On the username changes, and community choice.

Hello, I am a long(ish) time user, member since 2017, and I have had (full) discord nitro since 2019. I wanted to get nitro for 2 reasons. One, to have cool emojis and gif pfp. And second, I wanted to support the platform that had gotten me and my friends off of the cell speaker phone, and into a simpler system for gaming and talking. The system which I had begun to need in my life, to talk and game with friends from across the world. Now, these reasons have begun to be overshadowed by a dark, corporate cloud which has been sitting over discord. I am going to be cancelling my nitro after 4 years. This was the last straw. But don't worry, this can be fixed. All discord needs to do is listen to it's people. The people who not only use the platform daily, but seemingly importantly to the new discord prioritization for nitro, the people who give you money. This is what is wrong:

This change with usernames is quite simply a bad idea.

Even the reasoning for this, to help people remember their usernames more, is just full of holes. I have never once heard anyone complain or have trouble with the discriminator username system, and quite frankly, it is not as complicated as they make it seem in their article. The only complication can arise, I learned from the article, seems to be if you have out of place capital letters (which I can scroll through server lists forever and never find someone with that). Other than this, the old username system is not complicated or needing of change. It is not nearly as awkward as you think to just simply say "my username is bagels#0123" or at most "Bagels#0123 with a capital B". In fact, this adding numbers to the end of your username is something quirky and unique to discord, in a good way.

The biggest issue here, is that this is supposed to make your username more unique and simple to remember. Now by this, you have gone and done the opposite. My username used to be bagels. Now, it is bagels13. I know, I know, I used to use numbers before, so why is it an issue that I use 2 less? Simply because those numbers were not attached to my username. The 4 numbers were what made my username unique, allowed it to be bagels. It was what made my username a "discord username". It did not overcomplicate things, make it look bad with the 4 numbers at the end, since it was a different shade from your name, and had a #, and everyone was completely happy with it. This one change has actually completely destroyed that uniqueness of usernames. Again, I am no longer bagels. Quite sadly, this username started with discord, carried over to other games and become my main alias, and now it has been destroyed by discord. And this is an issue with many others as well. You used to have 9999 people able to have any single username, now, there can only be one person with a single username. What's the point? Yes the display name fixes it, so you can have any username, but why rely on this? I think everyone would agree, it is much nicer and better just to be "bagels" with no display name, no numbers attached to it. This update has literally destroyed this, and not to mention the quirkiness of having what is uniquely known as a "discord username" with the discriminator.

The last thing, is that this change has directly given the green light to people wanting to gatekeep certain usernames, with low character count, with common names, words, so that they can sell it later. This is a common thing in other games and platforms as well. Many people make many accounts with common names, things other people might want one day, and be willing to pay for, to make a quick buck. This is a huge negative part of other platforms, that nobody ever is able to fix, but discord didn't have this problem. In fact, discord perfectly prevented this. Now, in removing the ability for anyone to get a unique username, it has completely reverted this fact about discord.

Now! This may all seem grim, but don't worry. It can be fixed! This can also apply to a lot of different things on the platform as well. Hold a referendum! Post a poll, let the community decide - to keep the username change or not? Overall, we all want one thing: for discord's users to be happy on the platform. It will make me enjoy it more, and it will net you more money, with more people coming to the platform. This is something many companies skip but ask your community! With asking your community, you will never make a decision everyone will hate like this one. Overall, you will have better decisions, given you will be directly consulting the people who the decisions mater to. This again results in a much better user experience.

Thank you for reading if you are still here.

In conclusion, this change is unnecessary, destroys uniqueness of usernames, and breeds a negative community of account sellers. I personally, and have seen a lot of people doing this as well, will be cancelling my nitro membership unless I at least see better community based decisions in the future. So long!