DevEx: The Problem

UPDATE 1: Since this has stirred some questions on Twitter I think it's time that I speak what i'm thinking since some people don't understand.
When I said, "do the math" I'm seeing users all over ROBLOX ignorant enough to change to OBC in what I find to be ROBLOX's greatest marketing ploy for my entertainment. These people don't have money, they aren't marketing games and to be honest, the only currency they get is their daily value of sixty-five ROBUX. They aren't going to achieve that minimal value that is required to get DevEx to affect them, and even if they got the one-hundred thousand ROBUX, they still would neglect to make any money should they had paid for OBC monthly, as they would make only one hundred dollars, and OBC/monthly for twelve months would be the equivalence to roughly two-hundred and forty dollars. So the moral of this story is, if you're genuinely wanting to make money on top of paying your OBC, I suggest LifeTime OBC and to make something that people will both love, and continue to invest in (aheheheh I could list a lot of people but lets just say; TheGamer101, TheAmazeMan, Merely, and of course, ROBLOX)
Hopefully that clears up some question.

-----

DevEx; a long awaited and much beloved idea presented by John Shedletsky in early 2013 on Twitter. The idea of course, being to give "good developers" a source of income to develop on the ROBLOX platform. I'll won't deny telling you that DevEx's hype was nothing more than a bunch of positive thoughts from people thinking it was going to be simple, and easy to make lots of money from ROBLOX. Except here's the catch.

It's not quite as good as it sounds.

DevEx is a great idea and the hype was well deserved until ROBLOX had brought the feature to a screeching halt with the statement that you must belong to OBC, a complete waste of money to even exchange for it; because if you did the math, one-hundred thousand ROBUX a year for some users can be great. But users buying OBC are spending twenty dollars a month. It's ROBLOX's genius way to take money from people that won't do the math in advance and find that if they only make one-hundred thousand a year, that the one-hundred will never balance the twenty dollars they pay monthly. So it's essentially the most genius marketing ploy I've seen from a children's game (despite the awful memberships and stupidity of the developers at Club Penguin; representing the second biggest joke in online gaming this year) that actually works. This is not only made for my own hilarity, it's made for ROBLOX's very own gain; and what's even better is that people that buy OBC just for this are never going to see a return, they'll only "feel" a return is made.

I took to the forums and asked some people some honest questions, and the smart minds of ATR spoke their own words. My question being why does the Developer Exchange only benefit users that make profit? Users that own huge clothing groups gain profit from the work of others. I won't list specifics or names because that wouldn't exactly be fair, but I think you get the point. There are people out there more talented than the people that make money. A good example would be Kestrel in this case. The operators will benefit more from this than the actual designers, won't they; and not just groups like Kestrel. Operators like Tiger and Kiwi will likely cash in just the same.

DevEx has the potential to be a great ROBLOX feature, but the issue with it is that it isn't open to talented individuals who are trying to build for their own audience. They're not being compensated for work that reveals the true spectrum of ROBLOX creativity, and once we reach a point where there is a way for the creative who aren't recognized to be compensated, we're going to see a completely different Developer Exchange, and some more extensive abilities for the unrecognized ROBLOX community to make real money from their ROBLOX work.

~ Darwin12

Price Floors: Combating Copying?

The latest update from the developers at Roblox is quite interesting. We've seen Roblox tinker with the economy before (Ie: Instituting game passes, allowing users to sell gear, trading currency/items etc.) That being said, ROBLOX has been very lenient in the past about what their users can and cannot do in terms of manipulating the economy. The latest update takes away some of that freedom by instituting a 'price floor' with the sales of clothing. This is an unwise update, as it will cause more harm than good. This update will promote pumping more Robux into the economy via users purchasing Robux, decrease visibility of clothing, and promote copying even further.

One of the principals of economics is inflation (Prices going up because there's more currency in the economy.) The clear and concise reason of Roblox implementing this update is because they want to increase revenue from users purchasing Robux. When a government (Take Roblox, for example) pumps currency into an economy, the value of that currency drops (This is known as inflation.) Inflation results in higher prices for goods, and the value of that currency dropping. This happened in Zimbabwe, when the government tried to pump money into the failing economy in an effort to fix it. The result was disastrous, the value of their currency dropped rapidly, and more money was pumped into the economy to try and fix it. This resulted in a viscous cycle, which is why Zimbabwe abandoned their national currency, and uses the currency from other countries. If the floor was set relative to the growth rate of Roblox, then there wouldn't be an issue.

One hundred billion dollars worth of Zimbabwe's currency is enough to buy three eggs.

The concept of how fast goods sell is based on something called price and demand (It's why the gas prices fluctuate randomly.) The higher the demand for an item, the higher the price. Less demand equals lower prices to try and drive demand. When gas isn't in demand, the price goes down. When gas is in demand, the price shoots up. Another factor (In my humble opinion) is visibility. If lots of people drive Ford's, the visibility of Ford's products increases, which results in more potential sales. If a lot of people are wearing a shirt in Roblox, they may say, "Hey, I like that shirt - I'm going to go in your inventory and buy it from whoever made it." With higher prices, it takes longer for users to purchase items, and users will likely hesitate and consider if the item is truly worth 25 days worth of login bonuses. This will decrease visibility for that item, and hinder sales overall (Which outweighs the benefits of increased profits.)

Copying is an issue that has plagued Roblox for a long time now (Copying of places, clothing, and models). The update is increasing the minimum that items have to be sold at - copiers that previously sold items cheap to make their items the obvious choice vs. the original creator selling it at a higher price have their potential revenue multiplied by a massive percentage. This will encourage copiers to steal clothing and sell at the new minimum, which increases their profits overall.

Some say that this update will bring higher quality items to the catalog, that it will discourage copying, or it will increase revenue.

@Rbx_tt911 Catalog assets will be of higher quality (possibly, it could go either way)
— zerois (@ZeroisRBLX) September 24, 2013

I agree there, people will obviously be more conscious with their money. However, I believe those higher quality items are going to be copied and sold at the minimum price.

@Rbx_tt911 no point in copying clothes anymore unless the original creator doesn't have BC
— Lilly (@lillyrblx) September 24, 2013

I disagree there, I believe copying will be increased due to the higher quality clothing being appealing to players (And the new price minimum being raised up.)

@Rbx_tt911 because it lets less people buy your assets in trade for a smaller revenue
— Cody Buchanan (@MetaSlunk) September 24, 2013

I partially agree, I think that the concept of supply and demand is going to come into play and reduce sales to the point of where creators are making less money vs. what they were previously making.

Roblox has an interesting idea about setting price floors to assist with the economy. However, there are far too many things that have to be set in place/corrected before price flooring can be implemented. It has potential, but for now, it's a bad idea that needs to be removed from the site until the other supporting factors are put into place.

The "Price Floor" Update: An Economist's Point of View

Hey, IBarrageI here.

With this new Price Floor update on Roblox, it's forced me to actually use my A-Level in economics to good use. Of course that's not a bad thing. (I think)

In this post I'll be looking at the benefits and drawbacks to this update, in a detailed and economic way. This means I'll be using a lot of words and confusing diagrams (All of which I'll be explaining as we go along). Sit sit back relax, and let me do all of the work.

First off, I'll say this right now. This is not all bad, despite the negative comments. The point of a price floor (Which is more commonly known as a minimum price) is to stop the demand of, lets say a high quality shirt, going down without as many competitors trying to under cut prices. Because, as a consumer, you are more attracted to lower prices it even doesn't matter if you're rich or not, because lower prices in a common consumer market, lower prices get more sales.

With low prices leading to more sales, this means that players who price their clothing according to quality, lose sales due to an amazingly high amount of cheaper competitors. The price floor acts as an equalizer.

The adding of a "Price floor" is actually something that is used in real life as a form of government intervention, an in our case, the government is ROBLOX.

Benefits

Despite the complaints, there are many benefits to this. But many of which are limited.

The Builders Club Incentive

Ok, this update is an incentive to purchase Builders Club. That fact is proven in the blog post about this update.
Although this might seem like a drawback at first, once I explain.

It may sound like an scheme set up by an evil corporation, but it is essentially a way to push users to experience the benefits of Builders Club. And believe me, there are plenty of benefits. This fact alone is one whole benefit.

The Leap into Graphic Design

Once again, this is a benefit about incentives. The increase of prices makes users want to make their own clothing. And for this, I shall explain with the power of diagrams.

The above diagram is one that shows how the market works under the price floor.

At the top of the diagram shows a gap, this is "excess demand", which essentially means, that there are people who want the clothing, but can't afford it or just don't want to purchase it for that price.

This excess demand is what makes people try to fill their own demand, this means more graphic designers.

This incentive to create is what will make players understand the true sense of inepenance. The added idea that there is no-one to undercut their prices is an added incentive to create their own content. Though, this of which requires builders club. Which will move me onto the drawbacks.

Drawbacks

There are quite a lot of drawbacks to this update many of which are already apparent.

Needing Builders club

Before, I mentioned that the incentive to buy builders club was a benefit. This time it's a drawback.

As everyone knows, Roblox is a free to play game (to an extent), and character customization is something any user can do. I'm sure many of you remember the first time you bought your first shirt. And probably buying a Visor or the free Red Roblox Cap, and getting a shirt to match. With this update, new users will be unable to experience much of the character customization due to the prices of everything being out of their reach. A big downer indeed.

Sales dropping

This one is annoying to the ones who actually make a large amount of R$ and Tix from clothing, e.g. Kestral

Here's the diagram from earlier:

"Q1" represents the market average sales. With the price floor in place, quantity sold decreases to Q2. This decrease is what causes the problems. It's alright selling at this price, but if your main market is aimed at new players, then sales will be completely diminished.

Meaning an income for a player who markets like this, has completely dried up.

Entrepreneur? What's that?

This is a big problem for me to a sense.

A long while ago, Roblox posted this to their blog. Although that post was directed at place building, it was the same for clothing. "If people like it, they'll come back for more".

The entrepreneurial side of clothing was about thinking "What price will get me the most profit?", "How could I increase my prices without losing sales?", "How could I be the next big clothing brand?". These are all questions that players are faced with when selling their clothing. This was what the post was making reference to.

Though, with the price floor, the entrepreneurial side of clothing has now diminished and has been dumbed down. As now it feels like now all clothing is now at a completely set price. No need to do anything, just put it up for sale, leave it and hope for the best. This is what upsets me the most.

All of these drawback do appear to outweigh the benefits in the fact that  it all goes against the idea of ROBLOX being a free game.

The price floor itself is rather redundant in the fact the intervention it is supposed to do, has turned itself into a marketing tool for Roblox.

Although the price floor is a good idea, a lower value should of been chosen 5 - 10 R$ would of been more reasonable, but the sheer fact that one builder club member can't even afford 1 piece of clothing with only their daily R$ seems too outrageous.

Thanks for reading.

IBarrageI

ROBLOX Changes: Minimum Prices

Hello, I have written this because there have been numerous complaints, forums and comments on the clothing itself about the new 'Minimum Prices' on clothing. I support getting rid of this new update and will be talking about it here.

NBC's Problem:

People with no Builders Club could only narrowly afford to buy some people's ridiculous prices as it was, the new changes make that even more ridiculous. 10 Robux is roughly 110 tix  which means 11 days worth of saving, if the t-shirt is Robux only. If the t-shirt is tix only then you have to save 12 days worth. If the t-shirt is both, you have to decide if you will use tix (which you get every day) or Robux (which sometimes costs more tix sometimes less - 100 tix can be 10 Robux but so can 110 tix). Plus shirts are 25 robux (270 tix) or 300 tix and ditto with Pants. That's between 27 days and 30 days saving for a Shirt and then another 27/30 days for Pants.

Uniform Problem:

Same as the above problem except if you don't buy the uniform you may end up being exiled, especially when there is suddenly a new uniform. To make matters worse, for most groups you must buy a Shirt and Pants for 300 tix each Not much else to say in this point of view except that you always see those few in group training's, they look new so could barely afford clothing anyway but they always say this when asked why they aren't wearing the uniform = "I can't buy the uniform, it's too much". To this, most High Ranks in groups go on to say, "Buy it for tomorrow", most likely if they don't have enough today they won't have enough tomorrow because of the increased prices.

Reasoning behind it:

Quote from their blog post on it all, 'Talented artists aren't making a ton of clothing because they can’t make money doing it.' 
If people want to make money they will sell their clothing at the price they choose, many people sell clothing for cheap for the buys not for the money, anyway. They say they have 3 main reasons behind it all, I will go through them all.
1. Raise the quality of items in the catalog.
Insane. People who can make good clothing, do because they like making clothing and normally they sell the clothing anyway, it won't raise the standards because if people make bad quality items it's not because they don't want to waste their time for no money but because that's the highest quality they can make clothing. Kestrel and Tiger prove this, expensive items but for great quality, people with bad quality items sell stuff for reasonable prices usually and if they don't then people don't buy their clothing.
2. Reward makers and sellers of clothing.
It doesn't reward them in the slightest, they have control over what prices they put the clothing, if it is good quality people buy it whatever the price (Unless it is insanely stupid). NBCs make good clothing too, but now not only can they not sell anything but they can't buy anything too.
3. To incentivize non-paying users to buy ROBUX.
Greedy, I want to work for Roblox when I get older, but not for the money but because they are all kind and they have good working days. If they want people to buy BC they make good reasons, all this will do is make people angry at Roblox and make them choose against BC and choose to Protest and hold Petitions.

Things to do:

• You can read the Preview of this for a start, and later the actual article.
• You can go here: Tiger and Kestrel Appealing against the update
• And here: [Petition] Put clothing back to 5 tix minimum
• You can join this group Robloxians Against Price Floor
• This is how bad it's got: NBCers may as well quit now

I agree, it is extremely bad, but some of the complaints are getting offensive - so please tone down those. Every 5 people wanting it, it seems there are roughly 1000 hating it. Not exaggerating, just look on the forums.

If they want to do a major change, it should be how much tix NBCs get a day, or if they should get 160 per week (Example). Just not this. This means the end of most businesses whether they may groups or people.

This isn't in my opinion, it's everybody's.

-Bennyhill44

Kestrel: What You See and What you Don't.

To all readers: prior to reading this, there is a clear position of bias in this article from a variety of standpoints that include working at Kestrel for three weeks, working with the high ranks, and also seeing the functionality of ROBLOX's "most beloved" company. What you read is simply an opinion from all my points in Kestrel and this all should be taken literally.

Kestrel. ROBLOX's biggest company. You may describe it as overpriced, unreasonable; or you may be rational enough (or maybe just a BCer who has money to spend) to say it's genius, quality, and great.

In reality; Kestrel is the center point of ROBLOX's (so-called) "Clothing Industry" that owners of such groups like Kestrel, Tiger as well as other minor companies like Kiwi paint themselves as members of.

I'm going to start by stating a thing as I already did; I had the privilege of working at Kestrel for two weeks. The new owner, ojo1234 was a friend of mine, you see. The company idea is great. What is 'essential' to ROBLOX is a spirit of individuality and there would be one if anyone could make their own clothes. The only issue with Kestrel is that everyone loves it and they buy the same clothes as you do. People entering "ROBLOX government places" will find that Kestrel is a common theme there. Kestrel suits, Kestrel tees, and so much more.

When you look at Kestrel, you should see some state of originality and creativity. A sort of expression that is unprecedented by other clothing companies. The feeling you get when you step into a Kestrel store is different than stepping into a store owned by Kiwi, Tiger or Crown. It's a feeling almost hardly tangible, but is a moment you remember. It's the feeling of experience. When you enter any Kestrel store in the ROBLOX Universe, it's too easy to say the feeling of experience is present.

Kestrel is what I see as a literal market leader. It's basically the Abercrombie & Fitch of ROBLOX; the only difference is that it's virtual clothes instead of real clothes. 

Hardly a lie, as Kestrel's previous owner, FighterAce had served the demand of thousands of roaring fans for a great majority of it's history. Making hundreds of thousands of ROBUX. Many people have the audacity to charge Kestrel with the idea that it is "too expensive" or "really bad" for the simple fact that suits (and their clothes in general) at Kestrel cost completely reasonable prices (a virtual suit for the price of about 15 cents if you converted ROBUX... expensive? ha.) 

To many people; Kestrel is a (so-called) waste of money.

Despite my differences and interests with the company; I still see reason, genius and great work. Calling Kestrel unoriginal? Look at a variety of clothes presented by the ROBLOX market (not going to list specifics) and think again. 

So when I say I'm nothing more than a consumer of Kestrel's products; I'm implying that I am a supporter of originality, growth, and great work for a great price.

Check out Kestrel!

- Darwin12

Are Tickets Slowly Becoming Useless?

          

          Hello! Chubbs21 here with another Catalog post! Recently, many hats have gone off-sale, including some ticket hats. Also to add, the production of Tix hats has stopped, besides the 1-Tix-promotional hats. 

          ROBLOX used to have a thing back in the day called "Ticket Tuesday" (You may have read about it if you look back in the ROBLOX Blog). Every Tuesday the hats that were released were tickets only. This was shortly stopped, for no clear reason. There are, as of the creation of this post, 63 pages in the catalog of robux-only hats, compared to a tiny 3 pages of ticket hats.

          The ticket hats that recently went off-sale, according to trusty sources, include:
- Snakes on a ROBLOXian
- Olukia Seer
- Spaceface
- Zombie Tie
- Webbed Witch
- Living Lantern
As for robux hats offsale, the list is pretty long. 

          But why are tickets rarely used compared to robux? That can only be answered with logic, ROBLOX needs money to run all their equipment! (Stop calling them greedy, equipment is expensive!) But is it necessary to completely destroy the purpose of tickets?
If you think of all the features where tickets are used and robux aren't, the only place I can think of is the Ad system. Otherwise, robux is a second option.

          Is this a smart move? Should ROBLOX even give us daily tix? Should tix even be a thing anymore? Post your opinions below!

~chubbs21

Kestrel - high quality clothes or overpriced shoddy clothes for the pretentious?

Taken at the Trade Hangout by Merely.

Kestrel a fairly old clothing group which currently has the owner Ojo1234, has recently gained quite a lot of fame with the construction of it's new stores which are set in famous place such as Paris, Venice, Dublin, Washington and many other famous cities. With all of it's success like most things it always has his controversial problems such as the high prices of Kestrel's clothing. Suits can be up to 18 Robux as shown below.

Many complain the clothing it to simple for such high prices however many do disagree, Kestrel seems to be everywhere now. From your friends wearing it, to ads everywhere, to stores even being in some of your favorite social places. As their slogan is 'Clothing at its best', but would everyone agree?

~EZroboxpolice.

Discussion Article: Texture Copying

The Probably Most Extensive and Ranting Article You Will Ever Read

Sorry to start off my career with a worthless article, but let’s begin with a quote:

“Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.” 

You need to hear this article, no matter how boring it is. It is a growing problem in ROBLOXia.

First, take a look at this suit.

A great suit, right? It took me hours to make, painstakingly on paint.net.  But quote V, and “With so Much Chaos, someone will do something will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty.”

Now look at this suit.

I know what you’re thinking, V. “Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history’s fingers, down it goes.”

You are right.

I was outraged by this. I found it by taking a look at all my sales (I make many clothes, and when I’m sad I look at all the tickets I make) and clicking on a fashionable player who was wearing this suit. I peeked in his inventory for other RayMan36 statements, and out pooped that ‘thing.’ But being me, I decided to write. I wrote a letter much more formal than this, but what came back was no better than the item that I had a deal with in the first case. I’ll quote from ‘David’:

“The 'Report Abuse' buttons are the best way to let us know about rule-breakers and bad content. They send Reports directly to our moderators and provide a way for us to keep track of repeat offenders so that further steps can be taken against their account.”

Duh. I already did that, although this character probably lived by the Faust quote: "I am the spirit that denies! And rightly so, because everything that arises is worth it perishes. "

He had disabled comments on his shirt, template, and did not let me send him a message. A coward. He knew he was copying, and paid no heed to it. But “Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”  This is a snowball effect. He is going to get the attention he deserves, or does not deserve. “Is it meaningless to apologize? 

Never.” 

I do have a slight solution to the problem. We could right click disable (like on RN), causing copying the image to be almost fruitless, unless someone screenshots the texture, but that would be really grainy.

The copier is not banned at the moment, but I do hope this article makes a dent in the arising issue. I realize that almost all of you readers have been stolen from sometime on ROBLOX and thank you for your time. “While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.” 


UPDATE: I believe that the copier ran out of BC, so the shirt is not on sale anymore.

England Prevails.

IBarrageI's Picks: BLOXcon Posters

Heyo, IBarrageI here.

As many of you may know, my passion in life is graphic design. So of course I jumped with joy at the announcment of the BloxCon Poster Contest. It's not always that Roblox do Graphic design contests, but the total of these contests this year has now totaled 2 with the Splash Screen contest being the other one.

(Ok. I don't like to preach, but here it my entry if you wish to check it out.)

Now, onto why I'm here

Below are some of my favourite entries into this contest with reasons why I like them. :)

First off, we have this entry from hammer142. He has entered his in for the London category.

I believe this is one of the most stand out competitors in this category as the overall feel of it is just so... What's the word? Strong? Yeah, strong. The reason for this is that it shows many aspects of the British icons, such as the red arrows, Big Ben, and of course, the bowler hats.

Next we have this Chicago entry from wall142.

Now let me stop you here. This design is so simple, that "apple took a patent out on it before it came out". Get it? Because they copyright everything that's simple?.. Ah forget it. 

This entry is so simple and elegant, that it just screams out "come to me" because it is so refreshing to see such professionalism in one image. *cough* ahem yeah I need to calm down now. Good work wall142. 

Next we have this NYC entry from IIFlipII

Thought wall142's entry was simple? Well check out this one. This style of graphics is what is known as "flat graphics". Whereby a design is limited to just simple logos, block colour and text with as little complexity within it as possible. This one is eye-catching aswell as professional. Definitely one of the front runner in this contest.

Next up we have this NYC entry from godsend

This entry has a lot going on, and it is sure to make people feel proud to be going to NYC to see the sights and scenes you will see in New York, such as the Statue of Liberty, The Shuttles, and many aviation machines.

Nice work godsend

Next we have this beautifully simple entry by TREVOR818730

Using the iconic ROBLOX avatar holding a torch, this gives a soft sense of adventure.

The skyline has also got shadows on it, obviously to pay homage to the newest release of dynamic lighting.

Once again, I feel that the simplest of entries are getting the most attention, and this one isn't different.

Here we have freaked's entry

Wow.

The detail and simplicity of this speaks for itself.

Please, if I die now while looking at this, I'll die happy. As this is just the height of design.

Please, just keep doing what you're doing freaked.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

After writing this post, it's put me in the mood of reviewing people's posters.

Be sure to send me your posters to me on twitter (@WayAboveSociety) to recieve a nice little critique on it. :)

Until next time. Goodbye my friends, goodbyyyyyyyye.

Dead Zone and Apocalypse Rising: The Terrain Dilema

Don't get me wrong, Dead Zone and Apocalypse Rising are both great zombie survival games. The guns (especially ones on Dead Zone) feel really nice, the loot is interesting and refreshing, the tension from the atmosphere makes me jump when I see another player, but one thing is lackluster in both games. The map.

Now, the reason I wanted to write this article is due to Apocalypse Rising's announcement that a new map is coming so I wanted to make some issues apparent. So let's start with Apocalypse Rising's map, which I consider to be the worse of the two. If you load up the game right now and play for just a short, 15-minute session, you will notice two distinct "biomes," if you will: the cities, and the "there's nothing here worth your time" zones. Also, there's nothing really unique about any section of the map, no weather changes, no elevation changes, no style changes, nothing. The cities are all monotone too, no significant landmarks to tell you which city you are in and very little difference in density and height of buildings.

SO FLAT! Small hills help, but aren't enough

Next, let's look at Dead Zone's current map, I say "current" because there was a much better map before ZackZak decided to change it back for whatever reason, which was also the map I did the review on. This might seem odd at first, but the current map is better than Apocalypse Rising's map because it slightly restricts the player's movements through the use of impassable mountains. These days, people are looking for a lot of freedom in games, but a little bit of restriction helps create a more natural environment (you can't go everywhere in the real world, can you?).

Old image of Dead Zone I had left form the review. Note the hills and mountain range, so much  better!

There is one super duper important feature which is lacking in both maps, that is elevation and terrain differences. I saw Gusmanak posted on twitter an image of a radio tower along with a message which implies that the elevation problems will be solved, however, it won't be unless large amounts terrain gets elevation differences. Not to say adding a radio tower or a small hill is a bad thing or it's not an improvement, but it's just not enough to fully immerse a player.

To be honest, I'm not too impressed with the alpha version of the new map Gusmanak posted on his twitter. Sure it has some nice hills, sure it has a larger city, but the terrain still screams "BORING!" A mountain range right smack in the middle of the map which separates two sides of the map, or a canyon which houses a top secret military outpost could provide so much in terms of gameplay.

Alpha version of new map, note the flatness

(As a side note, since it strays from the point I'm trying to make, the number of small towns is way too high. They seem like fillers and can be replaced with terrain features. No one loots there past the first 5 minutes anyways.)

On top of this, the map still provides no flow. There are way too many roads and not enough restrictions which will force players to encounter each other more often in the wild. Reducing the number of roads and increasing the number of terrain features which block certain paths to cities will create way better flow. Being able to walk in a straight line to any city is boring and requires a larger map to elongate the travel time. But impassable terrain like a canyon or a wall (perhaps for quarantine reasons) will make the travel time longer and make the map feel larger than it really is. Non-flat terrain serves to accomplish 5 major things:

1. It improves uniqueness of a particular region, you will no longer have to guess which part of the map you spawn on. When you see a canyon or a mountain in the distance, you will immediately know where you are and what routes to take to get geared up.
2. It gives more "flow" to the map. Obviously, you can't fly over a chasm, so smart placement of different terrain elements can force chokepoints and dangerous areas to occur naturally.
3. It gives more options to the player in terms of PVP options. Currently, when you see a player in the open you want to kill, you both will engage in what I like to call "the dance of the derps" in which both of you fire rounds at each other, jump around, and pray to god they hit. With terrain features, you could, hide on a mountain and setup an ambush, snipe noobs in a city from a mountain, or shoot down at people in a canyon camping for loot.
4. It allows the fog to be pulled back. No one likes fog. For fog to be in the game to purposefully prevent you from seeing all the way to the other side of the map is really annoying. Terrain features will limit your vision naturally, not artificially. Fog still has to be there, it just won't be so "in your face."
5. Make the map feel larger than it is by making the player work around the terrain in order to get to their destination, thus, increasing travel time.

I really want the maps to provide more than just locations for spawning loot. I want to be able to use the terrain for more than just running in straight lines. Also, just bring the old map back ZackZak, it is much better.

TL;DR Mountains, canyons, and other terrain features will make maps of Apocalypse Rising and Dead Zone much more interesting. No one likes flat things.

On iOS, ROBLOX opens all games to those without membership

You've been living under a rock for the past month, Roblox has recently released its mobile version onto the iOS platform and you can get your hands on it if you have a iPad 2+, iPhone 4+, or a iPod Touch 5th generation. You can download it for free by searching the word "Roblox" in the App Store.

The app allows you to join games which are normally only accessible on a PC and play with your friends. However, since it is on a mobile device, it has some limitations as far as performance and the complexity of games go. Shedletsky recently posted on IronNoob about this and said that the mobile version can handle up to "15k non-moving blocks and  200 moving blocks, otherwise performance will suffer."

All this sounded good until the release day came. Roblox announced that NBC members will only be able to play 8 selected games. This surprised me very much as they have never attempted to limit the games users would be able to play (except Builder's Club only places, which were a failed experiment) and them doing it on the iOS just seemed to be really out of the ordinary.

Good new came in today though, as Roblox just made a blog post announcing their decision to allow everyone to play every game. I'm actually really surprised by this considering their past actions regarding "BC test features" *cough* packages *cough* which still have not been released to the general public even though they have clearly been out of testing.

For me, this is less of an issue about being to play games on the go, but more about Roblox's bettering of their business practices. If you remember from some time ago, a user accessing the "Upgrade" tab of the Roblox site would have the cheapest option of Builder's Club hidden. And they would have to press a tiny button to reveal it. This really showed their greed as they hid the cheapest membership option, driving the less knowledgeable folks towards more expensive options they perhaps do not need. This was thankfully reverted.

They proved with this update that they are still a reputable company who actually keeps their consumers in mind, even if it is just once in a while. I applaud them for this and hope they continue to prosper.

-yomamadude6

What has Roblox done right, what has it done wrong.

Let's all be honest here, we all love Roblox dearly (or at least I'm inferring that from your reading of this Roblox fan-blog), however, we all know things that Roblox has done wrong or has yet to accomplish. You might not see some of the things I see in this article, and I might not notice the ones you do, so please leave a comment if you want to make me aware of something I didn't talk about.

Of course, before we talk about the goods and bads of Roblox, I have to mention that this is my personal opinion and that you do not have to agree on it (I hope you don't take my word 100%, I don't want to brain wash you). Also, I'll be talking about the pros and cons from a semi-experienced Roblox player's point of view, so you won't see things such as "this game has lots of lag."

It is courtesy to take a look at the good side before I dive into the criticisms. So let's get started!

As you all know, Roblox is a place for kids and teenagers to both have fun and express their creativity, programming skills, design skills, and economic skills. And Roblox nails these quite well, on a basic level at least.

With regards to creativity, there seem to be two types that exist in the game. One which is outside the game, like customizing your character, and one in game, for example, building a dream house. While in-game creativity can be expressed well because Roblox does not have too much competition (Minecraft does not allow scripting), the out of game one is not done well.


Character creation and customization alone is not enough to satisfy my personal hunger for expression. Let's compare this to a similar game (on the "out of game" side at least) Neopets. 

Many of you might have heard or even played this virtual pets game. Although it is aimed at young kids with its adorable art style and cutesy flash games, there is a large adult community present (I would estimate 8-12% of the population is ages 25+). 

The reasons for this could be many things, however, I am here to examine what this game has done right that Roblox has not done. For one, Neopets actually supports communities outside of the actual game; meaning that fanblogs (like this one), forums, and many user designed things actually get frequent spotlights to bring more attention to them. Roblox's not supporting of user-generated content outside of the official game means people are more likely to quit the game, as they have no strong community to fall back on (I don't consider groups strong communities).

Character customization is equally strong in both games, just with different styles. This is one part Roblox has done right: regularly releasing hats. 

The next part I feel Neopets has done that would make Roblox a better game is the economy. For one, Neopets has a stock market, but I don't feel it would be a great addition to Roblox anyway because of the randomness and easy profits (inflating the economy). 

Preview of crafting from
Roblox's blog.

But one things that does need to be in Roblox is the addition of "tradeable" consumable items that can be redeemed for "non-tradeable" hats/gears. This would add tons of dynamic economical shifts to Roblox (something it lacks dearly) and make playing with the economy more interesting and ultimately more profitable. 

The above could be solved with the introduction of crafting though. Soon™

Last thing that Neopets does is having a great deal of community interaction/involvement. It frequently hosts art spotlights, HTML spotlights, etc. while Roblox has NONE of these. The lack of these does nothing good to hold the community together, instead, it makes the community feel non-existent, void, empty.

Overall, I think Roblox is a really strong game that benefits from its unique game engine. However, it really needs more features added  to improve the community around it as well as the economy that drives it.

-yomamadude6

edit: Spelling

P.S. More place reviews will be coming ;)

Shady Business Hat Critique

Hmmm. Well isn't this something? From a glance, it's just like any other fedora. Same sort of style. But people don't look further into it. It's style resembles a type of hat that is highly looked at as a famous hat. Yes, I am talking about the classic fedora and the Sparkle Time Fedoras. The actual design and the name of it suggests that this is worn by "Shady Businessmen" AKA The Mafia (And they sure have done well  in capturing that theme). It is also very realistic, and can appeal to many players, not just because it's a fedora, but that it's a good alternative to lashing out 1000's of R$ on a classic fedora (Not saying that they will not want the classic though).

As I said earlier on, it looks as if this was meant to represent 2 other hats. and this is the picture showing us the comparison:

First off. There is a likeness to the other hats, though not exact. First of all, it's the same sort of style, it's slightly flat, just like the classics. Though if there is one thing that doesn't match it, it the size. It's been made fairly smaller.

The positioning is also very similar to the classics. As seen on this character.

It's almost as if it was to almost represent the classics.

Just like below. But there are obvious differences.

The brim on the classic is lower and wider. but that's pretty much the only obvious differences. (Thanks to shadow888888880 for the character)

This hat is priced at 1000 R$. A very decent price considering what is looks like. It's a price worth paying for it. (And I should know, I bought it myself). But don't take my word for it.

Comments from ROBLOX:

Posted 1 hour ago by jumbochris1995
Oh man, I want this.

Posted 1 hour ago by tomcis147
holy cow

Posted 2 hours ago by rikublade4817
At least its a decent hat we hadnt seen a decent hat in a while

LordL3git: I really want it but I spent all of mah moneh because im so dumb I have a feeling once it is limited it will go big.

IBLackoutzz: I love it. I bought it.

Though, many people are opposed to this fedora, due to the fact it's said to be designed for the 3.0 bodies. But frankly in my opinion, it suits 1.0, 2.0 AND 3.0 So I don't know what they are complaining about..

The hat is also timed and goes offsale in 2 days, and it already has over 900 sales. (A popular hat indeed)

tl;dr A good hat that looks like a classic, worth buying.

Thank you for reading, Also, suggest other hats I could critique.