Today we’re testing out a brand new site feature on ROBLOX that will make it easier for you to chat and play games with your friends. The new chats and parties system is a complete overhaul, adding new functionality and a slick new design.

We’ve turned on our new chat and party system, and will be testing it for the rest of the week. You can expect this feature to become permanent after we finish the testing. If you find any issues or bugs, let us know in the comments!

So what’s different about the chat and party system that makes it better?

The new chat system is a lot cleaner, simpler, and faster than the previous chat. Your friends list displays which of your friends are online, and what they’re doing (on the website, building, or in a game). You can have multiple chats open on screen at once, allowing you to talk with multiple friends simultaneously. But that’s not all, we’re making it even easier to communicate with more than one friend at a time.

With just a few clicks you can start a group chat among friends. Just click the Create Chat Group button, search your friends list, and start chatting! It’s as simple as that. Check out this flowchart to get an idea of the process:

Group Chat Flowchart. Click for full-sized image.

With just a few more clicks, you can turn a Chat Group into a Party. Parties function similarly to Group Chat, with the added benefit of letting the party leader invite everyone to a game, and have them all enter on the same server. The improved party system makes playing ROBLOX games with your friends a much more straightforward process.

As a note, while one-on-one chat is between friends, any user in a group chat can invite people from their own friend list, expanding it out into friends of friends. The same goes for parties.

Go try out the new chat system. Hit up your friends, start a Party, play some games together. Let us know what you think of it here in the comments, and be sure to report any bugs you find!