As a player/developer who plays Roblox everyday I would like to see usernames with spaces or periods (.) come back. I want these as a new option for the Roblox website because there is a problem were I try to pick a new username and they are all taken by dead accounts or other accounts. This will be nice to see again because I want to have a unique username like Family Guy but with no underscore. (Here are some examples of old 2006 roblox accounts with a space in them.)
If this issue was fixed where we get more usernames options, it will make it easier to find the name that you want. This is nice because it will bring cooler usernames back to Roblox.
I donât think you can really class using a TV showâs name as âuniqueâ.
I think as your example shows very well, it allows people to impersonate brands a lot easier, which isnât exactly ideal.
There are plenty of threads on the wider internet about the issue. I think one that is really applicable to Roblox is admin commands, and messaging commands such as whisper. An example on a reddit thread I found, /msg john doe what's up - Are you messaging john âdoe whatâs upâ or are you messaging john doe âwhatâs upâ? Spaces make it ambiguous when shown amongst other text. It allows people to type sentences as their names which could get confusing depending on where itâs shown on the website.
Itâs not impossible it just requires a lot more work both from Roblox and from developers to correctly support it and expect it, with very little benefit in return.
As @BanTech pointed out, spaces are a no-go; with many online services also not supporting spaces in names.
Iâm sure most people wouldnât mind dots and even dashes in usernames; however, a big change to usernames would probably impact a lot of scripts (both on and off platform) that expect a specific syntax for Roblox usernames.
A similar argument, is consoles; sometimes developers may need to type out a playerâs name in the console, and periods, spaces, and dashes all make this much harder (as youâd need to do ["name"]). Not the biggest of issues, but one worth considering.
Inb4 people someone names themselves discord.com, youtube.com, etc or just append .com to their current username. Now their username is filtered in every text box because it looks like a website.
Now I do have these questions:
Why do you want to name yourself Family Guy or otherwise the name of some tv show or brand. This is going to cause you more problems in the future.
How will allowing these characters help you in development. What about the current legal characters hinders your development that you need this feature.
Why are you trying to change your identity. Youâre probably wanting this name just for a namesnipe, and that is all this feature is going to incentivize: namesniping. (tbh the name âincapazâ is a Spanish namesnipe, however it stuck with me and everyone knows me as incapaz, so I canât change it now.)
The only argument you have brought up is that other accounts that arenât yours have taken âuniqueâ usernames so you want to fix this issue by adding more legal characters. Well I am here to tell you that every username is unique because it was never registered by someone else.
I think the most important question is the second one. After all this is the developer forum.
I agree with this too but invalid identifiers are allowed anyways (usernames can start with numbers, so youâd have to do [""] still).
I am sorry but this wouldnât be safe. I am sure that several users would use their real life name as their username then. This could also cause several games to break because they werenât designed to handle spaces and periods in names.
This is a poor argument. Itâs already possible to incorporate full names with _s, or just⌠without special characters. (I.e. people can set their name to something like JohnDoe or John_Doe)
This isnât safe for a platform like Roblox. I donât see the point of adding full stops into your username like I see spaces. Although I get what you mean, this gives users a chance to put their personal information on the website for example âJohn Smithâ orâCharlie Brownâ even if itâs impersonation of another person - which would cause you to get more problems in the future.
This also counts for website or branding use, it could get you into legal trouble and a mess.
Iâd love to see it happen and have more unique usernames on the platform especially with symbols like brackets or colons but there are more cons than pros in these situations.
I can imagine as Roblox gets a bigger following in the east, they will be adding non-alphanumeric characters in usernames anyway (e.g. allowing players to put japanese/korean/chinese characters in their usernames). I donât think the argument about âspaces and periods might break games that donât account for thoseâ is going to be a sustainable one in the long-term.
Obviously, this shouldnât be allowed and blocking out names with underscores after it and words that are most likely to be common surnames should be blocked
The entire point of usernames is to provide a clear and easy reference to a person. Itâs best not to overcomplicate them. If we add more special symbols, whatâs to stop the same argument for colons, or slashes, or exclamation marks?
Most feature requests should be related to helping the development process. I fail to see how adding a space to your username will improve said process.
feel free to discuss this further with me on another topic or PMs