However, chat is not a direct replacement for messages, they require you to be friends with the user, which is typically unfeasible. Despite the amount of junk/scams sent through messages, it is still a key tool to receive feedback and respond to user feedback or provide user support outside of external channels.
This leaves users without any way to directly contact creators on Roblox on-site and should not be removed until a proper and equivalent replacement exists.
Even with the removal of user to user messages (which from my experience are 99% spambots - none of which get banned no matter how many reports they get - and the other 1% being legitimate messages that get ignored because of the 99% making people not read their inbox) the messages system still has a purpose: getting messages from Roblox itself.
Like for example, if we didn’t have the message box I wouldn’t have ever known I got a crown that I didn’t deserve. Where else would things like this go?
I use the messages for contacting many UGC creators to retrieve permission to use their accessories in GFX / animations, etc. many of which have not connected any (contactable) social media to their account and are not present on the DevForum. The messaging feature has actually come in handy multiple times with a significant number of creators responding and granting me permission through the Roblox message.
The removal of this feature leaves me with no reasonable way to get that permission. This doesn’t just affect UGC permission cases, but it also impacts genuine cases where a player may reach out to a developer to ask questions or report a problem. Despite what many may believe, many creators do reply to messages they receive.
I understand if the feature is old and run-down, but there has to be some way to modernise the feature, right? In fact, just to get the ball rolling, here are a few things that could be changed to update the feature:
Don’t send a message if it’s filtered
Change the message page url to use a unique message ID rather than a relative ‘messageIndex’ (helps if you get a message between page reloads)
Better spam protection, perhaps move any messages with commonly sent message content to a separate spam tab
Finally fix archiving Roblox messages so it doesn’t delete the message out of existence
Make replies an actual thing rather than just quoting the original message in a new one
If Roblox could simply change the above (and perhaps even add new features like basic markdown and image support?), I believe it could truly revitalise this feature in a modern-day Roblox and more importantly, remove the need to remove a feature that is ever so important for the users who use it.
