I’ve played since very early 2019, and I’ve built about 15,000,000 in worth in that time. I’ve sank hours into roleplays and outfits and builds and I’ve been here for almost every major season. I’ve definitely seen the game have “phases” in this time and how those have impacted how the devs handle the game today. This is a really long post but I just wanted it out there, I like discussing these things with people!

Update schedule (or lack of it)

I think honestly the game boomed the most in 2020. Lockdown meant a bunch of people who (were supposed to be doing online school, most likely) had plenty of time to play the game. Sunset island at this time was booming and trading was out. The spring-summer update in 2020 added a vast amount of new items and admittedly set standards extremely high. At this point we had sets pretty much every season, new hairs almost every month. The developers had clearly set this as their standard and wanted to keep to it.

I think this actually was part of the downfall, after 2020 when lockdown eased a lot of the team couldn’t keep the same momentum and updates slowed. Events came late if they even came at all and the semblance of a schedule vanished. I think this may have lead to some cracks forming in the community, because previously everyone would come together to talk about new content, but with less of it, less buzz was generated and a lot of players got bored and just never came back.

Now, we don’t get any communication. Every four months or so we get a few hairs, a few toy items locked behind a paywall (and I’m not biased because I have most codes redeemed. I just get angry for those who don’t have access to them!) and a chest if we’re lucky. That’s it. Bugs don’t seem to get fixed even if they have seen complaints, such as the code rotting in campus 2 and outfits not loading, and I theorise it’s because Barbie doesn’t want to release smaller updates to address this. Because each update for a time was bigger than the last, she now fears going back to smaller updates that don’t have a new set or realm or item.

Broken promises and neglected features

When campus 3 first came out, the hype was understandably huge. This had been drip marketed to us for ages! The developers promised more drops of content and “waves” of additions to the campus. These never came. I noticed a lot of players falling off as we waited months and months with no communication. After the soft confirmation of campus 3 being dropped, campus 4.1 (beta) came out. I noticed the reception was generally very positive, but sadly this campus didn’t last long. Months later this too was axed for campus 4.2. I noticed a lot less people seemed to like this one at first? The cafeteria was cute but overall I saw a lot of complaints about the structure and lag. This campus too was axed, and now we have 4.3. No other campuses have been updated since then, which means campus 1, 2, 3, 4.1 and 4.2 are all dead. Barbie seems to be incredibly indecisive about what she adds to the game, and while I don’t think this is a bad trait, it’s a bad trait for someone who develops a game to have. Players got tired of all the mind changing and more dropped off because of it.

Barbie also dropped a lot of other features over time, we no longer got seasonal sets, toy items dropped to a crawling pace once released, the mermaid shop items and tails don’t fit correctly with a lot of items, the lore they started hasn’t seen additions in years, and so on. And we rarely if ever see a fix for these complaints.

Greed

I feel like this is the one a lot of players are waiting for. The developers have definitely gotten worse.

Having initially promised to never release sets for Robux, it’s clear they had their sights set at money, as they soon went back on this sentiment in a really deceptive way, toys. But there was signs before this too.

The sets over the years became more expensive, and diamond earning methods didn’t scale this increase. It was evident Barbie was trying to coerce players into spending either hours of time or money on her game at this point. Outfit making essentials such as heels started costing an outrageous amount of diamonds, some of which amounted to about eight hours of straight playtime for an average player who had multipliers. Even more without. Quality of life features such as hair colours, patterns and the now semi redundant customised C2 lockers got locked behind a Robux wall.

I am deliberately not counting the GoT set here. The proceeds were proven to, to some degree, be going to charity. Some speculation claims the devs took huge cuts but I’m simply not qualified enough to talk on that, nor do I think it was horrendously greedy. It was an optional set for a good cause which was not essential to own for a good gaming experience.

Then came the toys. They aren’t for Robux sure, but they still cost real money. About half the items now released are locked behind not only a paywall, but a paywall many people cannot even access due to stocking issues! The only method of obtaining these things in game is a very tiny chance from a mermaid bubble, and they’re expensive when you do get them. As someone who has most of the toys, the quality is nice and the items are cute, but I’m getting tired of almost every nice item in the game being a toy. The only ballgown that isn’t a toggle of a smaller skirt just made big since miss lady rose is a toy. All the elemental fairy dresses are toys. The only animal feet sans the hooves are toys. It’s a bit much when a toy item is the only item in a set niche. And even though a lot of the items are toys, the toys drop extremely slow and randomly. This causes a panic buying effect on people when a toy does drop, and also incentivises buying all the toys before they have items.

The positives

I don’t like ending things on a bad note, so I do want to list some positive changes I’ve noticed too!

First of all, the sets are more versatile. Skirts now often have long and short toggles, you can add and remove features including fur and snowflakes that mean they’re now year round items, and most sets and items often feel like you’re actually getting more than one item due to how variable the toggles are!

Second of all when events do release, they are really cool. Halloween in specifics is extremely fun, tons of players band together to grind candy and explore the chests! I don’t think they’ve lost their charm even after all these years.

Third, I think the updates we do get are very well done. I am not talking about old bugs not being patched, and not saying the updates themselves are good or exactly what we want, but when we get new features, it’s very rare that they have any bugs, let alone game breaking ones. New items almost always fit, new realms normally always have correct physics, and new items are usually very pretty!

Fourth, I think the devs are trying to grab the reins on this game again. They know where they’ve made mistakes and are clearly not repeating them. The addition of mermaids and the mermaid shop, new roleplay features and realms, and the lean back into “fantasy” sets clearly shows that they’re trying to steer back into their roots a little. I’m hoping in the future they integrate the uniqueness of the elements and magical creatures more!

Fifth bullet points that don’t really warrant a whole paragraph:

The detail in some of the features is insane! Each cafeteria item has a description and isn’t just a reskin, furniture has so many poses to interact with and so many items have secret interactions!

The devs are really good at storytelling through sets and items, such as the descriptions on a lot of the winter calendar items

The devs are really good at adding small touches to updates. Instead of making just the mermaid shop they gave us little fishies to unlock too!

And finally I think the community that is left has held steadfast. Aside from the odd toxic players, you’re all really nice. Compare this fandom to almost any other Roblox game and this one comes out on top for how kind and gentle they are. Yes there’s arguments and whatnot but I think that’s natural. The amount of cool outfit hack posts and community projects I see never fails to amaze me.

So I used to play this game like years ago. I don’t remember when but at least before 2019. Back then there was this little smile meter at the top with percentages, the face would change depending on the percentage. No idea where that went I kinda miss it.

I remember it was also a LOT harder to get characters, albeit that part may have been because I was younger at the time and didn’t have as much of an attention span. I feel like I own double the characters in half the time than I used to. And this might be me being silly but I could swear this game used to have some voice acted segments? Now there’s just nothing.

I almost didn’t get back into the game because I just remember it being a slog where you couldn’t get any characters or shops. It used to be a month or so of playing to get just 3-4 toy story characters because nothing ever dropped for me. And I got up to Hamm in like an hour last night!

None of this is complaints btw, other than one of my favourite character Alice being locked behind expensive gambling ( :/ ) I’m enjoying the game. I just feel like they’ve changed it completely from when I last played and was wondering if anyone else remembers or can shed light on why I remember it so differently.

Forgive me if this has been asked before. I just find it weird that some new dolls (Demi, S2 lockers, so on) have badges but some don’t. I bought the dolls because I like the actual dolls but noticed that some had no badges at all (it’s not just me not getting them, they’re not in the scroll or anything.)

I’d normally assume “yes but they’re slow to update” is the answer but some toys from the same time do have codes which is why I’m wondering if maybe these ones just won’t?

I’ve bought some of the dolls from Amazon, I want to complete my collection of 6, so the code isn’t a huge priority (but I do want it for how much I paid!). Issue is I’ve seen maybe 1/5 of the reviews for the raynebow doll specifically have said the code was ripped out, replaced with a fake, scratched and redeemed or just straight missing from the slot altogether when they got the doll. Probably happened because scammers redeemed the code and returned the doll, and Amazon didn’t check the return.

If this happens would jazwares be able to help me or am I kind of just stuck? Because I’ve paid full price for these dolls from Amazon, so it’s not like I’ve done eBay I think maybe they can? Just want to be prepared for the worst case 😒

Apologies if this has been asked before when I searched key words I couldn’t see anything but I might be tech illiterate I fear

Roblox is, for context, supposedly supposed to match people into age grouped servers when verified now. So if your account is 18+ most kids paired with you should be either 18-21 or 16-18. No kids in the 5-12 groups should end up in your servers unless they join a friend in the above groups (if I recall correctly please don’t jump me if I’m wrong here ahah) because of the chat restrictions. I think it was so that everyone in a server could chat it would try to prioritise grouping you with other people in your group or one off it. I don’t know if maybe DTI is an exception here or what but I always end up with players who play, chat and generally act in a way that indicates a younger age in my server. I am not shaming them or saying this is a problem, it’s not an issue but I AM curious.

My theory is that parents have used their IDs to verify kids accounts not realising what it does/to make the pop up go away, leading to the servers Roblox is TRYING to fill with adult accounts getting clogged with people of a much lower skill level or theme comprehension. (Either that or they’ve stopped age matching..?)

It’s even more confusing because I can chat with these accounts more often than not, which implies they are verified in a group close to the 18-21 one. Which, again, doesn’t always appear to be the case when the person is playing.

I want to say again as I see it as important, I have NO hate for anyone like that and this game is for everyone! If kids want to play I don’t think low skill, acting young or whatever is reason for them not to! But when Roblox is trying to get people of similar ages into servers it’s confusing that specifically the 18+ servers have this issue. And it’s frustrating also when I want to play with people around my age and SUPPOSEDLY Roblox has changed it so this will be more common. I don’t like master or pro servers all that much as I find them too competitive. I like casual and I’m not really looking for a solution or anything, rather I’m curious if anyone else has observed this?

I have a friend in the 16-18 group and when I join them I don’t notice this as much. Everyone seems to be decently skilled. But when I play solo in a presumably 18+ matched server a ton of younger players end up in it. Is it a coincidence? Has Roblox stopped age matching servers?

I go to a relatively small exam centre, and they have no spare rooms to move this person to. During my last exam (geography on Wednesday morning, I’m a little late I know.) the person in front of me was being *extremely* disruptive.

Every time they used their calculator it sounded like they were punching it like it owed them debt, when they flipped their page it sounded like they were shaking the whole paper violently, any time they moved something it was like they were bashing the table in. It genuinely sounded like they were ripping their paper when they wrote or highlighted. I’ve never heard someone make so much noise in an exam. The exam centre is next to a train station and that’s genuinely less disruptive than this person was being. I know I’m not being dramatic because other candidates complained too, they had three different invigilators discussing what to do about her and nobody else was making close to this much noise. It was just this one person.

Invigilators told her four times if she didn’t stop she would have to be removed or disqualified but they never did anything except move her to the corner. Which because it’s basically a classroom sized “hall” didn’t do anything to dampen the noise. Any time I started to think, I’d be disrupted again, (ADHD and ASD, sensitive to noise) and I know I lost marks because I couldn’t focus. She would make noises like the above at least once a minute.

We qualify for special consideration apparently and they’re going to write in for it, but those few marks (likely only 1-2% based on the guidelines I’ve seen) probably won’t make up for the amount lost by the disruption. I’ve been told she will likely be in another one of my exams and now I’m worried about losing more marks in my harder papers. I need to find a way to cope that doesn’t rely on the exam centre doing something but I don’t know how.