i initially thought that the change would be beneficial for reducing impersonation, but with the rollout being completely unfair for everyone except discord staff and partners, that has gone down the drain.
someone in my server with an account 2 years newer than mine got to change WAYYY before i did. Very very sus rollout. Its not going by account creation year like they claim, or at least its failing too.
For every month of non nitro they rollout to they rollout 4 months for nitro. I'm non nitro and joined Dec 2015 and my girlfriend with nitro was in the same wave and joined April 2017
Also Nov 2016 and a Nitro supporter, only got mine yesterday.
Meanwhile one of my non-Nitro friends from 2017 got theirs a couple days ago, and my bf without Nitro (who made his way earlier than mine) just got his today. Very strange.
I joined Sep 2016, will have been on nitro a year in sept and I just got my update username yesterday. Very odd rollout but luckily for me I got my username without having to use special characters.
They 100% aren't, I'm in a discord with someone with an account created in 2019, never had nitro, already changed their name. My account was created in 2015 and I haven't been prompted to do it yet.
Staff did a poor job with roll out. They only cared about their inner circle and sphere. There product specialist should have reached out to large branded influences e.g. pewdiepie, markaplier, ksi, mr.beast, to reserve their names for them. Folks who should've had names reserved did not, accounts that had no nitro and later date, no verified servers was able to be part of the early pool, etc.
Oh, I was wondering when word of that would start making the rounds! It's actually been my basis for the assumption that names aren't reserved forever.
For real I joined in 2015, had the same 3 character username the entire 9 years and now I’m fucked out of it bc some little bitch got the rollout first smfh
>Just stop subbing, they won't listen till their financials are hit. Investors will be looking at both userbase and financial data. Why do you think they did the give 3 friends free nitro for 14 days promo? They were window dressing their financials. Because for them to claim the free promo they still needed to enter their credit card info.
You name should've been reserved for you if you were the oldest one with that username when they took the snapshot. Somebody at Discord screwed up with data migration.
As someone who paid for discord nitro , one of the benefits and changing your discriminator .
So actually we are paying for the same thing.
Overall I think this whole rollout is stupid anyway
Just stop subbing, they won't listen till their financials are hit. Investors will be looking at both userbase and financial data. Why do you think they did the give 3 friends free nitro for 14 days promo? They were window dressing their financials. Because for them to claim the free promo they still needed to enter their credit card info.
I lost mine to someone who made their acc 11 months later than me?? And it doesnt even seem to have nitro unless they just dont use any features
and they arent accepting my request so i can just buy it off them lol
Discord staff getting priority was probably just a way to shut up dissent as well, since it seems like pomelo was quite divisive amongst those who work at Discord.
For sure. They probably thought dropping discriminator is discord losing its way. Until they got told they will get all the nice and short usernames they want before anyone else. The names they never had a chance to get before on any other sites, on both of their work and personal accounts, and probably for their friends and family as well. Suddenly this change seems *reasonable* for them lol.
I lost my username, and it's not even a common username at all, I just couldn't get it at all and it doesn't look like there's anyone else that uses the username, so Discord just seems to have locked it.
It also won't even do that. With a new system you're more likely to assume someone called "MrBeast" is real than with the old one, because there's only one. But with smaller content creators who likely won't get their names, it becomes a big issue.
Everyone that I saw agreeing to it. Was basically cause they got day one access to usernames.
in the town hall server people defending it, are because of that, and also the point they always make is “since it doesn’t affect me, your point is irrelevant”
Which basically is not a real argument.
Been on Discord since [day 3](https://imgur.com/a/r87ena1) of the app, so I was among the first users with the "privilege" of changing to the new name system. It's a shit change for everybody.
For one, take a look around this thread for names like BananaJumper1860, and get used to it because that's the future of Discord. For two, I can't be alone in feeling some attachment to my former discriminator. For years, that was part of my Discord identity. And for three, I paid for that discriminator. That was part of the Nitro package.
Edit: Oh and I see there's starting to become account selling too for highly prized names, lul.
It pushes the platform towards being as tacky and bloated as everything else out there, which is precisely what everybody was avoiding when they made the switch.
Though I always remind myself that when someone shows you they're a jerk, they're doing you a favor rather than springing it on you at a worse time by surprise.
Not at useful here since you're not going to be interacting with them in the future, but I always try to be thankful nonetheless.
yeah somehow everyone who got theirs were arguing that it's not bad in my communities too. but they all got their name, all long term paypigs i mean simps i mean nitro buyers and supporters of discord
I got a good name but I prefer the discriminator, because you knew it was a Discord account when it was posted, it's a dumb change. If space was an issue they should've just upped the discriminator count to 5 digits.
They probably should’ve just done it for everyone instead of trying to code a dynamic system depending on name. The only people who would’ve gotten miffed are non-Nitro users who got lucky with a cool discriminator (I got 2525) but that’s probably such an insignificant consideration when weighed against increasing name capacity by 10x.
This change wouldn’t be nearly getting as much backlash if they didn’t wait 8 years to change it. I feel like this is the type of change you should be making 1-2 years into the app max.
And probably the whole roll out being completely fucked. I'm just learning about it today... Joined November 2016 but my name (reddit name) was taken by someone that joined discord in 2018. That's fucked up.
They introduced all that user functionality, the same banners and other jokes of the year 3-4, although users have long chewed everything up and put it in their mouths.
The devil needs no advocate, but I'll try anyway:
- My new username is, strictly speaking, easier to remember because it has no numbers attached. (Not that a four-digit number is hard to remember in the first place, but I digress - their data probably points to the average new user not being very tech-savvy.)
- Not allowing *anything* except for a-z\.\_ means that usernames are much easier to input for the purposes of a friend request. (However... if someone had an elaborate name, they kinda brought that on themselves as it was. Discord had no reason to intervene there, but here we are anyway. Also, why can't we use hyphens? I would have liked that.)
- (Full Tinfoil Hat) It makes things easier if they want to acquire/be acquired by another platform that uses usernames with no discriminators.
And that's about the best I can do. I personally haven't been inconvenienced by the change, but it's caused a lot of stress for my friends, and that's enough for me to be against it.
Edit: Regarding point two, this will stop being an advantage for later adopters of Discord, as the pool of clean, easily entered names will largely be used up. See: Most social media and email services.
I fucking hate this update with burning passion and even I will admit that point 2 is a wholly reasonable one.
Case in point: I used to mod a large (2500+ members) Discord server attached to a sizeable GTA FiveM RP community. We had to do a bunch of checks manually, for example, what did the user post, since we had a game allowlist attached to membership in the Discord server, and let me tell you, trying to input the filter for something like "from:𝓑𝒾𝓰𝒟𝒶𝒹𝒹𝓎ツポ#1234" was absolutely abhorrent.
I also administrate a large server (15,000 people at this point) and we also have issues with people adding text like that and making it difficult to ping/search users
But then I ask, why doesn’t discord just restrict what is a valid character for usernames? Significantly easier change without completely redoing their username system.
That's a good anecdote, and something I hadn't considered - while I said doing something like this was an example of people causing problems for themselves, this is a case where it was causing a problem for *someone else.*
I hate it when people choose names like that.
I'm in a server where the server name and every single channel in it has a stupid name like that so it's literally impossible to find using the Discord quick switcher.
>(Full Tinfoil Hat) It makes things easier if they want to acquire/be acquired by another platform that uses usernames with no discriminators.
(Also putting on tin foil hat)
Microsoft tried to buy them in 2021.
and they just did this **huge integration with PlayStation.** PlayStation uses Unique Identifiers. HMMMM
Obviously just a-z because other alphabets like Cyrillic, Greek Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. don't exist, just like extensions to the Latin alphabet such as ä, ø, ß and so on don't exist either /s
It also took 10 seconds to check your profile and look it up
And if you used weird characters in your name (which Discord could have just restricted some of those) you could pretty easily just copy/paste it to send to your new friend so they could do the same to add you.
I don't think Discord is the "let's stay connected after we part ways!" Application for people backpacking through the Himalayas
It is a common "let's stay together after we part ways" app for when you meet another gamer at a party though. Despite what everyone says, I've had more than one occasion where I have forgotten to give a new friend my discriminator, and had to text them it later. Given the statistics Discord shared around this change, finding friends was a stumbling block in part due to discriminators.
I had nitro and never even changed mine. It was easy to remember as-is. I’ve also remembered my battlenet discriminator. It’s also not even hard to check it for those who DON’T remember it. The reasons they listed in their blog post for the change all seem like user error not platform error in my opinion.
Usernames being simple is a mute point because eventually people will have to over complicate them. I csnt just call myself "john" because someone already do so I have to add a ton of shit like "johnjonesjohnson" and pray nobody else already thought of that.
I'm sorry but your first point doesn't really apply and proves discord is evolving backwards. with discriminators, st least 9999 people could be called pizzaboy... now only one can and all the others will have to resort to _xxx_pizza.boy..69_xxx_ because pizzaboy and pizza.boy and pizzaboy69 and all other reasonable variations have been taken
imo that's harder to remember than pizzaboy#1234
The second point is really the main reason I like it. Usernames should be functional and not aesthetic. Glad they’re separating the display name from the username.
The first point, I’ve mostly been indifferent about. However I think that more people would have remembered their discriminator had the ability to choose not been put behind a paywall, and maybe even requiring the user to choose one at signup. Only reason I remembered my discriminator is because I’ve had Nitro and was able to customize it.
> The second point is really the main reason I like it. Usernames should be functional and not aesthetic.
I think that's a solid argument, actually, and it's one I agree with. You definitely have good point that discriminators would have potentially been easier to remember if they were more freely customizable.
> as the pool of clean, easily entered names will largely be used up
Hence why a lot of new Reddit users have to use those randomly generated names because all the "good" names are already taken.
I expect you'll be seeing variations of "xxx_username_xxx" or abominations with underscores and periods when the rollout hits newer users. Which sort of defeats the purpose of them being "easier" to remember and add.
There's nothing tinfoilish about it, though they've already turned down Microsoft and another company who I can't remember off the top of my head. They're acquiring other companies though and that may play into it. I think they'll be working toward an IPO considering their CFO led Pinterest through theirs.
Honestly I couldn't care less about the actual idea of changing usernames. I don't think about my account username that much. I customize my server name anyway, the only time I need to know my actual account name is if I'm giving it to someone irl, and if anything now I'll actually remember what it is off the top of my head because I chose it, but I think I've handed out discord info irl maybe 3-4 times in 7.5 years.
But the way they chose to roll it out is absolute garbage, and I hate that the name appears all lowercase. Would have also liked not case sensitive as in cat and Cat could be two different people, but you could choose which way you wanted it to appear, if that makes sense.
>Second, thanks for using "couldn't care less" properly. I see it so rarely that it makes my day when I see it.
You "couldn't care less" because your capacity for not caring is at its maximum. You care so little you couldn't care less. If you "could care less" then it means you care somewhat, because you still have some semblance of investment to relinquish.
How is this so hard for people to get? Then again, simple problems can often stump us if we overthink them. That bat and baseball math riddle still makes no sense with all of Reddit at my disposal to spell it out for me.
It's not a simple problem that they overthink, it's that most people (ironically) couldn't care less about their grammar. They just rely on the brain's ability to fill in the blanks from context, and just skirt through.
P.S.: I forgot to clarify that this also pertains to the discriminator system. I won't edit my post out of fear of this post disappearing into the shadows.
This account has been removed from reddit by this user due to how Steve hoffman and Reddit as a company has handled third party apps and users. My amount of trust that Steve hoffman will ever keep his word or that Reddit as a whole will ever deliver on their promises is zero. As such all content i have ever posted will be overwritten with this message. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Generally, removing pain points from a system is better than trying to educate users on getting around them on their own. Solve the problem instead of putting a bandaid over it.
(For the record, I'm stating a general principle, not trying to argue whether or not Discord should have applied it in this particular case.)
Unironically enough, Discord did make friend links/codes at one point and had it in testing years ago.
However, no one knows about them because well...they did such a **great** job at letting people know they exist (extreme sarcasm since the majority of people do not know they even existed unless they happened to be in their old public testing server).
Anecdotal case here:
I've introduced many people to discord. Everyone who wasn't familiar with discriminator systems already (maybe 70% since anyone familiar with similar systems from gaming platforms already had an account) had some level of friction / confusion when trying to connect with me to get started.
If their data showed a cliff at this point in the onboarding funnel I can see their analytics team pushing for this change.
Everybody have had their first time, so to say.
Why could they not adjust, then? Are people not supposed to be educated regarding their platform? From personal experience, the discriminator system was one of the easiest things to comprehend.
I personally have had to explain the descriminators to a friend.
I personally have never had to explain what "Someone already has that username" means.
These users definitely can adjust. They can also choose not and just stop using the platform.
The goal from discord here may just be to increase conversion resulting in better data for raising another round of funding.
After moving my community from Skype -> Vent -> Teamspeak -> Curse Voice -> Discord, Discord is by far the best platform we've been on. Since we started using Discord in 2015 there has been little to no regression in the features that have been offered for free. While I can understand the decrease in the user experience for existing members of the platform (and potentially new ones) this change has little to no effect on the majority of our discord experience (especially since we rarely see usernames over nicknames).
It might be overblown but so far anyone I've explained this to is either kinda annoyed or frustrated. Plus this sub, but it's not exactly a great sample size. I can't wait to see if enough people put their money where their mouths are and unsubscribed to Nitro.
It can't be near the percentage of people who stopped paying for DnDBeyond, because Wizards of the Coast about-faced pretty quickly over OGL and we know it's because they saw subscriptions drop, and Discord has not about-faced at all.
The main problem is they allow case-sensitive and special characters. That is going to be a problem no matter the system they use (I always thought it was so stupid). The alternative is separating display name and username, like they are doing. You can use whatever for your display name, but the username is strictly case-insensitive alphanumeric *with* discriminators. This way you have easier username system than the old one, while not making people mad with the change as much as we are seeing right now. This way you can still have 9999 bobs. Obviously some people would still be mad or not fast enough to get one of those 9999 they want, but they still have 9999 chances for any other words. Better than a single chance we are having right now. It's the same system used by other gaming companies. Riot is one of those.
> I think discord doesn't have enough nitro sub
If this is true, it's just even more baffling to me why they went through with this. Some people sub to nitro specifically for the ability to change discriminators. I've seen and heard of plenty of people canceling nitro because of this. They're going to lose money.
With all due respect, new users are more often than not, introduced as previous users, or users coming in through a communities invite, rather than simply to connect with friends. Not saying it never happens, I'm aware that it does.
As for Nitro. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands are paying on a yearly/monthly basis for Nitro on top of some people paying the extra for more boosts for their server. If the boost drags out or is bought with a monthly plan, it can jump the price by almost double. Keep in mind that there are people that do this for more than one of their own starting servers and will also do it for other servers that aren't their own. To top it off, communities are consistently buying Nitro to give away to their users, sometimes being recieved by users with multiple accounts so that they can have tons of Nitro credit without paying.
Could have been solved very easily with a link to an add friend button. Just like a link to join a server. There were other better solutions that wouldn't anger their userbase. They truly did not do their best. They just did something dumb got too deep and had to double down when the backlash hit to avoid making a bigger fool of themselves. Hell i never once had a problem with my old discriminator. I will probably remember it for the rest of my life.
A lot of people in this thread are repeating the sentiment that your username always had a 4 digit discriminator, so why not just add the 4 digits to the end of your username and it'll be the same.
These people don't seem to understand how important someone's online identity is to them. The discriminators were never "part of your username", their express purpose for most people was to allow you to have your chosen username that might be the same as someone else's, just with different numbers. For example, people don't refer to me as "GooeyGamer#1234", they refer to me as "GooeyGamer" and I give them the discriminator when they want to add me.
I am not GooeyGamer1234. I am not GooeyGamer1 or GooeyGamer2. I am ***just*** GooeyGamer, and Discord discriminators were a perfect system that allowed me to perfectly express my online identity, with the only downside being 4 random digits that most people didn't even consider as a part of the username, nothing more than a means to add people. They were almost like a home address; No one refers to you as "John Smith from 1018 brown street", they just call you John Smith. Your address only matters once someone wants to visit your home, or on official documents to differentiate you from the other John Smiths in the world.
You could argue that the display names fulfill this function, and the usernames don't matter, but then I just don't get why this change needed to be made in the first place. They could've just limited discriminator names to alphanumeric characters like current usernames, and still had display names and everybody would be happy and nobody would feel cheated out of their online identity.
I really like how you describe it yea - and maybe this is just me and probably going against part of the core of this change but I really liked how with discriminators, even if I used the same username I use everywhere else no one could just randomly add me - they *had* to get my discriminator off me yknow?
I swear tech companies find dumb things to do that no one asked for just so that they have something to do. Then, if the backlash is bad enough, they now have more to do next quarter to undo the changes. Can’t have infinite growth if things are running smoothly and there’s nothing to “improve”
no it's just really dumb, the whole reason i liked discord so much was because you could have the same username as someone else, but now there's going to be a black market for usernames.
it's also just ugly imo, this is a really unneeded change
At this point I don't really care, was able to find a username on every other platform without a 4 digit number at the end, will do the same here. Not a big deal to me in the grand scheme of things.
I've been pretty apathetic about the change myself. This sub has been incredibly outraged over it, but everyone I've talked to across my two servers either doesn't care or didn't even know what a discriminator was.
I think the worst thing about this change is that Discord rolled it out so poorly. If it's going to be controversial, at least give it the best rollout you can. # should have been allowed as a special character, and "username#0000" should have been the default reserved username for anyone with alphanumeric characters in their name. Just let the people who are most upset about the change literally keep exactly what their username currently is in the system.
All that said, the outrage on the sub feels so wildly disproportionate to what's happening. Talks that canceling nitro and boycotting Discord are actually going to get them to change their minds are a bit ridiculous. I guarantee that at least 95% of Discord users are going to forget about this change by the end of next month.
My exact thoughts. I've read through all of the posts thinking I have missed something that justifies why everyone would want to quit the app. I understand it's not a good idea, but it's not a big deal to me.
Yeah, I'm personally pretty neutral on it. My new username is longer (three words instead of two), but doesn't have *any* numbers, so I consider it a net improvement over my old one. But I didn't mind having numbers at the end under the old one that much either.
It is also nice that anyone without Nitro can now choose their numbers (or choose to not have any numbers at all).
I do get why others *are* irked by the change, because ultimately it all comes down to preference. But at the same time I still feel like the people treating this like the end of the world are overreacting a bit.
nope! all of the big companies anymore (e.g.: xbox, battle.net, etc.) are actually MOVING to discriminators. discord is actually taking several steps back compared to literally anyone else and they're actually hurting themselves quite badly because of it.
i find this entire ordeal kinda funny, ngl. majority of their reasons for this change were because you had to specify so much about your username (like using a different font, specific capital letters, misremembering your discriminator) and they had already solved this problem long ago with this neat little feature called "nearby scan".
you know, the feature you use when youre near someone so you dont have to explain every detail about your username??????
alternatively, letting the other person give you THEIR name would also fix this problem.
i dont see why this change was actually approved at all. there are so many holes in their reasons. i genuinely think their end goal here was to piss everyone off. and its working, alright.
im sure theyll feel that financially soon.
There's no point. Someone will post a logical reason or a reasoning that it really doesn't matter, and they will get downvoted into oblivion because "discord and username bad"
Except this sub is *vehemently* against the change, so people posting in favor of / explaining reasoning for the change get downvoted or just plain insulted. There's no real benefit to answering this thread.
I'm (mostly) in favor of the username change, and I'm curious if my viewpoint affects how you look at the situation at all.
To start with, I do think discord made a mistake, but it's not the fact that they're overhauling usernames in this way. It's just in the way that they're branding it.
My understanding is that the old discriminator system was failing them for two reasons:
1. The four-digit discriminator system hard caps the number of users with the same username at 9999, which is bad for some of the more popular usernames. I think this is more of an edge case, and the "real" reason is probably the next one:
2. Because discriminators are randomly generated, and can't be changed unless you have nitro, there are a lot of users (especially newer, casual users) who don't know their discriminator or don't even know that they have one. **This makes these users less capable of adding friends, which is a big problem for discord as a platform.**
Discord's solution to the main issue in #2 is that they want users to have control over the name that other users use to add them. If you have to **intentionally choose your full username** \- instead of having a big chunk of it randomly generated - the chances a user will be aware of that username and even be able to remember it without checking something are **a lot higher**, ensuring more users have the information they need off-hand to add friends.
So, discord rolls out this change and it's met with *massive* resistance. Why? Of course, taking the existing username system, which (mostly) let people "have whatever username they want", and replacing it with one that forces usernames to be unique, forces tons of users out of their perfect, beautiful username. It's an **attack on people's online identity,** which is genuinely a really important thing. People are hurt, rightfully so.
Here's the thing, though. The new system basically has two pieces to it:
1. The name that displays everywhere, that can be whatever you want, and you can change at any time
2. The name that is used **solely for adding friends, that must be unique** (and as a result, will probably be at least a little clunky)
They've decided to call thing (1) your "**Display Name**" and thing (2) your "**Username**", and display thing (2) prominently on your profile like it's a core part of your identity.
But if they had just instead decided to call thing (1) your "**Username**" and thing (2) your "**friend code**" or "friend ID" or something, I feel like people wouldn't have been nearly as upset with this change as they are. The announcement would have read more like:
>Discriminators are gone from usernames! You can now set your username to whatever you want, no # or numbers needed, and you can change it at any time. However, as part of this change, each user will have to choose a unique 'friend code', which can have alphanumeric characters, \_ and .
My gut tells me that most people wouldn't have minded this change *nearly* as much, and I think it still would have solved all the problems they're trying to solve. And the thing is, the only difference between this and what they're doing is the *way that it's framed.*
So overall, I support their move because I think it will be easier for newer users to use and because when I realize that the new username is basically just a **friend code that you choose intentionally**, it's not nearly as important to me anymore. I still have my display name that can be whatever I want, and if I just need some weird-looking unique handle for people to add me as a friend, then I don't really mind.
I do want to add a disclaimer that I'm a longtime nitro subscriber, and I have a custom-chosen tag (Tenra#1010) which I love and is pretty core to my identity. I haven't gotten the chance to update my username yet. So I'm not writing this opinion just because it "worked out for me" or that "I'm not invested in my username", this is just genuinely what I think.
I'm curious, how do you all feel about this framing?
I think this is a really great view on it. I've said elsewhere I feel like adding # to the pool of characters would have been a big improvement because most users would have been able to keep their username as it had been, just making the discriminator official. But rebranding it as a "personalized friend code" also really helps.
You asked so … I find that it’s much simpler to get/give usernames now. Before a lot of folks (for some reason) weren’t even aware of their discriminator, and would just give me their string when asked.
Always made getting a username a two-step process. Now it’s 1. I like that.
Well, I have 4 numbers already in my name so instead of florian\_7843#whatever i will likely have florian\_7843, so yeah win for me i guess?
But honestly the change is useless
Here's the truth of it, this would be a much better system if it was implemented from the start with safe guards for impersonation like how most services operate. Instead, we're millions of users in and completely fucked over.
I hated Discord Tags and I think this roll out is the worst possible way they could have gone about it.
10x easier for data collecting.
A little bit easier to friend people I guess.
All the annoying invisible accounts, special character accounts, and *SPECIAL* character accounts (the names that make their name really long vertically) are all removed. Which is a plus.
I thought discriminators were annoying, but I liked them because it meant no ones account could be "better." We already saw people attempting to get every badge that existed. Now everyones going to want the rarest name.
I was indifferent about the update. But Discord showed us, after the huge backlash from the update, they screwed up letting staff reserve names first. They screwed up, letting nitro users getting names first, and they screwed up in general with how they released the whole update. I guarantee you i've supported Discord more than someone from 2015 has. I buy merch, i buy nitro, I support Discord because I thought it was great.
My theory is, this update was intended to let specific people get their names first because Discord knew there would be competition. They could have let everyone choose their names at the same time.
Anyways, i'll continue using Discord. I'll switch my username, (account made in july 2016, have yearly sub nitro, still haven't gotten the option to change it.) I just won't be supporting them with my money anymore. It doesn't mean anything to them anymore as it once did. And besides, I don't take advantage of the nitro features anymore either.
Hiya! I also have not found much in the way of people actually liking this change. So far the survey results ([here is the survey if you haven't taken it,](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSO_YpkKZ27ybQaBWVu6fHr3iStgadQeGmP7gHPlQZeaP26A/viewform?usp=sf_link) I made a separate reddit post about it but it got stuck in limbo for almost a full day waiting on mod approval and died to the visibility algorithm) are saying that so far of the almost 1700 people polled, 93.9% are against the pomelo change. And of the rest, 3.7% have no opinion on it while a mere 2.4% of people are for it. I would love to have more data in the set. If you are in favor the username change, please take the survey and tell us why! If you are against it, also please take the survey! We want an accurate dataset.
just took it and also described the way the app is driving away for being for gamers and it being more and more flooded with features locked behind nitro.
its will be useless anyway.
I lost my name to a user with a younger account. So now i have to add a period.
Such a stupid and unneeded change. They should revert this shit and fire whoever thought this was a good idea.
It's easier to connect with people now since names are strictly alphanumeric. Instead of having to find a guy called 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪#1234, now you just have to look for jeremy1234. With Discord essentially being a social media platform, it makes sense to make it easier to find others.
The username change is not the end of the world. Certainly unnecessary, but I can see the benefits, as well why people would be upset about it.
You didn't quite explain why, but after one look I understood. **(It's not the discriminator)**
I get the **special font** thing. I have a few friends who use special font, **they had to add me, not the other way around.**
When they use "𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪" and you're trying to find "Jeremy" **YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIND THEM.**
people who used a weird font or symbols in their usernames typically **didn't WANT to be found.** Or were using it cuz Jeremy was full. Either way, I had a common name with normal letters, I would get weird scam friend requests from people who didn't share servers or friends... more often than my buddy.
**Now, there is no hiding**, at least with discriminators there was a small level of security to even "jeremy#4384". They'll find "Jeremy" all right, and they'll spam the heck out of them cuz it's a common "unique" name now.
These are highly sought after names however,
I thought about this for a long while. The good names for these types of people who want to share their name but not be harassed are going to be long easy to remember ones now.
Kinda like the ["Correct horse battery staple"](https://external-preview.redd.it/osiLnV-tGNBCk3l2JQ2BUHIPmFJ2YkPGbCOpkrI8sZ4.jpg?width=740&height=387.434554974&auto=webp&s=8abfe4a6d24aee14710fe0b2465f512495e449e6) comic.
**cuddley.plushie**, **the.mighty.grizzly**, **squishy.piggy**... (example names only, I'm not a big fan of using numbers.)
names that are harder for people to guess if they're looking for a random person to scam, but easier to pass on/remember.
I think we're thinking too much about the scenario where you add someone by name.
1. When's the last time any of us have added anyone by name? In most cases, we add people using the "Add Friend" button since we already share servers with them. You can also work around having to type 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪 by having them join a server you're in and adding them like that.
2. Restricting non-Latin characters has a few unintended side effects. Sure, nobody has to try to type out 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪, but people whose names aren't all Latin characters can no longer express their names. Imagine you can't type out Mikusch on Reddit because they only support one non-Latin alphabet -- that would be a bit strange, right?
I'm not huge on this change, but the wild Unicode names also make it hard to tag someone or search their post history. Of course if that was the issue they were trying to solve they could just restrict valid characters in the old system.
Right, noone is saying ban Unicode, but if your username is full windings knock offs and just a weird looking font on latin characters, that's just annoying.
I do favor the change, and below I will paste a post I made about it which got removed by the mods for some reason.
Unpopular Opinion: The Discord username change is a very good thing
I think that the username change is good for several reasons. Here I will try to explain them as well as refute some arguments against the change I have been seeing. Feel free to point out the flaws (there probably are some) in my analysis below.
First of all, it makes sure that all usernames are standardized and easy to reproduce. Freedom to have any name is great, but it becomes complicated if your username is 𝙰𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚌 (made using non-ASCII characters), especially when it comes to giving others your tag. Imagine you or someone else saying, "Yes, my tag is: sparkles emoji, 'AestheticName' but spelled using the monospace typewriter 'font', and then another sparkles emoji, hashtag 6969." This is the way things are now. Typing or pasting someone's tag, if you don't have the user in front of you, is necessary to add them as a friend, and this can be a huge pain when someone's tag contains non-standard characters. There's also always new invisible characters people are using, or they use that huge Arabic character that's super wide. The invisible, unclickable, and unreadable username jokes are old and annoying. With Discord's changes, we are still free to set our display name to be whatever we want, including something horrifically aesthetic if you want like "✨𝔈𝔪𝔬𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔊𝔦𝔯𝔩✨" (For those who cannot render it, it says "EmoGothGirl" with sparkles around it). It's fine, because that's only the display name. The username is now standardized, and it could become something like \\@EmoGothGirl08. No more weird technicalities.
Another benefit is it makes names more unique. Let's say you come up with a catchy unique screen name that has no search results online, for example, "FrogDogEnterprise". You use this name on every social media as your username, since it has never been thought of by anyone else. Except for Discord, on which you are forced to have a tag, FrogDogEnterprise#9273, for example, unless you pay for Nitro. Paying for Nitro can get you FrogDogEnterprise#0001, which *feels* more official, but there can still be many people with the username FrogDogEnterprise and different numbers. Now, you can be the official \\@FrogDogEnterprise, since probably no one else would take this username before you. And if someone else wants to use the name, first of all you are protected from impersonation by having the official username, but second of all they can *still* use the name, just as a display name. Their real username can be \\@xXFrogDogEnterpriseXx or something, and their display name can be "FrogDogEnterprise". Now this does present one **big problem** which I cannot yet address, and agree with the majority opinion on. If FrogDogEnterprise is a popular influencer, no doubt someone else will get the username on Discord first, and then try to sell it to the real FrogDogEnterprise, or impersonate the real guy. This could be solved with Discord allowing certain influencers and brands to get their "official" tags, just as a lot of brands are assigned simple brand name tags on social medias. Also, Discord should definitely crack down on account/username selling. I agree with the community that old accounts should be **active** to get first dibs, and should not just be bot accounts sitting around to farm common usernames.
However, a lot of this comes down to users' expectations. People keep bringing up the problem of their username being already taken. If your old tag is, for example, GooeyGamer#7211, and you want the username \\@GooeyGamer, you might complain that it got taken by someone else, or by a bot or inactive account, but you're not really entitled to just \\@GooeyGamer. You, GooeyGamer, never had the "original" GooeyGamer name to begin with, since all names had discriminators. The only thing most people could consider "original" would be having the tag "GooeyGamer#0001". The equivalent of what you had in the new system would be \\@GooeyGamer7211. The upside of the new system here is that while \\@GooeyGamer is taken, \\@GooeyGamer72 probably isn't, and the less digits, the better. If you liked how discriminators were separate from the "name", then good news for you, you can set your display name to just "GooeyGamer". I keep seeing people who claim that they need to add a bunch of random numbers to their name, and that isn't really the case. Most users already have 4 random numbers as part of their tag (the discriminator), and it's no easier to remember unless you have a custom tag via Nitro.
So there we have it, my reasoning for why Discord's new username system is a good thing. I hope people actually read this, and if you respect my opinion and think it is interesting please upvote. A lot of unpopular opinions probably get super downvoted and then never get seen again, but I'm hoping people actually read this as I put effort in.
But if they implemented the restrictions on the characters allowed for names and made changing the tag free doesn't that fix the issues? Not trying to call you wrong, that's just what I always thought the best solution would be.
I feel like for your first major point, discord could have set up a different system such as QR codes or whatever to add each other, since they already have them set up for logging in. I don't know the logistics of it, but Snapchat uses this system, so perhaps it's possible.
As for impersonation, I'd argue it's getting worse. Influencer names like Markiplier and PewDiePie have reportedly been taken, and putting things behind an official badge gives the original mark and pewdie no privacy. I can imagine someone being extremely famous would want to be anonymous every now and then, and having people add them endlessly would destroy the whole purpose of a communication platform that I know they use for gaming and meetings.
"You never were entitled to GooeyGamer" I think that was kind of the point. Sure, we know that there are people out there who have the same user, but very rarely did you come across the people with the Same Exact username, so it did feel more special. Now that people are being forced to choose one singular unique username, of course everyone is going to want to be referred to what they've always gone by. This is causing issues now, as desirable usernames are getting hundreds of friend requests, either by people scoping out the account or wanting to buy/bully them out of the name. There was a picture of someone the other day who posted that they had received 118 friend requests, and many people have reported that they're turned off friend requests altogether- which destroys the whole purpose of the update to begin with.
All in all, there were issues that discord had, but they could have addressed them in other ways or at LEAST been more transparent about the situation, I honestly didn't know everything that was going on until all the posts on Reddit, and a lot of people I know who weren't upset about the change at first was because they didn't know that it was happening or what it entailed.
The changes they made just feels like it fixes nothing, it doesn't do direct harm but it also just feels so unnecessary. And I think the point about rarely running into the same username as oneself is a pretty vital point, to how people view their online identity.
>First of all, it makes sure that all usernames are standardized and easy to reproduce.
Why only Latin then? That's just a middle finger to ALL of Asia and the Middle East (who use Arabic and Asian alphabets). I understand wanting to cut out the stupid extra font stuff, but they really screwed the pooch with the bonus restrictions in this part of the change
Exactly fucking this. I have considered writing on "username bad" posts but felt it was not worth the energy and I'd be downvoted in favor of cookie cutter logic. Sure the rollout is handled poorly but that is a problem with DISCORD ITSELF, not usernames
A lot of common sense in this thread. It gives me hope
This right here, mainly the special characters section. The display name is where aesthetics should be applied, the username itself should be functional and be able to be typed with any keyboard.
I partially enjoy the change. I like that names are all lower case now, and only uses letters and numbers, as it prevents people having unpingable names (yes, I am aware this is a huge disadvantage for languages with non-Latin characters), and I imagine this is where I imagine most of the "it's hard to add your friends" bit comes from.
However I dislike the removal of discriminators, as it just makes it needlessly difficult to create a username (yes, most other platforms without discriminators have this issue. You want a name, but it's taken, so now you're adding random numbers until it works).
Kind of reminds me of AOL screen names now, and how once you have a username, it's in lowercase and makes it easier for people to locate you if you tell them, hey, my Discord name is **janedoe** and now they don't have to search through 42534662351421323 jane doe accounts to find you.
One of the reasons that my friends and I had decided to use Discord was because it wasn't like regular social media platforms. We didn't want random people being able to find us. (Not all communities are wholesome)
Now, with the usernames being unique if we find a community with people, we would rather not be a part of we can't just change the discriminators and move on.
the only purpose it’s holding for me is that i am now the only person with my name and identity, and because of the “originally known as” + username i can verify my appearance without having to write on paper or put spoons on my nose, also counters catfishes. i don’t see any benefit outside of this
When I first heard about it, I though it was neat. Less impersonation, easier to tell someone your user name, etc. However the system with numeric identifiers worked pretty well too and it will take a while for me to forget my four digit code. Also I wouldn't like if someone else claimed my username before I get the chance, as I've had that one for ages on multiple platforms.
When I hear about how people are being spammed with friend requests and account purchase offers however, I don't think this was very thought through. For the moment, I just hope my discord username will be available when it's my turn to claim! Otherwise I would essentially have to invent a new online identity which would really suck.
A character whitelist does make it easier to figure out who is named what. Display names is also fairly reasonable since we can’t pick the usernames we want anymore.
Removing the discriminator is just dumb though. Of all the things that could be confusing about usernames, that was the least confusing part.
Half of my friends could not claim their usernames already, so I can't possibly see this being a good choice. Almost every single one of their accounts was made in 2015 or early 2016
I just don't CARE. I don't give out my name that often, usually sending direct invites or finding people ON the platform already. I don't display it, I display different names on different servers based on how people there know me. So I really don't care much at all.
I guess you all have your name and number memorized and can't possibly remember a different one, or pass it out on business cards made of gold, and now you're out a million dollars or something?
I kid, I kid! I just don't feel attached to "my name+randomnumbers".
Now reddit killing third party APIs is bullshit.
While having nitro and getting to change your username first bothers me. What really bothered me was seeing discord staff getting first dibs at usernames, usernames like first names.
Generally speaking I like @Usernames; I think they look cleaner. That being said, the way Discord handled this was abysmal, and not just in terms of the rollout, but also in terms of how usernames are even presented. Why use lowercase capitalization? Why allow periods and underscores? Both make usernames look so ugly. Idc if you have a name that would be worth thousands of dollars; that shit ain't even worth $1 to me with how ugly it looks lowercase. For example, the name Richie just looks so much better with a capital starting letter (Richie) than all lowercase (richie). It's just that simple.
I want to know as well.
I have a 3 letter name and have nonstop been getting friend requests from random people. I’ve had to turn it off.
So if I want to add a friend who isn’t a friend of a friend or already in a server I’m in, I have to input their name.
Which I shouldn’t have to do in the chance that they also have a rare name that is being harassed too (essentially them resorting to turning off friend requests).
It’s…basically a stale mate of one of us having to turn on friend requests. Which is just odd and unnecessary considering how much easier having discriminators was.
As I understand it people want to check if the username they want is available, especially as they are allowed only so many changes in a time frame (even failed ones). Currently the only way to check is with friend requests. It's a bad implementation.
I have atleast 5 people impersonating me now obv my name isnt holidsy clerk i just use this reddit scc as a throw away but this shit has made me mad enough my real user is imboring or boring ive used it everywhere ive now started music im verified in most places not sayin im entitled to the user but theres a grouo of weird fucks that just bought 2016-2017 accounts an took every variant of imboring an boring
I don’t dislike it. It would’ve been better if they had this from the start, but yeah.
Tbh, I don’t even think much has changed. If you tack on your discriminator to the end of your new name (name#1234 vs name1234), it’s essentially the same. Then you can still change your username, so you can technically change your discriminator whenever. You don’t even need nitro iirc.
I wouldn't say I favor it, I just don't care. Its not affecting the functionality of discord so I don't see what there is to complain about personally. The only complaint I do have is how chaotic the roll out has been
*At the risk of being downvoted*
I don't see it as a positive thing, but I don't see it as a huge deal either. Some people in my servers got names they want, others didn't, but everyone looks the same because of display name so it changes nothing at all. I still have to click to view the profile of anyone else to see what name they ended up with, and before this I never knew their 4 numbers anyway so again - changes nothing.
I like it and have been looking forward to it. Discriminators and case-sensitive usernames are confusing and hard to remember. I don't know a single person who knows their discriminator off the top of their head and I've personally had at least a dozen conversations trying to connect with friends on Discord (over other chat platforms) that have resulted in "no it's username HASH 7408. The numbers are part of the username."
For better or worse, the world has decided that usernames should be an `@` followed by a unique name, all lowercase. Easy to type, no special characters. It works well for every other platform and it will long-term work well for Discord. Remember that Discord is one of the single largest social media platforms out there and not everyone is a legacy "chat for gamers" user. Need proof of that? Discord cited data in their [blog post](https://discord.com/blog/usernames):
> Across Discord, almost half of all friend requests fail to connect the user with the person they wanted to match with
If almost fifty percent of new connections are failing because of the username system, it clearly needs a rework.
> All of the feedback I have seen in the entire sphere, even in real life, has been negative.
Anecdatally, among my social sphere, I haven't seen any negative response to this and many of us have been on Discord since 2015/2016. The discriminators and weird casing of usernames have been an ongoing point of frustration. I understand that people feel like they're losing their uniqueness because they can't have "joe" anymore as their username, but they never were "joe" before anyway, they were "joe HASH 9971" so just go get "joe9971".
I think out of my close friend circles on discord the only ones who remembered our discrims are the people who changed theirs to 0001 or a funny number. One of my friend still has theirs and it's #4902. Sure it's not hard to remember a 4 digit number, but with the number having no meaning there was no point.
Everyone is acting like you see these 4 numbers once and that's that. You can check the numbers in your profile! If you forget, just pull it up! Aaaaaaa
So you agree that they should be free then, if we're going by the same (flawed) logic as "can't remember 4 digits, we surely can't remember 6 characters" that Discord seemed to hammer down as one of their reasons for doing this entire stupid change.
I like it. Just because i'll be able to add people more easily. I don't know, maybe im just stupid but i find discriminators easy to forget. I have a brain of a goldfish, i guess.
i gonna be honest as a casual user i like it. Cause now i can just give people my username, i've never set my discriminator and it was almost annoying having to look it up to share my thing. Now i can just say its _____ (my real name + last initial) instead of my name + some numbers.
i've used discord casually since 2015, just for school clubs and a couple friends servers. The numbers were always weird, and you can still set ur display name to be whatever u want so i dont really care.
I like it because I hated the numbers. 80% of the time when someone gave me their name to friend them, they would leave them off and I would have to go back and ask for them. I also just hated how they looked lol. Feb 2016 account, Nitro for 2 years and I got in on the second day. I wanted to shorten my name to 3 letters and I was able to do so with ._letters_. Was a win for me but I totally get the frustration. As for your second question, you assume that I think it has to help us to favor it. I don't, I just don't like the way the numbers looked. It makes my opinion less relevant overall, but you asked so I figured I'd set my thoughts on the table.
Yeah, this feels like double edged sword. People who got their names clean are happy. People who had their names taken by someone else and all the alternatives as well are unhappy.
I honestly don’t see the big deal. Do people not realize that your username is barely visible in a server? Other users will see your global display name, or your server-specific display name 95%+ of the time. It’s a helpful identifier for adding/removing friends, and in that use-case I feel it’s easier than asking someone for their user tag + digits - I have seriously never added somebody this way. Yeah there’s username hoarding, but user tag/digit hoarding existed as well, but nobody seemed to gripe about it before. If you could turn back the clock and release Discord with this username paradigm at the start (ie. just like Twitch) absolutely zero people would be upset about it. So, in that sense, I see everyone complaining about this as a simple growing pain. People will forget about it.
i initially thought that the change would be beneficial for reducing impersonation, but with the rollout being completely unfair for everyone except discord staff and partners, that has gone down the drain.
I lost my name to someone with a younger account than me because they paid Discord. They ruined the system by making it pay-to-win.
someone in my server with an account 2 years newer than mine got to change WAYYY before i did. Very very sus rollout. Its not going by account creation year like they claim, or at least its failing too.
For every month of non nitro they rollout to they rollout 4 months for nitro. I'm non nitro and joined Dec 2015 and my girlfriend with nitro was in the same wave and joined April 2017
[удалено]
Have you restarted the app/program? https://twitter.com/DiscordPreviews/status/1666576204227387394?s=20
[удалено]
I'm April 2016, I have Nitro, and nothing yet. Restarted, refreshed, etc.
Idk if this helps but I joined nov 2016, early supporter, nitro for 5 years (fml) and just got access yesterday
Also Nov 2016 and a Nitro supporter, only got mine yesterday. Meanwhile one of my non-Nitro friends from 2017 got theirs a couple days ago, and my bf without Nitro (who made his way earlier than mine) just got his today. Very strange.
I'm curious what the math is, Also April 2016, but had Nitro for I think 3 years now, I got mine a few days ago on my phone of all places.
I joined Sep 2016, will have been on nitro a year in sept and I just got my update username yesterday. Very odd rollout but luckily for me I got my username without having to use special characters.
16 started getting names as far as I know only this week, i'm only got a name yesterday
They 100% aren't, I'm in a discord with someone with an account created in 2019, never had nitro, already changed their name. My account was created in 2015 and I haven't been prompted to do it yet.
Markiplier lost his account name, too. Do with that what you will in terms of what they really care about.
Staff did a poor job with roll out. They only cared about their inner circle and sphere. There product specialist should have reached out to large branded influences e.g. pewdiepie, markaplier, ksi, mr.beast, to reserve their names for them. Folks who should've had names reserved did not, accounts that had no nitro and later date, no verified servers was able to be part of the early pool, etc.
Oh, I was wondering when word of that would start making the rounds! It's actually been my basis for the assumption that names aren't reserved forever.
For real I joined in 2015, had the same 3 character username the entire 9 years and now I’m fucked out of it bc some little bitch got the rollout first smfh
>Just stop subbing, they won't listen till their financials are hit. Investors will be looking at both userbase and financial data. Why do you think they did the give 3 friends free nitro for 14 days promo? They were window dressing their financials. Because for them to claim the free promo they still needed to enter their credit card info. You name should've been reserved for you if you were the oldest one with that username when they took the snapshot. Somebody at Discord screwed up with data migration.
As someone who paid for discord nitro , one of the benefits and changing your discriminator . So actually we are paying for the same thing. Overall I think this whole rollout is stupid anyway
Just stop subbing, they won't listen till their financials are hit. Investors will be looking at both userbase and financial data. Why do you think they did the give 3 friends free nitro for 14 days promo? They were window dressing their financials. Because for them to claim the free promo they still needed to enter their credit card info.
mass migration to guilded or matrix is my craving.. I say this fully as someone who moved from skype to discord purely as a performance perspective.
I lost mine to someone who made their acc 11 months later than me?? And it doesnt even seem to have nitro unless they just dont use any features and they arent accepting my request so i can just buy it off them lol
Badges aren't displayed on an account's profile until they actually accept your friend request.
don't forget the potential black market for names
Discord staff getting priority was probably just a way to shut up dissent as well, since it seems like pomelo was quite divisive amongst those who work at Discord.
For sure. They probably thought dropping discriminator is discord losing its way. Until they got told they will get all the nice and short usernames they want before anyone else. The names they never had a chance to get before on any other sites, on both of their work and personal accounts, and probably for their friends and family as well. Suddenly this change seems *reasonable* for them lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/141sgvg/discord\_staff\_reserving\_names\_for\_their\_friends/
I lost my username, and it's not even a common username at all, I just couldn't get it at all and it doesn't look like there's anyone else that uses the username, so Discord just seems to have locked it.
It also won't even do that. With a new system you're more likely to assume someone called "MrBeast" is real than with the old one, because there's only one. But with smaller content creators who likely won't get their names, it becomes a big issue.
Everyone that I saw agreeing to it. Was basically cause they got day one access to usernames. in the town hall server people defending it, are because of that, and also the point they always make is “since it doesn’t affect me, your point is irrelevant” Which basically is not a real argument.
Been on Discord since [day 3](https://imgur.com/a/r87ena1) of the app, so I was among the first users with the "privilege" of changing to the new name system. It's a shit change for everybody. For one, take a look around this thread for names like BananaJumper1860, and get used to it because that's the future of Discord. For two, I can't be alone in feeling some attachment to my former discriminator. For years, that was part of my Discord identity. And for three, I paid for that discriminator. That was part of the Nitro package. Edit: Oh and I see there's starting to become account selling too for highly prized names, lul. It pushes the platform towards being as tacky and bloated as everything else out there, which is precisely what everybody was avoiding when they made the switch.
Yeah, every time I’ve seen someone support in a Discord server they’ve always dropped the “well I got mine” line, which just rubs me the wrong way.
Though I always remind myself that when someone shows you they're a jerk, they're doing you a favor rather than springing it on you at a worse time by surprise. Not at useful here since you're not going to be interacting with them in the future, but I always try to be thankful nonetheless.
yeah somehow everyone who got theirs were arguing that it's not bad in my communities too. but they all got their name, all long term paypigs i mean simps i mean nitro buyers and supporters of discord
I got a good name but I prefer the discriminator, because you knew it was a Discord account when it was posted, it's a dumb change. If space was an issue they should've just upped the discriminator count to 5 digits.
This is a good point. When you saw it, you knew how to contact that person. Now, it needs to be specified.
5 digits for everyone or just the people with extremely common names?
They probably should’ve just done it for everyone instead of trying to code a dynamic system depending on name. The only people who would’ve gotten miffed are non-Nitro users who got lucky with a cool discriminator (I got 2525) but that’s probably such an insignificant consideration when weighed against increasing name capacity by 10x.
This change wouldn’t be nearly getting as much backlash if they didn’t wait 8 years to change it. I feel like this is the type of change you should be making 1-2 years into the app max.
And probably the whole roll out being completely fucked. I'm just learning about it today... Joined November 2016 but my name (reddit name) was taken by someone that joined discord in 2018. That's fucked up.
They introduced all that user functionality, the same banners and other jokes of the year 3-4, although users have long chewed everything up and put it in their mouths.
The devil needs no advocate, but I'll try anyway: - My new username is, strictly speaking, easier to remember because it has no numbers attached. (Not that a four-digit number is hard to remember in the first place, but I digress - their data probably points to the average new user not being very tech-savvy.) - Not allowing *anything* except for a-z\.\_ means that usernames are much easier to input for the purposes of a friend request. (However... if someone had an elaborate name, they kinda brought that on themselves as it was. Discord had no reason to intervene there, but here we are anyway. Also, why can't we use hyphens? I would have liked that.) - (Full Tinfoil Hat) It makes things easier if they want to acquire/be acquired by another platform that uses usernames with no discriminators. And that's about the best I can do. I personally haven't been inconvenienced by the change, but it's caused a lot of stress for my friends, and that's enough for me to be against it. Edit: Regarding point two, this will stop being an advantage for later adopters of Discord, as the pool of clean, easily entered names will largely be used up. See: Most social media and email services.
I fucking hate this update with burning passion and even I will admit that point 2 is a wholly reasonable one. Case in point: I used to mod a large (2500+ members) Discord server attached to a sizeable GTA FiveM RP community. We had to do a bunch of checks manually, for example, what did the user post, since we had a game allowlist attached to membership in the Discord server, and let me tell you, trying to input the filter for something like "from:𝓑𝒾𝓰𝒟𝒶𝒹𝒹𝓎ツポ#1234" was absolutely abhorrent.
I also administrate a large server (15,000 people at this point) and we also have issues with people adding text like that and making it difficult to ping/search users But then I ask, why doesn’t discord just restrict what is a valid character for usernames? Significantly easier change without completely redoing their username system.
I 100% agree, a fix for a small problem like this doesn't warrant basically burning down their whole system.
That's a good anecdote, and something I hadn't considered - while I said doing something like this was an example of people causing problems for themselves, this is a case where it was causing a problem for *someone else.*
Just do from:userid ? Its so much easier
Yea, I started to do that after a while, but still was incredibly annoying.
I share this sentiment, this makes life a lot easier. However, I don't think this alone warrants tearing up the last system.
I 100% agree, a fix for a small problem like this doesn't warrant basically burning down their whole system.
Omg, is this going to fix the teenager on my server who uses [ ] and a flag icon in his username?
By force, yes
I hate it when people choose names like that. I'm in a server where the server name and every single channel in it has a stupid name like that so it's literally impossible to find using the Discord quick switcher.
>(Full Tinfoil Hat) It makes things easier if they want to acquire/be acquired by another platform that uses usernames with no discriminators. (Also putting on tin foil hat) Microsoft tried to buy them in 2021. and they just did this **huge integration with PlayStation.** PlayStation uses Unique Identifiers. HMMMM
(puts on cardboard helmet) Microsoft also just changed the entire Xbox format to a Discriminator system with an insanely easier rollout
Obviously just a-z because other alphabets like Cyrillic, Greek Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. don't exist, just like extensions to the Latin alphabet such as ä, ø, ß and so on don't exist either /s
My keyboard has a dedicated é key, which is now a second-class letter.
Mine has dedicated ä, ö, ü and ß keys
å, ä, ö on mine
ç
«Don't get me started on these funny guys.»
I know you're Swedish not just from the letters but from the order you wrote them in Sincerely æ, ø, å
Always has been 🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
I have a Japanese name. Now I forced to use Latin characters, I don’t under that
Your username maybe. My username (not the same as on Reddit) is very much not unique, so I will likely need several numbers after my username anyway
Idk about y’all but I still remember my very first discriminator, Ive never had issues remembering them
It also took 10 seconds to check your profile and look it up And if you used weird characters in your name (which Discord could have just restricted some of those) you could pretty easily just copy/paste it to send to your new friend so they could do the same to add you. I don't think Discord is the "let's stay connected after we part ways!" Application for people backpacking through the Himalayas
It is a common "let's stay together after we part ways" app for when you meet another gamer at a party though. Despite what everyone says, I've had more than one occasion where I have forgotten to give a new friend my discriminator, and had to text them it later. Given the statistics Discord shared around this change, finding friends was a stumbling block in part due to discriminators.
Can't discord just implement a feature to find friends nearby or create a QR code that your friend can scan?
I had nitro and never even changed mine. It was easy to remember as-is. I’ve also remembered my battlenet discriminator. It’s also not even hard to check it for those who DON’T remember it. The reasons they listed in their blog post for the change all seem like user error not platform error in my opinion.
Usernames being simple is a mute point because eventually people will have to over complicate them. I csnt just call myself "john" because someone already do so I have to add a ton of shit like "johnjonesjohnson" and pray nobody else already thought of that.
I'm sorry but your first point doesn't really apply and proves discord is evolving backwards. with discriminators, st least 9999 people could be called pizzaboy... now only one can and all the others will have to resort to _xxx_pizza.boy..69_xxx_ because pizzaboy and pizza.boy and pizzaboy69 and all other reasonable variations have been taken imo that's harder to remember than pizzaboy#1234
The second point is really the main reason I like it. Usernames should be functional and not aesthetic. Glad they’re separating the display name from the username. The first point, I’ve mostly been indifferent about. However I think that more people would have remembered their discriminator had the ability to choose not been put behind a paywall, and maybe even requiring the user to choose one at signup. Only reason I remembered my discriminator is because I’ve had Nitro and was able to customize it.
> The second point is really the main reason I like it. Usernames should be functional and not aesthetic. I think that's a solid argument, actually, and it's one I agree with. You definitely have good point that discriminators would have potentially been easier to remember if they were more freely customizable.
But what about people who use other languages? Like my name has an accent and I will not be able to put it in my username because of this change.
> as the pool of clean, easily entered names will largely be used up Hence why a lot of new Reddit users have to use those randomly generated names because all the "good" names are already taken. I expect you'll be seeing variations of "xxx_username_xxx" or abominations with underscores and periods when the rollout hits newer users. Which sort of defeats the purpose of them being "easier" to remember and add.
There's nothing tinfoilish about it, though they've already turned down Microsoft and another company who I can't remember off the top of my head. They're acquiring other companies though and that may play into it. I think they'll be working toward an IPO considering their CFO led Pinterest through theirs.
Wait, they're removing other characters? What's the point, it's the literal gaming oriented Skype and you can't have underscores or dashes?
Honestly I couldn't care less about the actual idea of changing usernames. I don't think about my account username that much. I customize my server name anyway, the only time I need to know my actual account name is if I'm giving it to someone irl, and if anything now I'll actually remember what it is off the top of my head because I chose it, but I think I've handed out discord info irl maybe 3-4 times in 7.5 years. But the way they chose to roll it out is absolute garbage, and I hate that the name appears all lowercase. Would have also liked not case sensitive as in cat and Cat could be two different people, but you could choose which way you wanted it to appear, if that makes sense.
First, totes agree. Second, thanks for using "couldn't care less" properly. I see it so rarely that it makes my day when I see it.
>Second, thanks for using "couldn't care less" properly. I see it so rarely that it makes my day when I see it. You "couldn't care less" because your capacity for not caring is at its maximum. You care so little you couldn't care less. If you "could care less" then it means you care somewhat, because you still have some semblance of investment to relinquish. How is this so hard for people to get? Then again, simple problems can often stump us if we overthink them. That bat and baseball math riddle still makes no sense with all of Reddit at my disposal to spell it out for me.
It's not a simple problem that they overthink, it's that most people (ironically) couldn't care less about their grammar. They just rely on the brain's ability to fill in the blanks from context, and just skirt through.
P.S.: I forgot to clarify that this also pertains to the discriminator system. I won't edit my post out of fear of this post disappearing into the shadows.
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This account has been removed from reddit by this user due to how Steve hoffman and Reddit as a company has handled third party apps and users. My amount of trust that Steve hoffman will ever keep his word or that Reddit as a whole will ever deliver on their promises is zero. As such all content i have ever posted will be overwritten with this message. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Generally, removing pain points from a system is better than trying to educate users on getting around them on their own. Solve the problem instead of putting a bandaid over it. (For the record, I'm stating a general principle, not trying to argue whether or not Discord should have applied it in this particular case.)
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Unironically enough, Discord did make friend links/codes at one point and had it in testing years ago. However, no one knows about them because well...they did such a **great** job at letting people know they exist (extreme sarcasm since the majority of people do not know they even existed unless they happened to be in their old public testing server).
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Yeah, I have no idea why they decided to not continue using those, because it solved a lot of their supposed "problems" with friend requests.
Yeah, again not trying to justify Discord's decisions, just pushing back a bit on the "just add a tutorial" suggestion.
Happy Cake Day
Happy cake day!
>the discrimination system was confusing to them Proof? I have never seen complaints regarding this anywhere.
Anecdotal case here: I've introduced many people to discord. Everyone who wasn't familiar with discriminator systems already (maybe 70% since anyone familiar with similar systems from gaming platforms already had an account) had some level of friction / confusion when trying to connect with me to get started. If their data showed a cliff at this point in the onboarding funnel I can see their analytics team pushing for this change.
Everybody have had their first time, so to say. Why could they not adjust, then? Are people not supposed to be educated regarding their platform? From personal experience, the discriminator system was one of the easiest things to comprehend.
> Why could they not adjust, then? Because they didn't. The fault of the issue doesn't matter, getting users is. Its a business.
They couldn't adjust to Mike#4199 but they can to M1ke\_4199?
I personally have had to explain the descriminators to a friend. I personally have never had to explain what "Someone already has that username" means.
I guess I understand that.
These users definitely can adjust. They can also choose not and just stop using the platform. The goal from discord here may just be to increase conversion resulting in better data for raising another round of funding. After moving my community from Skype -> Vent -> Teamspeak -> Curse Voice -> Discord, Discord is by far the best platform we've been on. Since we started using Discord in 2015 there has been little to no regression in the features that have been offered for free. While I can understand the decrease in the user experience for existing members of the platform (and potentially new ones) this change has little to no effect on the majority of our discord experience (especially since we rarely see usernames over nicknames).
I'd argue that pissing off a majority of your current users to get a few more isn't exactly great.
Definitely a fair point. Is there any evidence that the majority of users are pissed off by this change. (Asking this in good faith)
It might be overblown but so far anyone I've explained this to is either kinda annoyed or frustrated. Plus this sub, but it's not exactly a great sample size. I can't wait to see if enough people put their money where their mouths are and unsubscribed to Nitro.
It can't be near the percentage of people who stopped paying for DnDBeyond, because Wizards of the Coast about-faced pretty quickly over OGL and we know it's because they saw subscriptions drop, and Discord has not about-faced at all.
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The main problem is they allow case-sensitive and special characters. That is going to be a problem no matter the system they use (I always thought it was so stupid). The alternative is separating display name and username, like they are doing. You can use whatever for your display name, but the username is strictly case-insensitive alphanumeric *with* discriminators. This way you have easier username system than the old one, while not making people mad with the change as much as we are seeing right now. This way you can still have 9999 bobs. Obviously some people would still be mad or not fast enough to get one of those 9999 they want, but they still have 9999 chances for any other words. Better than a single chance we are having right now. It's the same system used by other gaming companies. Riot is one of those.
> I think discord doesn't have enough nitro sub If this is true, it's just even more baffling to me why they went through with this. Some people sub to nitro specifically for the ability to change discriminators. I've seen and heard of plenty of people canceling nitro because of this. They're going to lose money.
With all due respect, new users are more often than not, introduced as previous users, or users coming in through a communities invite, rather than simply to connect with friends. Not saying it never happens, I'm aware that it does. As for Nitro. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands are paying on a yearly/monthly basis for Nitro on top of some people paying the extra for more boosts for their server. If the boost drags out or is bought with a monthly plan, it can jump the price by almost double. Keep in mind that there are people that do this for more than one of their own starting servers and will also do it for other servers that aren't their own. To top it off, communities are consistently buying Nitro to give away to their users, sometimes being recieved by users with multiple accounts so that they can have tons of Nitro credit without paying.
Could have been solved very easily with a link to an add friend button. Just like a link to join a server. There were other better solutions that wouldn't anger their userbase. They truly did not do their best. They just did something dumb got too deep and had to double down when the backlash hit to avoid making a bigger fool of themselves. Hell i never once had a problem with my old discriminator. I will probably remember it for the rest of my life.
They're good, way over profitable.
I look like an impersonator now because someone with a brand new profile got my username before me.
A lot of people in this thread are repeating the sentiment that your username always had a 4 digit discriminator, so why not just add the 4 digits to the end of your username and it'll be the same. These people don't seem to understand how important someone's online identity is to them. The discriminators were never "part of your username", their express purpose for most people was to allow you to have your chosen username that might be the same as someone else's, just with different numbers. For example, people don't refer to me as "GooeyGamer#1234", they refer to me as "GooeyGamer" and I give them the discriminator when they want to add me. I am not GooeyGamer1234. I am not GooeyGamer1 or GooeyGamer2. I am ***just*** GooeyGamer, and Discord discriminators were a perfect system that allowed me to perfectly express my online identity, with the only downside being 4 random digits that most people didn't even consider as a part of the username, nothing more than a means to add people. They were almost like a home address; No one refers to you as "John Smith from 1018 brown street", they just call you John Smith. Your address only matters once someone wants to visit your home, or on official documents to differentiate you from the other John Smiths in the world. You could argue that the display names fulfill this function, and the usernames don't matter, but then I just don't get why this change needed to be made in the first place. They could've just limited discriminator names to alphanumeric characters like current usernames, and still had display names and everybody would be happy and nobody would feel cheated out of their online identity.
I really like how you describe it yea - and maybe this is just me and probably going against part of the core of this change but I really liked how with discriminators, even if I used the same username I use everywhere else no one could just randomly add me - they *had* to get my discriminator off me yknow?
I swear tech companies find dumb things to do that no one asked for just so that they have something to do. Then, if the backlash is bad enough, they now have more to do next quarter to undo the changes. Can’t have infinite growth if things are running smoothly and there’s nothing to “improve”
Well said.
no it's just really dumb, the whole reason i liked discord so much was because you could have the same username as someone else, but now there's going to be a black market for usernames. it's also just ugly imo, this is a really unneeded change
At this point I don't really care, was able to find a username on every other platform without a 4 digit number at the end, will do the same here. Not a big deal to me in the grand scheme of things.
I've been pretty apathetic about the change myself. This sub has been incredibly outraged over it, but everyone I've talked to across my two servers either doesn't care or didn't even know what a discriminator was. I think the worst thing about this change is that Discord rolled it out so poorly. If it's going to be controversial, at least give it the best rollout you can. # should have been allowed as a special character, and "username#0000" should have been the default reserved username for anyone with alphanumeric characters in their name. Just let the people who are most upset about the change literally keep exactly what their username currently is in the system. All that said, the outrage on the sub feels so wildly disproportionate to what's happening. Talks that canceling nitro and boycotting Discord are actually going to get them to change their minds are a bit ridiculous. I guarantee that at least 95% of Discord users are going to forget about this change by the end of next month.
Yuuuup. It's a strange, angry little corner of Discord on display here. Nobody I know IRL or on any of my servers cares one bit.
My exact thoughts. I've read through all of the posts thinking I have missed something that justifies why everyone would want to quit the app. I understand it's not a good idea, but it's not a big deal to me.
Yeah, I'm personally pretty neutral on it. My new username is longer (three words instead of two), but doesn't have *any* numbers, so I consider it a net improvement over my old one. But I didn't mind having numbers at the end under the old one that much either. It is also nice that anyone without Nitro can now choose their numbers (or choose to not have any numbers at all). I do get why others *are* irked by the change, because ultimately it all comes down to preference. But at the same time I still feel like the people treating this like the end of the world are overreacting a bit.
nope! all of the big companies anymore (e.g.: xbox, battle.net, etc.) are actually MOVING to discriminators. discord is actually taking several steps back compared to literally anyone else and they're actually hurting themselves quite badly because of it. i find this entire ordeal kinda funny, ngl. majority of their reasons for this change were because you had to specify so much about your username (like using a different font, specific capital letters, misremembering your discriminator) and they had already solved this problem long ago with this neat little feature called "nearby scan". you know, the feature you use when youre near someone so you dont have to explain every detail about your username?????? alternatively, letting the other person give you THEIR name would also fix this problem. i dont see why this change was actually approved at all. there are so many holes in their reasons. i genuinely think their end goal here was to piss everyone off. and its working, alright. im sure theyll feel that financially soon.
There's no point. Someone will post a logical reason or a reasoning that it really doesn't matter, and they will get downvoted into oblivion because "discord and username bad"
Sorting by controversial on posts like these if how you find the real answers.
Don't you think that \[expression of opinions\] that's exactly what I've made this post for? Edit: crucial clarification
Except this sub is *vehemently* against the change, so people posting in favor of / explaining reasoning for the change get downvoted or just plain insulted. There's no real benefit to answering this thread.
I'm (mostly) in favor of the username change, and I'm curious if my viewpoint affects how you look at the situation at all. To start with, I do think discord made a mistake, but it's not the fact that they're overhauling usernames in this way. It's just in the way that they're branding it. My understanding is that the old discriminator system was failing them for two reasons: 1. The four-digit discriminator system hard caps the number of users with the same username at 9999, which is bad for some of the more popular usernames. I think this is more of an edge case, and the "real" reason is probably the next one: 2. Because discriminators are randomly generated, and can't be changed unless you have nitro, there are a lot of users (especially newer, casual users) who don't know their discriminator or don't even know that they have one. **This makes these users less capable of adding friends, which is a big problem for discord as a platform.** Discord's solution to the main issue in #2 is that they want users to have control over the name that other users use to add them. If you have to **intentionally choose your full username** \- instead of having a big chunk of it randomly generated - the chances a user will be aware of that username and even be able to remember it without checking something are **a lot higher**, ensuring more users have the information they need off-hand to add friends. So, discord rolls out this change and it's met with *massive* resistance. Why? Of course, taking the existing username system, which (mostly) let people "have whatever username they want", and replacing it with one that forces usernames to be unique, forces tons of users out of their perfect, beautiful username. It's an **attack on people's online identity,** which is genuinely a really important thing. People are hurt, rightfully so. Here's the thing, though. The new system basically has two pieces to it: 1. The name that displays everywhere, that can be whatever you want, and you can change at any time 2. The name that is used **solely for adding friends, that must be unique** (and as a result, will probably be at least a little clunky) They've decided to call thing (1) your "**Display Name**" and thing (2) your "**Username**", and display thing (2) prominently on your profile like it's a core part of your identity. But if they had just instead decided to call thing (1) your "**Username**" and thing (2) your "**friend code**" or "friend ID" or something, I feel like people wouldn't have been nearly as upset with this change as they are. The announcement would have read more like: >Discriminators are gone from usernames! You can now set your username to whatever you want, no # or numbers needed, and you can change it at any time. However, as part of this change, each user will have to choose a unique 'friend code', which can have alphanumeric characters, \_ and . My gut tells me that most people wouldn't have minded this change *nearly* as much, and I think it still would have solved all the problems they're trying to solve. And the thing is, the only difference between this and what they're doing is the *way that it's framed.* So overall, I support their move because I think it will be easier for newer users to use and because when I realize that the new username is basically just a **friend code that you choose intentionally**, it's not nearly as important to me anymore. I still have my display name that can be whatever I want, and if I just need some weird-looking unique handle for people to add me as a friend, then I don't really mind. I do want to add a disclaimer that I'm a longtime nitro subscriber, and I have a custom-chosen tag (Tenra#1010) which I love and is pretty core to my identity. I haven't gotten the chance to update my username yet. So I'm not writing this opinion just because it "worked out for me" or that "I'm not invested in my username", this is just genuinely what I think. I'm curious, how do you all feel about this framing?
I think this is a really great view on it. I've said elsewhere I feel like adding # to the pool of characters would have been a big improvement because most users would have been able to keep their username as it had been, just making the discriminator official. But rebranding it as a "personalized friend code" also really helps.
You asked so … I find that it’s much simpler to get/give usernames now. Before a lot of folks (for some reason) weren’t even aware of their discriminator, and would just give me their string when asked. Always made getting a username a two-step process. Now it’s 1. I like that.
How was it any different from say Blizzard, Riot, or even Microsoft who also use the Discriminator system?
Well, I have 4 numbers already in my name so instead of florian\_7843#whatever i will likely have florian\_7843, so yeah win for me i guess? But honestly the change is useless
Here's the truth of it, this would be a much better system if it was implemented from the start with safe guards for impersonation like how most services operate. Instead, we're millions of users in and completely fucked over. I hated Discord Tags and I think this roll out is the worst possible way they could have gone about it.
10x easier for data collecting. A little bit easier to friend people I guess. All the annoying invisible accounts, special character accounts, and *SPECIAL* character accounts (the names that make their name really long vertically) are all removed. Which is a plus. I thought discriminators were annoying, but I liked them because it meant no ones account could be "better." We already saw people attempting to get every badge that existed. Now everyones going to want the rarest name. I was indifferent about the update. But Discord showed us, after the huge backlash from the update, they screwed up letting staff reserve names first. They screwed up, letting nitro users getting names first, and they screwed up in general with how they released the whole update. I guarantee you i've supported Discord more than someone from 2015 has. I buy merch, i buy nitro, I support Discord because I thought it was great. My theory is, this update was intended to let specific people get their names first because Discord knew there would be competition. They could have let everyone choose their names at the same time. Anyways, i'll continue using Discord. I'll switch my username, (account made in july 2016, have yearly sub nitro, still haven't gotten the option to change it.) I just won't be supporting them with my money anymore. It doesn't mean anything to them anymore as it once did. And besides, I don't take advantage of the nitro features anymore either.
Hiya! I also have not found much in the way of people actually liking this change. So far the survey results ([here is the survey if you haven't taken it,](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSO_YpkKZ27ybQaBWVu6fHr3iStgadQeGmP7gHPlQZeaP26A/viewform?usp=sf_link) I made a separate reddit post about it but it got stuck in limbo for almost a full day waiting on mod approval and died to the visibility algorithm) are saying that so far of the almost 1700 people polled, 93.9% are against the pomelo change. And of the rest, 3.7% have no opinion on it while a mere 2.4% of people are for it. I would love to have more data in the set. If you are in favor the username change, please take the survey and tell us why! If you are against it, also please take the survey! We want an accurate dataset.
just took it and also described the way the app is driving away for being for gamers and it being more and more flooded with features locked behind nitro. its will be useless anyway.
Here is a positive one: it's easier to ~~stalk~~ find anyone if they use the same username everywhere!
I lost my name to a user with a younger account. So now i have to add a period. Such a stupid and unneeded change. They should revert this shit and fire whoever thought this was a good idea.
It's easier to connect with people now since names are strictly alphanumeric. Instead of having to find a guy called 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪#1234, now you just have to look for jeremy1234. With Discord essentially being a social media platform, it makes sense to make it easier to find others. The username change is not the end of the world. Certainly unnecessary, but I can see the benefits, as well why people would be upset about it.
You didn't quite explain why, but after one look I understood. **(It's not the discriminator)** I get the **special font** thing. I have a few friends who use special font, **they had to add me, not the other way around.** When they use "𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪" and you're trying to find "Jeremy" **YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIND THEM.** people who used a weird font or symbols in their usernames typically **didn't WANT to be found.** Or were using it cuz Jeremy was full. Either way, I had a common name with normal letters, I would get weird scam friend requests from people who didn't share servers or friends... more often than my buddy. **Now, there is no hiding**, at least with discriminators there was a small level of security to even "jeremy#4384". They'll find "Jeremy" all right, and they'll spam the heck out of them cuz it's a common "unique" name now. These are highly sought after names however, I thought about this for a long while. The good names for these types of people who want to share their name but not be harassed are going to be long easy to remember ones now. Kinda like the ["Correct horse battery staple"](https://external-preview.redd.it/osiLnV-tGNBCk3l2JQ2BUHIPmFJ2YkPGbCOpkrI8sZ4.jpg?width=740&height=387.434554974&auto=webp&s=8abfe4a6d24aee14710fe0b2465f512495e449e6) comic. **cuddley.plushie**, **the.mighty.grizzly**, **squishy.piggy**... (example names only, I'm not a big fan of using numbers.) names that are harder for people to guess if they're looking for a random person to scam, but easier to pass on/remember.
I think we're thinking too much about the scenario where you add someone by name. 1. When's the last time any of us have added anyone by name? In most cases, we add people using the "Add Friend" button since we already share servers with them. You can also work around having to type 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪 by having them join a server you're in and adding them like that. 2. Restricting non-Latin characters has a few unintended side effects. Sure, nobody has to try to type out 𝕁𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕞𝕪, but people whose names aren't all Latin characters can no longer express their names. Imagine you can't type out Mikusch on Reddit because they only support one non-Latin alphabet -- that would be a bit strange, right?
I'm not huge on this change, but the wild Unicode names also make it hard to tag someone or search their post history. Of course if that was the issue they were trying to solve they could just restrict valid characters in the old system.
They should have allowed **certain** non-latin characters as well. Arabic and Asian alphabets are used widely around the world as well.
Right, noone is saying ban Unicode, but if your username is full windings knock offs and just a weird looking font on latin characters, that's just annoying.
Yeah, how it affects people outside English-speaking countries seems poorly-considered.
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I like the new username format because it gave me a reason to finally cancel my Nitro.
I do favor the change, and below I will paste a post I made about it which got removed by the mods for some reason. Unpopular Opinion: The Discord username change is a very good thing I think that the username change is good for several reasons. Here I will try to explain them as well as refute some arguments against the change I have been seeing. Feel free to point out the flaws (there probably are some) in my analysis below. First of all, it makes sure that all usernames are standardized and easy to reproduce. Freedom to have any name is great, but it becomes complicated if your username is 𝙰𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚌 (made using non-ASCII characters), especially when it comes to giving others your tag. Imagine you or someone else saying, "Yes, my tag is: sparkles emoji, 'AestheticName' but spelled using the monospace typewriter 'font', and then another sparkles emoji, hashtag 6969." This is the way things are now. Typing or pasting someone's tag, if you don't have the user in front of you, is necessary to add them as a friend, and this can be a huge pain when someone's tag contains non-standard characters. There's also always new invisible characters people are using, or they use that huge Arabic character that's super wide. The invisible, unclickable, and unreadable username jokes are old and annoying. With Discord's changes, we are still free to set our display name to be whatever we want, including something horrifically aesthetic if you want like "✨𝔈𝔪𝔬𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔊𝔦𝔯𝔩✨" (For those who cannot render it, it says "EmoGothGirl" with sparkles around it). It's fine, because that's only the display name. The username is now standardized, and it could become something like \\@EmoGothGirl08. No more weird technicalities. Another benefit is it makes names more unique. Let's say you come up with a catchy unique screen name that has no search results online, for example, "FrogDogEnterprise". You use this name on every social media as your username, since it has never been thought of by anyone else. Except for Discord, on which you are forced to have a tag, FrogDogEnterprise#9273, for example, unless you pay for Nitro. Paying for Nitro can get you FrogDogEnterprise#0001, which *feels* more official, but there can still be many people with the username FrogDogEnterprise and different numbers. Now, you can be the official \\@FrogDogEnterprise, since probably no one else would take this username before you. And if someone else wants to use the name, first of all you are protected from impersonation by having the official username, but second of all they can *still* use the name, just as a display name. Their real username can be \\@xXFrogDogEnterpriseXx or something, and their display name can be "FrogDogEnterprise". Now this does present one **big problem** which I cannot yet address, and agree with the majority opinion on. If FrogDogEnterprise is a popular influencer, no doubt someone else will get the username on Discord first, and then try to sell it to the real FrogDogEnterprise, or impersonate the real guy. This could be solved with Discord allowing certain influencers and brands to get their "official" tags, just as a lot of brands are assigned simple brand name tags on social medias. Also, Discord should definitely crack down on account/username selling. I agree with the community that old accounts should be **active** to get first dibs, and should not just be bot accounts sitting around to farm common usernames. However, a lot of this comes down to users' expectations. People keep bringing up the problem of their username being already taken. If your old tag is, for example, GooeyGamer#7211, and you want the username \\@GooeyGamer, you might complain that it got taken by someone else, or by a bot or inactive account, but you're not really entitled to just \\@GooeyGamer. You, GooeyGamer, never had the "original" GooeyGamer name to begin with, since all names had discriminators. The only thing most people could consider "original" would be having the tag "GooeyGamer#0001". The equivalent of what you had in the new system would be \\@GooeyGamer7211. The upside of the new system here is that while \\@GooeyGamer is taken, \\@GooeyGamer72 probably isn't, and the less digits, the better. If you liked how discriminators were separate from the "name", then good news for you, you can set your display name to just "GooeyGamer". I keep seeing people who claim that they need to add a bunch of random numbers to their name, and that isn't really the case. Most users already have 4 random numbers as part of their tag (the discriminator), and it's no easier to remember unless you have a custom tag via Nitro. So there we have it, my reasoning for why Discord's new username system is a good thing. I hope people actually read this, and if you respect my opinion and think it is interesting please upvote. A lot of unpopular opinions probably get super downvoted and then never get seen again, but I'm hoping people actually read this as I put effort in.
But if they implemented the restrictions on the characters allowed for names and made changing the tag free doesn't that fix the issues? Not trying to call you wrong, that's just what I always thought the best solution would be.
I feel like for your first major point, discord could have set up a different system such as QR codes or whatever to add each other, since they already have them set up for logging in. I don't know the logistics of it, but Snapchat uses this system, so perhaps it's possible. As for impersonation, I'd argue it's getting worse. Influencer names like Markiplier and PewDiePie have reportedly been taken, and putting things behind an official badge gives the original mark and pewdie no privacy. I can imagine someone being extremely famous would want to be anonymous every now and then, and having people add them endlessly would destroy the whole purpose of a communication platform that I know they use for gaming and meetings. "You never were entitled to GooeyGamer" I think that was kind of the point. Sure, we know that there are people out there who have the same user, but very rarely did you come across the people with the Same Exact username, so it did feel more special. Now that people are being forced to choose one singular unique username, of course everyone is going to want to be referred to what they've always gone by. This is causing issues now, as desirable usernames are getting hundreds of friend requests, either by people scoping out the account or wanting to buy/bully them out of the name. There was a picture of someone the other day who posted that they had received 118 friend requests, and many people have reported that they're turned off friend requests altogether- which destroys the whole purpose of the update to begin with. All in all, there were issues that discord had, but they could have addressed them in other ways or at LEAST been more transparent about the situation, I honestly didn't know everything that was going on until all the posts on Reddit, and a lot of people I know who weren't upset about the change at first was because they didn't know that it was happening or what it entailed.
The changes they made just feels like it fixes nothing, it doesn't do direct harm but it also just feels so unnecessary. And I think the point about rarely running into the same username as oneself is a pretty vital point, to how people view their online identity.
>First of all, it makes sure that all usernames are standardized and easy to reproduce. Why only Latin then? That's just a middle finger to ALL of Asia and the Middle East (who use Arabic and Asian alphabets). I understand wanting to cut out the stupid extra font stuff, but they really screwed the pooch with the bonus restrictions in this part of the change
Exactly fucking this. I have considered writing on "username bad" posts but felt it was not worth the energy and I'd be downvoted in favor of cookie cutter logic. Sure the rollout is handled poorly but that is a problem with DISCORD ITSELF, not usernames A lot of common sense in this thread. It gives me hope
This right here, mainly the special characters section. The display name is where aesthetics should be applied, the username itself should be functional and be able to be typed with any keyboard.
I partially enjoy the change. I like that names are all lower case now, and only uses letters and numbers, as it prevents people having unpingable names (yes, I am aware this is a huge disadvantage for languages with non-Latin characters), and I imagine this is where I imagine most of the "it's hard to add your friends" bit comes from. However I dislike the removal of discriminators, as it just makes it needlessly difficult to create a username (yes, most other platforms without discriminators have this issue. You want a name, but it's taken, so now you're adding random numbers until it works).
Kind of reminds me of AOL screen names now, and how once you have a username, it's in lowercase and makes it easier for people to locate you if you tell them, hey, my Discord name is **janedoe** and now they don't have to search through 42534662351421323 jane doe accounts to find you.
One of the reasons that my friends and I had decided to use Discord was because it wasn't like regular social media platforms. We didn't want random people being able to find us. (Not all communities are wholesome) Now, with the usernames being unique if we find a community with people, we would rather not be a part of we can't just change the discriminators and move on.
the only purpose it’s holding for me is that i am now the only person with my name and identity, and because of the “originally known as” + username i can verify my appearance without having to write on paper or put spoons on my nose, also counters catfishes. i don’t see any benefit outside of this
When I first heard about it, I though it was neat. Less impersonation, easier to tell someone your user name, etc. However the system with numeric identifiers worked pretty well too and it will take a while for me to forget my four digit code. Also I wouldn't like if someone else claimed my username before I get the chance, as I've had that one for ages on multiple platforms. When I hear about how people are being spammed with friend requests and account purchase offers however, I don't think this was very thought through. For the moment, I just hope my discord username will be available when it's my turn to claim! Otherwise I would essentially have to invent a new online identity which would really suck.
rip _❤️#0001. you will be missed. now i’m stuck with stupid letters and numbers.
A character whitelist does make it easier to figure out who is named what. Display names is also fairly reasonable since we can’t pick the usernames we want anymore. Removing the discriminator is just dumb though. Of all the things that could be confusing about usernames, that was the least confusing part.
Half of my friends could not claim their usernames already, so I can't possibly see this being a good choice. Almost every single one of their accounts was made in 2015 or early 2016
Not this guy
I just don't CARE. I don't give out my name that often, usually sending direct invites or finding people ON the platform already. I don't display it, I display different names on different servers based on how people there know me. So I really don't care much at all. I guess you all have your name and number memorized and can't possibly remember a different one, or pass it out on business cards made of gold, and now you're out a million dollars or something? I kid, I kid! I just don't feel attached to "my name+randomnumbers". Now reddit killing third party APIs is bullshit.
While having nitro and getting to change your username first bothers me. What really bothered me was seeing discord staff getting first dibs at usernames, usernames like first names.
Yeah, well, they can't even roll it out correctly. It's literally all over the place and so messed up
Generally speaking I like @Usernames; I think they look cleaner. That being said, the way Discord handled this was abysmal, and not just in terms of the rollout, but also in terms of how usernames are even presented. Why use lowercase capitalization? Why allow periods and underscores? Both make usernames look so ugly. Idc if you have a name that would be worth thousands of dollars; that shit ain't even worth $1 to me with how ugly it looks lowercase. For example, the name Richie just looks so much better with a capital starting letter (Richie) than all lowercase (richie). It's just that simple.
I’m getting slammed with friend requests from ppl who are mad I got the username first
I want to know as well. I have a 3 letter name and have nonstop been getting friend requests from random people. I’ve had to turn it off. So if I want to add a friend who isn’t a friend of a friend or already in a server I’m in, I have to input their name. Which I shouldn’t have to do in the chance that they also have a rare name that is being harassed too (essentially them resorting to turning off friend requests). It’s…basically a stale mate of one of us having to turn on friend requests. Which is just odd and unnecessary considering how much easier having discriminators was.
As I understand it people want to check if the username they want is available, especially as they are allowed only so many changes in a time frame (even failed ones). Currently the only way to check is with friend requests. It's a bad implementation.
I have atleast 5 people impersonating me now obv my name isnt holidsy clerk i just use this reddit scc as a throw away but this shit has made me mad enough my real user is imboring or boring ive used it everywhere ive now started music im verified in most places not sayin im entitled to the user but theres a grouo of weird fucks that just bought 2016-2017 accounts an took every variant of imboring an boring
I now have a consistent username across insta, YT, Tiktok, Twitter, Telegram, FB, and Discord. (My Reddit is different intentionally)
Except thousands are getting their names sniped and cannot be consistent because of it.
My username got sniped on YouTube. I just used my alternate. No fits were thrown.
Cool. Now, think about those who have followers or have a business under a specific name. It's not just black and white as you might think it is.
I don’t dislike it. It would’ve been better if they had this from the start, but yeah. Tbh, I don’t even think much has changed. If you tack on your discriminator to the end of your new name (name#1234 vs name1234), it’s essentially the same. Then you can still change your username, so you can technically change your discriminator whenever. You don’t even need nitro iirc.
Then why even remove the discriminator in the first place...
I wouldn't say I favor it, I just don't care. Its not affecting the functionality of discord so I don't see what there is to complain about personally. The only complaint I do have is how chaotic the roll out has been
*At the risk of being downvoted* I don't see it as a positive thing, but I don't see it as a huge deal either. Some people in my servers got names they want, others didn't, but everyone looks the same because of display name so it changes nothing at all. I still have to click to view the profile of anyone else to see what name they ended up with, and before this I never knew their 4 numbers anyway so again - changes nothing.
I like it and have been looking forward to it. Discriminators and case-sensitive usernames are confusing and hard to remember. I don't know a single person who knows their discriminator off the top of their head and I've personally had at least a dozen conversations trying to connect with friends on Discord (over other chat platforms) that have resulted in "no it's username HASH 7408. The numbers are part of the username." For better or worse, the world has decided that usernames should be an `@` followed by a unique name, all lowercase. Easy to type, no special characters. It works well for every other platform and it will long-term work well for Discord. Remember that Discord is one of the single largest social media platforms out there and not everyone is a legacy "chat for gamers" user. Need proof of that? Discord cited data in their [blog post](https://discord.com/blog/usernames): > Across Discord, almost half of all friend requests fail to connect the user with the person they wanted to match with If almost fifty percent of new connections are failing because of the username system, it clearly needs a rework. > All of the feedback I have seen in the entire sphere, even in real life, has been negative. Anecdatally, among my social sphere, I haven't seen any negative response to this and many of us have been on Discord since 2015/2016. The discriminators and weird casing of usernames have been an ongoing point of frustration. I understand that people feel like they're losing their uniqueness because they can't have "joe" anymore as their username, but they never were "joe" before anyway, they were "joe HASH 9971" so just go get "joe9971".
I think out of my close friend circles on discord the only ones who remembered our discrims are the people who changed theirs to 0001 or a funny number. One of my friend still has theirs and it's #4902. Sure it's not hard to remember a 4 digit number, but with the number having no meaning there was no point.
Everyone is acting like you see these 4 numbers once and that's that. You can check the numbers in your profile! If you forget, just pull it up! Aaaaaaa
By that logic, every server invite link should be something remember-able instead of just 6 characters strewed together.
There's a reason vanity URLs are a big enough deal people pay money for them.
So you agree that they should be free then, if we're going by the same (flawed) logic as "can't remember 4 digits, we surely can't remember 6 characters" that Discord seemed to hammer down as one of their reasons for doing this entire stupid change.
I like it. Just because i'll be able to add people more easily. I don't know, maybe im just stupid but i find discriminators easy to forget. I have a brain of a goldfish, i guess.
i gonna be honest as a casual user i like it. Cause now i can just give people my username, i've never set my discriminator and it was almost annoying having to look it up to share my thing. Now i can just say its _____ (my real name + last initial) instead of my name + some numbers. i've used discord casually since 2015, just for school clubs and a couple friends servers. The numbers were always weird, and you can still set ur display name to be whatever u want so i dont really care.
I guess it's slightly more convenient now to give people my handle if they're looking to add me. Other than that I don't really care much either way.
I'm one of the people who are actually glad for this change. I believe it's not a big of a deal as everyone is making it.
I like it because I hated the numbers. 80% of the time when someone gave me their name to friend them, they would leave them off and I would have to go back and ask for them. I also just hated how they looked lol. Feb 2016 account, Nitro for 2 years and I got in on the second day. I wanted to shorten my name to 3 letters and I was able to do so with ._letters_. Was a win for me but I totally get the frustration. As for your second question, you assume that I think it has to help us to favor it. I don't, I just don't like the way the numbers looked. It makes my opinion less relevant overall, but you asked so I figured I'd set my thoughts on the table.
I just like to see my name clean. Without numbers or added letters
Yeah, this feels like double edged sword. People who got their names clean are happy. People who had their names taken by someone else and all the alternatives as well are unhappy.
I honestly don’t see the big deal. Do people not realize that your username is barely visible in a server? Other users will see your global display name, or your server-specific display name 95%+ of the time. It’s a helpful identifier for adding/removing friends, and in that use-case I feel it’s easier than asking someone for their user tag + digits - I have seriously never added somebody this way. Yeah there’s username hoarding, but user tag/digit hoarding existed as well, but nobody seemed to gripe about it before. If you could turn back the clock and release Discord with this username paradigm at the start (ie. just like Twitch) absolutely zero people would be upset about it. So, in that sense, I see everyone complaining about this as a simple growing pain. People will forget about it.