I know where you're coming from, I still have a copy of Media Pro and it comes in handy sometimes. But there's no reason to prematurely judge Lightroom in this area. If you study the file renaming template editor you'll find that you can quickly customize the tokens and enter custom text in a way that'll generate the sequence you want:
The reason Lightroom puts in a dash is ensure compatibility with multiple file systems. But it's an option you can turn off. Note that this is in the Preferences dialog box because it affects any time Lightroom names or renames a file.
There's only one major way in which Lightroom batch renaming falls short: You can't batch find and replace text within the filename. Media Pro, Bridge, and many other free/cheap utilities can, but of course renaming files outside of Lightroom is not a good idea. Other than that, Lightroom can usually rename files as needed. In most other ways Lightroom is far better than Media Pro ever was.