price floor from 10 to 5 r$ going to do if it's now impossible to get anything as an NBCer anyways, unless you get lucky and make a successful game? Because of this, those clothing developers now lose their main group of consumers, and thus make significantly less money than they could be.
FAQ: For the FAQ I will keep the question, ROBLOX's answer, then my answer, which is free of all the sugarcoating ROBLOX has done, as well as give some insight as to what they had to say. Q: I used to spend most of my time on ROBLOX earning the login bonus, and then shopping for shirts and pants in the catalog for my avatar. What can I do now?
"More and more, the future of ROBLOX will be about experiencing things with your friends. Most of our work at ROBLOX is focused on making ROBLOX more immersive, and available on more platforms, and easier to play with friends. Removing tickets simplifies our efforts to expand in all directions. And it will simplify the introduction of our new articulated avatar. We plan to be free forever, so you will accrue these benefits as we expand to the living room and VR, and as we make our mobile experience increasingly more social and spontaneous." I'm not sure how removing tickets, a feature that ROBLOX already developed, helps them expand. That could mean a lot of things anyway. There is no correlation between Tickets and the introduction of the avatar whatsoever! They are two completely different things. I hope you are aware of the fact that what they're basically saying is that they found it necessary to remove the entire foundation for the economy in order to give you knees and elbows! So, get used to and enjoy the new knees and elbows that destroying the foundation of the economy brought you , as we expand to consoles and the rift. This will somehow all make it more social and spontaneous. Again, not true. They're driving away people. That doesn't make it more of a social place.
"For those of you specifically interested in character dress-up, more and more developer games are supporting this. Some of our games, like ROBLOX Top Model, have made clothing purchased in the catalog less important, because dress-up can happen in-game, with your friends." these aren't universal cosmetic changes. Maybe some people who accessorize don't want to be stuck inside ROBLOX's top model or other games like it?
Q: Will anything replace the login bonus? We want to continue to reward many of the other activities you do on ROBLOX. We are introducing three temporary achievements on ROBLOX. Check the blog tomorrow for details. We want to continue to celebrate your accomplishments – and you guys do so much more than just log in!
Basically there are some items that you can get for a limited time, maybe a hat or something, I don't know. No they don't care about rewarding you, they wouldn't make it harder to get rewarded if that were the case. So to continue they're celebrate your accomplishments, that most likely means featuring developers on the blog sometimes, put their games in their ads and on their streams, and trying to get themselves to think that this helps out everyone else, too, ultimately making it harder for you. But remember! Three free items! Keep your spirits up, kiddo.
Q: I have a business making clothing on ROBLOX. Will I make less money going forward? "We are reducing the price floor on shirts and pants from R$10 to R$5. We are reducing the price floor to ensure that creators have more freedom to sell items at lower prices, now that tickets will be removed. We will also be holding regular contests for clothing makers going forward. They will be creating the clothing for our new users and we’ll also be featuring their clothing in the catalog for all users.
Over time, our catalog will be largely stocked with community created items for all categories, including body parts, animations and gear. All items in the catalog will go through a selection process where we pick the best items for sale, along with the best items that are freely available for everyone. For those items that are freely distributed, there will be fantastic rewards to the catalog developers." Yeah, basically. Scroll up for more info about that. Now the only way to get hardly anything apparently, is if you make your item for free -which means even less money for you- all to get a mysterious fantastic reward that they don't specify.
Q: Tickets were a reward for developers who made great content. How can they be rewarded now?
"Developers can now monetize their game with developer products, gamepasses, and the affiliate program. ROBLOX developers can cash out their ROBUX for dollars which can be spent in the real world."
They basically just sell everything but in ROBUX: the thing that's now near impossible to receive. Want some ROBUX? make a game, which then enables people to buy your passes with the ROBUX that THEY don't have. Don't want to do this? Make clothes. Then people can buy your clothes with the money they DON'T HAVE. Or, you can buy it. Real money, please.
Q: Without tickets, how can developers to advertise their games? "In addition to user ads, ROBLOX has introduced Sponsored ads which allow developers to more effectively advertise their games. User ads will continue to be available in the future for ROBUX and we believe this will increase the quality of user ads on the site. Both forms of ads are profitable for users who are advertising virtual items and games that sell developer products. We will continue to work on both systems to provide you additional stats so that you know just how profitable running ads on ROBLOX." You can use the ROBUX that you don't have to advertise your stuff, which will increase the likelihood of users buying it with the ROBUX that they don't have. Want some ROBUX? Make a game or shirt, so that people can buy the products with the money that they don't have. Or pay. paying is good too.
Q: How can new Developers get started without Tickets? "ROBLOX is a place where many game developers get their start. We are committed to making sure new developers get their games discovered. To that end we have created a new email address – featuredgames@roblox.com – for you to submit your up and coming games to. These submissions will be reviewed by our marketing team and submissions that meet our editorial standards could end up in the featured games sort. We’ve also identified the top ways our developers are making money in their games and provided this information to you in the Developer section of the site. Soon we’ll release more templates for budding designers to use when creating clothes and items."
You can get your stuff featured! Uhh, maybe. Which then increases the likelihood that people will go to your game to buy the transactions with the money they don't have, or buy your clothes with the money they don't have!
Q: How will top ROBLOX developers be affected by this?
"ROBLOX developers will no longer receive Tickets on place visit. Currently, only a very small portion of our top developers’ income is from Tickets.
We are committed to helping our developers earn money.
We plan to expose additional stats on best-selling products so devs have better insight into what is performing well. We will continue to provide new stats for devs and new platforms and users to help devs earn more. We think that this change will increase sales by more than the income lost and will end up being a positive change for developers long term."
They won't. You will though.
Q: If it’s about simplifying the economy why aren’t we getting a small stipend of ROBUX for continued logins?
"This would make it even more attractive to create alts and bots."
Because we feel that you should make a game then maybe get featured, so we can feature it in our ads and streams, before you acquire virtual currency. I already explained the whole alt/bot thing too. Scroll up.
Q: If it’s about botting, why don’t you just implement ways to counteract that, like only awarding currency for spending at least x minutes in a game?
"In general, anything we reward with currency will ultimately be botted."
RIGHT?! scroll up for my thoughts on that.
Q: ROBLOX is greedy for taking away free currency. "Every dollar we make at ROBLOX gets poured back into the company. Unlike many other kid (and adult) virtual worlds, MMOs, and social networks, we are growing rapidly and have an enormous opportunity ahead of us.
Our vision is to Power the Imagination of our community, and to do it more immersively and more socially. Removing tickets is not about greed. It is about simplifying the platform, removing bots and alts, and paving the way for a ROBLOX that is bigger, more engaging, and more fun than ever before."
Sorry about them sort of dodging your question. You are right, considering what options you have left to make money. And just watch, They're going to screw themselves over because of it. Scroll up for my thoughts on simplifying the platform, and bots and alts. Apparently, removing tickets will also help them make a more engaging and bigger experience, somehow. SOMEHOW removing a key feature = more fun, more immersion, and a better experience. It's unrealistic to expect someone to believe that EVERY earned dollar goes into the company. I mean, however many Administrators there are have to be able to at least live, and they probably get some more on top of that, too(not saying this is bad).
Q: ROBLOX doesn’t care about base-level players, the majority of our Monthly Active Users.
"Every player who ever supports us through ROBUX or Builders Club was originally a base-level player. We understand this dearly. We understand that if we make ROBLOX less attractive for base-level players, over time we will have fewer monetizing players." Yeah. We know.
Q: Is ROBLOX in financial trouble? "We are profitable and will be hiring 40+ additional employees in 2016, 100% supported by our profits." Now that we admitted that there will be less monetizing players, and players who buy builders club or ROBUX, who knows?!
"I want to thank you for playing ROBLOX over these past (almost) 10 years." Thank you, but I'll be going now, and I'm sure a lot of other people will as well. I hope you are happy with what you have done.
Well guys, It doesn't end before April 1st. Heh-Heh? #MakeROBLOXGreatAgain
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