Discord's Recent Announcement made a lot of people mad, mostly because of Hyrum's Law - users were relying on unintended observable behavior in the original username system, and are mad that their use-cases are being broken despite very good evidence that the current system is problematic. I think the major issue here is that Discord didn't go far enough, and as a result, it's confusing users who are unaware of the technical and practical reasons for the username change, or what a username is even for.
TL;DR usernames in the new system are more like friend codes than usernames; Discord should treat them as such
I feel like I’m alone in being happy to switch to usernames. The 4-digit always seemed strange to me, and any time I’d ask someone for their name they’d always say “Oh, I’m name!”, and then inevitably someone would followup with “What’s your weird number thing?”, and they’d say “Oh yeah, let me look it up”.
Being able to use effectively the same username you use everywhere else is miles better IMO.
Maybe someone here can explain what was so appealing about the number system?
Unique usernames cause issues with having to come up with wildly “creative” names to be able to be called the same thing everywhere if the platforms get big enough, or start adding loads of numbers to everything. Unique usernames also create prestigious names, which people most certainly care about, especially for branding or clout.
The discriminator system was clever, as it let people just pick names that they felt resonated with them better, while also keeping everyone equal - you didn’t have a prestigious name like “adam”, and everyone else who just wanted to go by adam on the internet had to add extras to it. Instead, everyone was given the extra numbers so nobody was special.
Now obviously, the username in itself is not that special, and nobody really goes by their username, but a lot of people do assign some value to their online identities and handles, and Discord just sidestepped that by putting everyone on the same level.
There were issues with the username system, but I don’t think the 4 numbers were it. You absolutely do memorise your 4 numbers if you’re adding people constantly for some reason, and if you’re not, it’s not exactly a major inconvenience.
From my experience, people who are happy with the new system already go by somewhat unique names, so this makes it easier for them.
The “numbers” are called Discriminators and served a variety of purposes:
Identity wise it meant multiple people could have the same username text. If you wanted to be John, you could be John#6754 and someone else could be John#1298 and both of you could be John! Now there is only one john.
It provided parity. EVERYONE had it, therefore no one is better or worse than other excluding particular number combinations. If you were John#5363 and hated the discriminator, well everyone else had one, versus someone behind john, and then someone having to be john_87 because there’s already a john
You argue that being able to use effectively the same username everywhere is a good thing. The unfortunate reality is the rollout Discord used alongside the limited number of permutations (combinations?) of short usernames makes this impractical. For example, a friend largely goes by a 4-char username, and the switch by Discord means they can’t use that 4-char username on Discord anymore. It’s easy to say like “well, just add something to the end”, but that is exactly what discriminators did.
At the end of the day the benefits weren’t as compelling as the losses (it would suck to have one’s identity impersonated or username stolen, or now most folks with short usernames have to stop friend requests cause they are getting spammed with them, or the fact these accounts are valuable and can be sold).
It is understandable that some people don’t really care about the matter and that’s fine, but it doesn’t make the frustrations others feel less important.
I feel like I’m alone in being happy to switch to usernames. The 4-digit always seemed strange to me, and any time I’d ask someone for their name they’d always say “Oh, I’m name!”, and then inevitably someone would followup with “What’s your weird number thing?”, and they’d say “Oh yeah, let me look it up”.
Being able to use effectively the same username you use everywhere else is miles better IMO.
Maybe someone here can explain what was so appealing about the number system?
Unique usernames cause issues with having to come up with wildly “creative” names to be able to be called the same thing everywhere if the platforms get big enough, or start adding loads of numbers to everything. Unique usernames also create prestigious names, which people most certainly care about, especially for branding or clout.
The discriminator system was clever, as it let people just pick names that they felt resonated with them better, while also keeping everyone equal - you didn’t have a prestigious name like “adam”, and everyone else who just wanted to go by adam on the internet had to add extras to it. Instead, everyone was given the extra numbers so nobody was special.
Now obviously, the username in itself is not that special, and nobody really goes by their username, but a lot of people do assign some value to their online identities and handles, and Discord just sidestepped that by putting everyone on the same level.
There were issues with the username system, but I don’t think the 4 numbers were it. You absolutely do memorise your 4 numbers if you’re adding people constantly for some reason, and if you’re not, it’s not exactly a major inconvenience.
From my experience, people who are happy with the new system already go by somewhat unique names, so this makes it easier for them.
The “numbers” are called Discriminators and served a variety of purposes:
You argue that being able to use effectively the same username everywhere is a good thing. The unfortunate reality is the rollout Discord used alongside the limited number of permutations (combinations?) of short usernames makes this impractical. For example, a friend largely goes by a 4-char username, and the switch by Discord means they can’t use that 4-char username on Discord anymore. It’s easy to say like “well, just add something to the end”, but that is exactly what discriminators did.
At the end of the day the benefits weren’t as compelling as the losses (it would suck to have one’s identity impersonated or username stolen, or now most folks with short usernames have to stop friend requests cause they are getting spammed with them, or the fact these accounts are valuable and can be sold).
It is understandable that some people don’t really care about the matter and that’s fine, but it doesn’t make the frustrations others feel less important.