A modern reimagining of SuperSafeChat

Feature Requests Engine Features
1

With the current push for child safety on the platform by limiting text chat, team create, and links , the ways players can communicate in game are about to be severely restricted. This is going to severely affect games that rely on player to player communication in the case that other players in your lobby are not within the same age bracket as you.

My solution for this would be a modular reimagining of SuperSafeChat that could be set up by developers to create reusable terms and phrases for players of any age to utilize for cross-age-group communication alongside terms that anyone in Roblox frequently uses (LOL, Hi, What’s up?, etc.)

For those who do not know what SuperSafeChat was, this was an in-experience chat feature where a chat-bubble themed button would open up a menu of basic phrases and text emoticons that users and guests (also removed) could use to communicate to eachother. As guests did not have access to regular chat at the time, this was the main method of communicating with them. I feel we are in a similar situation where users are not going to be able to communicate with everyone, so this is a sensible solution for providing some level of communication while also keeping child safety at the utmost, as only approved phrases are permitted. See below for an image of what SuperSafeChat looked like:

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This UI isn’t the prettiest and certainly doesn’t match the modern Roblox aesthetic, so a UI overhaul would be required.
Alongside that it would be great to have it integrated with TextChatService alongside providing ways for developers to add on unique phrases that fit the environment of their game. I.e. if you have a game surrounding pet collection and care, you are going to want users to be able to talk about their pets, resources they need, or anything advice related to collecting and caring for pets. However, as this is intended to be an ultra-safe method of communication among players, a great deal of care must be taken when deciding what developers should have access to custom phrases. I recommend rolling this out for top developers as a trial run, and moving on from there introducing an ability to run set phrases through an AI filtration algorithm to catch any misuses of the system.

It would also be nice to have a built in API to connect these safe phrases with emotes and sounds that play when users say them (think a short “Hi” sound and wave when a user selects “Hi” as an option). This should again be restricted in a similar way as bad actors are usually the first people to abuse emotes and sound effects (atleast in my experience).

There are a lot of directions in which a system like this could be taken, but I’d also like to make it clear that this doesn’t solve every problem introduced by these recent changes. This won’t fix anything related to Team Create (outside of possible in studio communication if the complete ban is lifted), the censoring of links, and any problems posed by face scanning for age estimation. I have been an outspoken supporter of reintroducing SuperSafeChat for sometime now (even preceding these recent pushes for communication restriction), but seeing how other users are now recognizing the system as a potential solution to both bad actors on the platform and completely removing cross-age-group chat, I think it’s a good time to make a formal request for a successor.

49 Likes
2

Wasn’t this an extremely hated feature in 2013? It is a good idea indeed but could cause outrage amongst the playerbase.

4 Likes
3

Two of the main reasons behind this were:

  1. This feature revolved around Guests and particularly young users, which were already extremely disliked at the time for being seen as Noobs.
  2. The feature was clunky and limiting to use and was only used to communicate with the two above groups, who were already disliked enough to avoid and complain about.

With Roblox limiting communication across all users, I think it’s safe to assume that a new system like this would atleast be a step up from no communication. A new user interface and custom chat options made by developers alongside emote and sound hooks could also certainly help remove some of that clunkiness.

5 Likes
4

I’d say perhaps it could also be turned into a location marking /waypoint system like Helldivers 2 has for games which require those kinds of features.

2 Likes
5

That could be another nice thing to add with hooks, connecting seperate ui actions to send messages. Fully support this!

3 Likes
6

Yes, I think this should be added to Roblox. Especially so I can somewhat still communicate to my “Connections” that are in different age groups than me.

Also, just in case anyone was wondering this is from the Roblox article on the new update:

"Can creators make their own preset messages?

  • No, however we’re currently considering how we can safely enable creators to implement this type of functionality."
4 Likes
7

Strongly agree with this, It’d be nice as an option - but also I think that if anything is used to disambiguate <13 and 13+ users, it should be the availability of menu chat versus free form chat, rather than photo verification to assign a pool of people to interact with. I made a post about bringing back menu chat a little while ago because I couldn’t post in feature requests. I did try to oversell it a little bit because I think that people in the general Roblox community should be talking about the benefits of menu chat versus free form chat in general.

I think menu chat is good for a well-moderated environment because:

  1. Controlled input equates to controlled output. Anything with free form chat is a game of cat and mouse
  2. It is near impossible to direct people off-platform with menu chat (as long as devs are careful with custom responses they add).
  3. I swear it used to be the industry standard. On Roblox. On Wizard 101. On what other platforms are users under 13 allowed to post free form chat? Typically, on social media sites, the age requirement to post is 13+, so why aren’t free form online interactions the same?
  4. A parent can tell whether their child is using Roblox the way they are intending just by looking at their screen. I personally liked when it said <13 or 13+ on the top right corner of the screen because it meant in my group that we caught a lot of people lying about age from their screenshots

I think it would work best as a global user chat setting between free-form chat and no chat though, if the feature just means a nice little UI that users that can already chat can use, then it’s kinda useless as devs can already make something like that

4 Likes
8

Originally, this was my stance: <13 users should only have access to a menu chat like SuperSafeChat and 13+ users get access to freeform chat with filters. This doesn’t seem to be the way Roblox has decided to go, and its somewhat understandable considering 13+ includes everyone from age 13-17 which are still, legally speaking, children in the United States where Roblox is headquartered.

Still going back in forth in my head as to how developers could be able to add custom menu options, while still prioritizing user (especially child) safety. I think until there is a clear plan for implementing something like this overtime, the best thing to start out with would be having a set of Roblox-created menu options based on game-genre that can be toggled on/off in game settings and then release some implementation of custom menu options in the future.

6 Likes
9

The probability that they will ever re-add this is really small, considering they are doing more harm than good.

2 Likes
10

This absolutely should be added back in my opinion. Sure, restrict regular chat for different age groups, but at least let us be able to communicate with each other with predetermined prompts.

3 Likes
11

With the start of the new year and the beginning of the new chat restrictions described in Age Checks to Access Chat, Studio Team Create, and Links on Roblox being implemented, I believe that now is the perfect time to openly discuss an option like this for developers to continue to have some form of chat within their games.
A majority of games on Roblox rely on some sort of communication between players, and while you can now set up custom matchmaking based on which users can chat together, this simply is not a possibility for smaller games and games that require other forms of matchmaking as priority.

2 Likes
12

I’d like to give a +1 to this, many child based games still use this function and succeed in their own right in safety. A direct game I’d point to would be Wizard101, it has the perfect parent lock situation on Open Chat* (Hard filter on custom chat messages until you sign up as a member + a parent/guardian enables Open Chat manually via website).

All it takes is someone who knows what players would need (Rare in the case of Roblox) to make a massive Menu Chat list. From my perspective they just threw on the easiest and quickest option with glue and tape to appease investors and government branches. It doesn’t take a genius to see how much their age verification system breaks community growth both in and off-platform.

*Open Chat essentially meaning they can use slang and words not verified manually by Kingsisle (Developers). – Of course still with the profanity and slur filtration

1 Like
13

This is honestly something that should be brought back as an alternative to chatting since many people lack the ability to properly communicate now.

It worked very well for Roblox Guests since it gave them some kind of way to talk to players and made the platform feel more welcoming to them, so it should return this way.

There is a chance it’ll still be abused though by malicious users, so it should only be available to games that have verified creators to help keep the platform’s safety intact.

1 Like
14

Yeah, +1 on this.

Not ideal, but probably better than nothing.

2 Likes
15

Looks like Roblox is planning to add a system somewhat like this in the near future, but the specifications are still currently unknown. Happy that developers can atleast create their own preset message systems now, even if its without direct Roblox support with a “plug-and-play” system.
I will be responding to this feature request with any further updates regarding this new feature and whether they work well or miss the mark for developers/users

2 Likes