Say "Hello" to Display Names!

Code-related question: for the Lua Chat System, are Speakers still named after the username, or is that changing with this update?

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I’m confused as to why people would namesnipe, considering multiple people can use one display name.

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A bit on the part of the impersonation; I do agree that there is many solutions to making this less confusing for players, but the catch with having the names displayed on the leaderboard as well as the overhead seems a bit on the hardcore side of changing this feature.

I hope they will find a way to make it more simple because it does seem cool;
Maybe something like this for the leaderboard? Or duplicate names overhead that are easy to see.image

11 Likes

The entire purpose of this change is to allow players to have the display name they want but may not be able to use otherwise due to other other players using it. Only letting you chose your own username would make this entire update completely pointless.

Will there be any protections against more vulnerable young players who may not know how to check if it’s a display Name or a Username? This could become a serious problem for developers and even admins alike; Impersonation of game owners or admins could leave young kids unaware to Display Names vulnerable and trusting things that someone says due to their Display Name matching one of an idol or admin.

Another question is how this feature will work with messages and friend requests etc.
If I get a message will it display their Display Name or their Username.

You need to elaborate on this much further. This leaves room open for confusion and panic amongst the community on the possible negative effects of this update.

Edit: To further upon this, if there is a blacklist for popular developers and admins, what do small developers do working on games whos player base is more vulnerable and young? Can we expect a feature for developers being able to blacklist display names in their game and forcing them to use Usernames?

9 Likes

instead of creating this confusing and messy system, how about you streamline username changes, make them free, and implement a proper system for banned accounts usernames expiring. This just seems like bloat.

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Wait so that means that:


Fas_ty35
@ Fasty

vs

Fasty35
@ Fasty


We can still have the same @ name?

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I have to agree with you on this one - I think the risk for impersonation of staff / admins is really high. This essentially is allowing a free name change, and not all games are really set up to support that. Not to mention, discord (a popular chat application) already has this sort of behavior, and impersonation is a HUGE problem there… with roblox’s already scam-susceptible player base, a feature like this could quickly pose some real problems.

Reporting is another thing that can become an issue. Right now, screen recording an abusive user is pretty much solid proof of their exploits, and game creators can ban these users accordingly, but in the future it will be impossible to tell if someone is just using another person’s name and attempting to frame them. At the very minimum, it is necessary to add an ability to turn the feature off as a roblox player.

These kinds of features are some of what prove roblox still thinks of itself as a game and not an engine & platform. Roblox should not be the one to add in a gameplay feature like this, I think this sort of functionality should be implemented by game devs and not the roblox platform itself. It might be nice to have a toggleable feature for game devs or something like this but really it could hurt gameplay in certain games that rely on specific people being displayed as themselves.

IMO, Roblox should leave this to the devs and instead focus their time working on things like exposing more engine features that are impossible for devs to do themselves. If a game wants display names, they can add display names without Roblox needing to intervene.

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Users have been able to change their users for what 7 years now? It’s always been best practice to use the UserId not the Player’s Name.

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The display names should honestly not be shown for users <13

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Yes, the “@ name” is simply your username. It won’t change.

The only problem is to figure out who is the Imposter, the only way to know who to report is either by avatar or Pc only leaderboard.

I also hope there is a way to make this opt-out per game, for security and complexity reasons.

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But that wouldn’t stop the impersonators. I think not so many people will look at the player list when they see their “favorite youtuber” starts interacting with them because of excitement or something else.

There are tons of scam games that have successfully copied or modified the player list to show popular influencers or the Roblox staff. And It works pretty well.

This feature would be great for people who want to rid the extra numbers and dump out of their name, but is it really necessary? A lot of games already have a programmed displayed name system and this would cause a lot of issues off the back including false personation and having a hard time distinguishing between real users and knock-offs. I can already see myself having a hard time identifying exploiters. I believe you should leave this option toggleable for developers.

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Looks like certain usernames won’t be allowed as DisplayNames, such as “Roblox”, “builderman”, “newfissy”, etc…

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I agree with this statement; maybe a sort of ability to get a verified check mark or some other feature regarding allowing players with OG usernames to differentiate themselves would be cool

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Hence my comment that the chat will probably receive similar changes as well.

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YES!

lets go!

I understand it now.

Good update Roblox! :slightly_smiling_face:

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This problem already exists. Nothing is stopping the dev from hiding the default playerlist and replacing it with a malicious one with fake usernames (which is already done). DisplayNames don’t change much.