The Problem
As a Roblox developer, it is currently too difficult to situationally display Teams in the playerlist/leaderboard to players.
If you use Teams for checkpoints, which is a common use case for obbies and story games, you can accumulate quite a hefty list:
However, a list of this size can become too cumbersome to actually be useful to players. In addition, some team names may have spoilers. As such, the ability to hide or show a team is important.
The “Workaround”
There is a way to solve this issue; however, it is incredibly janky and tedious. If you reparent teams on an individual client, they will not display in the leaderboard. However, this causes jank with two built-in functionalities:
- If people are on that team, the playerlist will display them as being on a catch-all “Neutral” team - this may not be desirable and lacks customization
- If you need to bring the team back, you have to reparent EVERY team in a specific order in order to maintain your desired sort order (see this related feature request: Ability to influence order in which Teams are displayed in playerlist)
Proposed Solution
Add a “Visible” property to the Team instance. When true, the team shows up in the leaderboard for all players. When false, the team is hidden.
In addition, to address the first issue in the workaround, add a property called something like “Neutral Team Name” to the Teams service to allow developers to override the “Neutral” team’s name.
Why Solve This
If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because it would increase my efficiency and control over the built-in leaderboard and teams system.